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
