SMARKLET

SMARKLET New Year Edition, January 1, 2011 The Marketing Club Newsletter of SIMS

GUERRILLA MARKETING

SMARKLET

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

Greetings!

SMARKLET is back and Wishes all its readers a very happy new year!

This edition of SMARKLET is focused primarily on new age marketing. Our endeavor is to constantly pro-vide you with information, facts and snippets that are not taught in class-rooms.

New age marketing could be of many types - Experiential, Guerilla, Ambush and Viral to name a few.

In this edition we will cover many different concepts of marketing with the help of examples and cases.

Hope you enjoy reading this edition of SMARKLET!

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Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla Marketing is basically an unconventional system of promotions that relies

more on time, energy and imagination rather

than a fixed marketing budget. The term

Guerrilla Marketing has been coined by Jay

Conrad Levinson.

Although originally meant for small

and medium enterprises, Guerrilla Marketing

is now being used by large businesses. It is a

non traditional method of marketing.

Guerrilla Marketing involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in pub-

lic places, street giveaways of products, PR stunts and any unconventional marketing

intended to get maximum re-

sults from minimum re-

sources. Guerilla Marketing is

based on human psychology

rather than on experience and

judgement.

Today, starting with NGOs,

social organizations, big firms

and small organizations, al-

most every single firm has

started using guerrilla market-

ing as a means to cover eye

balls.

Two advantages of using guerrilla marketing techniques are firstly that it is an ex-

tremely low cost medium and secondly the fact that it helps in catching large number

of people.

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REVERSE GRAFFITI

Reverse graffiti, also known as clean tagging, dust tagging, grime writing or clean advertising,

is a method of creating temporary images on walls or other surfaces by removing dirt from a surface.

It is often done by removing dirt/dust with the fingertips from windows or other dirty surfaces, such

as writing 'wash me' on a dirty vehicle. It is also used commercially as a form of Guerrilla Advertis-

ing.

Domino‟s Pizza was one of the earliest U.S. companies to commission GreenGraffiti, investing less

than $20,000 in a campaign that included 210 street impressions, spread across New York, Philadel-

phia and Los Angeles last summer. Pedestrians were invited to send in photographs of themselves

with the street images to win Domino‟s gift cards. Domino‟s estimated that the campaign brought it

about $1 million worth of publicity.

It is currently taking form via guerrilla marketing all over

the world. As competition with businesses escalates to a

more global position, the standards of current advertising

campaigns are growing old.

Advertisers are now scrambling to form new ways to grab

attention over the television ads that used to work so well.

Recent CBS reports have suggested that a person could see

up to 5000 advertisements in a single day, wearing on a

mind, and making the world hesitant to buy any product

through an advertisement.

Marketers need to find new ways to stand out.

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Undercover marketing is a subset of guerrilla advertising where consumers do not realize that they

are being marketed to. For example a marketing company might pay an actor or a social celebrity

to use a certain product visibly and in certain locations where target consumers congregate. The

actor will often be able to sell consumers on their product without those consumers even realizing

that they are being marketed to.

An undercover campaign which aims to generate buzz, is economical, and once sufficient buzz has

been generated, is almost free, as consumers "market" the product to others, through a network of

referrals which grows and grows. Buzz campaigns can reach consumers isolated from all other

media, and unlike conventional media, consumers tend to trust it .

If marketers fail to hide the campaign, they run considerable risk of backlash. In cases where con-

sumers discover they have been manipulated into liking the product, they generally become angry

at the marketer (and by association that product) over being misled.

Examples of Undercover marketing

Sony Ericsson used stealth marketing in 2002 when they hired 60 actors in 10 major cities, and

had them accost strangers and ask them: “Would you mind taking my picture?" The actor then

handed the stranger a brand new picture phone while talking about how cool the new device was.

And thus an act of civility was converted into a branding event.

Wikipedia has also become a tool for undercover marketing. The creation of Wikiscanner, for ex-

ample, has revealed attempts at manipulating Wikipedia's content by a large number of business,

government, and special interest groups.

The topic of undercover marketing is explored as part of the 2003 documentary film, The Corpora-

tion, as well as in the fiction movie, The Joneses, a satirical which arrived in theaters in April

2010.

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Ambush Marketing

Ambush Marketing might be the sneakiest, most devious, and controversial forms of marketing. Despite

all this, it can be very effective. Ambush marketing is a form of marketing in which a group takes ad-

vantage of an event (that is usually highly publicized, documented, and seen by many) but with no affili-

ation with the event and no fee is paid.

Many see ambush marketing as immoral; regardless,

many big brands have used it now, and in the past. Here

are some more examples:

Hugo Boss- 2009: Hugo Boss sailboat follows Tiger

Woods off the shore of the British Open

Bavaria’s Brewery – 2006: Bavaria‟s Brewery was

removed from fans of the Netherlands because Bud-

weiser was the official beer sponsor.

Nike – 2002: Despite the 2002 Boston Marathon

being sponsored by Adidas, Nike supplied the runners

with spray painted swooshes that commemorated the

day of the race, but not the race itself (clever).

Qantas Airlines- 2000: In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the slogan for the games was “Share the Spir-

it.” Qantas airlines adopted a slogan “The Spirit of Australia” despite the fact that Ansett Air was the of-

ficial airline sponsor.

Nike – 1998: Despite Adidas being the sponsor of the 1998 FIFA World Cup, Nike decided to spon-

sor individual teams.

Nike – 1992: In the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, Michael Jordan (sponsored by Nike) covered

the Reebok sign on his gear while accepting his gold medal for USA basketball. Nike also sponsored the

press conference for the “Dream Team” even though Reebok was their official sponsor.

What does this mean? It means that regardless of how controversial the strategy may be, whenever there

is a cost effective and potentially useful marketing technique, it‟s dumb not to take advantage of it. For

example, you can go to an event that is sponsored by your competitor, and hand out free t-shirts for your

company. Not only do people like free stuff (especially t-shirts) but some of those people might even

wear them in the event. Imagine one hundred people wearing Yahoo t-shirts at a Google convention, or a

thousand people wearing free Coca Cola gear at a Pepsi event. In this world where a dollar is hard to

come by, its dog eat dog.

Ambush marketers simply develop a creative advertising campaign around the event, never use the event

logo, trademark, and capitalize by association with the event without paying for “official sponsor” status.

The Pepsi hot air balloon flying above Sharjah, on the day of the Coca-Cola Cup final, is one such exam-

ple.

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HUL vs P&G

The story starts on July 23, 2010

when Mumbai woke up to hoard-

ings that screamed: ‘A Mystery

Shampoo!! 80% women say is

better than anything else’.

P&G, it was later found, was

planning to unveil the new Pan-

tene on August 1.

When the suits at HUL found out,

they saw an opportunity to score

a point. They ambushed P&G. On

July 28, even as the P&G hoard-

ings stood tall on its skyline,

Mumbai woke up to another

hoarding that was upfront, and

suggestive of its source of inspi-

ration. It said: „There is no mystery. Dove is the No.1 shampoo‟. Dove is one of the four brands in HUL‟s

shampoo portfolio.

This is not a new concept for India. It all started with The Pepsi-Coke war which began with the 1996

cricket World Cup is still considered by many as the most famous example of ambush marketing. Though

Coca-Cola was the „official‟ sponsor of the event, Pepsi stole

the limelight with its „Nothing official about it‟ tagline. A dec-

ade later, the war continues.

KINGFISHER vs JET

After changing its identity, Jet Airways put up a hoarding that

read: „We‟ve changed‟. Kingfisher Airlines, which was

fighting for the numero uno position, placed a cheeky bill-

board just above Jet‟s hoarding, screaming: „We made them

change!‟. Taking the fight a step further, GoAir placed a

hoarding higher than Kingfisher‟s, with a line pompously say-

ing, “We‟ve not changed. We are still the smartest way to fly”.

There‟s no debating that these campaigns were highly noticed.

A billboard battle between Idea & BSNL. Idea was still pat-

ting its back for coming up with „Walk and Talk‟ message that

pushed India to stay fit when BSNL tripped it by displaying

this idea‟s fatal facet on this hoarding.

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CASE STUDY—THE FUTURE GROUP

Out-of-the-Blue, Creative, Exhilarating, Exciting, Vivacious, Energetic, Surprise, Effort, Affordable,

Rules-Breaking, Attention Seeking, Effective, Viral!

These are some of the words that together, represent the essence of Guerilla Marketing. How can we use a

simple idea to fascinate, delight and have our purpose fulfilled solely through word of mouth?

Guerilla Marketing cannot be taught through theories. It can only come alive through out-of-the-box crea-

tivity.

With retail market in India especially in metros where standard of living and disposable in-come is at an all time high, competitors will vie for the market share and can stoop to any levels while marketing their products. Guerilla marketing is just one of the strategies and surely one can learn a lot from the ongoing battle, especially people interested in marketing/marketing techniques.

The Future group came up

with 3 catchy statements

which surely does catch

your eyes (whether one

changes their loyalty or

not, only time will tell) and

surely one cant resist ap-

preciating the same.

Keep West-aSide. Make a

smart choice !

Shoppers! Stop. Make a

smart choice !

Change Your Lifestyle. Make a smart choice !

Future Group started com-

peting with Shoppers Stop, Westside and Lifestyle through this ad campaign.

Although there are a lot of questions that are raised when we speak of guerrilla marketing, it manages to

capture our mind space.

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TRIVIA

This beer company claims that it is "The King of Beers".

Budweiser. Many people over the years have thought that the name BUDWEISER stood for "Because U

Deserve What Every Individual Should Ever Receive" just a little FF for everyone (fun fact).

How did Pepsi-Cola get its name?

It once claimed to contain pepsin. Pepsi's creator, Caleb Bradham, claimed his cola contained pepsin, an

enzyme crucial to digestion, so Pepsi allegedly aided digestion. Though at first it trailed Coke in sales,

today Pepsi is its main rival in the soft drink arena.

In Taiwan, Pepsi-Cola made a very grave error (no pun intended) with their slogan 'Come alive

with the Pepsi generation'. The catch phrase was translated a little too literally in Taiwanese, and

ended up saying what?

'Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.'. More often than not, it is the Coca-Cola advertisers

that make serious faux pas, and often in the Far East countries, such as China and Taiwan. This advertis-

ing campaign lasted a very short time, and was removed from all advertisements when someone finally

realised the literal nature of the slogan.

In China, Coca-Cola used the name 'Ke-Kou-Ke-La', which means 'bite the wax tadpole' or 'a fe-

male horse stuffed with wax' until it was realised what this slogan meant. They had to make do

with 'Ko-Kou-Ko-Le' in the end. What does ‘Ko-Kou-Ko-Le’ mean?

„Happiness in the mouth'. Another badly translated slogan, 'Ke-Kou-Ke-La' was supposed to be used in

an advertisement which featured no speech, only a bottle of Coca-Cola and the name 'Coca-Cola'. When

translated into Mandarin text, it became 'Ke-Kou-Ke-La'. What this name meant was soon realised, and

this name was not used. Instead, Coca-Cola used „Ko-Kou-Ko-Le‟ .

KFC told the world that their chicken was 'finger lickin’ good', but what did they tell the people of

China?

'Eat your fingers off'. This happened in 2002, and although the slogan was researched before it was re-

leased, this did not stop the faux pas from occurring.

The Parker company made a colossal mistake when they tried to market their leak proof pens. In-

stead of advertising ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you’, they accidentally claimed

that 'It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant'. In what language was this mistake

made?

Spanish. The company assumed that 'embarazar' meant 'to embarrass'. It actually means 'to impregnate',

as the phrase in Spanish for 'to embarrass' is 'avergonzar'.

SMARKLET

SYMBIOSIS INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

(SIMS)

Editors – SMARKLET

Anupreet Singh

Deepak John

Maansi Sharda

Sobiya Robertson

E-mail ID: smark@sims.edu

TEAM SMARK

Amrit Pal Anirban Anupreet DJ Devesh Maansi Megha

Neeharika Parul Pratuesh Rahul Sandeep Sobiya