Is Guerrilla Marketing Still Relevant Today?

Guerrilla Marketing has been a popular term in the world of marketing. It was first coined and elaborated by J. Conrad Levinson in his book “Guerrilla Marketing” (1984). The popularity of his theory can be traced by 20+ million copies of books being sold and translation of his book in 60+ languages over time. The book threw cutting edge promotion strategies, particularly for small and under-resourced firms to successfully promote their brands under budget constraints. It primarily talks about “small budget-big impact” style promotional strategies, e.g., publicity stunts, wait marketing (marketing to people at waiting places like doctor’s office), ambush marketing (associating with a popular event without paying any sponsorship fees), wall graffiti, promotional posters etc.

Thinking as of today, the promotion landscape has radically changed since ‘80s. We are now living not only in an “inter-connected” world, but also in a highly “inter-active” world. This transition from inter-connectivity to inter-activity has morphed promotional strategies in many different fronts. Are posters still relevant today? If so, how can we cut through clutter where everybody else is showing up with posters everyday? How quickly can we implement “wait marketing” without annoying the potential audience?

The answer lies in not avoiding posters, billboards and ambush marketing altogether, but in how we can innovate ways of poster advertising, billboard displays and ambush marketing in a new interactive world. Here come the custom flash ads that pop up in mobile ads, content marketing through blogs, facebook advertising through customer profiles and so on. The challenge is about capitalizing on interactivity of customers and providers. As an example, here is a picture of transit shelter that is adorned with a heated billboard, saying “Feel the Warmth of Brasil”.

(credit: http://www.bestadsontv.com)

The idea is to attract European tourists to Brazil, a sunny country that most European travelers would like to visit during harsh winters. Starting with Milan, Italy, the ad agency Artplan decided to put heated billboard on transit shelters where people can touch and feel the heat from the billboard! It is, as if, you can “feel” how valued a warm country would be for traveling when you are going through a harsh winter. It was reported that, the website http://www.braziltour.com received over 86,000 page-views while the campaign ran and an increase of 320% on the word “Brazil” in Google search engine.

Therefore, in a changing tech landscape with the same age-old budget limitation, the challenge of guerrilla marketing is different today. It is about meeting budget constraints with big impact “interactive” promotion that would work. Obviously, guerrilla marketing is not dead. It is still relevant today, with a new face of expression that must be learnt for success.

How Much “Love” is Enough for a Brand?

How does a relationship with a brand grow? First, you get to know the brand. Then you try and perceive that the brand works great for the purpose. Then you start liking it, preferring it over other brands. Once you are convinced that this is the only brand which serves the purpose best, you start loving it. You don’t want any other brand except the one that crossed your mind. The brand gets your mind share, resulting in your purchase and market share.

But how much love is enough for a brand to survive? Love is scalable, at least in the world of branding! Imagine how this love translates when it comes to a new competing brand that serves similar purposes, almost in the same way as your most preferred brand does. Then you start liking, and ultimately giving a share of love to the new brand. You become a soft-core loyal, switching in between these two brands. Therefore, in my humble opinion, making your customers love your brand is not enough to survive in a hyper-competitive market today.

Thus we need to find out the next level of brand engagement. This could be called “living” the brand. Living the brand starts when you stop seeing the brand merely as a superior way of meeting your needs and start looking at how it integrates in “well and woes” of your life. For example, you might love a cookie brand because of its taste, but the brand owner starts promoting this cookie as a “smile maker” of kids to keep them happy. The secret is about to stop talking on superiority points, rather talk about how it fits in your life that you live everyday.

This “knowing-liking-loving-living” sequence is also important for internal customers, e.g., employees. Organizations must try their best to administer internal branding program that creates employees’ emotional attachment with the organization. It would ultimately result in internal brand evangelists, who would go a long way to spread the good word not because they are being paid for their jobs, but because they love and live the brand from their hearts. I have seen many customer service people at GP using Airtel numbers, as well as their GP numbers. While it is very common to have multiple SIMs these days, the foregoing example does not show that these executives are “living” the brand, even though they might “love” it. The same goes with Tata agent’s office in Dhaka. You will hardly find them using Tata brand cars! If you do not live your brand, how come you expect your customers to love and live it?

Now if you feel that you have a superior brand that customers love, think about taking your customers to the next level before it is too late.

Employer Branding: A Neglected Dimension in Bangladesh

Employer branding refers to a concerted effort by an organization to project its unique identity and superiority in the employment market as an attractive place to work to potential job candidates. Like branding a product (of course, an organization could also be viewed as a product to be promoted), employers should not ignore this important aspect of their strategic brand landscape.

Skeptics might pose a question like: why should I spend money to pitch a message to job candidates to tell them to consider me first when I am able to get a lot of applications for a single post without any effort at all? We do not need employer branding. Sorry, I beg to differ.

Now go back to your pile of applications and see how many of applicants are actually qualified enough to be recruited. This is a common problem in Bangladeshi perspective. People you expect to apply are actually not interested to apply to work for you. Most people who apply, are either not matching well where they are currently working, or not perfectly matching the required qualification as you expect. Well, I might be generalizing too much, because exceptions are always there. But this happens to be the case in many organizations in Bangladesh. Did you ask yourself why are you ending up with bad resumes?

In my humble opinion, the problem is not with job candidates. The problem lies in your branding gene. You might not have created an image in the market that appeals to the top performers in the industry. They look at the ad and perceive the employer as not of their ideal ones. If we want to attract talented candidates, we need to get on top of their minds through employer branding.

Next time you end up with bad resumes, think about what went wrong with your employer branding, if you have any program like this at all.

Hindsight, Insight and Foresight: Which One is Important in Brand Management Process?

Well, what do all these mean actually?

Hindsight is about the past. If you are an experienced and seasoned brand professional, you have a lot of experience in your cache. You learned a lot through real-time experience. You know what worked and what failed, including reasons why strategies failed. You manage by the wisdom that “history repeats itself”, so you believe that learning from the past and acting based on experience would bring success to your brand at present. While some truth is in this philosophy of brand management, there is a big problem as well. This is similar to driving a car while looking at the rear-view mirror all the time. Of course, you need to look at the rear-view mirror more often than not, but solely depending on the past has its own hazards waiting ahead. Situation changes in brand management environment, and judging the present situation with that of the past may lead to serious misjudgment and wrong strategies.

So you need to wake up and beware of the present. Insight is about deeper understanding of present situation as well as customers’ minds that would yield competitive edge to a brand. This is probably the reason why most perfume brands would sell at a much higher price than its actual cost of production. High price signals high quality and prestige in consumers’ minds. Perfume is not only a functional product, but also an image-yielding product that puts some favorable personality traits on persons using it. This is what we call unfolding customer insights- getting deeper into customers’ minds to understand both its expressed and hidden motives rooted in their souls. This insight is tremendously affected by CHANGES in culture, technology, lifestyle, demographic composition and psycho-graphic profile of customers. Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (535 BC – 475 BC) rightly pointed that, “there is nothing permanent except change”. This is so true for technology driven businesses today! While hindsight is essential to understand this change in the current scenario, depending too much on hindsight in strategy formulation might also prevent you from understanding evolving customer insights and finding out creative solution to address these changes.

Is “brand insight” enough for a brand’s success? Well, the equation is not that easy. Whether present “insight” would bear fruit today as well as tomorrow, is a hypothetical question. Not everybody views and explains possible future results based on current strategy in the same way. There is no magical crystal ball to look at and say that the current insight will continue bearing fruits in the same way in years to come. Since CHANGES can result in morphing of “current insight” into “future insight”, here comes the importance of foresight (future insight). How skilled are we in predicting the future? How Steve Jobs predicted the death of PC and came up with futuristic products with enough craze in the market? How come Tim Cook , successor of Steve Jobs, is having hard time with Samsung? What foresight can save Apple in the long-run?

So the bottom line is, you need all these three elements in different proportions: hindsight, insight and foresight in your brand philosophy to be on the top of market. In my humble opinion, while you can be trained to have all these three qualities engrained in your thinking process, it takes more than training and education to be successful as a brand manager. It is not about knowing how to juggle three bottles at a time, but about injecting unique and personal creativity in the same juggling show that impresses others while you play with the same tools. As someone rightly pointed, “winners don’t do different things, but they do things differently.”

It is up to you how you prioritize and make a winning combination of hindsight, insight and foresight. But only the creative combination that matches with the present and future situation will ultimately win.

“Co-creation” in Disaster Management: A Service Quality Perspective

“Co-creation” is an important concept in service marketing. It talks about concomitant role and participation of customers in creating and providing quality services by the marketer. In many cases, no matter how hard a marketer intends and tries to provide quality service, it is bound to fail if customers don’t play their due part in creating and receiving the service. For example, while providing relief and medical services to people during any disaster, say an earthquake, would not be efficient unless people in crisis show discipline and patience in receiving emergency services.

This co-creation during a crisis situation was positively exemplified by the Japanese in 2011 when Fukushima nuclear power-plant exploded due to an earthquake. As a result, nuclear materials leaked into the environment, exposing inhabitants to nuclear hazards. Government evacuated thousands of people on an emergency basis and opened temporary relief shelters. Evidently, the service quality could not have been ensured and delivered by the government unless the people in crisis had their qualities exposed in playing due roles and “co-create” the ultimate service quality. What are those qualities that we saw among the Japanese during crisis situation? Were those qualities created in a day or did it take a long time through education and cultural learning? Let us enjoy an info-graphic presentation. Click here

What Intel has to do with McAfee?

Intel is the largest, and almost a monopoly producer of computer processor maker, with an annual revenue of about US$ 53 billion, R&D budget of about US$ 10 billion and rising. Its closest follower is AMD, lagging far behind in the second place, with an annual revenue of about US$ 5 billion, R&D budget of about US$ 1.3 billion and falling. Now Intel has an undisputed footing in the hardware market, bothering less about developing software systems for consumer markets. However, an interesting development that did not get much media attention was its acquisition of security firm McAfee in 2010. What Intel has to do with McAfee? What are the facts and rumors?

I would not buy the industry gossip that says Intel’s acquisition of McAfee is just a casual acquisition that has little significance. I think Intel has a definite plan and future road-map that has led it to make such a digressing move to security software market. After acquisition, Intel has let McAfee run as an independent subsidiary of Intel group- running its own R&D and culture as intact as it has been. Although McAfee security products have not been able to hold its ranking in the consumer market, in fact, beaten out by Kaspersky, Norton, Bitdefender and Eset, it has been a profitable and growing company having a command on large corporate data security market. On the other hand, unlike other security software champions, McAfee was available for bidding in the spin-off market. So Intel took the chance to buy McAfee, paying about US$ 7.6 billion in cash and put in its portfolio. It can safely be guessed that, Intel’s long-run road-map includes some sort of security research that would greatly be aided by such acquisition.

So what are those agenda of Intel? What would be the implication for future computer processors coming out of Intel’s house? According to an analysis, Intel has always been worried of data security issues, however, it became of serious concern after the much publicized “Aurora” cyber-attack from China in 2009. Buying a security arm like McAfee would give Intel advantage over R&D in data security. There are rumors that Intel will embed data security features in future processors- something like Anti-virus integrated in the hardware. This will create not only value addition through charging more than proportionate price as compared with the differential increment in cost of incorporating such software in the hardware, but also a technological edge for Intel that none others in the industry would be able to match in the short-run.

There is another option for Intel, if not incorporating the software in the hardware. Intel can just leave McAfee as it is, and work on tying/linking its sales to computer assemblers, majority of whom buy Intel processors. It would create huge synergy of Intel’s domination in the processor market with that of the upcoming domination in the anti-virus market. How would you feel when you read something on a computer box that says “Intel recommends Mcafee”?

In both ways, Intel is the winner.

The Rise of Ali Baba

No, I am not talking about the legend of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. I am talking about a Chinese web portal, currently the largest B2B sourcing portal and trading platform in the world. It also has a financial services company and a consumer sales portal that belong to the same corporate group. According to a report, Alibaba group handled about US$ 170 billion worth of trading in 2012, more than eBay and Amazon combined!

Ali baba is the brainchild of Mr. Ma Yun, a Chinese national who thought of a one-stop sourcing website for everybody at any corner of the world. Ma Yun, a well-travelled man, enquired a lot of people he met on the way about the name “Ali Baba”. In his words, “People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China- they all knew about Ali baba.” So he decided to use this name for his ecommerce web-portal, that has come a long way since its inception in 1999.

Today, the revenue of http://www.alibaba.com stands at about US$ 4 billion (2012), mostly commissions from handling trade and other financial transactions. No matter how fancy the brand name has been, alibaba.com seems to fill an important gap in the market- a platform for exchange between those who produce and those who want to buy. This is essentially a key element to any efficient market system. We can clearly see the overwhelming power of simple ideas, stemming from the very basic requirement of exchange platform that Yun thought about 13 years back. It seems that, when simple and basic ideas are put to work, they really work wonders!

Why Yahoo! is Giving Free Smartphones to its Employees?

After taking over as the CEO of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer announced last year that all of its US employees will get a smartphone of their choice, including phone bills and internet charges. It includes any model of Apple, Samsung, HTC or others that run mostly on iOS or Android platforms, except anything that runs on Blackberry. The offer seems to imply Yahoo’s adaptation to current dying trend of Blackberry, and rise of iOS and Android systems. The offer would cost Yahoo several million dollars, however, not much when you compare with its US$ 5 billion revenue per year!

What are the implications of this move? The CEO dubbed this program as “Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!” It sounds great, particularly to those young and enthusiastic employees who dream to have the latest smartphone available in the market. It feels better when this is free and your boss pays for voice and internet usage! Definitely a morale and motivation booster for its employees.

Well, Yahoo also has something in mind. In line with the majority of its customers who are using iOS and Android phones, Yahoo is tuning up its employees to understand customers better- to think and act like its customers. As the CEO said, “We’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.” What a smart move indeed! Some critiques argue that, while Yahoo’s motive is clear, this scheme would also burden employees with extra workload because they are available beyond working hours due to accessibility of “official” phones. There would be no excuse to delay in replying emails or text messages from your boss even when you are not working.

Over and above all, it seems that if abuses can be prevented in overloading employees, sponsored smartphones would be a smart move to increase morale and productivity. In fact, what unique takeaway in this example is the CEO’s thinking of aligning employees to understand the way customers think, so that better services can be provided in turn. Can we say that this internal marketing practice should be replicated by other marketers too?

Integrating Supply Chain with Branding Program

Branding is more viewed as a creative part of business plan at consumer end than as a process of integrating the back-process to meet customers’ needs. Think otherwise. Have you ever given credit to your supply chain manager who continuously ensures that products meet technical and other specification and are available in the market “on-time”?

Branding program cannot be planned and executed in a solitary island. You need the whole physical, technical and human infrastructure of the organization to do that. Integrating your branding program with customers’ needs and wants sounds great. However, to achieve this end, a careful design of supply chain is mandatory. None in this world does make all of its products today. Raw materials, parts, accessories- even human resources can be outsourced. In a report published in 2012, Apple has listed about 156 suppliers of parts, accessories and assembly operators who contributed to 97% of Apple’s procurement expenditure. Imagine what would happen if only 5% of them say sorry in a fine morning, that they cannot deliver the accessories as per Apple’s designated time-frame! It would result in a chain reaction of delays in all the connected processes. Result? Sales loss. Companies who believe and practice branding, must design and develop their supply chain ecosystem to support their branding program. Otherwise, front-end people will have tough time dealing with the consequences of supply chain anomalies.

Wall Mart’s New Distribution Experiment!

Wall Mart, one of the largest retail chains in the world, is going to experiment with a new model of distribution that would shock most of us. How about distributing an online order to a customer via another customer of Wall Mart who happens to live in the same city or drive along the same route where the former lives? In return, the “distributing” customer would get a discount in his/her shopping bill and/or get an allowance on gas charges. Wall Mart thinks that this model, if can be put to work, would result in “cost savings” in distribution. This is the model in a nutshell.

Of course, it is not going to be easy. The prime challenge would be to develop a trusted network of “carrying” customers who would efficiently do the distribution job. Some incidents of theft and damage on transit are expected, resulting in dissatisfaction of customers at the expense of “cost savings”. Well, after a while, a system of ranking would evolve that would identify a pool of trusted customers who would efficiently deliver goods to online customers. In fact, if this sort of ranking were not to take place among buyers and sellers, eBay could not have existed today. In addition to a ranking system, a clear knowledge of legal consequences of every outcome of this system must be conveyed to all parties concerned. Otherwise, legal battles will surely doom this innovative experiment. Let us wait and see how this system would actually evolve in reality.

What do you think about it?