Today T.I.C. has successfully completed 23 years in the industry and I owe it all to my experimentation with new concepts, learnings from experiences and of course the dedicated and hard working team members I have had till date. Although T.I.C. is 23 years old, my relationship with the industry dates back to my school days. It was in my school days itself when I was able to bring to life the concept of getting sponsors for events, which no one else was doing at that time, as this was the time event ‘industry’ was in its inception period. My interest in organizing school events moved to college and its then when I realized my strong passion for creating events and therefore decided not to enter into my family business. I took the risk of venturing into an industry which was not even recognized. However I also knew the fact that if you are convinced with your thoughts and have the ability to make people see that your dreams hold possibilities, there is no way that you will not succeed. I always remembered this thought especially during my initial days as an event manager where I faced tremendous difficulties in setting up the business. However I held on to this philosophy and successfully laid the first foundation of T.I.C. I pledged that whether I earn a lot of money or not, whether I become a corporate honcho or not, I will always stick to doing what I enjoyed most, which was events. That’s how T.I.C. was born and its tagline ‘Fun @ Work’ came in existence. In its foundation year itself, I introduced ‘Cornucopia’, India’s first talent hunt show. The idea came from my experience in schools where music was a rage but the budding singers did not have a platform to showcase their talent. The idea for the event was also originated from the fact that brands were also looking for innovative options to promote their company and products to the school audience. Thus, I decided to capitalize on the situation and made these brands my sponsors. In the year 1998, we introduced Dell Direct and Michael Dell, its owner, to India. The event was organized at a large scale and for the first time in India, we used surface projections on a curved dome structure to introduce Michael Dell. Year after year since then, we delivered innovative concepts that elevated the standards of events in the country, be it India’s first ever fund raiser event or introducing a brand in form of a 3D live e-puppet, be it India’s first musical Broadway to introduce a range of heavy commercial vehicles or India’s first promotional remix music troupe/group in place of celebrities for an Integrated launch campaign. Be it South-east Asia’s biggest MICE movement or India’s first ever Truck Racing championship, T.I.C. has always taken pride in walking the road less travelled. And as today as I write this memoir on what brought me success, the only reason for that I can think of is T.I.C bringing innovation in everything we organized. Every event was a new learning for us and from every mistake we only improvised. The trait, which we rigorously follow at T.I.C, is to accept mistakes. Not just rectify them but also see how we can overcome the challenges the next time. When I started T.I.C. all I wanted to do was to bring to life innovative concepts and thoughts. Make people see and feel things beyond their imaginations and that is something which still remains my success mantra till date. I fervently believe that if you as an event manager can bring to life imagination coupled with surprises, you can win anything be it a client brief or an audience’s trust. I believe that you should not follow success, instead do the kind of work that makes success follow you. At T.I.C. we never bother about the scale of the event. Instead what energizes us the most are the exciting things we can do with the event.
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Philips India recently unveiled a new product category for men within the Philips body grooming range at a high-profile launch event in Delhi. Everything Experiential’s Shantanu Jain discusses with Anurita Chopra, Director Marketing, Philips Personal Care, the importance of experiential for Philips and the need to keep its TG engaged. Q- Tell us about the new product category? A- So this particular product is something that we came as a solution to men for their body hair problems below the neck. In our research we clearly discovered that there were enough men who were using razors, scissors and creams which were painful and temporary solutions to their body hair problems. Getting rid of body hair gets messy, dirty, is unhygienic and leads to body odor and we found out the majority of men were struggling with it. And here we smelt a strong sense of opportunity and hence the genesis of body grooming came up. We thought of keeping it very simple by launching one product for the sensitive body area and making the life of men simpler. Q- How important is experiential for Philips? A- Experiential is integral actually because the entire personal care category is such a new space and we have been actively working on it. One can obviously do traditional marketing and send out a one-way message but these practices do not really give the consumers a flavor of what our product is all about. Q- What are the key elements common to all your experiential endeavors? A- Innovation is imperative to any experiential campaign we design. We always seek out fun and engaging ways to connect with the consumers. Our main focus is that consumers should have as much fun with our products as we have coming up with it. Q- Is experiential part of the marketing mix in the launch of this product? A- Men who face the issue of body hair are often hesitant to openly ask for a solution to their problems so the idea is to reach out to them digitally with a solution. Instead of going through traditional channels to promote we plan to make them experience the product. We have planned a Google hangout with Arjun Kapoor where he is going to be talking about the use of product in a really fun way and then there is also a radio activation that we are doing at a mall where he will engage with the youth. Q- Is there anything particular that you look for in an event agency before you partner on a campaign? A- Ideation is the core of any campaign that we want to execute at Philips any event agency that comes to us needs to have a stunning idea in place. The power of execution comes next because an idea can only be powerful if executed a certain way. You can have a great idea on Powerpoint but really struggle in terms of execution. Overall I think it is also the attitude of the agency and the partnership spirit in them that makes us give us a final go ahead. Q- Any experiential campaigns by any other brand that you’ve loved? A- I think Lakme has emerged with some really interesting campaigns in the past. As a brand we at Philips continue to take inspiration from interesting campaigns by different brands all the time.
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Consumers today are bombarded by advertising noise. It is in their everyday lives, their social lives and their virtual lives. This noise is everywhere. It is inescapable and it is unavoidable but yet, it has become invisible. Evolutionary animals as we are, consumers inundated by pushing, nudging, look-at-me messages are adapting. We have learned to screen these messages out and concentrate on what we really want to know about and who we really want to engage with. This new generation of street-wise, tech-savvy consumers has created a real problem for the marketing industry. How do we penetrate the protective carapace in which consumers have shrouded themselves? How do we create exciting promotional campaigns that will grab attention and capture imagination? How can we be heard above the noise? The answer is experiential marketing. Over the last few decades – in which TV and print have dominated the media landscape – the value of experiential marketing has all too often been disregarded. Brands hoping to launch effective advertising campaigns were assured that traditional broadcast media was the future, and a lot of money was spent in order to perpetuate this myth. The ‘AD men’ would justify their billings by quoting TV viewing figures, and explaining how these figures would translate into an impressive ROI. At its heart, experiential marketing is about value driven interaction. Traditional marketing channels push the consumer; this is our message – listen to us. Experiential marketing pulls the consumer; see what we’re doing – what do you think? A good experiential campaign will pique interest, drawing consumers to ask ‘what’s going on here?’, and consequently encouraging them to engage with a product or an idea. The aim of an experiential marketing campaign is to create emotive experiences, drive quality engagement between brand and consumer and – as a result – harness the immense power of word-of-mouth. Those who enjoy a positive experience are highly likely to share it with others, directly or indirectly endorsing the associated product and thus increasing brand advocacy. We call this advocate a brand champion: an individual who has the ability to influence perceptions and shift purchase behaviour across peer and tribe groups – but how can you ensure that your carefully planned experience will resonate with your target audience? Experiential marketing is sensory driven. We as humans need to feel something before we act, and to draw consideration we need to create experiences that involve consumers in honest, authentic and imaginative ways. Other marketing disciplines often focus too heavily on words and 2D images, forgetting about the other – equally important - 4 senses; touch, taste, sound and smell. Brands that are able to stimulate more than one of these senses are more likely to be recalled at a later date and evoke an emotional connection with the consumer. This connection is what will eventually drive purchase decisions or influence perceptions. According to a study done by the Sense of Smell Institute, people can remember around 50% of visual stimuli after 3 months, compared with remembering 65% of what they smell. For example, you only need to be within 50 feet of an Abercrombie and Fitch store to smell that it is there. Today, people are constantly sharing their life stories and the growth of social networks such as Instagram and Twitter means that brand experiences have the chance to become part of this real world story telling - if they are carried out effectively. People share positive experiences in seconds and thousands can engage with the post, however consumers can share a negative experience just as quickly, instantly tarnishing the brand you have worked so hard to build. As much as you can create a tidal wave of new brand fans off the back of an exciting experiential campaign, if executed poorly you will quickly spread the wrong word. With experiential marketing so closely linked to social media and online interactions, it’s no wonder that the number of brands utilizing experiential in India is on the rise. The marketing landscape is packed full of articles and opinions on engaging with Millennials and more recently, with Generation Z – those born from the late 90’s to the mid 2000’s – and 50% of India’s population falls into one of these categories. India is quickly catching up with the likes of the USA in terms of connectivity, so it makes sense that they are also catching up in the way that companies communicate with their customers. Whilst traditional, predictable and measurable advertising such as TV broadcasting still accounts for a significant portion of India’s marketing spend, there is a growing consumer demand for advertising to become a 2-way conversation – something which can only happen when a brand has something interesting and engaging to offer. It’s no secret that a huge number of people literally live their lives through their phones and that social media has a massive influence on the way we conduct ourselves and the decisions that we make. For these reasons, bridging the gap between physical experience and the online social space is imperative for success. Virtual and augmented reality are two up and coming technologies increasingly enabling this bridging, however the power of photography is not one to be underestimated. With images accounting for around 90% of all interaction on Facebook, technology which can produce sharable branded photographs of customers enjoying their experience is invaluable for producing genuine user-generated content. When it comes to structuring marketing spend, businesses need to shuffle the deck. Broadcast media has become so deeply embedded, that breaking free from the typical advertising model can be difficult, but we believe it is necessary to do so in order to challenge the status quo and create truly memorable campaigns. Instead of beginning with broadcast media, and working down, it’s time to start designing campaigns from the ground up. Experiential marketing allows a business to look their customers squarely in the eye, and generate a mutual rapport. The campaign messages disseminated by experiential marketing can then be repeated and reinforced through traditional media outlets, such as TV and radio. Experiences inspire us to create, or to change, to question our beliefs, to embrace new ideas and find new passions. Experiences are the basis of human existence and, as such, they are an incredibly powerful marketing tool. About Mark Mark Evans is the Managing Director at UK based experiential marketing agency 'Kommando'. With close to 20 years of experience in guerilla marketing he boasts of a sizeable list of international clientele and campaigns that stretch across 17 countries. Twitter Handle- @kommandogroup (The article has been extracted from BW APPLAUSE)
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More than 1,500 marketers from around the world converged in San Francisco at the Experiential Marketing Summit on 11 May 2015. Produced by theEvent Marketer magazine, EMS has become the industry’s most significant and substantial annual gathering. With more than 90 sessions, keynotes, workshops and classes, there’s always a lot going on—but our team at Sparks scoured the conference to bring you the six biggest EMS takeaways. 1. Story Doing The age of storytelling is getting an upgrade as marketers use live events to not just tell a story, but create a story in which attendees “do” that story…by creating that story and living it for a moment or moments in time. Storydoing is a buzzword that is starting to heat up, but, more importantly, it’s a philosophy being embraced by Fortune 500 experiential departments: Attendees become a part of the event and actually drive the experience themselves via highly interactive footprints, shareable engagements and customized event activities. 2. The Content Play It’s been the trend of the year for more than six months already, but at EMS we saw the different ways marketers are now using content—creating it, amplifying it and distributing it. In many cases, the actual event is now designed and used specifically to generate content for the rest of the marketing mix. And attendees themselves are now being used as both content creator and content amplifier. Bud Light’s Whatever, USA used 1,000 attendees to generate 37,000 pieces of content viewed by 15 million people. Numbers like that give our industry the power to reach more people than advertising. Bud Light vp and 2015 Grand Ex Award Winner Alex Lambrecht summed it up best when he proclaimed to a packed room of marketers that “the event has become a content factory.” 3. The ‘Temperature’ of Experiences Creating an experience that perfectly connects the brand and the target requires the right “experience temperature.” At Target, for example, live experiences are designed to be varying levels of “cool” (hip, exclusive, sleek) or “hot” (sexy, exciting, heart-pumping). And that temperature can be “raised” or “lowered” depending on the goal, strategy and event, EMS keynoter and Target vp-experiential marketing Dan Griffis told attendees. 4. Design Thinking Goes Beyond Design The practice of using “Design Thinking” to solve creative problems is moving beyond look and feel, with marketers using the proven principles of DT to build event strategies, on-site experiences and engagement protocols. Officially, “Design Thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic reasoning to explore possibilities of what could be, and to create desired outcomes that benefit the customer.” Unofficially, it’s helping marketers apply proven methodologies to the construction of live engagements. As IBM Global Interactive Experience Leader Paul Pappas said at an EMS Design Thinking session: “The last, best experience that anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experiences they want everywhere.” 5. Streaming On Deck If there is one trend marketers agree will be huge but aren’t yet fully embracing, it’s streaming—broadcasting live events to others via the web, devices or via person-to-person platforms such as Meerkat… as well as from different points across a single event. Obviously b-to-b events have moved faster to stream content and activities from trade shows, conferences and proprietary events. But consumer marketers are activating live streams as well. Target’s sponsorship of the Grammy Awards was brought to life via a live Imagine Dragons broadcast that served as a streamable event and as the first-ever live broadcast TV commercial. Frito-Lay’s live stream concert at South by Southwest gave web viewers the ability to control the point of view (and some of the special effects triggered at the actual concert). And as personal streaming platforms such as Meerkat and Periscope take form, the ability to not only amplify an event in realtime but also use your attendees as the amplifiers themselves, is primed for growth. 6. Experiences Are the New Currency In a world where groceries get delivered at the touch of a button, Nike sneakers can be custom-design on a web site and Uber is everyone’s private driver, target audiences now have almost everything they want or need available to them at varying prices, immediate timeframes and convenience levels. No matter which session we attended at EMS, from Pepsi to YouTube to Microsoft to Intel, there was one common philosophy shared by industry marketers: That target audiences prefer experiences over material goods—that a live engagement, exclusive content, access and “moment” are proving better incentives for engagement than a discount, giveaway, etc. Put another way, there are few things they can’t get, buy or order—smart marketers must now provide something they could never get on their own. Lots of lessons learned at this year’s Experiential Marketing Summit indeed but these six were the most common topics crossing over from session to session, keynote to keynote, conversation to conversation. The next EMS takes place May 4-6, 2016 in Denver. About Kristy Elisano Kristy Elisano is the Vice President at Sparks, a globalevent marketing agency delivering experiences for brands such as Google, Verizon, Adidas, Michael Kors and Juicy Couture. Sparks has been awarded by Event Marketer magazine as one of the Top 50 Fabricators serving the events and exhibit industry in USA. (The piece has been extracted from BW APPLAUSE)
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With a career spanning over twelve years as an experiential marketing expert, SaumenRoy, Head, Madison IES,is convinced that “businesses will not live or die by the attributes they promise, but by the experience they offer theirconsumers at every touch point.” After extensive exposure to urban, small town and rural ecosystems through his previous capacities, Saumencurrently leads the integrated experiential arm of Madison World. The company boasts of having broken even within two years of being launched and has grown from a five member team headquartered in Mumbai to four full service branches in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata with over thirty team members. Having worked with brands like Cadbury, Godrej, Marico, Airtel, Toyota,Michelin and Renault, Saumen, in conversation with Yamini Singh, stands firm with his conviction thatexperiential should be part of every brands long term strategy. Q- How significant is experiential for a brand today when it deliberates its marketing spends? A- Experiential is a significant component and I feel it is now a part of most brands’ marketing budgets. But what really matters is how the marketer perceives experiential. Is it part of their ‘strategic tool’ or is it simply an ‘on-off’tool. In my opinion and experience marketers who have used it as “strategic tool” have benefited more than who are using it as ‘on-off’ tool. And the easiest way to find out is by the chronological order of getting briefed. If an agency is getting briefed without any major time lags then experiential marketing is likely a strategic tool for the marketer. Q- What is the size of the experiential marketing industry as per your understanding? A- It is pegged at 4,258 as per the latest EY report. Q- What differentiates a great experiential strategy/campaign from one that is poor? A- Ideation and the process you follow to approach the brief is the differentiator for any experiential campaign strategy. If you start thinking with medium/touch point first you will end up thinking ideas for a mall activity and never reach at the core idea to address the business problem/brief. Q- What do most brands wish to achieve via experiential marketing? A- Frankly each client has different objectives and it partly depends on the product life cycle of the brand also. The broad common ground would be to give the TG the real time exposure of the product and services and make them experience, consider and eventually purchase. Q- An example of a great low-cost experiential activity. A great example would be Wockhadt South Mumbai launch activation- a hyper local activation I was part of.The task was to build buzz around the newly launched hospital and establish Wockhardt’s philosophy of ‘Life wins’. An apple, which has always been associated with good health, was packaged in a red box with a quirky slogan – “An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but should you ever need us, we’re just a call away”. The red box also contained the hospital brochure along with call-for-appointments and emergency numbers, thus enabling call to action. Many thousands of these red boxes were hand-delivered to families and employees in the area. Cabs plying in the area were branded with the Life Wins messaging and an apple box handed over to each commuter as well. We conducted a school-connect campaign to promote the hospital’s childcare services and distributed branded balloons across all SoBo Schools. Mumbai domestic airport was identified as another key touch-point for the drive where red boxeswere placed on the carousel urging people to pick them up. Q- A great example of a poor experiential activity. A- A promoter coming and telling you “sir, we have a free gift for you and I need your mobile number” is the kind of activity wherein the only objective is to hard sell and nothing else. This is a very poor way to position your brand in a consumer’s mind. Q- Do you have any predictions on the future of experiential marketing? A- I feel we need to embrace the digital and social media ecosystem and use it as an indispensible tool to amplify experiential. This is where the future lies. (The interview has been extracted from BW APPLAUSE)
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Paperboat has weaved its entire marketing strategy around ‘nostalgia’. Be it the brands ATL activities or its BTL initiatives, all marketing moves are drenched in childhood nostalgia, a common ground to connect with consumers on, in turn helping the brand establish a unique identity amongst the clutter of other beverage brands. We caught up with ParveshDebuka, Head Marketing, Paperboat on the brand’s philosophies, its experiential initiatives and plans down the road. Q-How did you decide on ‘nostalgia’ as the central theme of the brand? A- Every Indian region has a particular drink associated with it. In North India, we spend winters dreaming about the arrival of our beloved mangos. The mango season starts with chatpata aachaar, khatta-meetha aam papad and tangy aampanna (stage 1) being made at home by our mothers and dadi-nani forces. Our motherly forces (with inconsequential advice from the menfolk of the house) made sure that every sip of the smooth aamras (stage 2,) was made with love and care. Its recipe will always be a shared yet a guarded secret. Similarly, in coastal areas, a glass of Kokum after the final cricket match between the two local schools not only quenched the thirst of little boys but also imprinted a deep love for Kokum. A stroll along the chawpati will always be incomplete without a kala khatta stain on your pristine white skirt; how can we ever forget the ‘bhaiya thoda our namak dalo please’ phrase. These are the drinks and memories we want to share with the world. The diversity of cultures in this country has given us unique drinks, recipes of which have been passed down for centuries. We are here to find a way of sharing these gastronomical gems with the world. . Q-What is the marketing philosophy for Paperboat? A-We believe in life and how easy it is to be happy. There is always plenty of opportunity for simple pleasures and we just want to bring that alive. For instance, when was the last time you made a paper boat? I made one long time ago in school and I got stuck in the second fold while attempting to make one last year. I spent twenty minutes trying to figure how to make one and when I finally did, I wanted to make ten more ! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I even floated one in rain water. It is experiences like this that we want to live again. Q- What is the current marketing spend for Paper boat?A- We can happily say that our spends on the marketing function truly rides on the strength of the idea. The creative team is constantly working on churning out ideas that would expand the consumer base for paper boat. Q-What do you think gives Paper boat an edge over other beverage brands in the Indian market? A- We can vouch for a fact that no other beverage brand in the market have two adorable puppies. We just can’t have enough of our dogs Hector and Beverages. Yes, they are our cutest and most adorable assets and obviously give us an edge (with a lot of nudges, that comes with the dogs, I guess). Q- What are some of the other marketing campaigns that you look forward to executing down the line?A- Well, there is no fun in revealing surprises. We will spring one on you soon and you will know. Q-What will be the target market for such experiential campaigns? A-Anyone and everyone willing to walk with us hand in hand and see lies ahead of the curve. Do you remember thinking , ‘if I eat a watermelon seed, will a tree grow inside me?’ I remember this from childhood. And so does everyone else in my office. We all have similar memories.
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After establishing its presence in 18 countries around the world, BlaBlaCar, an online marketplace that facilitates ride sharing, entered India in January 2015. However, despite being so new the brand has still managed to expand its presence in more than 700 cities in the country and has served over 3,00,000 fleets. In an exclusive conversation with EE, Raghav Gupta, India Country Manager at BlaBlaCar reveals the marketing strategy of the brand, its experiential initiatives and plans down the road for the brand. Q- What is the brand psychology behind Blablacar? A-Blablacar enables travel for 2-3-4 people, who might be looking to reach Jaipur from Delhi or some other short or long distance in an arrangement, where one of them is a car owner and the others can’t get train or flight tickets at the last moment. Usually likeminded people find each other through Blablacar and there are a lot of conversations that happen over the journey so the psychology of the brand is to provide care pooling services with the generation of strong social experiences. Q- The BlaBla Tour is an on ground initiative by Blablacar. Tell us more about it. A- The BlaBlaTour is an activity where the BlaBlaCar Team takes a BlaBlaCar and drives across cities to interact and meet with its members at parties in each city known as 'BlaBlaTimes'. The idea behind the on ground campaigns of Blablacar is to play on the social experience that a user gets through the application use. At BlaBlaTimes we invite our members to come and meet our team, other members who ride and share BlaBlaCar and to get to know each other in a social gathering. To break the ice we have a lot of games and engaging activities. Social media platforms are giving only digital experiences to customers today but as we operate through digital we at Blablacar also want to enhance the physical experience for our service users. The Blablabla times has already happened in Mexico, Europe, Turkey and was executed in six cities in India in July. Q-What are some of the other experiential initiatives by BlaBlaCar? A-Our target audience is young business professionals, students, business owners who travel a lot and hence use the services of BlaBlaCar. To cater to them we also partner with a lot of music festivals, especially with those where travel is involved. From coming October we will associate with a lot of such festivals and we also look forward to associating with college festivals that are majorly popular amongst the youth. Q- What will be the marketing strategy of BlaBlaCar as far as ATL mediums are concerned? A-. In terms of ATL, we have launched radio campaign recently in southern states and we have also launched a TV campaign in the same demographics as of now as these states are very important markets to us. Once we know the results of these campaigns then we shall scale up the same throughout the country. We also have an advertising tie-up with IRCTC currently, so if anyone goes to book a ticket online they can see a contextual banner of Blablacars and use our services too if they are unable to get the ticket. Q- Today there are multiple brands like Blablacar, who offer the services of ridesharing. So how is Blablacar different from them? A-Blablacar is the largest ridesharing platform in the world and much like other large companies we know that there will be companies who will get inspired from us and sell services like us. But I think that at Blablacar our intention is to create strong social experiences for our customers, many of who end up as friends after the ride. And that for me is the difference between Blablacar and others.
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Vanesa Group, the company behind the trusted brand Denver in the Indian personal care segment, has partnered with Cartoon Network Enterprises (CNE), the licensing and merchandising arm of media conglomerate Turner International India Pvt. Ltd., to launch a range of ‘Denver Superman’ deodorants for the first time in India. Launched at a press event at The Park Hotel in New Delhi, the Denver Superman deodorants are available in two variants - Power & Strength. Priced at Rs. 250, the products will be available soon in stores across India. The collaboration between the two successful brand names is the first of its kind in the personal care segment and promises to be a long association as shortly after the launch of the Denver Superman deodorants, Vanesa Group and CNE plan to launch Denver Batman deodorants and Denver Superman and Denver Batman perfumes. Additionally, Vanesa also plans to launch limited edition Denver Superman & Batman range of products. Mr. Siddharth Jain SVP and Managing Director – South Asia, Turner International India Pvt. Ltd, was present at the launch event and said, “Cartoon Network Enterprises has recently been appointed as the Master Licensee for the Warner Bros. Consumer Products (WBCP) portfolio for South Asia. This deal with Vanesa Group will expand the WBCP brands of Batman and Superman into new and exciting categories and draw consumer excitement.” In an exclusive conversation with EE, Mr. Saurabh Gupta, CMO, Vanesa Care Pvt. Ltd revealed the plans for brand Denver down the road and the marketing strategies it will adopt to penetrate into the tier 2 and tier 3 cities of the country along with the metro cities. “We wanted to introduce a new product in the deodorant segment as we felt that the category was becoming monotonous and the same vanilla products were being sold in the conventional marketing trends. Customers today have changed for the better and they are constantly on the lookout to experiment with newer experiences even while they want to stick to their favorite brand. At Denver we want to deliver such experiences to our customers hence we launched the ‘Denver Superman’ deodorant”-says Saurabh Gupta. When asked if the price of 250 INR was too exorbitant for a product that aspires to penetrate in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well? Saurabh responds by explaining that product pricing has been done after considering over all aspects of market competition, brand identity and the Superman association. He says, “Currently in the market there are plenty brands that are present in the range of 190-200 INR and most deodorant brands in the country today already exist in the 250 INR segment. Considering the association and the brand identity that we bring to the table with this product its price range is completely justified. However we also understand that not all customers would want to spend that much and would want to experience the product first. Hence we are also in the process of figuring out a way to launch smaller trial packages of the product.” In 6 months Vanesa will be launching the ‘Denver Batman’ deodorants and then an entire marketing strategy by the brand comprising of both ATL and BTL campaigns will be unveiled. Revealing more about it Mr. Gupta says, “We are going to start with our full fledged marketing strategies soon and our main focus will be to capitalize on the release of Turner Internationals ‘Batman v/s Superman’ film which is expected to release around March 2016. Our BTL activities will for the launched products will majorly circle around this films launch as I feel the products and the movie release will be a beautiful marriage that will complement each other. The main idea is to carry out an on-ground in cinema activation for the products through usage of product fragrances inside the cinema halls, contest videos and other such fun activities and we look forward to carrying such activations across 400 cinema halls in the country.” When asked if there is an activation agency that the brand has already hired to execute the campaign? He says, “Well, we have a lot of event agencies currently pitching in for the campaign execution but nothing has been fixed on yet. Our spends on this BTL activity will be around 50 lakhs and we want an agency that has an experience to handle international IP’s, the capacity and intent to work in a closely guarded atmosphere and a strong background to comply with all legal formalities. We are looking for an agency that does not compromise on the quality of execution at all.”
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