Jas’ Business Blog

The story of Phoenix may be a myth, but its alter ego reflections in brands is not. State Bank of India (SBI) is one such rare brands which have come back to life from its ashes. Though many may counter that SBI was never facing extinction, but nevertheless one has to agree that five years back the SBI brand was looking at the last leg of evolution cycle, desperately in need for some fresh idea or a fresh vision or pure luck. Well as luck would have it (no pun intended) the latter two happened for this massive amalgamation of nationalized banks cluster. The fresh vision came in form of Om Prakash Bhatt and the luck came in form of 2008-09 world recession triggered by the collapse of financial system worldwide.

Bhatt started off as a probationary officer in the State Bank of Indian in 1972 and worked his way up the ladder. Ironically, banking was not his first choice for a career. He joined the bank only after he proved to be “underage” to appear for the Indian Administrative Service. After that it was a dance of his skills, within an year of taking over as chief general manager of the bottom-ranked north-eastern circle of SBI, Bhatt lifted the circle to the No. 1 position. In his next assignment as the managing director of the State Bank of Travancore, Bhatt changed the profile of a traditional traders’ bank into a retail bank and aggressively sold mutual fund and insurance products.

Bhatt was later elevated to chairman in July 2006 . The first thing he did was to stop the roll-out of core banking solutions in SBI branches. TCS was implementing the computerization of SBI banks and Bhatt made them do about 700 changes to the project they were already rolling out as he felt it was just a “mechanical roll out of technology without checking of it was benefiting customers”, which seems to true for image of SBI at that time! Bringing a new word AUDACITY to SBI he opened about 955 branches in just 5 months. He plans to use ATMs for issuing cheque books and bill payments apart from cash dispensing. Results? “Our home loan portfolio has grown 27% this year, higher than the competition. Similarly, the auto loan portfolio’s growth has been 30%. You can’t call SBI a sleeping elephant any more,” said Bhatt with a wide grin in his interview in May 2008.

With him at center-stage of aggression, SBI has managed to come up with campaigns such as Surprisingly SBI. Although this campaign caught people unaware and many wondered why such an old and reputed bank went for “surprising” campaign, but it did a huge publicity of banking facilities to the younger generation. Thanks to great execution, some of the ads like “Chiman lal Charlie“, guy with no pants etc made a strong mark in mind of customers. The brand recall of SBI shot through the roof! It had just to connect old  faith with new customer and these ads did brilliantly. It was backed with elderly couple ads. Stage was set for the luck to come and make the party louder for SBI.

Sep 2008 saw the unimaginable sublimation of Lehman Bros empire, and with it eroded the reputation of and trust in the financial world. Suddenly the private banks saw their liquidity drying up. The strongest competitor and the only other bank apart from SBI in world’s top 500 financial services brands, ICICI, suddenly was again caught in bankruptcy rumors which erodrd the trust to great extent. People were now chanting PSU banks and running there. And with high brand recall guess who came to the mind? Yes, the war was won by SBI.

Bhatt has become businessman of the year, 2009 and is now in race for the Indian of the Year award instituted by CNN-IBN. HDFC chairman and member of the jury Deepak Parekh said of Bhatt: “OP Bhatt has proved that given the constraints of working in the public sector one can move forward….he has improved the results of the bank and has put State Bank of India on the global map.”

Since he took charge at India’s largest public sector bank in 2006, he has raised the banks market share and loans from 15% to 16.5% and deposits from 15% to 17.5%. He has also regained the top slot for market capitalisation, a position it lost to ICICI in 2007. And SBI has also taken over HDFC  in home loans. The State bank of India is now 29th most reputable company in the world according to Forbes.

Some stories make much great read once completed, you just read one of them. All the best SBI!

Jas Advertisement, Finance, Marketing

This one is a real puller from Shanghai J&J Advertising Co. The idea is brilliant and it may not compel a buy decision but it surely will result in better brand recall. In logistics business, the majority of the money is spent to assure the timely delivery and with zero damages; basically translating to two words – fast and reliable.

DHL hits the nail right on the head with this creative advertisement insert in a magazine. The advertisement includes a piece of transparent PVC paper placed into a magazine and having a DHL worker printed on it showing on both sides. This PVC paper is placed between the other two pages showing a guy on one side with Japanese backdrop and a lady on other page with Chinese backdrop. Therefore, when one turns the paper, the worker delivers the express mail between a guy (in Japan) and a lady (in China) effortlessly. Only a sentence is printed on top of a page reading, “International courier service express delivery guaranteed.” (see ad below)

And not only this, we have been witnessing many more such creative activities in paper magazines. Marketing is like creating a noise which right consumer can hear, and there is no point shouting in a fish market.

Magazine advertising is a definitely a different ball game as compared to other offline media. Just check how much time do you spend on reading a newspaper and a magazine. With television media, the problem is that the advert will be shown as per timing and the targeted customer does not have any control on this. The magazine medium’s essential strength lies in the active way in which readers choose and use their magazines. Magazines are an active medium, with the reader in control. Readers become deeply engaged with their magazines. As a result a strong relationship, a bond of trust, grows up between the reader and his or her chosen magazines. The time spent reading is substantial, and the copies are read thoroughly. Copies tend to be read repeatedly, often picked up more than once during a day and on more than one day. Then research has shown (and common sense strengthens it) that people are more likely to remember and recognize advertiser if they have repeated impressions from a regularly appearing ad. And as always, too much advertising leads to clutter.

With these points, I can now tell you why I really liked this ad! The ad involves two senses of consumer rather than one – sight and touch, which makes it stand apart. The use of plastic instead of paper has added to the novelty of the idea. It builds a small excitement in the mind of consumer and hence ensures a brand recall tomorrow when consumer has to use some logistics service. The magazine as a medium made sure that the consumer has all the time needed by him/her to relish the idea and absorb it. Remember one doesnt need to impress all, just the targeted audience. So over here there is nothing in advert which makes the right consumer to be pulled specifically. It people who will get excited by the idea would have no correlation with the intent to buy. Hence the success of advert will depend a lot on the kind of magazines DHL chooses to advertise.

Here are another two fine pieces of magazine adverts breaking the clutter of the noise and making a dent in reader’s mind.

Eye donation, by National Association for the blind
Advertising Agency: DDB Mudra, India

Styx Underwear, Czech Republic

Jas Advertisement, Concept, Marketing

‘Below the Line’ (BTL) campaigns are always dear to my heart as they show how innovative the brand manager can get. With so many virals, TVC, print media blasts, the idea of a fresh campaign surely makes one notice the brand with a concentrated attention. And compared to an advertisement, a campaign is based largely on a strategy and needs more planning and prediction.

Baci Perugina, an Italian chocolate brand, has been branding itself on love and romance to make its offering get associated with sweet, romantic and tempting (word Baci means ‘kisses’ in Italian). In its integrated campaign, the chocolate brand decided to sell some sentiments, unleashing an unusual love story. Target of the campaign was to capitalize on Baci Perugina’s awareness during Valentine day period. The company spun a story of one shy Giovanni who has fallen in love with his beautiful neighbor Gaia and went to its target audience – youth, via social media and then SMS.

On 4th Feb, a YouTube video came online uploaded by a guy called Giovanni telling viewers that he is in love with his neighbor, Gaia. He explains that he keeps asking her out but she is not interested. Now finally she has presented a yummy, unique offer to Giovanni- she will kiss him, if 50,000 people would ask her to do so. So that is why Giovanni has made the video, loaded it on YouTube and even then he opens a group on Facebook asking for help. Two days later on 6th Feb, the brand Baci Perugina comes into the scene  as an “independent supporter” of Giovanni’s initiative. They create a page on their website  where people can mail their request.

9th Feb – 3rd video is uploaded on YouTube where Gia tells audience that 20,000 mails have arrived and in case 50,000 mails come, she would kiss this guy.

Meanwhile outdoor campaign starts, videos are plated in a busy plazza asking for people to help the guy by SMSing their request.

On 12 Feb – Giovanni uploads a video thanking people for the 20,000 mails and says if 50,000 mails come he can kiss on Valentine Day (and public goes bersek). Finally on 13th Gia uploads a video saying the guy got 50,000 mails so she will kiss the guy the next day.

On 14th Februaru there is a big event in Piazza Duomo (italy) where the campaign details are unvieled. A video is uploaded on website showing the kiss being ‘delivered’. People realise it was an advertising campaign.

Performance/ Results:

The campaign was planned on different media: viral videos, the community engagement through YouTube, Facebook and the Perugina community, an interactive outdoor and a local event. People soon became fond of the story. In 10 days it recorded more than 50,000 mails; 151,841 visitors to the Baci Perugina site; 26,678 contacts on YouTube and 5,400,000 impressions on MSN. Sales went up by 11% in an A-8 market. Giovanni’s story was spontaneously talked about on TG1, the most important national TV news (italy).

Credits:

Advertising Agency: ARMANDO TESTA Turin, ITALY

Media Agency: MAXUS Milan, ITALY

About Company/Brand : Baci Perugina is one of the most important brands of chocolate in Italy, belonging to the Nestlè Group. It is also famous gift on Vday.

Jas Marketing BTL, Business, Concept, Marketing, Viral

A good piece of technology and a bad piece of branding – that is my view on Adobe Acrobat Connect.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today introduced the Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ software product line, the first web conferencing and collaboration solution to offer “always-on” personal meeting rooms. The product line, consisting of Adobe Acrobat Connect and Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional, enables knowledge workers to instantly connect online with nothing more than a web browser and the ubiquitous Flash® Player software.

Source: Adobe press release

With Connect, Adobe had introduced a new (re-branded) product line: Adobe Connect (hosted) and Adobe Connect Professional (hosted and on-premise). This product was part of Macromedia paraphernalia when it was acquired by Adobe in 2005-06 with the name Macromedia Breeze, which further was acquired as Breeze technology by Macromedia from Presidia. The product is based on Flash technology which has already made a mark and commands high availability paving way for higher acceptability.

The (re)branding though is a concern for many factors. First of all the product had already a decent acceptance in market as ‘Breeze’ so may confuse current users or people who know about it. Secondly the product has come out as an extension of Adobe Acrobat, a product which is widely known and has a very clear keywords attached to it – static page, non modifiable, preview file etc. All these keywords are not even closely related to this product. The very idea of a meeting or a discussion results in a document either modified or created, which is not possible with Acrobat. So it can be only used for plain discussion or presentation. If Adobe can integrate the solution with Photoshop or Illustrator like products of its, it may help production and print houses. Also Adobe may like to extend the Connect link to applications like Microsoft Office and browsers rather than just Acrobat.

For some brighter side points, unlike traditional web conferencing solutions, the Acrobat Connect products enable users to choose a simple and easy-to-remember web address for their online personal meeting room that is unique to them, much like a phone number or e-mail address . Accessing a personal meeting room is easy and instant, requiring little more than a web browser. Because there is no cumbersome software to download, knowledge workers can easily hold spontaneous, ad-hoc meetings that are virtually hassle-free to join.

Connect will have to fight for market share with products like webex and live meeting. According to Frost & Sullivan, Breeze had a 0.3% market share in 2007.

Below is the snapshot preview of Connect with various menus expanded to show case its features (which I have photoshopped to reflect features in single pic).

Though a nice product with great features, I must admit that though am a fan of Adobe’s thought process on the products, innovation and branding, the Acrobat -Connect combo doesn’t go down very well in synergy.

Jas Marketing, Technology Brand Check, Business, New Launch, Product LookUp, Rebranding

Most of the ads are supposed to lure the customer or a decision maker towards the product. But then there are other advertisements where the intended effect is negative, the intended recipient of advertisement need to be taken away from a product. Mostly these will be done by the social groups and non profitable associations. An example would be adverts warning people against use of tobacco or urging women to not ignore the symptoms of breast cancer.

After skin cancer, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed form of cancer in women. Although the shocking death of Jade Goody has had an impact with many women taking notice from their slumber about the silent arrival of cancer in their lives even at the young age. But still most of the women remain oblivious of the danger. Hence the need for adverts that should not only communicate the dangers, but should also kick them out of the slumber by introducing the feeling of fear or concern in them.

About ninety percent of the women in the world suffer from this ailment and  still ignore it due to sheer negligence. I am very sure no woman would want to face this trauma at any age. The thing with this ailment is that age is not a factor. It can happen at any age and as for the causes; research is still on. An estimated more than 1 million cases will be identified this year, and about 510,000 new and existing patients will die from the disease. In the U.S., breast cancer will be diagnosed in 1 in 8 women. in most other emerging economies, breast cancer is a relatively new concern, something that both patients and doctors are only haltingly learning how to treat. Previously a malady that mostly afflicted white, affluent women in the industrial hubs of North America and Western Europe, breast cancer is everywhere. Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America have all seen their caseloads spike. By 2020, 70% of all breast-cancer cases worldwide will be in developing countries. The incidence of breast cancer in India is on the rise and is rapidly becoming the number one cancer in females pushing the cervical cancer to the second spot. It is reported that one in 22 women in India is likely to suffer from breast cancer during her lifetime.

As the challenge remains to make women keep checking regularly using self examination, most of adverts are only successful in making women getting concerned but do not evoke a self responsibility to do self examination regularly. This particular ad campaign is worth showering accolades for raising awareness about importance of self-exams.

Anti Stress Balls
You don’t see breast cancer. You feel it

Stress balls have been used as a marketing tool for quite some time now, but this was very innovative campaign. The briefing for the ad agency (and the challenge) was to create a simple low-cost action to raise  awareness among women about the importance of self-exams and thus help them detect breast nodules or lumps. Simple and revealing, just like the self-exam.

The agency created an anti-stress ball with a deformed stone inside (see pic below), simulating a tumor. On squeezing the ball, the women feels a foreign object which raises her curiosity. The ball has the text that reads, “You don’t see breast cancer. You feel it. Do the self-exam”. 50,000 balls and a flyer – explaining the correct way of doing the self-exam were produced and distributed to women on the street, at companies, hospitals and at theme-related events.

Result was that during the action period, records showed a 22% increase in mammography exams and a 28% rise in hospital consultations. Bravo!

Advertising Agency: McCann Erickson,

Jas Marketing BTL, Concept, Marketing, Marketing Practices

If you are an Indian with access to television or internet or have seen any IPL match then I do not need to tell you what the heck is Zoo Zoo. The ad campaign that has suddenly taken over the any god damn media and has become the talk over lunch, coffee, tea, date, time pass talk and even office conversations! So what is this zoozoo and how is it made, are they actual people, dummies, animations or what? If you ask me, that particular query itself has a lot of hand in the advertisement’s success as television commercial and internet viral.

First of all what is this ZooZoo? zoozoo is the new brand endorsor for Vodafone India. In 2008, Vodafone had unveiled the ‘Happy to Help’ series during the first season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). With the launch of the second season, Vodafone has given birth to the Zoozoo: a special character created specifically to convey a value added service (VAS) offering in each of the newly released commercials.

What’s interesting is that there are some 25-29 such commercials planned under this campaign, some of which are already on air. The aim is to release approximately one ad a day, to sustain interest till the end of the IPL.

Success of this campaign has been humongous! It’s fan club at Facebook already has 188,822 fans base!!

What need does zoozoo like campaign caters to, apart from publicity of the brand? Explains Harit Nagpal, chief marketing officer, Vodafone India, “We’re acquiring customers at a very fast pace, but a large number of them are unaware of the range of services we offer. I mean, ‘phone backup’, which we’re advertising now, was launched two years ago, for instance!”(well this a news to me too!- Jas)

Behind Camera – Making of zoozoo

No, they aren’t animated characters. They are human beings who were made to wear body suits. “The design of the characters is such that one gets fooled into thinking it is animation,” shrugs Rao, which was indeed the very illusion that had to be created. “In a sense, it is ‘live’ animation!” he quips, referring to the fact that it was all shot live. The films shot at 20 frames per second has made the Zoozoo’s movements hurried and comical. See the images below to know how these ads were made from people.

Ogilvy experimented with several characters and finally took its love for the term ‘egghead’ one step too far, creating characters that don the colour white (with black dots for eyes and a mouth), have heads resembling eggs, and disproportionately thin bodies.

The idea is to tell the VAS stories in a world akin to, yet different, from humans. The creatures were then given a characterisation: they are to lead simple lives, speak a language of their own (something that sounds like gibberish), move in a certain way, and even emote like human beings, with big frowns or big grins to do the trick. The execution is almost like emoticons. “We even limited the number of emotions to be used, to keep things easy,” says Rajiv Rao, executive creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy India.

If one wishes to understand the size of this head, here’s a fact: a human head would typically reach up to the mouth level of this giant Zoozoo head. “We kept the hands and legs thin, which is why we cast women – and occasionally children – wearing the costumes,” says Prakash Varma, ad filmmaker, Nirvana Films, who has directed the commercials. The thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans. Sets were created to suit the size of the Zoozoos.

The films were shot by Nirvana in Cape Town, South Africa, with the help of a local production house there, called Platypus. Incidentally, the same combination of people also worked on the ‘Happy to Help’ series last year. When asked whether Cape Town is fast becoming a tourist spot for Vodafone and Nirvana, Varma laughs, saying, “Oh no! It’s just that we are very comfortable with the team there and know what sort of work to expect from them.”

Jas Marketing Brand Endorsement, Brands, Concept, Launch, Marketing, Marketing Practices, Print Ad, TVC, Viral

Happy Mothers’ day!

With time I have realized one thing, out of all the relations, its the relation of mother and a child which one will feel as the purest of all and the strongest. Maybe not always but lets talk about majority of times.

A relation with father is of a different dimension, it is supposed to be fact oriented and a father will try to give security, goods of life… basically the outer things. And he will also come to you, talk about handling life, about rising up and taking control of things in our lives, about how to handle the people, the needs, the finances etc.

A mother’s relation is more emotion oriented. She may not answer how to tackle the guy who is troubling you, but will ask you about how you are feeling, empathize with you, call that guy names and curse him! Even if you are wrong, she may fight for you  and refuse to believe the wrongness, even questioning it.

I was wading through the net for some Mother’s Day Ads, ideally these should be the branding ones as such a topic will help in making an emotional connect with the customer, not a factual connect. Hence it would go for a product or service that has already a brand value or the one which has right packaging.

Now this is a lovely ad by Zales, a US diamond store. The ‘Mom Rocks’ campaign duly associates the rock word with a diamond and suggests one to gift diamonds to one’s mother.

That was the best as per me, here are the others. Nice watching!

Sear’s commercial

Jas Marketing Brands, Marketing, Marketing Practices, TVC

This post has been pending from a longtime, sitting in my Drafts section as I started it but then did not get time to finish it off, so here it goes.

Financial Chronicle reports that GSK will be exploring the possibility of extending the Horlicks brand in several food categories over the next 12 to 15 months. It’s significant sales initiative – Horlicks Vending machines has already wrapped up due to lack of sales, so such a step to expand the mature brand like Horlicks is a strategically important step in long run. Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) has launched a new product – Nutribar in Indian market under Horlicks brand name in this very regard. Few years back Horlicks had ventured into biscuits for same reason. Horlicks has about 60 percent of market share in the Indian health drink market with annual revenue close to Rs.1000 crore.

Horlicks Nutribar

You would have noticed the presence of these three different variants of Horlicks Nutribar stacked up just near the checkout section of your modern retail outlets or the kiryana shops. With this launch Horlicks has entered the cereal bar market in India, which until now had presence of only imported products like Ritebite. The Horlicks brand, owned by GSK, has gone in for a category extension with this launch. The earlier category extension for Horlicks was into biscuits.

“The nutrition bar segment is actually non-existent in the country. As per our estimates, presently the category sales would be anywhere around 10 crores. Globally it is huge. In US the market for nutrition bars is worth a billion dollars a year. It is a good time to enter and grow the category,” said Shubhajit Sen, executive vice president, marketing of GSK India.

Priced at Rs 15, Horlicks Nutri Bar it is targeted at young adults in the age group between 15 and 35. It is a nutritional snack available in three flavours Cereal ‘n’ Milk, Choco Crispy and Nuts ‘n’ Raisin. As per Sen, GSK wants to leverage from the Horlick’s strong brand equity and hence wants to extend its offerings through the brand (instead of launching as a new brand). GSK has,hence, used Horlicks brand as an endorser brand as of now and may later make Nutribar a parent brand itself if it captures market well.

GSK in India invests about 12 and 12.5 per cent of its sales on advertising and promotion activities. In 2008, the company spent around Rs 180 crores in the communication activities and has said it would maintain the same in the current fiscal year. The company overall turnover last year was Rs 16,00 crore.The cereal or nutritional bar market is a sub set of functional foods markets, the latter being pegged at about Rs 17,000 crores right now in India.  Globally , functional foods have become a high growth market because of the health and convenience factors. India too has seen following such a trend.

Addendum

Nutribar may be shown useful in various ways, but as of now it has been marketed as an impulse buy. GSK has also come up with some innovation in modern retail merchandising. On right side below you can see a light plastic hanger which can be just fixed near the checkout counter or the shelves and is easy to install and dismantle. One single unit carries 27 units (9X3)with side part used as advertising space. It is effective as the salesperson can ‘install’ them when he comes to deliver the packs.

On left you can see the new packaging where the box itself is used as the branded shelf merchandising. If you see the box of Cadbury’s perk on left of this box, the person has ripped off the top of the box to showcase units inside, which has been effectively and elegantly handled by Nutribar package. The box itself takes care of right advertising as designer knew how it was supposed to be placed beforehand.

Innovative packaging

Merchandising innovation

Jas Marketing Brands, Marketing Practices, New Launch, Product Launch

Who knows the brand the best? The brand manager? The guy who is managing sales through distribution channels? or the one who is not at all part of company – the consumer?

There have been cases that a big brand was forced to take back a change just because the consumer was not happy with the new offering. And mind it, when a brand has made its mark, it sure does a lot of research before launching the change in market as a perfect brand is made by hearts, by emotions and they get disturbed easier than a brain ofcourse!

Tropicana New packaging

Recently PepsiCo found it in Tropicana the hard way, almost 24 years after Coke learned it through New Coke. The PepsiCo Americas Beverages division of PepsiCo is bowing to public demand and scrapping the changes made to a flagship product, Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice. Redesigned packaging that was introduced in early January is being discontinued, and the previous version is being brought back.

Also returning will be the longtime Tropicana brand symbol, an orange from which a straw protrudes. The symbol, meant to evoke juice’s fresh taste, had been supplanted on the new packages by a glass of orange juice and an orange-colored twist cap atop large cartons that is shaped like a halved orange.

Some of those commenting described the new packaging as “ugly” or “stupid,” and resembling “a generic bargain brand” or a “store brand.” This is what undersconsideration had to say about the brand – “This new packaging feels, at best, like a discount store brand with what looks like, again, at best, rights-managed stock photography if not outright royalty free. And the typography is, once more, at best, a lame derivative of how the British have lately exploited geometric sans serifs like Futura and Avenir to great results—here’s just one example of many.”

Tropicana Old packaging

But what is starking here is the role of Web2.0 means in these marketing effects. While it took months for Coke to understand that its new Coke taste was a flop, PepsiCo came to know about it in matter of days, thanks to blogging, twitter tweets, facebook and hate mail forwards on these channels. This November, many consumers used Twitter to criticize an ad for Motrin pain reliever and received responses within 48 hours from the brand’s maker, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, which apologized for the ad and told them it had been withdrawn!

Lesson for marketers? The same old one – brands rest in minds of people and not with the one who make the product/service.

Addendum
If you think it was only Tropicana packaging that PepsiCo tampered with in this tough time of recession, here is a food for thought, they even changed the packaging for Pepsi itself! And its not just the style of bottles or new funky colors, but they were bold enough to play around with the logo, in , I repeat, this tough time of recession!! Here are the visuals of what these guys did to a pretty neat brand…

New Pepsi Bottles

Jas Marketing Brand Check, Brands, Launch, Product LookUp, Rebranding

A fine hue of capitalist color palette was seen in a surprising and unusual cause-marketing push by KFC. It offered to help in tackling the pothole problem in Louisville, Ky. in exchange for stamping the fresh pavement with “Re-freshed by KFC,” in a chalky stencil.

Col Sanders filling potholes

“This program is a perfect example of that rare and optimal occurrence when a company can creatively market itself and help local governments and everyday Americans across the country,” said Javier Benito, exec VP-marketing and food innovation at KFC. Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson noted in a statement that budgets are tight for cities across the country, and finding funding for road repairs is a dirty job. “It’s great to have a concerned corporation like KFC create innovative private/public partnerships like this pothole refresh program.”

The KFC program appears to be part of a growing body of consumer-service marketing that connects in a meaningful way. This past holiday season, Charmin provided a public restroom in Times Square for the third year running. The company has also developed an application for iPhone and BlackBerry that helps consumers find toilets when the need arises. Samsung has installed electrical charging stations in many major airports to help travelers stay connected while in limbo.

Creating goodwill
KFC has for long been accused by animal rights people of using inhuman ways to kill chicken or using modified chicken for prepration, am not sure if these accusations are correct or not but they dont help the brand in any good way. Filling potholes may not entice people to wat more KFC chicken burgers but surely can create a goowill and hence increasing sales, decressing guilt inside consumers filling the potholes of KFC’s reputation.

More from: Adage

Jas Marketing Brands, BTL, Concept