THE POWER OF SOUND

“Of the 25 biggest product categories in the 1920s, 20 are still the brand leaders; and all were built on radio!”

Saigon, Vietnam 1965...

A secret US army base is readying for war...

But one man is going to keep the soldiers laughing...

And his radio show… Gooooood Morning Vietnam!

Back in India, Vidya Balan set Munna Bhai’s heart aflutter as she crooned, “Gooood Mooorning Mumbai” to her listeners on the radio. Panic was created on Halloween night in 1938. A radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ fictitious story The War of the Worlds caused many people to believe that Martians were invading New Jersey. The listeners missed the opening credits and many were treated for shock hysteria and even heart attacks. Newspaper offices (and surprisingly not Police Stations) were swamped with frantic queries, “What is happening? Where’s the nearest bomb shelter? What must we do?” Yes, a lot can happen on the radio! In fact air waves are witnessing fervent activity in India and the world over. The radio industry in India is growing at 30%!

The second round of privatization happened in 2006 making sure that “Radio” started playing a merrier tune and the radio industry got a chance to finally make profits. Earlier, radio operators were expected to pay a huge license fee, which increased at 15% annually. Now, they would be expected to pay only a one-time license fee or entry fee; and then they are free to go about their business. All they have to pay annually after this is 4% of their gross revenues. This immediately helps them save on 50-60% of their operating costs.

The future looks bright. With this system in place, more players would be expected to enter, creating more excitement and more revenues for the industry. When there were only 4 to 5 TV channels, the ad spends were about Rs.500 crores. As the channels have increased to 100, the ad spend too has increased to Rs.4,800 crores! Post-liberalization, radio seems all set to rule. After all, the global phenomena has been “radio” and “out-of-home” advertising showing better growth and performance than newspapers or magazines. No wonder, a whole lot of new players are scrambling to grab a piece of the pie, while the old players are working out different strategies to keep the audiences stuck to their radio sets and their frequencies.

One playground, different strategies

“No horoscopes, no agony aunts, no silly jokes, only music” is how Virgin’s channel Fever plans to capture the Indian audience. Red FM tried to catch their attention with the help of a star-studded line up of anchors. Radio City thought of capturing the smaller towns where operating costs would be less and it would provide the unique opportunity to advertisers to tap into and talk to consumers in smaller B and C class markets. Reliance (ADAG) with its BIG 92.7 and 45 radio stations firmly believes that in this game, only the big will survive. It invested Rs.160 crores for the 45 stations. Immediate profits is not something that’s on its mind as it’s looking long term, as all it plans to do is hold on and build the market. Radio Mirchi, which is the market leader in both Delhi (¾th people listen to it) and Mumbai (50% listeners are tuned to it) seems to have its focus absolutely right. Its target is the 15-35-year-old crowd, and it has understood the pulse of this market. According to its Deputy CEO, Prashant Pandey, “Playing English music makes us lose 95% of the audience.” So, everybody is working out a different strategy to outdo each other.

The power of sound

According to the Indian Listenership Track (ILT), Radio Mirchi was the clear leader (in 2006) in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. While Radio City, Red FM, Radio One, Big FM and Fever are fighting it out, there seems to be a new category emerging, which could very well defeat this whole category of traditional radio. The latest shift is towards ‘Satellite Radio’, which is giving traditional radio stiff competition. Very simply put, it’s nothing but subscription radio with almost no commercials, but with high clarity of sound. The three major players are Sirius, XM Radio and World Space. Free radio, or commercial radio, seems to come with its “baggage” of limited playlists, annoying commercials and general lack of choice. Satellite radio, on the other hand, gives you dozens and dozens of commercial free music channels, information and entertainment in exactly the format you want.

Technology seems to be turning radio upside down! Not just from satellite radio, traditional radio is facing competition from Podcasting too. DJs play their favourite music on the internet and their loyal followers download it on their iPods and listen to it whenever they want to. This is a group of music lovers who want to listen to music of their choice – not someone else’s playlists – and that too without any interceptions from silly commercials or jokes. Of course, this business is yet to take off; but consider this – it requires no licenses, no frequencies, no towers.

Just ordinary people creating programmes and gathering thousands of loyal listeners. Podcasters could just as well be bypassing an entire industry and creating a revolution.

If podcasting is for now just a potential threat, satellite radio is already demanding its pound of flesh and making life miserable for traditional radio.

A new dimension

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in ‘his’ language, that goes to his heart,” said Nelson Mandela; and that seems to be the magic of community radios, often referred to as ‘private radios’. They normally have a limited broadcast area and focus on a specific community. The Miner’s Radio in Bolivia is a very popular community radio. In India too, a small village in Karnataka used the community radio to pressurize the government to repair their public water pipes.

After three years of suffering drought, a young man recorded all the complaints of the villagers and aired it on the community radio. Within days, the pipelines were repaired and water came gushing into the village. Stalin K of Gujarat runs a revolutionary radio programme exposing the corruption in western Gujarat. Radio raids, where a whole team of reporters focuses on one particular issue, seems to be the most powerful weapon of community radios. The best part is, the programmes can be tailored to suit the needs of the community making it very effective.

Come to think of it, in spite of so much technological development, the good old radios seem to be the cheapest mode of information dissemination; and community radio is today paying a vital role in the development of communities and cultures. Jadavpur University’s community radio is all set to give the six commercial stations of Kolkata a stiff competition with its unique and customized contents. After Annamali University, IIT-Kanpur too is ready to flag off its community radio.

For those who felt that mainstream radio had no time for micro details and felt ignored, in came community radio to fill the void – Radio Idli – Mumbai’s first community web radio used air waves to showcase the talent of the Saraswat community.

So while traditional radio seems to be feeling the heat, let’s not underestimate its power. In the words of uber-marketer Jack Trout, “Of the 25 biggest product categories that existed in 1920, 20 are still the brand leaders. In other words, America’s leading brands were built on radio totally!” Tibetan Buddhists believe sound has the power to heal, to create new life. After all, every sound ever made echoes still, for sound waves never entirely disappear. According to Hindu mythology, everything started with the divine sound of “OM”...Let’s not forget the power of sound!

let’s stop being exploitative and start being creative

Ask yourself the reason why, while feverishly flipping through this magazine, you’ve suddenly stopped at this particular article! Is it because you have religiously followed this section on marketing strategies for the past year? Well, is that so?!?

A man walked into a large room full of people. He was supposed to address them. However, no one was paying attention and it was too noisy to be audible to all. So he went up to a board that was kept there and wrote something. There was a sudden silence in the room as everyone waited for him to speak. The man started, “Now that I have your attention, I will start my talk...” All that he had written was “SEX,” in bold letters on the board and had managed to get the attention of every single person in the room. ‘Sex’ is one word, which arouses a lot of curiosity and has a strong psychological appeal. Is it true then that sex sells? Well, a recent study showed that sex in print advertisements improved the effectiveness of the advertisement, made the ad – and the product – more likeable, and increased the “purchase intent” – especially for men.

Products are everywhere, brands are popping out of every nook and corner screaming, “Buy me, Buy me!” How do you make sure your products outsell those of competitors? For that, you would necessarily need to have a clear understanding of “why” & “how” people buy.

Vance Packard, in his landmark book, The Hidden Persuaders, explains the shopping phenomena, which was researched by the Du Pont company. For years, this company had been surveying the shopping habits of American housewives. An interesting discovery was that only one shopper in five had a list of what he/she needed to buy. Yet, all shoppers managed to fill their shopping carts with lots of goodies. The simple shopping rule is – seven out of ten of today’s purchases are decided in the store, where the shoppers buy on impulse. The study found most of the shoppers in a “just-for-the-heck-of-it-mood” while visiting stores. One just needed to catch their eyes to up the chances of their buying the product! Marketers are thus using subliminal seductions and sexual come-ons to sell their products and keep the consumers hooked.

Women are being portrayed as those objects, which help you remain hooked to the advertisement and the product. Images of pretty and very often scantily dressed women have appeared in ads, even without any connection to the product being sold. For years, advertisers have used several tactics to get people interested in their products; they have used humour, peer pressure, self esteem and many other things – but using women as sex objects seems to be the most effective technique in attracting attention.

Earlier ads showed women in traditional homemaker and mother roles; but today, this has decreased a lot. Around 60% increase was observed in ads using women as decorative objects. One look at the various advertisements makes it clear how women’s bodies are used in order to grab the viewer’s attention. So much so that 38% of female characters in video games were scantily clad. Tomb Raider, after all, would not have been such a hit video game if it did not have Angelina Lara Croft Jolie dressing and looking the way she did in the Tomb Raider movie!

Calvin Klein once said, “Jeans are about sex.” Who would you have thought that trousers stitched out of material meant to make tents could metamorphose into such a phenomena! Both Brooke Shields and Levis jeans shot to fame when Brooke Shields appeared in the ad which claimed, “Nothing comes between me and my Levis!” Back home too, jeans seem to be turning up the heat in more ways than one. The Wrangler jeans ad showed a woman faced with the emergency of dousing a burning haystack. She quickly strips off her jeans and douses out the fire, as a group of men stare at her – mouths wide open. Second in the series showed her walk up to the boys and demand “drop your pants,” and throw some Wrangler jeans at them. The ad saw a radical increase both in the awareness of the jeans brand and in the temper of Sushma Swaraj (who demanded its immediate withdrawal).

When Kwality Walls Ice Cream wanted to promote its product, Feast Ice Cream Bar, the ad agency Lintas created a series of ads for them with a tag line, “Mate your stick.” Certain symbols like a car, a key, a stereo system etc. were embossed on the sticks of Feast Ice Cream. The first four people who were able to combine the symbols of ‘car’ and ‘key’ would win a Mahindra Classic vehicle and the first 50 people who could combine the symbols ‘music system’ and ‘treble clef’ would win a Sony Hi-fi music system. Basically, if you got two sticks, one with the ‘car’ symbol and the other with a ‘key’ symbol, you won the car. So the ‘car’ had to find it’s ‘key’, and the ‘treble clef’ had to find a ‘music system’. Hence, one stick was looking for the right mate. Their ads showed a young girl sizing up three men as she suggestively looked downwards and then turned her face in distaste. She finally approved of the third man and looked at the stick in her hand. The jingle in the background kept up the “Mate your stick” ruckus. The ads had to be pulled out quickly as they didn’t go down well with the public.

Abercrombie & Fitch, the American apparel manufacturers, came out with their catalogue titled ‘XXX Wet, Hot Summer Fun’, which featured boys and girls wearing nothing at all – not quite what you would expect from a catalogue meant to showcase the latest fashion clothing! Benetton too followed this strategy of showing shocking images instead of clothes to promote their brand. The Charlie perfume ad shows a couple walking down the street, very happy and satisfied in each other’s company. The woman then laughs, reaches over and pats the behind of the man. She is, after all, a “Charlie woman”. Almost all perfume ads have used sexual images, either subtle or blatant. Similarly, beer ads exploit men and women and their bodies to make the purchase of beer more ‘desirable’. From shampoos to cosmetics to toiletries, all products are being advertised using seductive women.

When marketers can’t figure out a good marketing and advertising strategy, they use “provocation” as a theme, which, they are sure, would always manage to grab eyeballs. No wonder a whole lot of tasteless advertisements are crowding the advertising horizon. Some advertisers, as a strategy use nudity to shock and stun the viewers and create a controversy. However, in the long run, this doesn’t seem a good move. You run the risk of offending viewers and turning them off completely.

Compare how males and females are depicted in advertising campaigns that use separate ads focusing on men and women. For example, both the Vuitton and Milk campaigns use a man and a woman to sell the same product, but note how the image of women are more sexualized than those of the men! You may attract men using sexual innuendos, but a team of researchers at the University of Florida concluded – the more seductive the model, the more it left the women bored and uninterested.

Laugh it off as a case of jealously or whatever, but if you have to sell to the woman, you should know what she wants. She is someone you cannot ignore. Surveys show that those are women who are the big spenders in the family. Out of the Rs.8,000 crore ad industry money, over 70% of the ad revenue on television came from ads that targeted women. It makes business sense not to offend her, after all, she buys for herself, the children and the house. So the fashion label ‘Guess’ has now changed its advertising campaign to include photographs of innocence and purity. Look around you, there are brands that have been top selling for years without using sexual advertising. One such company is Nike. Its creative ads have kept generations of youngsters hooked on.

Ads have to stop showing that women are nothing but beautiful and desirable. Media has to stop viewing girls as only sex objects. A women does not have to be always tall, slim, young, light skinned and perfect. Probably, ‘Dove’ soap’s “Real Women” campaign is trying to show just this. After all, we would not want our young girls to suffer from eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression – most of which are directly linked to the “image” they see and try to ape in advertisements.

Projecting just one aspect of their being is wrong, derogatory and unethical. There is much more to them. Over the years, they have achieved a lot, brought about changes in the system and have earned a place for themselves in the world. Advertising can no longer take advantage of a woman’s beauty. The job of advertising is to sell the product. If you rack your grey cells harder, you can come out with ideas which are more pleasant and effective. It’s time advertisers stopped being exploitative and started being creative.

Want Free GIFTS?

Everything you did right last year, seems to be stuttering away to glorious ignominy this year; competition’s biting painfully hard; sales are stabbing away; consumers aren’t even giving a third glance; the heat seems to be getting too hot... If you’re at your wit’s end, relax, we’ve got the mother of all solutions – give away your product... for FREE!

My six year old walked into a departmental store and went up to the gentleman at the counter and asked him, “Which one of these packets have the free gifts inside them? Please show me.” My jaw dropped as I watched him shop along piling things onto the shopping cart on the basis of which car, or Power Ranger toy or Superman projector they had inside them. Soon I realized I had four untouched packets of Kellogg’s Chocos, and many Sunfeast biscuits and Horlicks bottles. Once the “free gift” was taken out of them, they were abandoned by my little one, leaving me the headache of finishing them off. My first reaction to this shopping escapade was, “He is watching too much TV, and too many advertisements.” However, later I realized a simple truth: if there is one word that attracts people the world over, it’s the word ‘FREE’! This word has the capacity to stop you dead on your tracks. After all, everybody – from six year olds to sixty year olds – loves a free gift! Who could have understood this concept better than marketers who have been using this bait for years to lure unsuspecting customers into buying their products!

If all soaps can clean, if all detergents can remove dirt, if all creams could nourish the skin, if all hair oils make your hair black and shiny, then which one does one buy – probably the one with a free gift inside it. No wonder then that from cars to TVs to breakfast cereals, all are using some freebie or the other to outdo their competitors. The best part is that most of the time, they are successful as these gimmicks do work. When Pepsi was being launched in India, it came out with advertisements that invited the reader to try out the product. The headline ran like this, “Come on Bangalore! Taste the magic today!” All one had to do was tear out the advertisement, take it to any soft drink shop and exchange it for a bottle of Pepsi – for FREE! Retailers ran out of stock by the afternoon. This was an offer, which made everyone happy – the consumers, the retailers (who now were more willing to stack this new product) and of course, the company! In one go, they had created instant awareness about their brand. That day, all that Bangalore was talking about was, “Did you get your Pepsi bottle?”

Time your moves well

Sales promotion has arguably become the most important marketing tool today. It is like a short term tactile weapon available to businesses. The biggest benefit of sales promotion is that it can be conceived and implemented in a matter of days and the results can be seen in a matter of weeks, thus making it a very quick and effective technique. The immense speed with which sales promotions can be devised, organized and implemented, make the game of marketing very thrilling and exciting. In India, the best time to experience this thrill is during the festive season starting from October to January. It’s that time of the year when India goes on a buying spree, like there’s no tomorrow. As we light crackers and celebrate our Diwalis and Dussehras, corporations are busy crackling the market with fervent activity, offers and promotions. Last year, all white-good manufacturers fought the promotion war with great fervour. Samsung came out with its “Pehla Kamaal, Doosra Dhamaal” offer, where it lured customers with “assured gifts” on any purchase from its product range. This was the “Pehla Kamaal!” And a bumper prize, that is, your second chance to win a gift was the “Doosra Dhamaal!” Its competitor LG too came up with a similar offer called “Mangal Hi Mangal!” It too promised “assured gifts” on every purchase of LG products. On similar lines, you had Whirlpool with its “Take a chance or buy Whirlpool” scheme. Sansui called its offer “Ek Pataka, Double Dhamaka.” Haier too joined the frey with its “Lucky Luckier Luckiest” offer. ALL of them basically promised the same thing – just the names were different. It’s worth the effort, for according to Mr. Arvind Uppal, MD, Whirlpool India, 25% of their annual sales occur during September and October. No retailer wants to miss out on this golden opportunity when everybody is in a shopping mood! A freebie here or there always does the trick. In fact LG’s “Mangal Hi Mangal” offer was such a super success that the company recorded sales worth Rs.2,500 crores during the festive season. It was worth earmarking Rs.100 crores as the marketing budget for the season for LG. Samsung had achieved the same success a few years back with its “Phod Ke Dekho” and “Phir Se Phod Ke Dekho” campaigns.

“Phod Ke Dekho” was an offer that came packaged inside a coconut, which contained two silver coins; and the third coin had the surprise gift written on it, which could be a Samsung air conditioner or refrigerator or TV etc. The company made more than Rs.250 crores by just spending Rs. 15-20 crores! The same success story continued with their “Phir Se Phod Ke Dekho” campaign. All the action and excitement was once again packed inside a coconut. The company this time around expected to generate sales worth Rs.350 crores between October and November. And to think that it spent Rs.20 crores only.

According to market research, 16% more chocolates are sold between October and December, 20% more cars are sold and 30% more consumer durables are sold during this time. So if you want your sales promos to be successful, then timing them correctly would be very important. In India, October to December seem to be just the right months for these activities.

Aim properly

Another key factor in devising a successful sales promotion is deciding who to target the promotions towards. Horlicks has its biggest market in West Bengal, and the one sport this nation-state is crazy about is football. So Horlicks devised an offer clubbing Bengal and football. Consumers were required to predict the results of 8 football matches, where the winners would get cash prizes. Special 450 gm Horlicks bottles were designed with labels. The consumers were required to attach a label from these bottles and send it with their answers. The campaign was well planned and well executed, however not many entries were received and neither did the sales of Horlicks significantly increase. The company had made a small error. The people most interested in Horlicks were young, while men aged 15-40 – the target audience of the promotional campaign – were not the main consumers of the product, nor were they the key purchasers (mostly mothers buy this product). When it comes to children, nothing works better than cartoon character freebies; and companies are using this magic mantra like never before. Frito Lay started giving Pokemon freebies in its snack packs and saw a 100 % plus growth. Kwality Walls used Scooby Doo and its ice-cream sales shot up from 48% (in 2002) to 52.3% (in 2003); so much so that the FMCG giant Hindustan Lever used Pokemon give-aways to sell its Kissan ketchup. In fact, children come with such immense pester power that Red label thought it a good idea to give away Tom and Jerry toys with its tea pack. Mother and child both would be happy. Moral of the story – when in doubt, always use ‘cartoon power’; it never fails!

Go for gold!

When Marylin Monroe crooned, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” marketers listened intently. For years, gold has been considered as a “golden” investment opportunity in India. “Gold for free” is something totally irresistible. A lot of marketers are using this bait to attract customers. Tanishq launched a very successful promotion called “Get gold free with diamonds,” where, on every purchase of diamond jewellery worth Rs.5,000 or more, you were entitled to a 22 carat one gram gold coin. The idea of “free gold” was such a hit that marketers started putting it in soaps and creams too, to give a boost to sales. So Lux came out with its Lux gold star offer where one could find a 22 carat gold coin in their soap bar. Those lucky ones who did were entitled to an additional 30 grams of gold! Fair and Lovely lured the lovely ladies with its “Dream Diamond Offer!”

If you were lucky, you could win a diamond pendant; not just this, the first 24 winners were eligible for another grand prize – a diamond set worth Rs. 1 lakh! The schemes worked like magic. Horlicks too had tried the gold-trick in the 80s. The aluminium seals in certain Horlicks jars carried a message “You have won a gold necklace” or “You have won a pair of gold earrings!” There were 20 necklaces and 250 gold earrings to be won. The result? Their sale increased by 20% during the two and half month period of the gold rush promotion!

Make them interesting

Sales promotions should be planned creatively. If they are in the form of mundane price discounts, they are not so effective. The more innovative they are, the more buff they create among the consumers, which in turn excites them to actually go shopping for the product/brand. A good offer ensures that customers remain interested and enthusiastic about your brand. With so many choices available, customers might just shift to another brand out of sheer boredom, and not because your product is bad. Sales promotions help break monotony!

Interesting names of offers – like “Pepsi’s Toss Ka Boss,” “Coke’s Aish Cash” – excite the customer and get him involved with the product. “Britannia Khao, World Cup Jao” was another promo, which sounded so catchy. and well worded that – according to research – it was the most recalled promotional activity.

Everybody is giving free gifts, but the one who does it most innovatively wins. Like Hyundai, which came out with its “Hyundai Pe Hyundai” offer where, with every purchase of Hyundai products, one got a ‘hot card’. This was not the regular scratch card, but a card which needed to be illuminated to reveal the gifts being offered. When BMW wanted to reinforce its brand value, it did a unique thing. It hired a series of race tracks around the country. The people could indulge in pigeon shooting, a non-alcoholic lunch, as well as the opportunity to circuit drive the complete BMW range. They created a lot of buzz.

Commercial property agents are everyday flooded with inspiration about new commercial developments. This particular estate agent thought of an innovative way to get the agents to visit his site. One fine morning some of the property agents received a single left hunter Wellington boot. The next day an advertisement appeared in the leading papers, listing all the agents (who had received the shoe) by name. The ad invited them to collect the matching boot on the site. A lot of them did drop by. This is a fact, customers love offers. In fact, 80% of them admit to trying a brand if it rides on the back of an offer. No wonder in 2005, 18% of overall ad space was garnered by sales promotions. So, if you want to keep the customers coming, remember to tell them first – what’s for free!