Consumer insights form the bedrock for marketers: Rajesh Srivastava

Lockdown in India and in many countries around the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic has hit businesses across all industries and verticals. There is uncertainty prevailing and brands are all working towards various contingency plans to overcome the economic challenges arising out of this crisis, which has put them on the backfoot.

Many brands today are not sure what would be the next step and how does one strategise once the lockdown is lifted. To give his perspective as to how to face the challenges during the current times as well as prepare for the new normal in the post-COVID-19 times, Rajesh Srivastava, Marketing Guru, CEO ,Trainer and Author of the book, ‘The New Rules of Business’, presented his perspective on how brands should be managed during the COVID-19 crisis. The webinar was organised by Adgully as part of the STRATEGIC MOVES SERIES, to seek industry views on the prevailing economic situation.

Srivastava started his presentation by taking through some of the successful brands that he launched during his marketing days. Brands like Bagpiper, McDowell’s Signature and Captain Cook Salt are some of the successful brands that he had launched and built them. According to him, these brands performed well as they very launched based on strong consumer research which helped in culling out some powerful consumer insights. He further said use of consumer insights and thinking long term perspective should be imbibed. One must create property for brands and dream big and think world class. Properties like Free-flowing salt and iodized salt became a standard norm. Srivastava cited another interesting example when he became the CEO of JK Helene Curtis which were in Deodorant space and at that point of time the category was Rs 66 crore and today it has grown into a Rs 5,000 crore market. Using strong consumer insights, he repositioned Deo to Perfume, which was well received and worked wonders for brand.

One of his other mantras that he shared for the marketing professionals was to hone their skillsets in the following areas:

• Critical Thinking
• Creative Thinking
• Emotional intelligence
• Innovation thinking
• Design thinking
• People thinking
• Business storytelling

He then spoke upon Trend lines, where one has to do an Environmental scan so here he touched upon the following in the context of COVID-19:

• Refrain from crowded places
• Maintain social distance
• Health and Hygiene concern
• Frugal spending/ Conserve cash
• Activities will shift to home
• Support Local businesses
• Postpone major buying decisions
• Proclivity to use digital

Starting with postponing buying decision, Srivastava cited the example about the automobile sector, where he mentioned of what Hyundai car (De risk purchase decision) did during the 2008 crisis. So, during the recession in 2008 Hyundai told its customers that it will buy back the car if you lose the job in a year and entire money would be refunded. This really worked wonders and sales of Hyundai just soared high.

On Activities shifting to home with party and entertainment happening at home he quoted an example of Coke. All of us know Coke was a very famous brand in the US but in their initial days it was available in 100 ml but since it was getting exhausted fast and one was not able to find the coke in the fridge when required, so they moved to larger packs first which was in bottle and subsequently they moved to Pet as it was easy to carry and will not break if it falls down.

Coming to Frugal spending and conserving cash he mentioned this is a delicate situation like comparing to an ECG where the graph is not consistent. He then referred to the purchase of soaps which may not be available during the lockdown so here you need to go for family pack and larger packs instead or a refill pack to maintain your stock.

Technology today plays a great tole in marketing. Consumer technology and Big Data helps in drawing insights which at times can give you unrelated and unconnected events. Quoting an example how Walmart found that through their Big data related research that where there is calamity the consumption of beer will go up. So, Walmart stocked up their beer in those areas and to their surprise the beer sales shot up as people had nothing to do but stay at home and guzzle beer.

Talking about Contactless (Crowded places, Social distance, Touch and Safety, Hygiene), the example that he took up was getting customers to use Augmented Realty, Virtual Reality and Mixed Realty to try out products. The example cited here were for Ray Ban and Ikea. In the case of Ikea, one can use the QR code and visit an Ikea shop and find out how the furniture you are  buying will fit in your house in terms of aesthetics and design sitting inside the shop while checking you’re the furniture.

Finally, he touched about building reputation of one’s brand during COVID-19 times, where he mentioned about how Uber, Taj Hotels, United Spirits and HUL are helping in their own way to contribute to the society. While Ubermedic is helping in the transportation of medical staff, United Spirits is using their alcohol manufacturing facility to manufacture sanitisers and HUL has consciously decided to reduce the prices of their soaps. Taj Hotels is allowing healthcare workers to stay at their property in south Mumbai after performing their medical duties.

Key takeaways for all marketing professions:

• Environment – De Risk, Obviate Concerns, Follow the customers
• New Product – Consumer insight, MPV, Perpetually Beta.
• Convert Customers into: Brand advocates, De risk your business with partial employees/ Full time employees, decrease cost and increase customer satisfaction.
• Deliver customer experience digitally
• Communication – Product, Customers BA, Maslow’s hierarchy theory, Native Content and Dynamic advertising
• Innovative Business Model
• Respect your employees