-

Today’s lifestyle is giving rise to lot of lifestyle related diseases like hypertension, overweight & heart related diseases & doctors are also concerned with the same. Food & lifestyle changes are the key to a long term health & GSKCH is committed to providing the right solutions to the consumers for their changing lifestyle & their nutrition needs.

Designed as a healthy breakfast option for today’s fast-paced life, Horlicks Oats comes with ‘3 Way Health Advantage’# – helps manage weight, helps manage healthy blood pressure and helps reduce cholesterol. The product is available in 3 pack sizes of 200gm, 400gm & 1kg pouch pack and comes with the trust of Horlicks Nutrition Academy.

Jayant Singh, Marketing Director, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, India said, “Current lifestyle trends compel Indians to either skip or have an incomplete breakfast in which nutrition is often neglected. By broadening the Horlicks portfolio to Oats, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare aims to spread the goodness of healthy living and complete the consumer food table by adding yet another nutritious/wholesome option to the menu. With this launch, we want to occupy greater mind space in the healthy food segment.”

As part of GSKCH’s initiative to build awareness about Horlicks Oats, the company has launched an advertising campaign across print and television platforms to communicate the value proposition of the product of providing a 3 Way Health Advantage#- important for long term health & well being. Horlicks Oats is being launched first in the southern market.

-

Which brings us to one of the most important communication vehicles these propositions ride on……….daily mailers!

Digital direct marketing communication – your one on ones with potential buyers are not as easy as ABC. You know the importance of deliverability and other success metrics and you are sure your recipients are definitely receiving your email campaigns….there’s just one more question you need to ask yourself…. are they reading them?

Some of the key considerations which email marketers must take into mind while creating a “read & respond” campaign are:

Relevance: making the content relevant to each recipient. If a recipient knows that when your brand arrives in their inbox, this email is definitely something they have expressed an interest in and want to read, they will act on that.

Segmentation: The best way to implement relevance is to effectively segment your database so you know what your customers are interested in and therefore what content will be the most relevant.

You are now ready with that killer content, a solid Email Service Provider (ESP) behind you –(Choosing an ESP can be quite a task , here’s hoping you’ve done it right , what next?)

Ask Usain Bolt, what the importance of timing is? No seriously, a great proposition, even with A/B split tested subject lines and creatives can turn horribly wrong if the timing is off. A well timed campaign – other criteria remaining the same – can work wonders on the open rates and further on the ROI of the campaign. Unfortunately, there is no formula or overall ‘ideal time slot’ which you can follow to achieve this elusive ‘golden hour’. There are a number of factors that go in to your decision: what time is best to hit the send button? ( With a good ESP – it would be the Schedule button )

Timing – Day and hour depends on the answers to the following questions.

Who are your audience?

For a B2B audience, it doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the optimum days. As we all know, Mondays are spent getting back in to the swing of work after the weekend and Friday sees offices winding down for the next weekend. Saturday and Sunday are redundant as offices are closed. Days before holidays are = Fridays and days after holidays are = Mondays irrespective of what days they fall on !

For B2C email marketing, timings are very different. Very dependent on the demographic of your audience. One can safely assume most prospects will mainly be checking their personal emails in the evenings, during lunchtimes and over the weekends. However it is best to test which brings us back to segmenting! B2C sending can be a bit of a gamble without thorough testing of your specific target audience. Homework must be done and learning interpreted. A great ESP will be able to deliver dynamic content with different propositions scheduled at different times of a day or even different days.

Is your campaign seasonal?

For the B2B sector, marketers must avoid sending their campaigns over school vacation season, long weekends and of course the many holidays that we have ! Again advice for the B2C sector is entirely opposite. If relevant, a seasonal approach can boost additional sales and therefore revenue. Most campaigns are timed to address seasonal offers!

So much for planned marketing communication… However, there is another aspect to timing in direct digital communication.

Timing can never be as important as it is when the ‘Prospect ‘is on the verge of becoming a ‘Paying Customer’ …many a sales person have rued their chances – having communicated a little later than they should have. The optimum time for any recipient to receive your communication is when they have shown an interest in your brand or product. Using Automated Mails or trigger campaigns, based on browsing behaviour or when they last clicked on or opened an email gives you a clear indication as to when to send the email and what content to include.

A typical scenario of such lost opportunities would be apparent in a colleague’s recent experience on a very popular online store. As he described it “ I was on my way to check out and proceed to pay when I saw this dangling banner in the right column : Sign up for our newsletter and get 10% off. I paused, thought I could save this 10% by signing up and using the voucher code. So I smartly opened another browser, signed up and waited for the voucher. About an hour later, neither my inbox nor my spam folder had any sign of an email from these guys . I gave up hope and eventually had lost all interest in buying that item at 10% higher than I could have”. A simple Triggered email could have, rather, should have been used here to enable interest being converted to action at the point when the customer is most engaged.

While still on timing, or should I say while there is time – it would be good to remind you to look for patterns in your open and click through rates or other email metrics . Whether certain offers work better when sent at some time or another? Are there any influences that make your campaigns more successful, like salary days (beginning of the month)? Are you responding to your customers at the optimum moment?

The only way for you to determine what works best for you is to, as always, test, test, test! | By Amit Sarna, AVP Customer Success, Kenscio Digital Marketing

About the writer:
Amit Sarna currently holds the position of AVP, Customer Success at Kenscio Digital Marketing, a leading specialised Direct Digital Marketing firm. With 0ver 15 years experience in Business Development, Process Creation & Adoption, International Business (Europe, ANZ & US ) and for the past 11 years, Sarna has worked in the domain of eBusiness, Digital & Online marketing and specialized in Digital Direct Marketing solutions for eCommerce, retail, travel, BFSI, Non Profit, Jobs & Automobile businesses. Sarna is self driven with an entrepreneurial experience.

-

In his new role at DMA: India, Vatsal shall be responsible for strengthening DMA: India’s presence as an apex body for advocacy of direct marketing practices.

On his new role, Vatsal said, “With multitude of choices, Indian consumers are becoming more discerning about their brand preferences and where they spend money. Considering this consumer behavior and the increasing media clutter, it is imperative for marketers to create data driven customer centric campaigns. From traditionally being defined as ‘response generating’ domain, direct marketing is now used for ongoing customer engagement. By emphasizing on global best practices for marketing services providers and marketers, I aim to carry forward DMA: India’s vision of establishing industry standards and promote the direct marketing community.”

Sanjiv Swarup, Member of DMA: India Board of Directors, said, “In 2010 spends on direct marketing accounted for more than 50% of overall ad spends in the United States. Similar trend is also witnessed in India where marketers using data, backed with analytics are focusing on creating campaigns that generate interest, measure customer response and continuously engage with their customers. Considering this trend, onus is on us at DMA: India to increase member interaction and provide them with access to the latest information in domain of direct marketing. Vatsal’s depth of experience will help drive our agenda to advocate direct marketing and provide networking opportunities that will help the marketing industry to reach the customers more effectively.”

Direct marketing has gained immense popularity in past few years with emphasis not just being laid on measuring the returns on marketing spends but also campaigns being created to initiate a dialogue with the customer. With advent of new media and innovative usage of technology to engage with customers, spends on direct marketing have also increased significantly.

Vatsal was associated with Deepak Fertilisers’ consumer facing VARE division as Vice President before joining DMA: India. Prior to Deepak Fertilisers, Vatsal has worked with Reliance Retail, Tata Teleservices and RPG group.

Vatsal brings with him more than 15 years of rich and varied experience in domain of marketing communications across brand management, sales and promotions, loyalty and customer experience. With deep understanding of consumer behavior and innovative approach to engage with consumers, Vatsal has strategized and successfully executed marketing campaigns that have taken many brands to the next level.

Vatsal said, “Thanks to direct marketing going digital, it now considered as targeted and customer specific media rather than an intrusive form of marketing. In coming months I look forward to promote new trends and technology in direct marketing, besides creating platforms for knowledge sharing and innovation. We envisage instituting forums with active stakeholder participation in form of industry councils and regional chapters. We shall be organizing webminars, periodic meet ups and an annual colloquium modeled on global format to meet the objectives. Emphasis will also be laid on protecting consumer’s interest, thereby strengthen their belief in direct marketing.“

-

The 100% Organic, Herbal enriched Masala range is the finest quality Masala, offering a unique aroma, authentic taste and pure goodness that is identified with all MPS products. The Company boasts of its quality food, utilizing the high grade products from the Group’s orchards and agricultural divisions using organic fertilizers.

The newly launched Mixed Masala Range includes Chicken Masala, Meat Masala, Fish Masala, Sabji Masala, and sachets of Processed Tomato Ketchup, Mixed Pickle and Mixed Fruit Jam.

The Chicken and Meat Masalas are priced at Rs 48 (100gm), Fish Masala at Rs 36 per (100gm) and Sabji Masala at Rs 30(100gm). MPS also offers sachets of Chicken and Meat Masalas priced at Rs 5 per 10 gm and Fish and Sabji Masala priced at Rs 4 per 10 gm. The processed Tomato Ketchup sachets will be available at Re 1 (9gm), Mixed Veg Pickle at Re1 (10gm) and Mixed Fruit Jam at Rs 2 (17gm).

Speaking on this occasion, P. N. Manna, Chairman, MPS Food Products, said: “We are pleased to augment our world-class product portfolio with the Mixed Masala Range. Since time immemorial, spices have been a part of Indian cuisine and we are happy to bring Mixed Masala Range to the elite table. With its superior characteristic taste/aroma, hygienic packaging and sublime taste, with nutritional value, this natural Masala range enriched with herbs is all set to delight gourmets and food connoisseurs across the region.”

-

“We remain committed to our clients in continuing to invest in our Markets franchise. To this end Citi has made a several significant hires strengthening our credit markets trading, structuring and commodities businesses. These hires strengthens Citi’s overall market presence comprising of over 100 highly motivated and talented individuals in India,” said Pankaj Vaish, Managing Director and Head of Markets at Citi India.

“India is a high priority market for the Asia Pacific region and with these new appointments, Citi is confident of continuing to be amongst the leading Markets franchises in India supporting our clients’ needs across the entire spectrum of fixed income, currencies, commodities, credit trading and equities products and services,” added Pankaj.

Some of the key new talent who joins Citi India in the credit markets trading and commodities team are:
Rohit Dusad joins as Director Origination in Credit markets trading. In his new role, Rohit will be responsible for sourcing opportunities in the MME segment working alongside Citi’ Local Commercial Bankers. Prior to joining Citi, he originated structured products from Indian Banks & NBFC’s and established the franchise for delivery of onshore and offshore credit products for Indian Banks and DFI’s at JP Morgan. He has also worked at Nomura, Deutsche Bank, ABN-Amro and ICICI Bank across fixed income and debt capital markets in various capacities and has a combined experience of over 13 years.

Aditya Bagree joins as Director Credit Structuring. He brings with him over 10 years of experience having worked with Nomura as the Head of India Structuring. Prior to this, he has had extensive exposure in Funds Derivatives, Mortgage Swaps and Options Trading with Lehman Brothers, New York. At Citi India, he will spearhead the structuring activity in credit.

Chintan Shah as Vice President Credit Trading brings cross regional experience to the India Trading unit given his exposure to LATAM, US and Emerging Market products. Prior to joining us, Chintan with over 8 years of experience, has worked with the Emerging Market Structured Credit Trading business unit at Merrill Lynch in New York and more recently in the India Credit Trading desk at Morgan Stanley.

Deepak Shaw joins as a credit analyst bringing over 11 years of experience in credit analysis on debt issuers, internal ratings, securitization analysis, amongst others. Prior to joining Citi, Deepak worked with BNP Paribas Mutual Fund, Bharati Axa, and ICICI Bank in varying roles with significant exposure on Fixed Income products.

Dhiraj Singh as the Commodities Specialist joined Citi’s Corporate Sales and Structuring team and is responsible for the development and execution of Citi India’s commodities business. Dhiraj’s appointment reflects Citi’s strategy to enhance the commodity specialist knowledge and its ambition to be the best commodities Bank in Asia Pacific. Prior to joining Citi, Dhiraj spent 18 years working in the markets business at First Rand Bank and has a rich experience in both metals and energy segment. He has also worked in the bullion market.

Today, Citi is one of the largest foreign banks in India employing nearly 8,000 people and is integrally connected to the trade and capital flows in the region touching 7% of trade flows. Citi also plays a leading role in helping multi-nationals expand in India and also helping Indian companies grow overseas. Over the past three years, Citi has helped raise close to $60 billion from the capital markets for its clients in India and advised on nearly $25 billion of India-related M&A. In the consumer business, Citi has 42 full-service Citibank branches in 30 cities, with over 700 ATMs and a market share of over 20% in credit card spends.

-

Speaking about Alterian’s agenda for the Indian market, Chris Tew – Senior Vice President and Head of APAC, said, “the Indian market has started to know our technology pretty well, so we know that organizations are feeling the competitive edge. Be it retailers, banking, insurance, travel, leisure they, have all started to build up a large customer base, began to try stock customer attention, have some cross sale, and also to acquire new customers”. We believe that, Chris said, “with the need to engage one’s customer, large databases, and the difficulty in maintaining it manually, we need to start provide tools to alternate the process and to help marketers understand how to engage with their customer.”

Talking about the Indian market and their outlook towards translating their expertise here, Chris Tew, said, “Firstly to start at, talk to the direct marketers and educate them on the basics, need and procedure to engage with their customers and use finances correctly (advertising etc). This is one of the lesson’s we would like to bring to the Indian market through tool sets to enable that, he said.” Chris Tew, believes that Indian market is yet evolving, “but, we definitely see it as an emerging market for our type of technology. It’s slightly behind the Europe and the USA, also Australia, but in the Asia pacific is quite similar, but the sheer numbers make a big difference”, he highlighted.

“The USP of our technology is, Chris elaborated, “that it is an integrated system and the fact that we are able to hold a single customer view”. Listing the offers of Alterian, Chris Tew said, “the technology includes all the information that a marketer wants from Geo-demographic, transactional, history, purchase history, e-commerce history, campaign history, e-mails, SMS’s, Internet, analytics – all in one place. Thus, giving a marketer a real opportunity to understand and engage its customers. What makes Alterian different from its competition is that its designed for the marketers and to deliver at higher speed.

In terms of revenue, India as a market for Alterian is about 20 % of the Asia Pacific region, which could definitely grow up to 30 – 40 % in the coming years.In terms of the categories it caters to,Alterian believes that a lot of hand holding is needed in the social media space, in spite of knowing and understanding the potential of the medium. “India, along with lots of parts of Asia Pacific is accelerating in the area of digital direct marketing – SMS’s and e-mails etc”, he noted.

Alterian, offers a 360 degree approach to its customers. Though in India, they main areas of focus are social media (monitoring and engagement), analytics and campaign management and web content management and web analytics.A few of Alterian’s successful alliances in India are, HDFC, Dominos, Levis, Vodafone.” While internationally, Priceline, a pharmaceutical giant in Australia and Cisco are the global success stories for Alterian.

Alterian is all set to launch a new product to its customers, Alterian Alchemy, but only towards the end of the year. With growth plans in the pipeline, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region, Alterian aims to carve a niche for itself in India and leave a mark on marketers and customers as well. | By Ankita Tanna [ankita(at)adgully.com]

-

So Adgully caught up with S Venkatesh, Director, RW Promotions Pvt Ltd, to know more about the company’s growth plans and the BTL industry’s challenges and transformation over the years.

Venkatesh says that as the industry has been growing the product categories investing on the BTL activation is also seeing a transformation. He points out that besides FMCG brands, mobile phones, mobile phone service providers, satellite channels and now off late pharmaceutical companies have been joining the bandwagon for on-ground activation.

He adds, “Service providers today are very aggressive in terms of selling each of their offerings. Now as also the mobile handset prices are reducing even the mobile brands are becoming increasingly aggressive. Moreover there are certain categories which are more aggressive around a particular time of the year, for eg, paint brands get very charged up during festive seasons like Diwali.”

However, Venkatesh quickly points out that the sustenance for their business comes through small town satellite channels because these channels are marketing themselves in a big way. He adds that specifically in the rural sector lubricant brands, mobile service providers, pharmaceutical companies are the key drivers.

Recently the company did a lot of work for Max Bupa, a well-known insurance brand in the country. The team conducted medical camps all across corporate, housing societies etc for the financial solution brand.

So is the client’s brief always essentially to interact with the consumers?

Venkatesh says, “A brief will always differ from client to client but end of the day it is always sales oriented. We have carried out various activities for our clients where the activity has a social angle and thus in turn it strengthens the brand experience and brand loyalty of a consumer.”

He adds that though the industry has grown in leaps and bound, yet 80% of its business is urban based while only 20% rural market based.

“A lot of clients speak of how they have an increasing focus on rural markets but unfortunately there is no sense of continuity to the activities in the rural market,” he explains.

When asked if BTL activation can ever work in isolation, Venkatesh says, “Till today BTL has essentially been utilised to support a strong communication plan, but I am not ruling out the possibility that it can work in isolation. BTL activities give great visibility and great returns to a brand, unfortunately when communication partners are planning they treat BTL activity also as a plan. So nobody is really thinking and ideating over a BTL activation, the same creative that is used for various media, is passed on as a brief for BTL activation.”

But hasn’t the industry also been facing flak for being unregulated?

Venkatesh acknowledges it and adds, “We have a lot fly by night operators; I mean they might do a work for a day and then depart. So if one has to have a recognised regulatory body to look over the functioning of the BTL sector, it is very difficult. India is a very large country and the market dynamics are very different from region to region within a state in the country itself. Hence to get all stakeholders together and to decide upon a fixed pay scale and investment size is a very complicated thing to do.”

Venkatesh points out that the BTL industry is growing at 10-15% every year and RW promotions has been growing at an average of 8-10% every year.

However while speaking about a few challenges, he empathetically adds, “Logistics is a major issue. The other thing is that we operate pan India so when we do an activation, our challenge lies in being consistent across all the markets in the country. It is a challenge because every state has a different set of consumers, different infrastructure etc.”

Venkatesh has the vision to makes RW Promotions Pvt. Ltd. one of the biggest in terms of BTL activation and also in terms of rural activation. “We also want to be a one stop shop for our client’s media needs and thus we recently acquired an INS owned ad agency called Commugrads. We have also launched a production unit called Next Wave,” he adds.

While signing off as a word of advice Venkatesh says, “The industry has to improve in terms of sustenance of an activity so that the consumer is constantly interacting and engaging with the brand. Moreover clients have to allow a little freedom to us in terms of costing so that we can come up with clutter breaking work.” | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]

-

AdAsia2011 is scheduled from October 31 – November 03 2011 in New Delhi . The speakers mentioned above will share their perspective on the evolving dynamics in business, marketing and advertising.

Michael I. Roth as Chairman & CEO assumed the leadership of Interpublic, of one of the world’s largest organizations of advertising and marketing services companies, in 2005. Roth has righted the company’s financial course and moved to make it an industry leader by defining new models that provide value to clients in a rapidly-changing media and marketing environment. Roth is a member of the Board of Directors for Pitney Bowes Inc., the Ad Council and the Gaylord Entertainment Company. He sits on the Leadership Committee of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; the Board of Directors of the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy and The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA). In addition, he is a Director of The Baruch College Fund, The Partnership for New York City and The Enterprise Foundation. He is also a member of the Business Roundtable.

Pankaj Ghemavat is the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School . He was on the faculty at the Harvard Business School , where he became the youngest person in the school’s history to be appointed a full professor. Ghemawat was also the youngest ‘guru’ included in the guide to the greatest management thinkers of all time published in 2008 by The Economist. Ghemawat’s books include ‘Commitment’, ‘Games Business Play’, ‘Strategy and the Business Landscape’ and ‘Redefining Global Strategy’. Ghemawat’s new book titled ‘World 3.0’ was published by Harvard Business Review Press, and has received great many accolades. Other recent honours include the McKinsey Award for the ‘Best Article published by Harvard Business Review’ and the ‘Irwin Educator of the Year’ Award from the Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy Management.

Swamiji Sukhabodhananda is not only one of the most respected spiritual leaders of the country, but also nicknamed as ‘Corporate Guru’. His expertise lies in synthesizing ancient wisdom of East and modern vision of West appealing to both young and old from wide spectrum of society. The Week magazine acclaims Swamiji as one among the top five best exponent of spiritual knowledge. He has authored many best sellers such as ‘Oh, Mind Relax Please!’ and ‘Oh, Life Relax Please!’ which have sold over a million copies in over 80 titles in different languages. Swamiji was invited as a dignitary on five different panels at the World Economic Forum and the second Indian to be honoured at the prestigious lotus millionaires’ Intellectual Club at Manhattan , New York . Prasanna Trust under his inspiration and guidance runs an orphanage for girls, provides artificial limbs and callipers to people with impoverished background, provides scholarship for meritorious students, conducts regular poor feeding and blood donation camps

AdAsia2011 will also see Bruce Haines, who has 35 years of experience and over a 14 year period looked after some of the best brands in the world such as Porsche, Yellow Pages, Mobil, Harrods and Adidas among others. Haines joined Cheil Worldwide in March 2008 and is Fellow and former President of IPA, Fellow of the Marketing Society and has several charity commitments, including President of NABS, Patron of the Andrea Adams Trust and trustee of RMHC, UK’s leading charity providing accommodation for the families of children in hospitals

Robert Senior, dubbed ‘Adland’s Golden Boy’ and ‘The hottest name in Adland’ by The Independent, joined Saatchi & Saatchi in 2007 as UK CEO of SSF, and was appointed Chairman of the Worldwide Creative Board in 2010. Senior founded Fallon London in 1998 with four other partners. Together they grew the business from a start-up to a 190 person strong multi-award winning agency, famed for work on Skoda, BBC, Sony and Cadbury. Senior is also the Board Member of the English National Ballet School and a recent graduate of culinary night school.

Robin Wight, as President of both Engine and WCRS, Robin was part of the management team that led the management buyout from Havas in 2004. Wight began his career by setting up a student advertising agency while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge . After working as a copywriter in a number of agencies including Collett Dickinson Pearce and Partners, he co-founded Wight Collins Rutherford Scott with Peter Scott in 1979. Though Robin Wight has spent his whole career in advertising, he has always had a number of outside interests. He was the Chairman of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Arts and Business. In 2003 he founded the Ideas Foundation – a charity which helps identify and nurture creatively gifted young people from ethnic minorities through the award of Creativity Scholarships. In 2007 he published “The Peacock’s Tail and the Reputation Reflex: The Neuroscience of Art Sponsorship”. Despite a 29 year commitment to marketing BMW once a week he walks to work as his personal contribution to a cleaner planet.

Commenting on these confirmations, Madhukar Kamath, Chairman of the Organising Committee AdAsia2011 and Group CEO & Managing Director – Mudra Group said, “Michael Roth, Pankaj Ghemawat, Swamiji Sukhabodhananda, Bruce Haines, Robert Senior and Robin Wight, all leaders and accomplished speakers will be adding immense value to the proceedings at AdAsia2011. With over 15 speakers already confirmed and more to follow, AdAsia2011 will certainly provide all delegates a rich learning experience.”

Other speakers confirmed for AdAsia2011 are Indra Nooyi, David Dogra, Ram Charan, Rishad Tobaccowala, Joseph Tripodi, Akira Kagami, Thirasak Tanapatanakul, Duncan Goose, Kity Lun and Koichi Yamamato.

AdAsia returns to India after eight years. In 2003, the AdAsia congress was hosted in Jaipur and was widely regarded as a landmark in the history of the Congress. AdAsia2011 will not just be about Ads and Asia . It has a far more ambitious vision and seeks to comprehensively explore all aspects of the theme Uncertainty: The New Certainty. The business world is currently at an inflection point witnessing a realignment of global economic leadership. In the 19th Century, the world looked to the West for innovation and progress. In the 21st. century, everyone’s attention is riveted on Asia . AdAsia2011 will thus provide a ready platform to chronicle change of a significant magnitude and provide a glimpse of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. The prolific agenda of AdAsia2011 will comprise over 15 intellectually stimulating sessions aimed at exploring the business ecosystem and understanding the nature of disruption to effectively address pertinent concerns.

-

The company saw their offerings as a very clearly gap in the market, and the lack of awareness on its value creation potential, was one of the key reasons Customer Centria was founded. Some of the clients that the company currently has in its kitty are Goderj, Airtel, Being Human, Videocon, Bajan Allianz, Bharti AXA, Reliance ADAG etc.

Adgully caught up with, Kim Saldanha, Vice President – Marketing, Customer Centria, to know about what sets the organisation apart and if marketers real understand the word ‘engagement’.

Talking about Customer Centria, Saldanha, says, “We pride ourselves for foreseeing and gearing companies to focus on the customers. We get companies to learn from every conversation they have with their customers. So we provide our clients an end to end engagement strategy. Unfortunately customer management is a much abused word, people have not really understood their customers as yet and how their customers can really be engaged through innovative tools.”

So wherein really lies the challenge?

Saldanha, explains that the biggest challenge really lies in understanding which medium the customer really is likely to respond to you on. “The other big challenge is instituting an organisation’s mindset change. An engagement strategy has to be imbibed in the very working and culture of an organisation, because after a successful understanding of the customers, the organisation has to absorb the feedback accordingly,” she adds.

Customer Centria talks with immense pride for its work on Gojiyo.com, which the team was proud to co create and run. It has been featured by a UK research consultancy which tracks global brands, consumer trends etc. It marks Gojiyo as one of the most innovative social networks from around the globe as part of its digital trends mapping.

Moreover for IDBI Federal Insurance’s Wealthsurance Customer Centria created a very engaging campaign and the baseline of which said ‘Jisne bhi Suna, Khareed Liya.’ “We asked the client for their database and then we segmented the database and we arrived on different kinds of people who will buy this insurance. So taking a cue from the customer segmentation we caricatured each segment. There was a wheel of fortune representing various segments, a user had to drag the pointer to their segment and then the user would be provided insurance information suitable to that category of audience,” she adds.

Saldanha further says that the company is looking at initiating a research where they are looking at creating some sort of customer experience index. “At the end of the day if I am marketer I am also a consumer so we want to do it vertical-wise and define really the various customer experience parameters. We will unveil this research somewhere in September this year.”

Talking about social media, she says, “Sometime we disagree with a lot of marketers. For us social media is geography and not a channel. It’s a place where people are networking and when you understand that the whole method of handling social media changes. It is not about managing a Facebook page but it is about creating a relevant conversation.”

Saldanha feels that 3G will revolutionalise engagement purely in communication perspective. “So as 3G penetration increases the integration of a marketing plan’s various channels will be completely seamless. So from a marketers perspective it might seem complicated but it’s imperative,” she says while signing off. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]

-

Adgully: What is the Philosophy of BNI?

Ivan Misner: The philosophy of BNI is Giver’s gain. If you give business to people, you will get business in return. The basis lies in social capital theory. In this theory there is a concept of a law of reciprocity which has a transformational law out of transactional law. This is where a lot of people make a mistake by making it transactional. It needs to be transformational more than transactional.

Ag: What trends have you noticed internationally?

IM: First would be integration of face to face and online. I believe online social media and face to face networking is powerful. I see with time, good organizations networking through the integration of both face to face and online mediums. Second is education as a trend in this sphere. We don’t teach networking in universities. Companies will train people to do good business. It is not very different in India as well. India is a sponge of information and its members are so receptive to ideas and knowledge.

Ag: What are your India related plans?

IM: I believe India would be one of the two largest countries for BNI within the next five to ten years. We will have more chapters in India than almost any country in the world. India has a very entrepreneurial population, a young population, so it is very aspiration driven. It is an upcoming middle class. India has an incredible catalyst for helping this growth. I believe the opportunity as we move along in the next ten years is getting one lakh members across India. Last year we help generate 188 crores worth business between just 1000 members here in India. So going in this pace, we are sure India poses a lot of opportunities.

Ag: How do reach out to the companies India?

IM: It is primarily through word of mouth. Social media is an important part and we do get little visits through that but 80% is organic through members themselves. India is absolutely a powerhouse.

Ag: What are the setbacks for a business like this?

IM: During the recession of the economy, it is very difficult to do business. People who have a large part of business through referrals are doing well even in difficult times. This is because trust is almost a currency. If somebody trusts you, there are going to refer you especially when the economy is doing badly. Organizations are going to want that referrals.

Ag: What are your expansion plans?

IM: Our goal is to be present in every entrepreneurial country in the world. There are some countries that won’t be entrepreneurial but there are some amazing things happening in the world right now. So our goal is to be present in every country eventually. In India, we are present in Mumbai, Bangalore, Goa, Gurgoan and will be opening up in Chennai, Hyderabad. We are also looking at expanding in tier two cities. We finding that this is working better because there is a lot more trust in two tier cities, where everyone knows each other but don’t end up talking about business as they meet socially. We are just building up the infrastructure that can help support the growth of this organization. Currently the pipeline for new chapters is very strong. The average number of members in India is than the international average. India is a very strong region.

Ag: Anything else you would like to add?

IM: One of the things we try to teach is that networking is more about farming than it’s about hunting than it’s about cultivating relationships with people. It isn’t a get rich quick scheme; it’s when you built a solid foundation from a long term successful business. So we tell people, take your time. Trust doesn’t happen overnight. Get to know the people and the business will follow. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]