To keep things geekly simple, Microsoft Surface is a surface computing platform (where GUI is intuitively placed on a touch-sensitive screen and user interacts directly with it) that responds to natural hand gestures and real world objects. It has a 360-degree user interface, with a projector underneath the surface which projects an image onto its underside, while cameras  record reflections of infrared light from objects and human fingertips on the surface. The surface is capable of object recognition, object/finger orientation recognition and tracking, and is multi-touch and is multi-user. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving placed objects. This paradigm of interaction with computers is known as a natural user interface (NUI).

Enough of geekness, lets see what it can do. Surface lets you literally grab digital content with one’s hands and move information with simple gestures and touches, something which was revolutionized by Apple’s iPhone. Surface also sees and interacts with any object placed on the screen, allowing one to move information between devices or adding or accessing the information on those objects. Say one wants to order a hot cappuccino from 20 odd favors offered by a cafe chain, one can choose between the options using Surface, see calorie or ingredient information as one would see in internet, then place a customized order. Once the order arrives, Surface can understand when waiter places Coffee on it. Now you may want to leisure your time away, creating your play-list of your favorite songs on Surface, and browsing through the historic details of how coffee is made, see the videos of plantations from where your Coffee beans were plucked etc. Or say you just had a trip to Himalayas and want to share your images from camera to the Smartphone you are carrying. All you need to do is place compatible camera and phone on the Surface and it will recognize them giving you an options menu, you can then select to transfer the images to your phone without even touching any of these two, just by placing them on Surface! To be frank, this is one technology product which is still looking for the areas where it can be applied to, opportunities are endless but commercial viability and idea limitation are to play the devil’s advocate. Click here to see the sample applications which Microsoft showcases on its Surface website.

The idea of surface came when Microsoft in 2002 undertook a project to ensure that the company expands its role as a major player in the consumer market by creating, developing and marketing a new software platform. Microsoft hired Cheskin, a …., for ideation and to generate additional concepts. Each member was then issued pretend venture capital dollars to fund the concepts given by Cheskin that most appealed to them. This “VC investor” exercise had each team have only 10 minutes to pitch their concept to “potential investors.” PlayTable (now Surface) was the clear winner.

Microsoft is mainly looking at B2C market for acceptance of this product, hence is all set to woo businesses, and is creating enough noise about the product so as to increase the consumer acceptability once installations are done by businesses. As of now Microsoft has entered into partnerships with Harrah, Starwood Hotels, T-Mobile and International Games Technology (which produces Microsoft games).  T-Mobile is planning to use Surface at its sales terminals. Surface will recognize a phone placed on the tabletop and provide the phone’s characteristics and a price list. Customers will be able to drag icons that represent parts of a service plan onto the phone and place an order for purchase. Starwood explores the possibilities of using the computers for photo sharing, music play-list browsing, food and beverage ordering, games and game-related activities, and as a ‘virtual concierge’. Harrah’s wants to use the Surface tables to let people access maps of its different properties, find out the details about events and venues, as well as create their personal itineraries.

The consumer version of the product is expected to come in 2015, in case the product picks up. So lets see what is in store for Microsoft Surface.

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.”

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

When a company announces that it is going to do away with one of its key business units it is definite to impact the stock price in exchange. And if the stock rises by something like over 10% then it surely rings a bell (and in case you haven’t noticed, even the trade volume is high). It doesn’t take much of analysis to understand that Motorola had been doing badly in handset business. Its only ticket to cash registers was Razr, except for that one model, rest all just came and were lost in clutter. After grabbing world market share of 23% in 2006 on momentum led by its Razr phone, the company has lost nearly half that as rivals outpaced it with successful new products. So it was not surprising to see Motorola slip to number three spot behind market leader Nokia and now runner up Samsung.

I personally feel that Motorola has been too laidback, they are trying to catch the market based on some engineering innovations and aren’t really able to connect to the normal consumer who can give them volumes. Nokia relies on design innovations rather than engineering innovations in the electronic part. The ease of operation and sturdiness has been two main selling points of Nokia. If you have used Nokia once, you can use almost all Nokia phones as they are similar on usage, unlike other phones which are difficult to learn and the interface change with the handset.

Motorola has come up with another model W230. Looks like the handset was launched after a careful gap analysis of features and market need. With features like expandable memory upto 2GB,MP3 player,FM with recording, large phonebook memory and USB1.1 data connectivity, its loaded with features; I felt the handset was priced quite aggressively at Rs.3,400. The ad for the set is again a very typical of Moto phones with TG of middle class. It’s targeted at youth and boils down to the same word – Attitude. But it is actually a nice ad than the earlier one where father loses his head!

They did it with Perk about a decade back and they have done it again with ‘Ulta Perk‘ now. Cadbury brought the chocolate coated wafer category to the Indian cocoa confectionary market with launch of its highly successful brand – Perk, then popularized by brand ambassador Priety Zinta.

Perk was launched in the market in 1995 and has seen consistent growth through the years. The cocoa confectionary wafer market is around 35 % of the total chocolate market and has been growing at around 13% annually. Perk has been one of the best sellers in impulse buy market. Priced at Rs5 these days for regular size and at Rs10 for ‘Bada Perk’ (Bigger Perk), the Perk set the trend for Nestle’s Kit Kat and Munch to be followed.

Cadbury has come up with a new innovative product line extension now, by having wafer on outside and chocolate inside. Lucratively priced at Rs.5; the new concept is surely going to pull many consumers. According to Cadbury, extensive consumer research and testing has been undertaken to determine the product taste, format and the communication campaign. ‘Ulta Perk’ has been test marketed in the South Markets – Tamil Nadu & Karnataka (South of India) for over 6 months and has received excellent response from the consumers.

Even the advertisements are really interesting ones. The problem with these impulse buys is that in starting, a good amount of money needs to be pumped in marketing activities before a significant return can be achieved. And Even after you have done, you still need to keep pumping a decent money to make it rememberable on impulse. The TVC is featured below while the print adverts take on the mantra of situations in a totally opposite context than it would be normally. Like man chasing a dog up a tree, a fly complaining about a man in its food, a balloon playing with a child floating in air etc; all going with the tagline -
“Cadbury’s reverse bar. Wafer outside, chocolate inside.“

What is best part for Cadbury is that its a festive time in India and according to the recent urban practices, people have started giving dry fruits and confectionery items instead of traditional sweets / mithai. So in assortment packages, which by the way are quite popular from Cadbury, may be having few Ulta Perks embedded adding to sampling opportunity. This may soon give it desirable sales, provided the taste and texture is nice.

Sources: Cadbury India website, Ads of the World
]]> http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2007/10/cadbury-india-repeats-innovation-success/feed/ 0 http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2007/09/scintillating-fragrances/ http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2007/09/scintillating-fragrances/#comments Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:07:00 +0000 Jas http://jasginder.com/bizblog/?p=26 A twenty thousand euro dress, two thousand hairdo, 24carat diamond set jeweled in platinum… still your dress-up wont be complete without that subtle or expressive élan by virtue of a fragrance. How many times has just a sniff of it changed our mood? or made us float in air, brim with confidence or just bring a smile with closed eyes!

With such a stake they don’t command a cost based price, but get based on perceived price. It becomes a high involvement and in many cases the highest. As such it becomes a marketer’s dream turf. Some reach the zenith and other get branded for life in nadir.

Finally! finally HUL (Levers) has come up with the gel and fluoride combo under the fluoride category. When Levers had launched the gel-fluoride combo I had written about it in my marketing blog, the post can be accessed here