Age of photography services

Photographer - when we think of the term an image of a person with disheveled hair and rugged clothes lugging around a huge equipment around the neck, wandering in far corners of the world looking for a perfect shot. Apparently civilization was too mundane for them.

Bam! digital photography came and a mother with a kid wrapped around her neck, supported by her waist  became a photographer. I remember those days when we shot using those costly camera reels on family vacations, every picture needed to have our face in it because who knew which picture would simply refuse to appear on a paper. Now with my cell phone camera I shoot away happily and cramming the pictures in my computer hard drive which metaphorically creaked under the Gigabytes of photos. Yet there is an elite world of DSLR cam artists. I call them artist because of the wonders they do with their sophisticated cameras and high end softwares. People like me still don't understand aperture, ISO, white balance etc. Still I love to keep memories and share with friends and thanks to picassa, facebook and instagram.

When you come to think about it this is a whole segment of home grown photographers. I found the following needs that this segment has:
- Easy to operate camera: You don't need a big zoom lens to capture your dog doing tricks. A simple point and shoot device would do. This is where mobile phone makers have hit the nail right on the head.
- Simple editing service: This service need not require a software installation. It could be online. Now a days any tool from MS Office to picassa has simple picture correction and adjustment tools.
- Sharing services: Remember my creaking hard disk. Well it has just breathed a sigh of relief. All the photo sharing and online sharing services

There is a whole new dimension I found with a camera called Lytro. This is a special kind of camera which allows you to focus on different parts of a picture after capturing it. That is all about technology. The thing that interested me the most was its service that comes with the camera. After capturing the pictures you straight away upload those to your account on their website which has an inbuilt tool to change focus.

Perhaps other camera manufacturers should take a clue from this and realize that world is moving from just a good product to a great experience.

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)?

Heart marketing

There are many ways people do business. some by using brain, some by heart and some by brawn.

I rather have my business with emotions and sentiments.you may say its not different from the above three and i am just reframing my own lines round and round. But no its different and i'm telling you how. Just take an example- I say that "to keep your customers, your customers forever try and become their customer yourself".

Stumped? Well even i was when i first stumbled upon this notion. But after some pondering i found that it makes sense. Whenever you go and buy something from a store you dont just buy, you sell too. Actually its a barter of sorts. You keep the goods and the shopkeeper has to keep the bads or else you will never have the loyalty of yours going.

What are goods and bads? Goods are the things you take away with you while leaving from the store. Be it the thing you purchased or the bluff of the shopkeeper, the impression of how the store looked, how the salespeople dressed, the way you were treated... and the list goes on and on.. As far as the bads are concerned its a tricky stuff. I am not going to use quotes of any great marketeer as i found none and hey its my idea and how can some one else comment before I even show it to the world! Yes, the bads. Now attention all, the bads is what you give to the shopkeeper in exchange for the goods they sold to you.

Stumped again? Lets get lucid. No one is happy when going for a purchase as its not the heaven of customers where goods are supplied for free. You have to shell out from your wallet to get them. And I'd say no one willingly goes for a purchase until and unless its a necessity. Necessity is plain english so i won't explain that. Lets understand what creates necessity. In our daily lives it can be created out of what our body needs/desires viz. food, water, tasty food, junk food, status food and all blah blah. Again there is some emotional shopping too like the things you buy just because your neighbour has it or something that you would like to show off matching your status. Otherwise there would have been no Porche or Ferrari on the road.

So, to make you part with your hard earned money the seller has to take away all the bads. Now bads would include your apprehension and scepticism, your bad mood (well, you might have had a bad day in traffic before you reached the shop), sometimes even your foul word (god forbid) etc,etc.

You seller must keep in mind (especially in cities) is that there are a variety of customers and has to take proper steps to enchash each opportunity he/she gets.

The first breed is the ones with the moolah and the intent to shop. These customers are hell bent to pick up what they want from your shelves. These are the easiest of them all. Just show them what they want. In the eventuality of you being out of stock the customer would simply walk away to another place to get it. But don't lose hope before they leave the least you could do is to tell them when the object of their desire would be availble.

Tip: you could also give a special offer to them on their next visit.(But of course it depends on what you sell)

Mind you shoppers are suckers for offers and discounts. I mean i remember myself spending Rs.1000 just to get a 10% discount when all i needed was a Rs.400 T-Shirt!!

The second type is one with cash but there is no guarantee on the intent part. Such customers are either in your shop waiting for someone or have come to your shop with someone who has to actually purchase something. Classic examples of such customers are husbands with their wives/kids or both, boyfriends...

Now it depends on you to create a need for them. And by need i mean it could also be created in the mind of a man standing in a lingerie store. Depends on your calliber.

Third and the most common variety is called the browsers. They are there just like that probably because they have nothing else to do. In this case first you have to gauge their interest and deal on case to case basis.

Now this was just an example of how I think i would sell. Its not that i have become Philip Kotler Part II but who knows what my next note would be.. Probably it would have an exahaustive classification of what i feel the customers are like or perhaps about a tiny grain of sand lying on the beach of Jagannath Puri.

Till then i wish myself and all the readers CHA CHIINGggggg......