JULY 2010 ISSUE #1-10

EMPORIO
To the Facchas:

Dear Friends,

Philip Kotler famously said “There is only one winning

strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and
Extra! Extra!
direct a superior offering to that target market.” We
have taken these words to heart and tailored the first Prizes worth Rs. 400 to
issue of Emporio this year for you – our target market.
Some of you may have come in with a basic
understanding of marketing while many of you may not
be won! Read all about it
have any idea what marketing is all about. We take
pride in not having segmented the market and hence, inside!
targeting all of you.

How you treat this newsletter lies solely in your hands.

Whether you read every page and save it in a treasured
part of your computer or press „Del‟ and completely
forget about it, the truth shall remain that everything
that has been written has been written with a purpose-
a purpose of giving some insight, a purpose of  Contents:
enhancing our collective knowledge, a purpose of
preparing you for the future and most importantly a  Word-of-Mouse Advertising
purpose of building a purpose within you.
 Advertising Gone Wrong
What follows are our ideas and thoughts penned down,
intended to provide you with some food for thought. If  Crowdsourcing
you have any ideas on the issues being discussed here,
do send them across and we will feature them on our  Success Story of Amul Advertising
website.
 Making Advertisements
For those of you seeking material benefits, there are
contests within the newsletter. Have fun cracking them
 History of Advertising
and winning prizes!
Until next time!

Ayshwarya,
Niche Coordinator

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 JULY 2010 ISSUE #1-10

Word-of-Mouse Advertising Word-of-mouse communication relies heavily on

Rachit Kumar
Gone are the days when viral marketing was
epitomized by word-of-mouth communication.
The advent of the internet and the spread in its
global outreach thereof have ushered in a new era
wherein face to face discussions at focus groups or
over the phone have made way for the online
dissemination of information. Word-of-mouse
communication embodies communication of the
value proposition through computer-based
channels, such as chat rooms, electronic mails or
newsgroups. The phrase “word-of-mouse” was
christened by Jon Zilber in 1991 when he used it in
the magazine MacUser.
Word-of-mouse communication is usually inspired
by the product or service experiences by customers
which are conveyed through consumer e-mail
feedback, entries on blogs, posts on message
boards, personal Web sites, comments on forums
and e-mail. Unlike word-of-mouth, word-of-mouse
communication isn‟t channeled from person to
person but to numerous persons and the power of
persuasion that can be attributed to it is
significantly lower because of the substantially
lower recall value associated with “reading” as
compared to “listening”.
the creation and maintenance of a sound
reputation. Companies actively work towards
building a specific brand image so that the
consumers visualize the products or services
offered by a particular company if and when they
feel the need to procure them. Word-of-
mouse typifies an exaggerated form of word-of-
mouth, because information is exchanged
profusely through electronic media of
communication.
Just like other viral marketing techniques, word-of-
mouse techniques can prove to be a double edged
sword for the companies that choose to use them.
Negative reactions from consumers on forums or
negative reviews on blogs hold the potential to
create a spiraling effect that can kill brands. This
reinforces the need for the careful monitoring of
these techniques by experienced marketing
professionals. Despite the apparent dangers
associated with word-of-mouse, it promises to play
a huge role in the future of marketing.

Word of mouse can be used by marketers to trigger

word of mouth promotion of products or services.
For instance, when customers visit the website of a
company they can be offered a free subscription of
its newsletter. Through these newsletters the
company can offer to its customers all the relevant
information with regards to its products which
invariably gets communicated further by way of
word-of-mouth thereby fuelling gossip or creating
urban legends, something similar to what happened
in the case of Dan Brown‟s Da Vinci Code.

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 JULY 2010
Advertising Gone Wrong
Mehak Gulati
Advertising, though it can work wonders for the
marketing department, frequently tends to go
terribly wrong.
When your mobile network provider messages you
more frequently than your girlfriend/boyfriend, they
genuinely think they are advertising. So do MNC‟s
who cut and paste a common advertisement across
countries translates into an expletive in the local
language. For example, the Coca-Cola name in
China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning
"Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with
wax", depending on the dialect.
It is not just about translation of taglines leading to
bloopers and excessive irritating advertising
generating negative publicity for companies but
primarily about the fundamentals of advertising
being all over the place. Just a few of the things that
can go wrong are the choice of media, the content
and intent of the advertisement and its placement.
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ISSUE #1-10
It is not just about translation of taglines leading to
bloopers and excessive irritating advertising
generating negative publicity for companies but
primarily about the fundamentals of advertising being
all over the place. Just a few of the things that can go
wrong are the choice of media, the content and intent
of the advertisement and its placement.
The media that carries your advertisements should be
an entirely unbiased one. But, the recent trend in the
Indian media houses has been the adoption of a
cashless ad-for-equity model. Once the consumers
are aware of the stake holding equation, any
advertisement of the company through the parent
company‟s media channels is perceived as biased; and
the reporting of that media too as favoring the
company. This negative sentiment defeats the entire
purpose of advertising.
Equally important as the media is the content of the
advertisements. Indian advertising suffers from the
epidemic of creating entertaining advertisements that
are completely unrelated to the product and give no
information whatsoever. This can be labeled as a
branding exercise but though the recall is high there
is little or no association with the brand.
Then again, sometimes they try the conventional
approach and end up with the most predictable ads
(just think of every fairness cream ad). An even
bigger mistake is an advertisement where the
consumer gets confused rather than becoming better
informed about the other product. An advertisement
should be clear to the extent of being too simplistic.
"The risk of insult is the price of clarity." Rare is the
ad that makes its point clearly.
 JULY 2010
It‟s a complex ballgame as advertisers often resort to
listing features for the sake of being clear instead of
elaborating on how the product can actually benefit
the users.
What‟s in it for me? It‟s what a consumer will be left
wondering after such an advertisement.
Even if the appropriate media and content is worked
out the one thing that can lead to misplaced
contextual meanings is the placement of the
advertisements. This problem is particularly severe in
print and web media.
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ISSUE #1-10
These are, but some of the many blunders
marketers make when it comes to advertising.
With increased automation of ad-placement, it
becomes all the more difficult to monitor where an
ad goes and when it is aired. Also, in this age of
blogging, the criticism for such blunders creates
immense amount of negative publicity and being
extra careful has become even more important.
Food For Thought:
[Harvard Business Review, 1984]
A large multinational corporation once
attempted to sell baby food in an African nation
by using packaging designed for its home
country market. The company's regular label
showed a picture of a baby with a caption
describing the kind of baby food contained in
the jar. African consumers took one look at the
product, however, and were horrified. They
interpreted the labels to mean that the jars
contained ground-up babies!
Guess the company!
 JULY 2010
CROWDSOURCING: Application
in Advertisements
Manoj Motiani
Did you ever feel why is it that the art of ad making
is restricted to a few agencies when creative
individuals amongst the masses can do a better job?
Technology development has ensured that there is a
free market and once you login to Zoopa
(http://zooppa.com/) you can make advertisements
for well renowned brands like Microsoft.
Zoopa is one of several portals which use the
concept of “Crowd-sourcing”. Crowd-sourcing
refers to the process by which a company outsources
its activities to an online community or crowd .There
are rewards for completing the assigned tasks.
Although crowd-sourcing was pioneered in the
computing sector, now several business processes
are crowd-sourced.
Companies have begun to capitalize on this concept
based on the assumption that millions of heads are
better than one .This is especially true when it comes
to producing advertisements. Increase in usage and
improvement in performance of digital cameras and
related technologies have facilitated the creation of
advertisements which are of professional calibre.
Internet has facilitated easy and quick sharing of
“creative‟s” with the world.
Companies can crowd-source their work in the form
of contests or by using existing portals. The
collective of diverse consumers produce innovative
content for commercials that breaks from
stereotypical advertisements. Companies not only
get innovative content but also save huge
promotional budgets which go into making
commercials.
Allowing users to create ads comes with its own set
of risks. In 2007 Chevrolet experimented with user-
generated ads for its Tahoe brand.
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ISSUE #1-10
.On its web page there was a stock of video clips and
a text generator to create customized ads. The top
management at Chevy thought that customers will
make nice ads and circulate them across the globe
(An intelligent attempt at marketing the product
virally). But the idea bombed when instead of praise,
many of the ads that the users circulated defamed
Chevy products. The Chevy Tahoe case shows that
when it comes to crowd-sourcing companies control
the process, they do not control the crowd.
In 2007 Heinz tried its hand at a user-generated ad
contest. In this contest users were asked to submit
videos promoting its Heinz ketchup. Although the
response for the contest was overwhelming, most
submissions were of poor quality and were not able
to make the product look appealing. A huge amount
of money was spent to promote the contest itself.
The final result was that crowd-sourcing proved to
be just as costly as hiring a professional advertising
firm. In order to gain from such initiatives the
contest should have clearly stated the parameters
required for the ad which would have helped in
automatically weeding out ineligible submissions.
Matching the crowd‟s capability with the company‟s
requirement is essential for successful crowd-
sourcing. Thread-less, which draws its design ideas
from a crowd of amateur illustrators, is doing really
well and challenges the assumption that only
professional designers could do better. As the final
designs are selected by users who ultimately buy
these t-shirts, the success rate of design is extremely
high.
As the online community grows stronger more
companies will try crowd-sourcing to get creative
inputs and to create a Buzz amongst their target
audience. Companies must have a firm
understanding of the concept and the possible risks
involved in using crowd-sourcing. Good ideas and
understanding the customer will remain a constant
core of advertising.
 JULY 2010 ISSUE #1-10

Here are some successful and witty examples of

Success Story of Amul Amul ads which were made on very simple yet
Advertising relevant issues.
Jyotsna Kumari

After all the talk about TV commercials, news ads,

critics and analysis of various sorts of advertising
media, welcome back to the medium from which all
commercial advertising really started. Yes, we are
talking about a company here which charted its own
way to corporate success. Its advertising medium
also turned out to be of the “Zara Hatke” type.

Amul ads with the chubby, polka dotted skirt butter This ad captures Tata‟s invention: the cheapest car
girl swinging her ponytail has always attracted “Nano” with the cutest model advertising it!
common man‟s attention. It is the longest running
ad series and has got its name registered in the
Guinness book of world records. Amul has always
maintained its strategy to brand all its products
under the same umbrella brand name of “AMUL”
and advertise them all with the same advertisement.
Its mascot, the butter girl was chosen to target the
housewife segment, who is often the main decision
maker while purchasing dairy products. Most other
products revolve around some grown up girl or
housewife selling commodity products but here
Amul took a new approach. After Amitabh Bachchan‟s controversial movie
“Cheeni Kum” the butter girl came in a new avatar
The butter girl started appearing in hoardings some playing the role of the cancer affected child
50 years ago. Amul has kept the girl contemporary character of this movie.
by theming the ads around some contemporary
political, religious, entertainment or social issue.
Along with that, the ad contains some catchy line
which is a play on butter and brings a new
connotation to the advertisement.

The mix of contemporary issues and tongue-in-

cheek humor has today made Amul the household
brand.

With this Ad Amul reached across the border and

capitalized on Indian interest in Pakistan‟s internal
politics. Again, the words are interesting here.

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 JULY 2010 ISSUE #1-10

It is always difficult to remove IPL from the

relevant news list. This ad was dedicated to
Harbhajan Singh‟s infamous slap.

Mascot advertising that too, on hoardings was a risk Q: What is this picture about? And the one below?
which GCMMF took to advertise its vast range of
products, in the food and dairy products category.
This category is considered too sensitive to be
manipulated. Mascots are not very famous in India,
although they work well in western countries. The
advantage of having mascots as brand ambassador
is that they don‟t have any particular image, they
can never run into some controversy in real life and
they cannot endorse any other brand. So the
character of brand is inculcated in the mascot and it
becomes the real ambassador of the brand. Once
successfully launched, it remains in the mind of
consumers longer than the brand. Amul used this
tactic and with a limited advertising budget it got
hold of consumers. The butter girl made Amul a
company with a turnover of more than $ 1500
million. Although Amul has resorted to TV ads and
some other media, they have not been very
successful forays. The main attention is still focused
on the hoarding medium. This along with the
success story of Air India‟s Maharaja explains the
few stories of success of mascot advertising in
India.

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 JULY 2010
Making Advertisements
Arnab Saha and Rahul Anand
There are several tools used by firms to
communicate their offering to the target masses.
Such tools might include the name of the product,
the tag line used, the primary graphics, the
secondary jar structure, jar label and of course
advertisements.
The firm does a detailed research on finding out the
drivers for the offering. Then it identifies the prime
drivers amongst these drivers. These prime drivers
are bundled into what they call the communication
message. This communication message is then sent
to ad agencies which flush in their creative juices to
make the advertisement which reaches us all.
The only other message that the firms give the ad
agencies along with the communication message is
the direction of the advertisement. They specify the
stage at which the ad is directed, that is what in the
AIDA model (Awareness -> Interest -> Desire ->
Adoption) is to be hit. For instance, the Thumbs
Up ads might be directed at the Desire phase of
communication.
The ad agency then decides on the communication
route via which it can impart the communication
message to the target customers. In order to deliver
the brand communication, the firms try to get
actors/actresses who are most likely to connect
with the targeted audience. Let us understand this
with the aid of an example.
In case of Olay Total Effects, actress Kajol was
roped in for the communication for the message.
This is so because Olay Total Effects (TE) is
primarily an anti-ageing cream and the target
audience is women above the age of 25, more
specifically women in their mid-thirties and older.
As a result of that the actress who would portray
the same in the advertisements must connect with
the targeted audience; as is quite evident in this case
that Kajol was chosen primarily for these reasons
for the advertisement.
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ISSUE #1-10
However, in the case of Olay Natural White,
Katrina Kaif was chosen instead of Kajol because
Natural White is primarily a fairness cream targeted
for women above the age of 18 and hence in this
case Katrina, with her flawless fair skin would have
created a better connection with the target audience
than Kajol. Thus, even within the same brand to
deliver the communication for different product
lines different actors/actresses are employed.
Generally, when an actor is used to deliver the
brand communication it targets the desire and
action level of the pyramid. Sometimes the
advertisements may involve a plot. Classic example
of this includes most of the Fevicol
Advertisements. Advertisements may also impart
extensive product knowledge regarding a product.
This might be done in a case where the market for
the product is in a nascent stage and there is very
little knowledge regarding the product itself or the
knowledge regarding the product is extremely
outdated. The Olay TE Advertisement involving
Tisca Chopra, Gul Panag and Soha Ali Khan is
such an effort
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8_6zGceb7
M&feature=fvsr .
Another category which probably has seen a similar
kind of trend in advertising is the oral care category,
where doctors are used to deliver the
communication because of imparting the product
knowledge and attenuating issues of credibility of
the person delivering the message. These ads
typically aim at creation of awareness about the
product or the category as such.
Well, the agencies try to impart the communication
message via one or a combination of these tools.
Some of these tools as well may be used to
communicate the secondary drivers of purchase.
The famous JK cement ad was a topic for
discussion during the IPL. People laughed at seeing
a girl coming out in a swimsuit and it being a
message of JK cement being something special.
This ad has been often talked about by masses as
being the worst ad ever.
 JULY 2010 ISSUE #1-10

People wonder as to what went wrong in the grey
cells of the ad makers and the company. Generally
cement companies deliver strength and persistence
as their communication message. In a market where
other companies like Binani cement, Ambuja
cement and others give the same message, JK
cement perhaps wanted to establish itself as a player
by increasing its‟ brand recall. They decided to
come up with an ad which would remain in people‟s
mind for a long time. They wanted to hit at the
Awareness phase of the AIDA model and were able
to do it with perfection.
The buyers in cement industry are the contractors.
The maximum role the households can play is act as
influencers. Now when a contractor wants to
suggest a cement brand to a household, JK being a
famous brand, he will have it as one of the options
in the portfolio. Now, the product quality will be
tested by the usage of the product with time and the
early buying will depend on the price and the way in
which the company pitches its‟ brand to the
contractors.
Did You Know?
Cold medication is sold to loved ones and
not the ones suffering from cold. Why? It
is commonly accepted that the common
cold or the rhino virus has no cure and
that it is usually harmless. But pharma
companies had spent a large amount on
research trying to come up with a cure for
the cold. So they decided to market their
product as a relief giver and targeted
mothers. This is why you will never see
an ad for cold medicine without a mother
or a concerned relative in it.
Identify this product, which is considered as
the biggest marketing failure of the 20th
century.

Hence, advertisements are a route to communicate

the brands‟ message to the target customers. It is
the strongest tool companies have to win over the
minds and the hearts of the customers.

Identify the advertisement on the left for a once

highflying company, which had to file for
bankruptcy in 2001 and 2008 because of a failure
of their marketing strategy.

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 JULY 2010
History of Advertising
Ajay Sampath
What is advertising? Put simply, it is the act of
drawing attention. Advertising is drawing attention
to something in particular. Advertising, one of the
fastest growing industries in the world today,
contributes to almost 1% of the Global GDP. It is
almost impossible to escape the world of advertising
for we are constantly bombarded by different forms
of advertisements from dawn to dusk. Ever
wondered how all this started? Let‟s take a peek into
history to trace the evolution of the advertising
industry.
One of the earliest forms of advertising is our
National bird, Peacock. It advertises its wings in the
hope of attracting the best mate. The Cuckoo does
the same with its voice. In that sense, Nature runs
one the best advertising agencies known to us.
When did we humans pick this cue from nature and
start advertising?
Advertising in the Ancient World
The Babylonians, around 1600 BC, seem to have
used the first known forms of advertising – store
signs and street barkers or town criers. Babylonians
also used the concept of sponsorship allowing
Kings to stencil their names on the temples they
constructed.
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ISSUE #1-10
The Egyptians on the other hand used papyrus to
create sales messages and wall posters and Ancient
Greeks and Romans used papyrus for lost-and-
found advertising. Ancient Romans also used signs
that were pasted up proclaiming „circuses‟ and
„Gladiator matches‟. Another manifestation of
ancient advertising is in the form of wall or rock
painting whose tradition can be traced back to
Indian rock-art paintings dating back to 4000 BC.
This practice is present till date in India what with
political parties painting walls with their symbols
and messages especially during election periods.
http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=7989
2
Modern Advertising
Modern form of advertising is generally agreed to
have begun in the seventeenth century with
classified advertisements in the newspapers.
Sometime in 1630s, Frenchman Theophraste
Renaudot placed the first advertising notes in La
Gazette de France
(http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/des
ign/all/05040/facts.a_history_ of_ advertising.htm).
Simple description and prices served the purpose of
advertising till late 19th century, when technological
advances enabled illustrations and later colors to be
added to advertisements.
An early advertising Success Story: Pears Soap
Thomas Barratt, married into the famous soap
making family of A&F Pears, realized that they
needed to be more aggressive in pushing their
products to survive. He launched a series of ads in
the 1860s featuring cherubic children which
connoted the Pears brand‟s values of purity,
simplicity and quality which it holds even today. He
is hence known as the father of modern advertising.
http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/Advertisi
ng/advertising.php?pageID=history
 JULY 2010 ISSUE #1-10

Birth of Advertising Agencies

The term advertising agency originated in 1842, when Volney B. Palmer opened for business in Philadelphia
which is widely accepted as the birth of modern advertising. This event marked the beginning of a creative
industry that has transformed cultures and languages.
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/design/all/05040/facts.a_history_of_advertising.htm
Present Day Advertising

Advertising Industry has come a long way since the ancient times and is ever evolving at a frantic pace. In the
present day several exciting and new mediums like blogs, mobile, social networking sites have come up. Many
new forms of adverting like Surrogate advertising, Pixel advertising, Web Banner advertising, Public Relations
advertising, Crowdsourcing etc have also emerged. But one thing that remains unchanged is that
advertisements will continue to play a vital role in our everyday lives and will continue to shape our culture and
history.

Lipton Gimmicks
Thomas Lipton was a visionary when it came to advertising. He issued Lipton notes using which one could
buy 1 pound worth of groceries for 15 shillings at Lipton shops. This was the earliest form of coupons.
Similarly, he had advertising telegrams dropped from balloons from the sky. He displayed pictures contrasting
to regular Lipton shoppers (happy) from those who don't (sad). He used people wearing sandwich boards to
advertise Lipton tea. He even once had a Jumbo cheese made and advertised its progress leading to greater
customer involvement with the Lipton brand.

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 JULY 2010 ISSUE #1-10

Want to contribute?
Send in articles on the topic “Marketing to the Bottom of the
Pyramid” by the 13th of August and be a part of the next edition of
Emporio.

Dorminate
Does your dorm have what it takes to Dorminate the other dorms?
Suppose a fachch(a/i) comes to WIMWI and has the choice of picking
which dorm to stay in, can you make him / her choose yours? For more
details please check out the Niche NB on Dbab.

Crack!
Have you cracked all the questions that have been peppered over this
newsletter? If so hurry, and send in a mail to niche@iimahd.ernet.in with all
the answers. The first two readers to send in all the correct answers win Rs.200
each.
Brought to you by the Niche team 2010-11
Designers Srikanteaswaran T K Arnab Saha
Saurab Vivek Nair Sashank Rajpurohit
Saurab Vivek Nair Manoj Motiani Rahul Anand
Jyotsna Kumari Rachit Kumar
Srikanteaswaran T K Toshe Prasad Mehak Gulati
Ajay Sampath Ayshwarya R. Vikram