Nestle Alpino : To Love is to Share

Brand : Alpino
Company : Nestle

Brand Analysis : # 530

Nestle Alpino is the company's latest offering in the Rs 5562 crore Indian chocolate market. The premium end of this market is witnessing interesting action with Cadbury's Silk, Ferrero Rocher , Toblerone leading the fight. According to reports, 30% of the market is now consisting of premium chocolates.

Nestle always had been a laggard in the Indian chocolate market. After Kitkat and Munch, the company did not have any serious launches. It seldom fought the leader Cadburys and neither did it tried to respond to any of the launches from the market leader.

This year, Nestle stirred up the market with the launch of its premium offering branded as Nestle Alpino. Alpino has a striking resemblance to Ferrero Rocher. The packing and the product form puts Alpino directly pitched against Ferrero Rocher. That comparison gives the brand a premium image without any effort.

Nestle Alpino is being positioned as a chocolate that should be shared. There is a romance touch to this brand and this is highlighted in the launch campaigns.

Watch the TVC here : Nestle Alpino

Besides the product attributes like the chocolate bon-bon with creamy inside, what makes Alpino different are the love messages written inside the Alpino wrapper. There are more than 150 such messages inside the wrappers. This makes the brand a very cute affordable gift of love. 

Nestle has been investing heavily in boosting the distribution and POP promotions for Alpino and it is showing too. The brand is priced at Rs 25 a pack and the pricing is spot-on. Ferrero Rocher although is in similar price range has a perception of being an expensive product and this have prevented many from buying it frequently. But Alpino was able to create an image of an affordable luxury.

Alpino has all the potential to become a success in the Indian market and may eclipse Ferrero Rocher's brand in India. The fact that now Indian consumers are increasingly opting for premium chocolates rather than traditional mithai also favors product like Alpino. 

5 Brands Who AreTotally Winning at Vine!

Mobile app Vine has taken the video world by storm. Available to iOS and - as of two months ago - Android phones and tablets, more and more people now have access to the snapshot videos. WIth such massive potential reach at stake, it was only a matter of time before brands jumped on the Vine bandwagon. Just as Twitter restricts you to 140 characters, Vine only allows for up to 6 seconds of video, forcing brands to get creative in the way they streamline information. So here are just some of the brands who are totally winning at this Vine thing…

1. French Connection
Stop motion art is a popular format on Vine. So, in a collaboration with photographer Meagan Cignoli, fashion brand French Connection set out to exploit this trend with a series of shareable, summer-themed stop motion videos. In this particular Vine, we see FCUK’s latest collection packed up into a suitcase. 

https://vine.co/v/bFPQhPexlDz

2. Wired
Computer magazine Wired have frequently expressed their love for the video app. They put this love into practice earlier this year, getting staff to upload original & creative content. These ranged from a recount of the most loved Star Wars moments to - as shown below - comedian Fred Armisen receiving a tour of the Wired office from a tiny robot. 

https://vine.co/v/b67VzXeH7wX

3. Urban Outfitters
Another fashion brand next. Urban Outfitters have long been pioneers in creative Vine content amongst fashionistas, using it to promote in-store events, sales and generally just the brand itself. Whilst the video below is not strictly apparel-related, the unexpectedness, entertainment factor and general absurdity makes it completely share-worthy and gets people talking about UO. 

https://vine.co/v/bnrPdjDJln6

4. Brit Awards
A great example of using Vine to build momentum to an event. The Brit Awards for their 2013 ceremony released this Vine with teasing preview snippets and backstage footage. Throughout the night, the account continued to post videos of the ceremony from the audience, giving a sense of what it was like to be there. 

https://vine.co/v/b6XWE7Buq7t

5. General Electric
The US conglomerate corporation General Electric are perhaps a more surprising brand to have got all creative with Vine. In attempts to showcase the company as a forward-thinking, innovative and science-based company, the brand released a series of'six second science' Vines which proved incredible engaging and popular. 

https://vine.co/v/bDY9O7xTllv 

Special thanks to Madeleine Hammond, a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, a UK based corporate video production company.

Great Website Marketing Tips You Shouldn't Go Without!

Internet Promotion can be a great way to earn a substantial income. But unless you know how to be successful at web marketing, you may be missing out on an even bigger income. What you are going to read in the following article will help you have a successful career in the affiliate marketing field.

In any internet promotion plan it is important not to push sales on potential customers before they are ready to buy. Selling is not unlike seduction-the goal is to make the customer want to buy of his or her own free will. A sales website should focus on providing seductive information. The option to purchase should always be present but it should always be unobtrusive.

If you are trying to build interest in your online site through your blog, make sure to read the sites of other bloggers. Other blogs will be a great source of inspiration for future posts, as you will be able to see what topics are drawing readers to other blogs and which topics are duds.

Image is everything. When selling something, your photographs need to be of professional quality. No matter how great your product is, people will not be interested if you have amateur-looking photographs. Remember that when shopping online, a person can only go by the picture as a representation of the product, so it needs to be top quality.

Although you've probably read countless tips about title tags and how they relate to Internet promotion, you should also know that these tags will need to be refreshed from time to time. The words and phrases people search change like the weather, so always remember to refresh your title tags every so often.

Successful web marketing isn't just about keeping up with the competition " it's about outshining them. In order to do this, you have to be aware of what they are doing. Check out their website designs and product prices. Read their sales copy to determine its quality and keyword content. Do their sites take a long time to load? Are they consistently offering new services? What kind of external links are they employing? The more you learn, the better prepared you are to use that information to your advantage.

Post all of your articles on your website. This will help your readers and potential clients to know who you are and where to look for you. It adds to your aura of credibility and trustworthiness. Additionally, by adding your good articles to your website, you will attract lots of good, targeted, keyword traffic your way.

Updating content frequently is one of the best things you can do to capture the attention of the search engines. When customers are handed out of date information, they typically assume that the site is not viable or doing well. They will not waste their time on sites like this. A website that is regularly updated and working well encourages visitors.

As was stated in the beginning of the article, a person can earn a large income by web marketing. In order to make the most possible money, you have to know the ins and out of website marketing. Use the advice that was provided to you in the above article, and you will be astounded by the money you can make.

Brand Wars : Pepsodent Vs Colgate

The August of 2013 saw the beginning of another war in the toothpaste market. Pepsodent, the challenger brand from HUL directly attacked the market leader Colgate with a high profile comparative advertisement. The ads directly compared  Pepsodent Germicheck with Colgate Strong Teeth with claim that Pepsodent Germicheck is 130% better in fighting germs than Colgate Strong Teeth.

Watch the ad here : Pepsodent vs Colgate

While this is not the first time that Pepsodent has frontally attacked Colgate. 

Pepsodent is a small brand compared to Colgate. According to ET, Pepsodent Germicheck has a market share of 6.4% while Colgate strong teeth has a market share of over 29.4%. For a challenger brand like Pepsodent, fighting the leader directly certainly puts the brand in limelight.

In India, brands do engage in such direct attacks. Law does  allow certain level of comparative advertising provided it does not disparage the other brands. Usually the challenged brands take the matter to either ASCI or to the court. But since these take time to settle, the comparative ads may have achieved its objectives.

Most of the time, the challenger brand uses research evidence to support their claims of superiority. In this case, Pepsodent claims that it has 130% more germ attack power than Colgate. The fine print says that Colgate is indexed to 100 %. So is Pepsodent in a sense puffed up the numbers to make it seem extraordinarily superior to Colgate.

It is interesting to note that Pepsodent Germicheck chose to attack Colgate Strong Teeth rather than Colgate Total. Colgate Strong Teeth is the largest brand in the Colgate portfolio but this brand is not claiming any germ killing attribute. Colgate Total is the brand which claims the germ killing attribute. So rather than fighting the Colgate Total, Pepsodent Germicheck decided to launch the attack on Colgate Strong Teeth.

Direct comparative ads, that too against an established market leader most often works for the challenger brand. It has the shock value and the ensuing marketing war gets the challenger brand eyeballs and media spaces especially in social media. Frontal attack using such tactics has its fair share of risks. The market leader often will react with full might which may destroy the challenger brand. In this case , it is the fight between the titans and if there is a war, both will bleed.  

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy : Escape into One

Brand : Dark Fantasy
Company : ITC

Brand Analysis : 529

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy is the story of a brand which started its journey as a sub-brand and later acquired the status of a standalone brand. ITC forayed into the  biscuit market in 2003 and Sunfeast Dark Fantasy was launched in 2005. It was only after four years, that ITC thought of taking the brand to the next level.

Dark Fantasy's success can be attributed to the careful detail with which the brand was built by ITC. ITC took a risk in positioning Dark Fantasy as a premium biscuit brand. The premium space was vacant in the Indian market and marketers was unsure how consumers would react to a premium biscuit offering. 

To do this, Sunfeast tried to build the brand among emotional platform taking on the proposition of   ' Indulgence'. So here is a biscuit which would appeal to your sensuous self and take you through an experience of indulgence. It was a risky proposition and ITC backed the theme through some heavy campaigns. 

The brand had the tagline " Pure Indulgence " when it was launched. The USP was the packaging. Dark Fantasy in a way assured in a new wave of packaging in the biscuit market. The bold use of colors and calligraphy supplemented the brand's positioning as a premium biscuit. Later the tagline was changed to " Escape into One ". Dark Fantasy had twin packaging - there is an outer cardboard box and individual choco fills had wrapper packaging. That gave the brand a premium feel.

Watch the ad here : Dark Fantasy 

Rather than restricting itself as a premium biscuit, Sunfeast Dark Fantasy tried to create a space for itself by launching a new variety called Choco fills. Choco Fills are essentially biscuits with   chocolate filled inside. Although these types of biscuits were available, through smart packaging, Dark Fantasy brought lot of interest into this category. Now choco-fills are very popular that competitors like Parle had to launch a new brand in this category.

Buoyed with the customer response to Choco Fills, Sunfeast has extended this packaging strategy to its Cookie category by launching Delishus brand of cookies.
Dark Fantasy can be termed as a packaging success story. The brand has showcased the power of packaging and its influence in the positioning and brand image. Its not the first time that ITC has leveraged the power of packaging , it had tasted success in the FMCG category with Fiama and Vivel which differentiated  through smart packaging..The success of Dark Fantasy has created a freshness wave in the biscuit category with lot of colors and forms emerging from the leading brands. For consumers, shopping for biscuits is becoming  a delightful experience.  

Hero Maestro : Such a Boy Thing !

Brand : Meastro
Company : Hero Motocorp

Brand Analysis  : # 528


Maestro, launched in early 2012, was Hero Motocorp's answer to its erstwhile partner Honda's market leader offering Activa. After the break-up of the JV, Hero Motocorp wanted to take the fight into Honda's stronghold in the Indian scooter market.

Maestro looks and feels the same as Activa and comes with the same technology . Maestro was launched not as a unisex scooter but explicitly as a masculine scooter. This was probably inspired by the success of Hero Pleasure which was launched as a girl's scooter.

Maestro has the tagline of " Such a boy thing " and the campaign highlights the features that would appeal to young men. It is interesting to see the strategy of Hero to attack Honda's Activa not directly but through two brands - Maestro and Pleasure which are segmented on the basis of gender.

Watch the tvc : Hero Maestro

Priced at par with Activa, Maestro has generated considerable interest in the consumers primarily because of the long waiting period for Activa.  The launch campaign is surprisingly not masculine and Hero doesn't want to push the product as  masculine although the tagline says so. The brand doesn't want to put-off those who want  a scooter which can be used by all members of the family.

Although I started to write about Maestro highlighting its gender based segmentation, a surprising article caught my mind : read it here

In a classic case of Osborne Effect  , the company had already announced that Maestro will be phased out soon . Its ironic that the announcement is done in the same year of Maestro's launch. Customers who bought Maestro has been left dumbfounded  by this announcement. In many forum's like Team BHP, new buyers has expressed their feelings of being cheated . Obviously when products are phased out, new buyers often feels cheated but this is a product which is in the introductory stage and suddenly the company announces that this product is going to be killed soon .

Having said that, Hero Motocorp which had established itself as a reliable and dependable market leader hopefully will not let the customers of this brand stranded without any support.

In this digital era, it is important for brands to hold on to its common sense while sharing information. Over 80%  of prospective automobile buyers search for information in internet before purchases. And the official press release of phasing out of Maestro will not miss the discerning eye and surely a customer is lost. 

And what business sense does it make to launch a product along with the announcement that it will be phased out ? Its not planned obsolescence where products are phased out in a planned manner and after it reaches some stage in the life-cycle. 

Maestro , as reviews say , is a good product that provided some credible alternative to the market leader Activa. But the company itself has digged the grave for Maestro. How sad !

Is It Really All About Content?

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the importance of content and content marketing.  Since Google made their last algorithm change, more and more articles and blog posts are lauding the importance of developing unique content for the web.  But does the story of content development end there?

Based on recent experiments by The Marketing Blog, it looks like theres more to the idea of original content than meets the eye. Two factors in particular weigh into the content discussion.  They are; influence and engagement.  Last year Google rolled out the rel="author" tag and its gained wide acceptance.  Do you think they are providing extra juice to content published by influential voices in a given industry?  You bet. 

In addition to providing higher rankings to content produced by influencers, you can rest assure they are also providing additional weight to content that is widely shared among social networks and other online communities.  After all, Google's likely more interested in what individuals (especially influential ones), communities, and social networks have to say about digital content than any other type of source.

What this means for you

Depending on your role, you may want to consider how best to leverage the new opportunities inherent in a social world.  Guest posts from authoritative sources, engaging content that is designed for optimal shareability, and engaging with social networks can all have a dramatic impact on your website and website rankings.

Keep in mind however that the end goal isn't just for purposes of search engine optimization but rather building brand and generating leads for your business.  If you rank number one for a keyword or keyword phrase that no one searches on, you haven't accomplished anything.  focus on results if you want to make the most of this new post-Penguin 2.0 digital world.

The best place to start with any type of content marketing campaign is with specific goals and objectives.  What is your end goal?  Can a content marketing plan help you get there?  Probably but you need to begin with the end in mind.  I've spoken with a lot of marketing executives but many don't have a clear understanding or picture of what success looks like.  Define it for yourself and you'll be much more successful with your content marketing initiatives.

What I like about content

The one true benefit that seems to be emerging from this new world of content generation is that of creating value for your audience.  No one likes being sold... they do however like being engaged.  The most productive way to engage your audience is by giving them what they want, creating value, and getting things done in a way that excites and delights them.

Marketing to customers is no longer about selling "buy me" emails but rather engaging content that can positively engage and motivate them - building a relationship.  And a meaningful one at that.  The best place to start is with a deep understand of your customer.  What motivates them?  What do they want?  By creating persona's of your target audience you can fully understand the best content to produce and how to deliver it.

Always begin with an understanding of your customer and have the end goal in mind.  When you do, you stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your content marketing goals.  Put in place a measurable plan and you're home free.

Please share your content marketing successes (and failures) with us on the Marketing Blog!