Jas Business Blog

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,

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.”

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

With information gaining vital importance in our daily lives, many people have started saying that we have entered an information age since last few years. IT companies are covering the distance between zero and billion in the shortest time for any company. The media has seen a bursting high in last decade as information has never been so easy to interchange, and when information is bombarded in our lives so heavily the next major thing is searching for the right information. So stress has been lately on how to structure the information, index it, make relationships between various information units so as to have a meaningful search. To reach this we need heuristic information, where the ‘thumb of rules’ are identified from experience.

“We’re not trying to provide users with an alternative income, but the Scour points programme is a good way for us to reward users for helping to build up the community, to refine search results beyond the ordinary algorithms,” concluded Yomtobian. Scour.com is owned and operated by ABCSearch, a part of Internext Media Corporation.

You can visit the search engine at http://scour.com

Undercutting is defined as offering to sell at lower prices than or to work for lower wages than (a competitor) or as required officially. Undercutting, hence, is done at the cost of one’s profit.

Now lets understand the reason for undercutting; while we admire how well kept the products are in retail stores are we never realize the efforts and pains taken by the salesman there to get them up. And similarly we may see some ad of a new product and we would run to the nearest shop next day to buy it; but takes a lot of persuasion, arm twisting, margins game and target adjustment to get those new and ‘unreputed’ products on shelf. But every month the targets rise for these dealers, salesmen and zone offices; and then comes the most novel uses of undercutting. A dealer dumps in neighboring place or across border and completes one’s targets. Or you may see the large wholesale dealers dealing in volume indulging in undercutting to earn bread and butter. So a big stockist in Delhi can dump stock in Faridabad, or a Rajasthan stockist take benefit of VAT induced difference to dump in Ferozpur (Punjab) etc.

Lets talk maths now, generally FMCG products have about 10% of retailer margin and about 5% of stockist/wholesaler margin (direct supply from company). Now there will be some schemes from time to time which increase this margin by some points, generally 1-2%, lets take 1.5% here. Now there are targets set for these stockists and wholesalers, if they perform full quarter, they will get more percentage as reward. Say this target completion margin is 0.75%. So the final margin of stockist is :

Wholesaler Scheme	1.50%
Extra Margin if target completed	0.75%
Wholesaler/stockist margin	5.00%
	——–
	7.25%
	——–

Hence instead of having 7.25% and giving other stockist’s retailer his 10% margin, the stockist gives 12.25%; and keeps only 5%. Due to this the retailers take supply from him and the stockist of that area suffers.

1. The good/service is a homogeneous commodity and customers are extremely price-sensitive. If one vendor undercuts another, they will capture all or a very large portion of the market (where “very large” means “as much as they can handle”).
2. Beginning from an equilibrium, one competitor will initiate a round of undercutting by pricing below the equilibrium. Because of (1), competitors will respond immediately, the same day if possible, with a match or a slight undercut.
3. Undercutting will continue until they bid the price down to the wholesale cost.
4. One competitor will then restore prices. Everyone will follow as quickly as possible, and the cycle repeats.

Because of (1), smaller competitors have a greater incentive to initiate cutting. Larger competitors will generally be the initiator of restorations. The cycle is asymmetric because restorations happen nearly simultaneously, but undercutting is generally slower. Competitive gasoline markets with a high degree of independent or small retailers typically demonstrate Edgeworth cycling, while markets dominated by majors (vertically integrated firms) will tend toward sticky pricing.

• Indicate Credit Level based on past history
• Select Features and Rewards – like if one wants rewards in form of miles/points or cash back; the introductory APR, annual fee etc
• Pick a Design – one can choose from a given set of 9 designs or one can add own image to the card (now thats customization!)
• Review and Apply

The choices are then packaged together to create a card customized to each cardholders’ personal preferences. This concept is being used in the USA for the first time whereas this has been tested before in UK and Turkey.

However, there are some trade offs in this venture. Once the applicant makes a choice, a certain number of other choices are closed for him. So, if you want no-frills, no rewards, you can get a lower interest rate. Want points or air miles? The interest rate goes up. Want a 0% interest rate for a year? Expect a higher ongoing rate. Want two points per dollar charged instead of one? Prepare to pay an annual fee.

From a marketing point of view, it does make an impact on consumers for following main reasons:

1. Empowerment
This concept gives the power in the hand of consumer to design what ever they feel like. This brings in more brand loyalty as consumer identifies more with the product.

2. Transparency
The selection process allows consumer to see the trade offs with every selection, hence consumer can know how the APR or annual fee change on selecting the desired cash back for example. The generic way of personalization was to have an online interview approach and make a product recommendation at the end of the process. This is an abstract way as consumer doesn’t know what is full platter looking like.

3. Personalization
The site not only allows user to choose the features but also the card image, which can be of a memorable sunny day you enjoyed at Las Vegas. This creates an emotional connect with the consumer, an important building block in marketing.

4. Behavioral data
The data so accumulated from online behavior of consumers will go a long way in helping Capital One to understand consumer and help them design things better to command more loyalty and consumer base.

All said and done, this is one initiative a lot of marketers in cards domain will be watching out for.