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Archive for July, 2007

Adobe CS3 raises the BTL campaign quality bar

July 24th, 2007 No comments

Last few years have seen a huge rise in innovative BTL campaigns; companies have also been engaging advertising marshals as Ogilvy, Saatchi and Saatchi and likes to come up with innovative guerrilla campaigns in developed as well as developing countries. The stress has been on the innovation, going away from the trodden path to engage the intended consumer. With the new age media, this has already taken another giant lead. This July’s first Friday saw Adobe launching its eye catching outdoor advertising campaign for Creative Suite 3 (CS3) at Union Square, New York.

The ad, placed on a 7 feet high and 15 feet wide wall, showcases to the pedestrians the unbounded creative ability of CS3. As pedestrians walk past the wall, infrared sensors locks on to the person closest to the wall; as he/she continues walking and moves the slider along, randomly-generated, colorful animation and music will springs ‘out of the wall’, developing or receding at the pace that the person advances or retreats. When each selected pedestrian reaches the end of the wall, “their” design reaches its full blossom, above the campaign’s message: “Creative license: take as much as you want.”

The ad is a part of online campaign that was launched last month, with similar sliders coming up in online ads. This ad effort took (rightly) six months of development and was done with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The agency, which is part of the Omnicom Group, has been working with Adobe since 2001. The ad is supposedly made by using all of the Adobe CS3 tools.

The campaign had few tough tasks to be taken care of. Major being that the majority of these Adobe products are the amateurs and not professionals, so the campaign had to talk to the normal public. Especially after the rise of social networking websites and platforms wherein anyone can come and express him/herself, the avenues of these products have increased exponentially. Many Adobe users, claims International Herald Tribune, are amateurs who use Photoshop to spruce up their Facebook photos or Premier Express to edit their YouTube videos. So the campaign looks at individual’s unique expression on the wall.

The wall was designed to switch its attention, and the control of the slider, to anyone who gets closest to it – but even the activity and movement of people in the background was designed to affect some of the incidental animation. That’s what the producers of campaign call making the wall “a single and multi-user experience simultaneously”.

Also Creative Suite 3 brings together the earlier Adobe CS products along with the acquired Macromedia biggies like Dreamweaver, Flash etc. The success of the suite and the impact on Adobe’s share prices will be a thing to watch this quarter.

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Selling new product launches to retailer

July 22nd, 2007 No comments
Whenever a new product is launched, its felt that the burden of success is on marketing. If the campaign is well structured, well executed, and the time, effort, competition and logistics are taken care of, then the consumer need becomes the only significant driver, no? Well you may say that if you have not been to the ground. Coz all said and done, the last leg of new launch is in hands of the salesman who is working with the retailers. He is the man who will make your new product reach the hands of consumer, but then he has a ‘catalyst’ – retailer.
But here comes the problem, normally when there is a launch the retailer is quite skeptical of buying it, leave alone placing it. The older brands are doing well, he is having his share of margin, so why buy something from these salesmen which doesn’t have a reputation yet? At same time the dilemma for salesman is that unless the product reaches shelves, how will it move?

Solution? Higher retailer margin, promotional schemes for retailers, larger credit period etc. Smaller brands may even have to place it for free wherein the retailer pays them after the sale of any SKU. But even with established brands, sometimes they won’t buy the newer product. Its not that consumer wont buy the product, it hasn’t reached its hands yet. But if you try selling the retailer, you will meet the exact excuse. Underlying problem is that its the retailer’s mindset that the product wont move / consumer wont buy and hence he will not place it.

Some other times you will see that you manage to sell the product to retailer assuring that he buys for this month and see the sales, vouching for the high sales of your other brands. Many times its another of a cheaper on pocket version or smaller SKU or maybe a smart but big packing. Say the product is a hit too, but after few months the retailer will get skeptical as he finds that his returns are lessening. I will take case of Pepsico coming out with Uncle Chips’ promotions. Say the margins on both Ruffles and Uncle Chips is 10% (assumption on my part). The retailer’s returns will lessen here. Reason is that the volume a retailer can buy from you is fixed, so his earlier returns on selling 10 packets of Ruffles will be much higher than that he gets by selling 10 packets of Uncle Chips of same volume (mind it, not grammage). Until the margin compensates for the loss, be doubly assured he will cry in next coming month ends (sales guys will understand this pain!)

But the story doesn’t end here, if the margin is lower for the retailer then its most probably lower for the manufacturer too. But the company district sales head will settle the equation by pushing the sales targets, which again puts the salesmen in tougher position. The more the newer product eats into the sales of its predecessor instead of competition, lower will be the market share in terms of value while the volume share may show a different picture. Instead of this I have seen quite few companies being more comfortable with just volume share.

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Now comes the Air Mouse…

July 22nd, 2007 No comments

Logitech has come up with an ‘Air Mouse’ which resembles Wii and hence is being talked of as Wii-remote for non-game console entertainment. To be made available from August onwards at a premium price of $150, the MX Air Mouse is supposed to go along with all the wafer thin wall big LCD screens that have been catching sales.

Pic-1 – Logitech’s Air Mouse

If you have used the Wii remote (see pic 2), then you must be aware of the low sensitivity of it in cases where you need minor adjustments. So as pointed out by Utility Belt , the author of the blog had problem trying to positioning it on top of just the right box before clicking. That is when used for applications, for TV i think it should be pretty okay even while choosing a channel from a list of drop down (remember Dish’s menus?)

Pic-2 – Wii Remote*

But the author talks on basis of a trial product that was given to him. Actual product will hit markets most probably by August and has been going through rigorous testing procedures and some enhancements.

I had a chance to have my hands on the Wii remote when i was in Lyon, France. Its the fifth home video game console released by Nintendo. It is actually a wireless controller, called the Wii Remote, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and can detect motion and rotation in three dimensions. So effectively you can make a swish motion in a golf game, as you would do in a normal real world.
And by the way, Wii, which started a little low as compared to PlayStation and XBox 360 in sales in Japan, the heart of this market, has taken away the lead from it. While XBox 360 leads the pack worldwide; in Japan it won’t move much.

*pics courtesy Business2 blog and Nintendo’s site

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