Though my basic qualification, if I may
be allowed to call it that, is an under graduation in commerce, I later
fortified myself with Materials, Marketing and Finance Management studies.
However, either directly or indirectly, almost all my professional life was
based on communications, marketing and sales.
While in the marketing, especially the
retail part of it, I had exposure to and experience in, playing key roles either
in one area or all of them in the planning, budgeting and executing of several schemes
and promotions, and to successfully mount campaigns around them.
Among such schemes and promotions, the
‘Introductory offer’ of one free on purchase of one item, ‘Baker’s Dozen’ which
means one free for the purchase of every 12 numbers of the same product [which
works out to a discount of about 8.33% by simple calculation and slightly
differently if one is taking the route of a Return on Investment (RoI)
calculation], so much off on return of a container or a wrapper are some of the
common promotions which by now many customers are familiar with.
But I am going to write about a few campaigns
and promos which, in my opinion, were quite interesting and have some anecdotes
attached to the same.
The
first one is ‘Door to Door’ canvassing, sampling and selling
About 40 years ago I was working in the
Secunderabad depot of a nationally reputed Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)
company that had introduced a new washing soap. We wanted to introduce the
product to the prospective customers by doing a ‘Door to Door’ (D2D) canvassing
manoeuvre. The job is to extoll the benefits of the product and if a customer
shows interest, to sell the product as a sample at a discounted price.
Since the primary objective of the ‘D2D’
canvassing is to introduce a new product to a customer, that is the only time
when a company really gives a discount by covering the same under the promotion
cost. Rest of the times any discount offered is hardly a discount at all. After all, there are no free lunches, ever.
Because many of the local sales representatives already had their hands full, the branch has requested the
Sales Supervisor Mr. TRR from the neighbouring state, to come to Hyderabad and lend a helping hand. Reason
for choosing Mr. TRR was not only because he could speak the language but was considered
to be of good integrity and also with considerable experience in promoting new
products.
During this operation, in the twin cities
of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, I was to be his side-kick. I was all of 23 years
old and literally a green horn with hardly any experience in such activities.
Mr. TRR had interviewed some professional teams in the twin cities who had
claimed to be having an experience in the services to be provided and fixed one
service provider for the job.
After due briefing, we started on day
one when Mr. TRR took me along with the team to Kacheguda area and the teams
were assigned as two members for a street. Inevitably, almost always, the team
members were women who can perhaps have more patience and persuasiveness than
men (pardon my gender bias but then there it is). The area was clearly
demarcated and the team started working.
Now Mr. TRR and I had two specific jobs
- to ensure;
1) the safety of women team members –
after all, one doesn’t know what type of person/s the team members would
encounter at each home they are knocking at, jeopardising their safety and
2) that the team members don’t sell away
the product to a retailer.
As real discount is being offered during
this campaign time, it is tempting to both the parties;
- an enterprising ‘D2D’ team member to simply offload the stock with a retailer on the sly, to escape the drudgery of
going door to door lugging so many pieces of the soaps and
- to the retailers who can get it much
cheaper than from a dealer.
Not only did I understand the job well,
but being a loafing vagabond that I was and am, I enjoyed loitering in the
streets and by lanes and got to know the place rather intimately.
In fact, over a period, campaigns such as these became real professional with the team members who started wearing uniform attire and going
about their work. However, I haven’t come across such people over the past decade
or so. Is it shutters to this type of campaigns now?
The second one is ‘Mystery Consumer’ Contest
This is a very interesting contest but
works best under restricted communication pathways.
The sales representatives of the FMCG
Company will offload products with the retailers through the
stockists/distributors and tell the retailers that the company is going to run
a ‘Mystery Consumer Contest’ during such and such a period. The company will
delegate some mystery consumers who may visit the retailers’ shops anytime
during the contest period. Any person may approach a retailer for buying their
needs and if the retailer recommends our product and if that particular
customer is the ‘Mystery Consumer’ delegated by the company, the retailer gets
a spot incentive which is attractive and profitable to them.
Some of the office staff members who
have not visited markets for professional reasons, have been delegated to be the ‘Mystery Consumers’.
Care is taken that the market, such a person visits, is not a market that s/he
frequents.
In my case I drew ‘Jam (Zam) Bazaar’ and
‘Oil Monger Street’ in between Royapettah and Triplicane of Madras (Chennai)
which is about 9 kms from my house.
So every morning I woke up early and took
a bag and the gift coupons and went to the target area on my scooter. Hitching
up my 'Lungi' (to look more casual and realistic I wore casual household wear) I
visited the shops and asked the shopkeepers casually for this and that product
and finally said ‘please also give me a couple of good soaps”. At this cue, the
shopkeeper is supposed to recommend our product.
During this assignment, I had some funny
experiences;
a) Most of the retailers never
recommended our product and after revealing who I was, they said I did not look
like the type who would buy our product.
b) In those shops where they recommended our
products, it was almost always the assistants or the boys in the shops, who
were real fast to see me through and to recommend our product.
c) It was tough to meander from shop to
shop without allowing one shopkeeper signalling the other about my presence.
d) After the first day, I could not
enter the Jam Bazaar market again the next day as message about my visit has
been shared among all shopkeepers by the lucky shopkeepers. I could only visit
shops in the Oil Monger Street in the subsequent days too.
e) My brown beard (at that point of my
age) was a landmark give away and I could not camouflage that very
intelligently.
Though it was a lot of fun to do this campaign
to motivate the shopkeepers, I wonder whether this would work now in the age of
smart phones and self helping super markets.
The third is a ‘Tie-up with a Film Contest’
This was another very interesting
contest/campaign that we conducted sometime during 1986.
Our office in Madras was catering to the
business needs of the then united Andhra Pradesh (AP), Kerala, Pondicherry and
Tamil Nadu with an office in Chennai. This contest, we planned, was to be
operated in AP to bolster the sales of a particular brand of soap of ours that
was taking a beating with the onslaught of competition.
So, the scheme was simple. Tie up our sagging product with that of a super hit film in a unique and ingenious way. The tie-up has again been facilitated
by Mr. TRR who had live connections with the Telugu film industry (certainly much
better than mine).
A film that was produced by a very
reputed production house and which, for the first time, was shot on the 70 mm
film format in the history of the Telugu film industry was chosen for the purpose.
While the film was simultaneously produced in Hindi language as well, it later was
dubbed into a few other languages too, if I am not mistaken.
Now, that was the time when Madras had a
ban on screening other language films, except for Tamil films, in any of the
film theatres in the city. So I had been allotted the manager’s car, his
chauffeur to go to Tirupathi, the nearest town in AP (at about 156 kms
distance) with a 70 mm screen, just to watch this Telugu film and intently at
that.
With such strict rules in our company,
this was indeed a rare honour for a teeny-weeny clerk like me. So we took off
on an afternoon, watched the evening show of the film, stayed back for the
night and returned to Madras the next day. Interestingly, the film was a super
duper success collecting most of the investment by the first week itself.
Now my job really started.
We had to design a questionnaire or a
form in Telugu, make artworks, and get them printed in hundreds of thousands.
The forms asked the participants to fill with answers to questions which
pertained mostly to the film. Like for instance, what was the colour of the
blouse, the heroine was wearing, in a particular song sequence and so on. The
participants of the contest will have to answer eight such ‘interesting’ and ‘very
difficult’ questions, covering the entire length of the film.
The forms were distributed free of cost in
all cinema halls where the subject film was screened along with the ticket. To
answer these questions, the participants sometimes had to watch the film again
and again. In the absence of video tapes, CDs and YouTube, this was an
opportunity for the film to garner more income.
The tie-breaker was a slogan as to why
the participant was using our product and as a proof of using our product, s/he
had to attach the outer wrapper of our soap. The bounty for the participant was
a decent chance of winning prizes from a real large array that comprised mostly
of household electronics. Thus this became a win-win-win programme.
After a few days, the mails started
coming in and started pouring in over a couple of weeks. Mr. EJMR, A driver with our
company who knew Telugu, and I used to sit every day in the evening,
after completing the regular duties assigned to us individually, to open the
envelopes, seggregate them town-wise, ensuring validity and keeping them in
segments. This continued for about four months or so till the movie ran in the
theatres and the last date announced by us for the contest in the forms.
The first sieving was by us in filtering
the wrong answers, hopeless endorsements / slogans, invalid forms that were not
accompanied by the wrapper of our product. The filtered forms were validated by
a panel of eminent Telugu Poets and Pundits, Late Brahmasri Yamijala Padmanabha
Swamy, Late D. V. Narasaraju and Late Behara Ganesh Patro; nominated one by our
company, one by the film production office and then a neutral tie-breaker.
All of us worked in right earnest and
finally drew a list of the winners and intimated the winners too of the happy
news.
The film production office proposed a
date when a big function was to be held at VGP Golden Beach in Madras. In turn,
we had informed this to our personnel in AP as well as the winners for making
the logistic arrangements for at least the top three winners to be brought to
Madras on company expenses, for participating in the function and receiving the
awards.
The D-day arrived and when we were
proceeding towards the venue at VGP Golden Beach, I started becoming ominous.
The buses from AP were lined up, bumper to bumper, all the way from the
Marundeeswarar temple in Tiruvanmiyur till up to the threshold of VGP Golden
Beach, on both sides of the road, which is easily an eight kilometre stretch.
If each bus was carrying at least 40 persons, one can guess the number of fans
that attended the function on the day. And there were buses beyond VGP Golden
Beach towards Mahabalipuram too. Our estimate of the crowd that gathered on the
day was about 50,000 give or take a few.
We reached the venue without much ado.
But from the main gate to get on to the podium was a herculean task. On the podium
were displayed our prizes for the winners and mementos to be given by the film
company to their technicians. On the ground before the podium was a sea of
people in all sizes and colours and were in a frenzy to see their tinsel heroes
and heroines in flesh and blood.
There were heavals and surges from one
angle to the other swaying and tilting the podium very precariously. Stuntmen
from the film industry in Madras, many of them quite inebriated, held raw
bamboo sticks in their hands and started thrashing the crowds in a blind rage,
seemingly in order to maintain some semblance of discipline. Bouncers were
unheard about in Madras at that time; so these guys donned the roles. Many were
injured, not mortally though thankfully. There was utter chaos.
Our manager who brought his family for
the function prudently sent them back home immediately, in his car. He could
not climb the podium as over a thousand people were trying to board it all at
the same time. We had to literally hold his body parts whichever way we could
lay our hands upon and haul him up.
Once he was on the podium, the stage
started swaying and tilting dangerously. Not only our prize material but the
safety of us was in jeopardy that day over there. We all jumped down in a hurry
and one by one we all went our way. How the prize material was protected and
brought back to be distributed later, was a puzzle to me and for which I don’t
hold an answer till date, but somehow they were rescued unscathed.
All this happened because the film
production gave full-page advertisements in the local vernacular newspapers
inviting the fans for the function unconditionally. It helped the film
production company to shoot that part of the people’s gathering, free of cost, which
they could use immediately in their next film, based on a political subject.
The next time I met my manager in the
office, he swore that he will never again tie-up with a film. But it did stir
the hornet’s nest and the exercise did help boost the visibility of our product
and the campaign was the talk of many places across the state for about six
months at least.
Mr. EJMR could clock
overtime and augment his monthly income for a few months.
And for me, I too could clock overtime
for a couple of hours every evening and weekend days thus increasing my monthly
income for a few months when the campaign was active. And at the end of the
programme, I was also given an endorsement by the company, exemplifying my
efforts for the programme, and a cash award of INR 1,000 (today's estimated value being Rs.12,350 approximately) as well.
I don’t know how well such tie-up
campaigns can work now but if anyone needs consultancy in the same, they know
whom to contact! J
The next one is Sampling ‘Pet food’ Campaign
How do you make a pet owner buy your
product meant for the pets? Only the pets would know what they like and not the
owner and the pets can’t communicate? The answer is in making the pet happy and
ensuring the pet-owner perceives that happiness.
So in the 1990s that’s exactly what I
attempted to do when I was working with a Pet food manufacturing and marketing
company. We were making qualitative but comparatively costlier pet food,
especially dog food. As a sales manager I had to work out a promo scheme to
ensure better market share for our product.
I had launched on a twin pronged
programme of door to door canvassing, sampling and selling programme on one
side and free sampling in the veterinary hospitals and clinics, in Bangalore
(now Bengaluru) both probably for the first and may be even the only time in
this country.
So when we sample, if the dog took the
samples with enthusiasm we go on about a spiel explaining to the owner the virtues
of the product and try to sell the product. If the owner was a kid, it was a
bit easier.
At that time, there were about eight
major veterinary hospitals / clinics in and around Bangalore and we linked a distributor for the supplies. Every day I had to supervise the sampling
programme in the hospitals and once in a way the D2D campaign, which was
entrusted to a reliable agency. After about a month’s daily visits to the
clinics, those close to me started noticing and even complaining that I smelt of
animals, especially the dogs.
I am not sure whether this campaign was
ever again tried but while it lasted it was good and gave me a high that it was
done for the first time in India by me. Well, I do think so but my boss, though
was happy with the initiative, was not at all happy with the increase levels of the
sales.
The final one is Referral Campaign for Vehicle
Finance clients
By 1994 I completely changed my industry
and became a marketing manager of a leading financial services company which
was the first to get an ISO certification for Non Banking Finance Companies
(NBFCs) in India.
We did a referral campaign for car
financing, again for the first time in India for such a programme of referring
of new clients by existing clients. In turn, the existing clients were offered
real good, worthy and useful gifts depending on the value of finance extended
to a new clients referred by them. The benefits increase in a steep and stepped
up mode.
Here, the volume of clients is not high
as it was noted that only the women clients or relatives of clients were
interested in this scheme. So we had to choose the gifts based on the
preference of the gender and it was a very interesting exercise I would say.
Apart from monitoring the referrals and the yields from the referrals I also
had the job of tying up with the dealers/manufacturers of the gifts worth
co-branding, at a significant discount. Our vendors were like Titan Watches
where we had customised watches as an added incentive.
Well, those were the days. With change
of time, I wonder how many such schemes would work today where everything is
instant and people do not have the patience to understand the virtues and
thrills of being patient.
I did a few more campaigns alright, but they were mostly the run-of the mill stuff and not really worth posterity.
So, until the next,
Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil),
Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi
(Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya and
Nepalese), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci
(French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic and Sudanese), Shukriya
(Urdu), Sthoothiy (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian),
Kob Kun Krab (Thai), Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino),
Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian) and Tenkyu (Tok
Pisin of Papua New Guinea), Malo (Tongan), Vinaka Vaka Levu (Fijian)
Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy
Chennai, India
