Google Ad Planner Tutorial for Beginners

Google Ad Planner - VGSOM - 4050

Google Ad Planner works as an excellent 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.


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. 

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.

Problem of Brand name substituting product name

"Please give me some Surf". "Get a Colgate". "Make a Xerox copy". Sounds familiar? These are some of the common phrases I heard while shopping at a convenience store. Now problem with this is that most of the time we ended up purchasing an entirely different brand! This is because I could not have returned home empty handed if my mom asked me to buy Surf and if it was not available.

Surf (a detergent brand of Hindustan Unilever) became synonymous to the word detergent in India (at-least) but it is highly probable that the store down the street would not have the particular brand in its inventory. So the seller would give you some other detergent telling "Yeh naya Surf aaya hai. Ise le jao" (Here is a new Surf. Take this).

Now brands which are basically an identity carry some value with it, which is reinforced by the quality of the product over time. Passing on products of other companies as a particular brand definitely cannot do justice to the brand. Imagine washing your clothes with a detergent that was not Surf and getting unsatisfactory results (results claimed by company in TV ad). Now what would a simple homemaker of a semi urban or a village say to others? "Yeh Surf se kapde saaf nai hote!" (This Surf is ineffective). Or perhaps when you get a smudged photocopy and you say that the Xerox is not clear.

A brand becomes so popular that it replaces the name of product and yet the brand somehow not living up to the expectations of consumer. This is quite a paradox. This might not be the scenario in cities where the customer is more aware. Nonetheless companies should not be less careful.

Coming to more recent times the problem has taken a new form. People make verbs out of brand names which are basically proper nouns. Examples ..Google it out, Facebook me. Although next time you sit down to "Google", before entering just check out your default search engine. It is possible that you are using Internet Explorer as your browser and the default search engine is Bing.

In strict marketing literature advertisement, promotion and publicity carry distinct meanings. Why not add one more jargon of consumer education? Or does marketing follow Caveat Emptor (Customer beware)?