Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Mistakes I believe Kingfisher committed

A lot has been said about the quagmire that Kingfisher airlines has landed into so let me get straight to the point. What I present here is a perspective of a student of subjects of marketing and is based on fundas learnt from there.

  • Product Strategy: The first thing that any student of marketing learns are the 4Ps of marketing. Out of all the first P stands for Product. Now from my own limited experience of flying I can say that the flights of 'Kingfisher Red' could have been better and I say from the point of view of a customer who looks for discount coupons even in economy flights and has the bare minimum expectation of getting to my destination on time and safely (well apart from the air sickness that I get sometimes). Things to be noted are as follows:
    • Kingfisher started off initially as a premium service, acquired Deccan and changed its name to Kingfisher Red. I think while acquiring apart from the condition of Deccan airlines they would also have thought that customer would now feel more pride in being associated with a premium brand hence the red. Remember there were days when you could even bag a Deccan flight roundtrip for 700 bucks (INR not USD). But then they did not give a thought that on a Kingfisher check in counter at the airport how a customer would feel if there was discrimination based on whether your Kingfisher ticket had a 'First' or 'Red' attached to it?
    • What's with the product? O.K. Let us step into the already delayed flight of Red. After a welcome with a forced smile and hassling the alley to my seat you could very well find that the earphone slot is not working or the screen in front is flickering incessantly. Why do you put these stuff there? I did not ask for them. I want to get home. I am tired of waiting for a flight like waiting for a train on the station which never seems to pay heed to something called clock! There goes the aspiration our of the oil stained window of my seat on Red. Yes the other P out of the 4 is for people and people travel in economy too.
    • Then I find the company coming out with a glamorous calendar, a cricket team and oh! a swanky commercial complex. There is a clear disconnect.
    • If you are operating an economy flight service there should be no frills attached. Why attach a few and make your service look like a partially decorated Christmas tree. (Hey there's something at the bottom, no wait, whoah! I found another one at the back). These seem like vestigial organs. For example what is the point of serving a free watered tea which I did not ask for. It seems like they wanted to do something but they forgot. This is the next P of the 4 Ps which is for Position which brings me to the next point.
  • Brand Extension: It seems there is a great confusion about what do we consider the brand Kingfisher to be associated with. Is it a famous brand of alcoholic beverages? Is is an cricket premier league franchise? Is it a premium/economy airline? Errr... Keep guessing but it is all of it. But consumer brain does not appreciate this. It becomes a memory overload. People cannot pinpoint what to expect out of it. 
    • Lot of contrasts in the flashy calendar girls and shoddy planes. Brand does only one thing and does it the best.
    • No amount of tiny idlis and luke warm tea can wash over the above fact.
    • Allow me to use a jargon but Kingfisher has too many things to say but there is a lack of what is called core brand value.
Well as a disclaimer I would like to say that I am not a disgruntled passenger. When it comes to fliers I am at the bottom of the pyramid (thank you Mr. Prahlad). I learn a lot of concepts day in and day out. But as my respected professors say 'It's all about application'. I have tried to critically analyze the situation and that is it. All the best Kingfisher and the readers. Hope you like it.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Google Ad Planner - Mukul Gokhale (10BM60050) & Kumar Abhishek (10BM60040)


For detailed tutorial visit: this link 
Why Social Analytics?



With the news of Facebook launching $5 Bn IPO, worth of social media has touched new limits. There is something unique about social analytics. In other types of analytics, one has to put in huge amount of efforts in generating data itself. The efforts required for data warehousing and then mining are above the basic herculean task of generating data. Social media and social networking websites have done some wonder for the first step of data generation. People are voluntarily sharing their entire life with the world and hence also with data analytics firms.
We no more have to design those complex questionnaires, break our head to figure out what we basically want from user. Instead the user itself comes to you now and tells you what he likes, what he wants, what he does not want so on and so forth. Also, based on the web presence of target user, his/her social circle gives added data which otherwise would be very difficult to get.


Google Ad Planner: It’s different



an·a·lyt·ic[1] : Pertaining to or proceeding by analysis is what the definition of analytic says. All the analytics tools present in market are heavily focusing on the data crunching part to generate some models. Large, scary and hard to remember statistical equations and formulas at background do this work for you. Although this forms the important part of any analytics tool, Ad Planner goes one step further.

Most of the analytics tools present give answers to the questions Why and What. They will tell you the trend, why the trend is like that and all stuff. Google Ad Planner not only tells you what and why but also guides you to use this what and why for your benefit !!!




Google Ad Planner works as a perfect STP (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) tool as well. It helps you to segment the entire social web sphere based on certain parameters specified by you. You can then choose which segment to target. The advertisements will be shown only to those target audience. This going one step ahead also helps to you design your advertisement strategy or in a way positioning your offering. Its feature of providing the estimate of exposure to your marketing strategy is like icing on cake !!
Since the tool works on social media, it not only gives you the current market trends but also the demographics of people setting that trend. Since it is from Google, it has to have something unique. Well, Google Ad Planner gives you an option of choosing the target audience profile and it will give you the list of websites you should advertise on. Not only this but it will also tell you if you can advertise through Google or not !!



The Ingredients



To do any analysis, what we require is huge amount of data. Now Google Ad plannar does not need you to break your head to collect the data. It makes your life simple. You give the websites you want your advertisement to be on as the input and it will gather all the required data from those websites. It will even give you relevant websites which you did not think of.
The second method is to design the demographics of your would be customers and put it in Ad planner. Google Ad planner will then find out the websites which have these types of visitors.



The Recipe



Since this is an advertising planning tool, we intend to demonstrate its usage by choosing one product and developing the essentials for the same. The entire process can be shown as follows


Google Ad Planner will give the analysis of data for chosen social websites. This analysis will include the numbers of people visiting along with their demographics. Based on this data, it will be easy for use to segment this entire population and then choose the one that fits best for our product. Interesting feature of this planner will also suggest me related websites even though they are not in our list.



The Dish



So finally using all the data analysis done by Google Ad Planner and the insights generated along with suggestions given by Ad Planner, we can plan our media campaign for chosen product with an estimation of impressions generate and reach it will have.



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[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/analytic