High Ceilings and The Road-Side Vendor

One thing which holds true in the sense of urban lifestyle is that the trust on a commercial outlet ( ex: A Clothing Shop or A Bank ) seems to directly proportional to the ambiance and big advertisements which the company shells out to the end users.

I was travelling my way back to the city which i work, which happens to be 2500 kms from my home town , the train which i was reserved to travel on had all its coaches exteriors painted with the big advertisements of one of the largest communication companies in India. This didn't end with it, the coaches inside had been refurbished with internal AD holders and Wi-Fi connectivity. Certainly a big spending has been done by the company to be able to paint costliest long distance train of one of the worlds largest Railway System.

Now let me post a few questions for you to ponder

1. Why do companies spend so much on publicity when we cant imagine an immediate long term benefit that this may give them?
2. Why do companies spend a big deal on the ambiance of the outlets?
3. Why do companies sign player like "Sachin Tendulkar" ?
4. Why do companies associate themselves with the biggest movie stars?

When the companies create and buy big Advertisements Slots and Publicity Positions, spend millions in creating the most visibly enchanting outlets , sponsor "millions" on Bollywood awards and the biggest Cricket Series, what they are doing is called as Seth says "An Organized Waste". Why because this waste is what gets them to crawl in the mind of the users of the product. Most importantly it helps them to communicate the confidence of the brand/product.

Now in tough times like these is when the companies may reap the benefit of the big-spending that they have made , since we the "urban" and "semi-urban" people in India feel safe to be doing business or be associated with the brands which have a significant amount of "Organized Waste" in their kitty.

Now in the context of India, let me modify my starting statement and say that the "initial trust" is what gets influenced the most. The reason that i say this is , though the communication company may have spent millions on painting the train "red" but what happens to the spending when it comes to customer response centers. This i can easily generalize for most of the Indian companies ....they have got half the lesson on how "Organized Waste" works.... if you need customer loyalty and for that cause more customers what you need to have is people who take their time in answering your queries and keep their promises, people who carry with them a sense of respect for the customer. Big Sponsorships get you a TV Channel Slot for 1 hour award playback but it may not get you what is called as an intrusion into the new customer base or for that case any increase what so ever in the existing customer loyalty.

A point worth mentioning " The Road-Side Vendor " still exists in rural india and presents an entirely different aspect which we shall discuss later sometime......

Reviving The New TV With Old Ads

The part that i love the most to watch when i am channel surfing is undoubtedly the advertisements which float across to create the brand and the product awareness to the end users.
During my recent surfing expeditions i have met with the advertisements which i remember from my childhood...i am talking 15 years back from now.
I may not have a correct reason as to why they have re-appeared, but there are a few thoughts around it which i can weave to reason out things....

1. With the financials getting hit across the globe..companies may / will significantly cut there marketing/advertising budget ( Though not a good long term strategy...but that's a separate topic i may write about later ). A few of them , who can still sustain the channel bandwidth cost , will cut in terms of creating and posting the new ads across the channels may as well go back to the legendary old ads, the jingles of which still resides in the mind of about 2 or 3 generations of families now. So they are still in market and seen on TV.

2. Why do customers still love some products over others, even after years they have been associated with that particular brand and product, even though they have a large number of other brands and products available to them? One of the factors by which the customer loyalty is influenced, is by how the value of the product was conveyed to the customer when the product was launched. Of the several aspects , advertisements strike the mark substantially. So it may be an effort to bring in those old "good luck" :) advertisements back on the floor and revive the customer loyalty.... if these ads where able to make waves back in those years they can make waves in these years too....but the sea is different....its playing over the sea of existent customers and making them realize what the product value was in the past ...remains the same or may be more today..but no way less.....

For the newer generation of customers, i think these ads still strike the cord and does make much younger kids ..stop for a while on the channels and guess what..the next day you can find the jingle is as well known 15 years after it was created across the generation of customers as it was known when it was created.....what more do you want from an AD :)...a new singing customer i guess