John Gourville, professor of marketing at Harvard, says: Many innovations fail coz consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new!

Put differently, user habits are a competitive advantage for the brands that have habituated them. Any new brand that attempts to change the customer routine will find it difficult to do so. Reason why, Gourville says brands that warrant a high degree of behaviour change generally fail if their benefits are not clear and substantial.

For instance, once you start reading a certain newspaper, you find it difficult to change the brand. The same is the case with your bank. Most often, the first bank you open your account in happens to be your last as well.

John Gourville claims that for new brand to stand any chance of converting the customer, it just can’t better than the old one but ten times superior, if not more. Apple moved us from Nokia coz it was not just better. It was superior!

Look at the keyboard of the device you are holding. What you have there is the QWERTY keyboard. Wonder what it is? Just look at how the letters Q W E R T Y are arranged there. Thus, the name!

This keyboard was first developed in the 1870s for the now-defunct typewriter. It was designed so the commonly used characters are spaced wide apart thus preventing typists from jamming the metal type bars of those early typewriters.

Better designed keyboards were invented during the 20th century. The one invented by August Dvorak placed the vowels in the centre row that increased the typing speed and accuracy. Yet, even the electronic typewriters that replaced the old-styled typewriters didn’t have them incorporated.

The QWERTY keyboards still remain the standard despite the invention of far better layouts. From typewriters to their modern-day cousins, computers. Truly an anachronism in this digital age!

Qwerty has survived and continues to flourish thanks to the high costs of changing user behaviour. One kind of humans, me included, learned typewriting and, hence, found it hard to change our typing pattern. The rest, instinctively learned to place their fingers in response to their thoughts with little or no conscious effort thanks to practice. Switching to an unfamiliar keyboard even if it is more efficient will force me and others to relearn how to type. And that is not going to happen.

Therefore, Qwerty lives on, no matter how quirky it is!

Say you are hungry. You are offered either an apple or an orange to buy and you really don’t have any special preference for either of them. Which one would you choose?

When buyers are offered vastly different product options, they struggle to make a decision. That’s coz it can be very challenging for their brain to analyse selections that are not alike. They are literally forced to compare apples and oranges!

In such situations, a smart way to help the buyer decide is to introduce a third option that is inferior to one of the others. The lesser alternative makes the option that it is dominated by, look more appealing.

In the case of the apples and oranges, if a sub-standard apple is offered, their brain unconsciously judges the two apples and selects the better one. The brain just compares it to the one that it was most similar to and discards the new option!

Put simply, a decoy was offered to make it easier for the brain to arrive at a decision. This phenomenon is called the Asymmetric Dominance Effect.

A fascinating set of experiments by psychologist Dan Ariely demonstrates how this effect shifts perception and can even cause the average sale price to rise. Ariely asked MIT college students to evaluate subscription options for the Economist magazine.

Experiment 1: Students were presented with two annual subscription options.

Option 1: $59 for online access

Option 2: $125 for print and online access

In this experiment, 68% of the students chose the print and online option while only 32% chose online only.

Experiment 2: Students are presented with three annual subscription options:

Option 1: $59 for online access

Option 2: $125 for print only

Option 3: $125 for print and online access

The addition of the decoy – Option 2 – caused the average sale to jump as 84% of the students chose the print and online option, while only 16% chose online only. No one chose the print-only option. I am sure you would have reacted the same way as the majority did.

Buyers get overwhelmed when evaluating radically different options. This frustrates them and they are unable to take a decision. It is here that you can deploy the asymmetric dominance effect to relieve the pressure by making the task of comparing the options less cognitively demanding.

Next time, when you are trying to make your customers compare apples and oranges, just offer them a bad apple!

It will be good if you can find some time to pick a book titled The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR. It would be great if you could read it too!

The title is a misnomer. The authors, Al Ries and Laura Ries, are not proposing that advertising is dead. Rather, they claim advertising isn’t as powerful as it used to be and should be used more as a support to a well-orchestrated Public Relations plan.

Their theory is simple: Build brands with PR and once it is established maintain it with advertising. They give enough and more case studies of brands that have taken this route: Microsoft, Starbucks, Body Shop, Linux, PlayStation and a lot more.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer used smart PR, more than advertising to launch its blockbuster brand Viagra. Not just the customers, even the drug experienced growth, thanks to PR!

Nicely written and neatly presented with apt examples, the book itself became a best-seller thanks to powerful word of mouth!

As irony would have it, the next book I picked up to read, or rather reread, was an old classic (never mind if all classics are old) All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. It’s a book that became popular not by advertising but by brilliant PR and word of mouth.

As a Unitarian minister, Fulghum wrote a simple credo and shared his statement of belief with his congregation and then read it at a primary school celebration. As fate would have it, a Washington senator was in the audience. Impressed, he requested a copy of the speech and took it to Washington where it was read into the Congressional Records.

From there it made its way to the Kansas City Times. Portions of it were printed in Dear Abby and Reader’s Digest. Talk show hosts read it on their radio shows. A telephone company sold thousands of copies as a poster to its customers.

The content was photocopied, sent to loved ones and posted on bulletin boards at schools throughout the country.

It was then made into a book. The damn book went on to sell more than a million copies around the world.

All this and more accomplished without a single shred of advertising!

Apparently, there’s a punch dialogue in a Tamil film which I didn’t see but only heard. The hero says: ‘Once I make my mind, even I can’t change it’.

Who says it or in what context is immaterial to this article but what was said is very relevant to the topic of this discussion.

Once we attribute a certain value to a person or thing, it dramatically alters our perceptions of subsequent information. Psychologists term it the Value Attribution Bias. In other words, once we attribute a certain value to something, it’s very difficult to view it in any other light. The initial value we attribute cloud our subsequent views of the same thing.

The bias is so powerful and potent that it affects us even when the value we assign is completely arbitrary.

A simple experiment conducted by three researchers, the findings of which were subsequently published in the ‘Journal of Marketing Research’ explains it.

The researchers picked three groups of students and told them they were checking the intelligence-enhancing properties of a beverage called SoBe, which they said increased mental acuity of those who drank it. To test the acuity, the researchers explained to the students that they had developed a thirty-minute word jumble challenge that the students would have to solve after drinking a glass of SoBe.

The first group was the control group which meant they were to take the test and solve without drinking SoBe.

The second group was told to pay $2.89 for SoBe and were served the drink.

A third group was given SoBe but was told that the university had gotten a discount and that they need to pay only 89 cents for it.

When the researchers tabulated the results, they found something interesting. Let the drums roll please….

The second group, that paid $2.89 for SoBe, performed slightly better on the test than did the group that received no SoBe. And if you think, SoBe should indeed be intelligence-enhancing, here is the clincher. The students who drank the cheap SoBe, the 89 cents group, performed the worst of the three groups. Which means, they performed poorly even when compared to the first group that didn’t drink SoBe.

Note, it’s the same drink. Never mind if it enhances intelligence or suppresses stupidity. Given that the same SoBe was served to the second and third groups, we can only conclude that it was the value the students attributed to the SoBe that made the difference in their test scores.

As idiotic and as stupid as it may sound to you, the more expensive SoBe made the students smarter and the cheaper SoBe made the students, well dumber!

The journal article that carried the findings was aptly named: ‘Placebo Effects of Marketing Actions: Consumers May Get What They Pay For’!

Expectations change the reality we live in. The value that we attribute to something fundamentally changes how we perceive it. When we get something at a discount, the positive expectations don’t kick in as strongly. We tend to discount the benefits as well.

Guess we are like that Tamil film hero after all. Once we make up our mind, even we can’t change it!

One of the most boring campaigns to conceive and probably one of the most difficult to hold viewer’s attention is the topic ‘road safety’. Viewer thinks, at best, that they know everything about it or, at worst, think nothing can be done about it.

One day, many years ago in the BBC canteen, a few journalists were discussing this and it fell upon Nick Ross to create a documentary on road safety that was both interesting and action-inducing. Though it felt like a punishment meted out to him, Nick decided to do something about it. What he did is an abject lesson on how a marketer needs to explore ways to puncture consumer complacencies. There are times when marketers need to create symbols of re-evaluation that will prompt customers to sit up and rethink of some of their assumptions about a certain product category. Especially when the category is as boring as road safety or as personal as impotence!

There were around 6,000 deaths on British roads every year. Both the British authorities and the general public had come to accept it as a part of life, a price they had to pay to drive on those very roads. Nick found that there were solutions lying around just waiting to be picked up. But because the topic in itself was boring, no one bothered to talk about it far less give it a patient hearing. Here’s what he did.

First, Nick decided he would reframe the whole concept of what was happening. He decided he needed to present an abstract number, i.e., 6,000 – in an entirely different context so that it gets attention and elicits an emotional response. He framed the deaths an ‘epidemic’. He said it was a threat to the entire safety of Great Britain and it was time the country faced up and fought. He titled his documentary ‘The Biggest Epidemic Of Our Times’. The stage was set.

Second, he realized he had to find an idea that would bring the 6,000 deaths to life in an entirely fresh way. In a manner that would make it unacceptable to the people. He began his documentary with an arresting set of visuals. He took a typical British town called Wallingford whose population was 6,000 and showed the entire town lying dead. The voice over was equally dramatic: Every year in Britain, a town the size of Wallingford dies on the roads. The drama was arresting.

Third, Nick knew he had the attention of the people. He now had to change the language of the authorities who could do something about it. The documentary urged the authorities to revise their targets. Targets? Instead of 6,000, the documentary said they should aim to kill only 4,000 people a year. Put simply, Nick was sarcastically implying that the authorities were killing people while they should be saving lives. The viewers were moved.

The people were agitated and demanded action. The authorities were forced by citizen’s voice and collective activism. Things began to change. Heads started to roll. Action was unleashed. Highway engineers explained how roads could be realigned. Academics showed how vehicles could be modified to avert a collision or absorb the energy of a crash. Technicians demonstrated how seat belts and helmets could save lives. All the changes were put in place.

There are just 3,500 deaths on British roads today. Their roads are among the safest in the world.

All coz an issue was reframed. The problem was brought to life. And the language was changed to induce action.

Imagine how many product categories in marketing, or for that matter problems in life, can be changed if only we reframed it well. And phrased it better.

Need proof?

When Pfizer was planning to launch Viagra, they faced a similar problem. The pill was supposed to cure impotence. But it was a harsh word. A problem no male wanted to admit in public.

Pfizer couldn’t say, ‘Come buy Viagra and come’ or something similar. They knew they had to reframe the problem. Find a softer phrase to cue impotence. They found one: Erectile Dysfunction. Or ED for short.

The company didn’t say impotence in their communication. They talked about ED. They even showed 30+ guys talking about and buying Viagra. Bob Dole, the republican party nominee in the 1996 American Presidential election was made the brand’s ambassador. What happened?

Things started to grow!

Even the brand too. Viagra has made tens of billions of dollars since its launch in 1998. All coz Pfizer reframed the problem. And found a phrase that pays!

‘Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go’, said Oscar Wilde.

Regardless of which one you belong to – ‘some’ or ‘others’ – we all wish to leave behind a trace of our presence. Why then, don’t we want our brands to do the same!

Human memory is short. Publics’ even shorter. More so when it comes to brands. Especially the ones that either don’t have a physical manifestation or those that don’t leave a hint of their existence once they are consumed.

Some brands are publicly observable. The car you drive, self-introduces to others. The jeans you wear talks to others even before you do. The laptop you carry logs in its presence every time you open it. Reason why these brands lend themselves well to better word of mouth. People see them. They talk about them.

Some brands are private. The lipstick you sell, ironic for something that’s put on the lips, stays silent. It may be attractive but it doesn’t tell others its name. The bank you bank on, may make your money talk, but it doesn’t speak about itself to others.

Such brands struggle to generate the word of mouth that comes easily to brands that are publicly visible. They are out of sight and out of mind. Since they are out of mind they are out of mouth!

If you want your ‘invisible’ brands to be remembered, recalled and relished even after they are used, you need to make them talk. And make people talk about it. For which you need to make the brand leave behind a reminder.…. a Behavioural Residue!

Behavioral residue is a physical indicator that you either let your brand have or a leave behind that reminds people even after it’s installed, consumed and not visible. It’s a smart marketing ploy to ensure your brand is seen even when it remains hidden!

There are two ways to increase the visibility of your ‘invisible’ brand. You could make the private brand and the aftermath of its consumption public. Or you can make it advertise itself through smart thinking.

If you are smart, you will do them both. Together!

Rocotile is a roof tool tile that is laid on the terrace of buildings that wards off sunlight and cools the room temperature below by a good 11 degrees. Once the tile is laid on the terrace, there is nothing about it that reminds the customer or the visitors. Rocotile, once sold, becomes invisible. To make matters difficult, Rocotile doesn’t advertise much either. And if these weren’t enough, the category is filled with big brands with bigger budgets. Yet, how does Rocotile succeed and surpass all of them?

Rocotile promises customers that their home will feel like Switzerland when they lay the tiles on the terrace. Contrary to most empty marketing promises, in this case, customers actually feel the difference. It does cool the home as much as it claims.

When customers get what they are promised, they not just happy but they also feel obliged to the brand. That’s what Rocotile capitalizes on. Post installation of the tiles, Rocotile offers the customer a gift. A well-designed aesthetic plaque with the words ‘Welcome to Switzerland’. A plaque so beautifully done that customers happily hang them at the entrance or in their halls.

It not only reminds the customer about Rocotile, it also becomes a conversation starter when visitors come home. And, invariably, the customer explains about Rocotile, how they had it installed on their terrace and how it has made the home feel a whole lot cooler etc. A simple behavioural residue that turns into a smart marketing tool.

Online is a funny place, if it can be considered a place at all. More so, the grocery delivery business that keeps changing by the minute. Literally!

First, it was delivery within 2 days. Then it was delivery within 10 minutes. And as if people couldn’t wait, it wilted to delivery within minutes. In fact, it was not even e-commerce anymore. They gave it a new name, Q-commerce. Quick commerce.

There was this start-up called Zepto. Started by two 19-year-olds who promised grocery delivery in 10 minutes. It even raised $200 million, shall we say, quickly. The startup’s valuation soared to $900 million, taking it closer to becoming a unicorn.

Grofers even went one step further and changed its all-grocery business model to a quick-commerce one and offered a range of other products too. For good measure, they even changed their name to Blinkit.

Not to be left behind, Swiggy got a $ 700 million funding to their Q-commerce venture, Instamart. The company claimed it would lead the Q-commerce grocery space and reach an annualized gross merchandise value of $1 billion in three quarters.

Ride share company Ola launched Ola Dash. You may be surprised Ola even launched a brand in the Q-commerce space.

Remember the last five overs of IPL matches. When even the commentators urged us to order and promised quick deliveries. 10-minute delivery was the in-thing.

The market was abuzz. The investors were thrilled. The start-ups were vrooming. The business press went gaga. Everybody was rooting for Q-commerce. Except the customer. They refused to join the party. They didn’t need 10-minute delivery. Once in an emergency, yes; but daily, no. They weren’t keen paying a delivery fee for it.

Zepto has stopped saying 10-minute delivery. Ola Dash has announced it is shutting down. Blinkit is too numb to speak. Ladies and Gentlemen, Q-commerce is dead. The brands are beating a hasty retreat. The start-ups are changing their business models. No more 10-minute delivery. It’s back to square one. Delivery time that’s reasonable. Delivery schedules that suit customer needs.

The only thing faster than the birth and speed of growth of Q-commerce has been its quick demise. Maybe we should have called it D-commerce. That’s what this concept was always destined for.

One of the many good things about Marketing 101 is its limited syllabus. The rules are limited and, importantly, they are simple.

Thou shall only serve the need of the customer. Thou shall find a customer need and serve it better than others and the customer shall beat a path to your door.

Thou shall not create a need. When you conjure up solution for a need that doesn’t exist, the customer shall beat a path to your door, and close it.

What then explains the madness of investors and their mad rush to invest in start-ups who don’t understand the basics of Marketing 101. Why would they invest in an idea that tries to solve a problem that doesn’t exist?

When I first wrote about this in ‘Hindu Tamil Thisai’ (https://www.hindutamil.in/news/supplements/vaniga-veethi/800587-quick-commerce.html), there were those who claimed I didn’t understand the new wave. Many felt I was old-fashioned and didn’t understand the millennials.

I doubt if millennials are a new breed, a different race, that they can be manipulated into buying a solution that doesn’t serve their needs. For all the evidence to the contrary, millennials aren’t dumb. And they don’t go that wrong.

But I was wrong on one count. I wondered about the sustainability of the concept of Q-commerce and suspected about its longevity. Even I am taken aback by the speed of its demise. It’s taken less than 10 weeks for the 10-minute delivery start-ups to understand that Marketing 101 still works!

Wishing to be in the limelight is one thing. But wanting to be even the corpse in a funeral so everyone can look at them is stooping to a whole new bottom.

Take the case of business owners who want to be in the limelight, literally, by acting in their brand’s advertising. Megalomaniac moths who seem to revel under the lights of a film studio. And harming their brands in the process!

For God’s sake, what do they take us customers for? Do they seriously think we buy their brands for their charming faces and cherubic smile? 

Business owners need to realize customers buy a brand that fits their needs and fills their minds. Their brands need a face; an identity, yes. But not theirs. By giving their brands their faces, they run the risk of harming the brand when harm befalls on themselves. 

Once upon a time, there lived a man called Vijay Mallya. He ran a few successful businesses. And one day, he decided to splash his face over all his brand’s promotions. When he got into trouble, so did all his businesses. Even the ones that were doing well. His own face became his businesses’ bugbear. His own identity became a millstone around even his good brands’ necks.

Moral of the story: Brand needs a face called positioning. When you interject your face into it, the brand goes down when you go down!

Once upon another time, there was another brand called Saravana Bhavan. With branches all over Madras and in more than 20+ countries, it was serving more people than any other South Indian restaurant in the world. One fine day, its owner was caught in a scandal; was accused of kidnap; got arrested for murder; was incarcerated for a crime that’s better left unsaid.

What happened to Saravana Bhavan?

Nothing. The brand still is as strong as ever. It has since opened more branches. Spread more to other countries. And serving more South Indian delicacies than ever.

Why didn’t Saravana Bhavan get Vijay Mallya’ed?

Because the world didn’t know who the owner of Saravana Bhavan was. Till they saw the news. And even when they did, his face was just of another accused in another murder case. It did not reflect or mean the Saravana Bhavan that meant so dear to them. For brand Saravana Bhavan, it was business as usual. And it continues to thrive even today.

Moral of the story: Brand needs a face called positioning. When the owner promotes his brand agnostic of his face, it thrives and lives happily ever after!

When in school, we picked up a fight with someone all the time. For no reason, at worst, to a stupid reason, at best. But we were smart enough to pick someone our size to fight. We knew the odds were stacked against us, if we chose a person bigger in size and stronger than us.

While we seemed to understand the basics of battle as a kid, sadly we forget it when we get an MBA. And choose someone ten times our size to pick a fight with. With naturally predictable and calamitous consequences.

The amazing marketers of Domex have decided to go to war. Understandable. They have been too timid and quiet in the toilet cleaner market for years. It’s high time they woke up and woke their brand as well. Deplorably, they have chosen a brand that’s more than ten times their size, Harpic. The queen of the Indian toilet. Even worse, they have decided to take her head on.

Any guesses who’ll win.

Harpic, of course. The sleeping beauty will wake half an eye at the minor intruder, smile and flush Domex down its own toilet!

To start a fight, you need to stand on solid ground first. Domex is struggling to even stand; in the store shelves or, for that matter, in customers’ minds. Yet, in their MBA wisdom, Domex marketers have taken the battle to the very brand that sets the tone and writes the rules of the toilet cleaner category. It reminds me of the famous Rajinikanth’s dialogue about the man who couldn’t even get up, yet wanted to have nine wives. Strike one.

The cardinal sin in war is to fight a superior army. 7, if my maths knowledge is right, is stunningly smaller than 70. A 7% market share brand like Domex should be thinking of growing by gaining from other smaller brands in its vicinity like Sanifresh and co. Not step on a sleeping giant like Harpic that enjoys 70% market share. Mice can play but only till the cat wakes up. Strike two.

Last I heard, people wanted clean and disinfected toilets. If it smells good, great. Never the other way around. Harpic stands for clean. And ‘clean’ is the category truth. Fragrance is just icing on the cake. A brand needs to meet category truth first before it offers value adds. Domex is yet to meet category requirements. Reason why they are languishing at the bottom of the market share table. They first need to present their ‘cleaning’ credentials before they talk about other things. Harpic, on the other hand, is the cleaner numero uno. All they now have to do now is to launch a range of fragrances. Voila. The cleaning queen will smell good too. Strike three.

Domex is out. Toast. History. Done. Dusted. Game set and match, Harpic!

You may say HUL, that owns Domex, is much bigger than Reckitt, that has Harpic. You may say the big HUL can outshout, outrun and outgun the small Reckitt. That may be, but it’s not HUL that’s has gone to war with Reckitt. It’s Domex. It’s David that has chosen to go head-to-head with Goliath that’s ten times its size. With a history that’s weak and with a proposition that’s fringy.

A primary school kid has picked a Ph.d to fight with. Expect to hear the sound of a toilet being flushed. And Domex being crushed!

A wise mind once said ‘Don’t let opportunity knock on your door, keep it open’. Sage advice, specially to marketers who wish to launch new brands. Yet, most of them search for a market to serve instead of creating a market to own and rule. In other words, they want opportunity to knock on their doors!

When marketers get an idea the first question they ask is the size of the market. Important, yes; since you wish to know if there is a market for your new product and money to be made. But the best new product ideas are those that create a new market. There isn’t a ready made market available.

What was the size of the DTH market when Dish TV was launched? Zero!

What was the size of the tooth gel market when Close Up was launched? Zilch!

What was the size of the scooterette market when Scooty was launched? Nothing.

Yet, these brands went on to create the categories they entered and have remained numero uno since. They were not waiting for a market to be created, to seek entry. They created a market and forced entry. Along with it, their success!

Does that mean marketers can create customer needs? Fat chance. These smart marketers didn’t seek to create a need. They sought to spot a need before others did and created a solution for it. Thereby discovering a market to enter and creating a brand to rule them. The operating word is ‘discovery’.

The aim of marketing is to achieve a market, but the starting point is capturing the mind; the customers’. Their mind has not been made up yet. Since there has been none to make them think.

Customers didn’t know a thing about DTH till Dish came in. But they wanted to have better reception and control over their TV viewing. There was a need; there wasn’t a market. Dish TV created it.

Customers didn’t know toothpaste can come in gels till Close Up came in. But they wanted to have tingling fresh breath more so when they got up close with their sweethearts. The need existed; a market didn’t. Close Up created it.

Consumers didn’t know the meaning of scooterette till Scooty came in. But the young Indian woman was going out a lot more and wanted something bigger than a moped yet lighter than scooter. They had a need; the market wasn’t there. Scooty created it.

You get the picture!

‘The market follows where the mind leads’ said Al Ries. Reason why they castigate big companies for not blazing new trails and creating new markets. The biggies want to go after existing markets, the larger the better. It’s the small, the carefree and the I-dare-to-see-different who search for an unmet need and solve it with a new solution. ‘Critical to making correct branding decisions is the ability to differentiate the market and the mind’, said Ries.

The way to be big is to be born small. The way to rule a market is to create one. And that involves guessing the size of the need and not focus on the size of an existing market to enter. The market follows where the mind leads!

A new brand doesn’t require a market. It needs a human mind. Lots of them. Their needs are real and unsolved. Their minds are virgin and uncontested. Spot them and solve them. The customer will wed you for life.

You can live happily ever after!