Introducing a fortnightly guide to the chaotic marketplace of the '90s: a column on the simple truths of life--and marketing
Marketing is not just about selling refrigerators to Eskimos. Marketing is not just about producing cosmetics in the factory and selling hope in the drug store. Marketing is not about beautiful women smiling vacuously, while trying to extol the virtues of a product and besieging you to buy it.
Marketing is also understanding . Understanding you, so that brands can then be created to improve your quality of life. And marketing mistakes are often the best teacher of the rare skill of understanding consumers.
A giant transnational corporation (TNC) decided to extend its simple but highly effective advertising campaign to Dubai. The outdoor campaign visually depicted dirty clothes being put into a bucket containing the detergent and out came sparking clean clothes. However, instead of sales going up, they started falling from the day the hoardings were put up.
Only then did the company realise its blunder. In Dubai, like in other Islamic countries, people read from right to left. Hence, they saw clean clothes being put in a bucket containing the detergent and out came dirty clothes. Hardly the sort of appeal that will have consumers queuing up at the shops.
Marketing success cannot be transplanted blindly. Cultural differences have to be taken cognisance of.
Sales of washing machines in the Grand 3Trunk Road belt in Punjab were showing unexpected buoyancy. Subsequently, the marketing department decided to investigate this buoyancy by undertaking a market visit.
To their amazement, the company representatives found that the end users of their washing machines were not housewives but roadside dhaba owners, who were churning lassi in the machines and serving truck drivers by filling up glasses through the machines' drainage pipes.
Even today, the smaller models are referred to in the washing machine industry as lassi-makers.
Everything cannot be planned and then are surprises. At times pleasant, at most times unpleasant.
Instant coffee was introduced to the world in the firm belief that it would be an instant success. Far from it. Sales continued to be sluggish.
Housewives, when probed, confessed that they felt guilty while using instant coffee because it meant they did not love their family enough. They were taking the easy way out. Based on this understanding, instant coffee marketers started telling housewives-through their advertising--that by using instant coffee they could in fact save time which they could then invest in being a better mother and wife. Sales went up instantly.
The only route to success lies in understanding the consumer.
Chocolates originally came in slabs no grooves dividing it up as we have today. Market research into the causes of stagnant chocolate sales in the '50s indicated an inherent among adults to eating chocolates.
Consumers, upon being probed, revealed that when they started eating a chocolate, it was incumbent upon them to finish it, since there was no marking telling them when to stop. 'They therefore consumed the entire slab of chocolate and felt guilty of excessive self-indulgence.
It was then that chocolate marketers introduced bite-size grooves on the slab. This effectively told consumers that they did not have to consume the entire chocolate in one go. They could just take one bite at a time. And stop.
The grooves continue to this day, and internationally, chocolate sales have never had any major problems.
To labour home a point made in the previous anecdote too, the only route to success is understanding consumers