New reality for marketers :- Augmented Reality

In today’s knowledge based economy technology is playing crucial role in shaping the world. Technology is impacting every aspect of business from manufacturing to consumption and from marketing to distribution. For instance, since the last three decades, Internet has emerged as a strong force which has drastically changed the way business is done.


Recently there has been a lot of talk about the concept of “Augmented Reality” which is a term used to describe a live view of a physical, real-world environment that is augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics. A typical AR environment has digital information transposed onto a real-world view. The termed coined by the Tom Caudell to describe a digital display used by aircraft electricians that blended virtual graphics onto a physical reality. The most common example relating AR to common people is sports broadcasting showcasing football field marked with yellow line to show offside player.

Since 2008, the concept has gathered huge momentum, thanks to the surge in usage of Smart phones and tablets across the world.

In the last two years, there has been a huge increase in the applications of AR in almost all the business sectors. There are number of innovative AR based applications in the market for Business cards, Equipment servicing, Weather services, Travel application, 3D gaming, Computer Aided Surgery, Airport Information, Navigational Overlays, Interior design & Modeling, industrial plant maintenance and many more…..

Marketers across the world have responded very positively to this new concept as it helps in engaging the customers in a better manner to create unique kind of brand experience.

Leading brands like Volkswagen, Kraft Foods, Coca cola, Carlsberg, Toyota, BMW, and Nestle have executed brilliant communication campaigns using AR. the key benefits of AR in the communication campaign are:

• AR increases engagement and ensures better user experience & usability

• Research has shown that AR increases the perceived value of products and brands

• AR is mobile and personal and, therefore, hugely accessible to a rapidly growing Smartphone market

• AR is an inexpensive alternative to other media platforms as no specific media needs to be purchased

• Brands have access to detailed analytics enabling them to truly understand their audience

According to ABI research the market for AR based application in the US alone is expected to be $ 350 Mn by 2014 from just $3.8 Mn in 2008. Juniper research predicts that revenue from mobile AR is expected to reach $ 1.5 bn by 2015. With current development and the pace at which it is growing, AR has a huge potential which is yet unexplored. I am sure a few years down the line, AR will be the crucial part of marketing communication for marketers across the world. And for the very same reason, there is no alternative for the budding managers but to equip themselves with the know how of augmented reality.


Prof. Yogesh Baviskar


Reference:-

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/news/2009/06/35_awesome_augmented_reality_examples.php

http://mashable.com/2009/12/05/augmented-reality-iphone/

http://www.inc.com/guides/201104/how-to-use-augmented-reality-in-advertising.html

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/12/13/augmented-reality-marketing-in-2010-and-beyond/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6irc0jwKC8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fGav7FI5P4&NR=1&feature=fvwp

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/research/8969.html

The Road To Superpower VIA Innovation & Inventions

Since last two decades the world economy is experiencing the transition, BRIC nations have shown promising growth and emerging as the new centers of power. Growth of BRIC nations is interpreted as “Third economic super cycle” marked with emergence of China as economic superpower by 2050 and India as third largest after china & USA. The great visionary like Dr. Peter Drucker forecasted this shifting of power to east in 90’s attributing t mainly to change in business models, manpower and material resources in his book titled “Managing in turbulent times”.

Today we are one of the leading economies with robust banking, huge demographic dividend, Strong domestic demand, stable political environment and huge forex kitty.

But on the contrary, there are some serious issues related to infrastructure, energy, healthcare, food security, employment opportunities and poverty (200 Mn people at Bottom of the Pyramid). Currently our economy is led by the service sector dominated by export led IT & ITES, manufacturing is yet to recover from the global downturn and agriculture is highly depended on monsoon.

On the International horizon China has emerged as world manufacturing destination, minnows like Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand are emerging as new low cost outsourcing centers, where as product and services from countries like South Korea, Japan, Germany, Holland and Finland along with USA are dominating the global markets. More over, India is seen as most lucrative market with huge growth potential by the economies across the world. Today, Indian market is flooded with global brands; on the contrary there are few Indian brands successful in global markets.

In order to join the league of developed country or super power in near future, we need to address the serious domestic issue and work on building the capabilities in delivering the innovative product and service at the global level and to do that, we need to concentrate and mobilize our resources on infusing the culture of innovation and invention at all possible level in the society.

Innovation and inventions are the crucial tools of competitive advantage in today’s knowledge based economy. Unfortunately our country with great legacy of Arybhatta, Chanakya, Dr. Bose and Ramanujan has failed to raise the bar in innovation and invention. In 2012, India rank 62^nd in the innovative index and have ranked much below China in filling of Patents.

Today there is need to build the ecosystem for nurturing the culture of innovation and research at all levels. There is need for strategic interventions in education system from primary to higher education in providing optimum infrastructure, qualified resource, sophisticated equipments, rewards & recognition for the motivation and assistance for scaling up & commercializing the innovations.

Industry- Academia relationship is also very crucial in innovation and research. In spite of large scale industrialization, there is huge gap pertaining to the same. There is need for fostering atmosphere conducive for strategic industry –Academia partnership. It helps in sharing infrastructure and resources & to increase the pace of new product development

With proper attention, we are the country with huge potential to unleash; Indian’s have gave the very famous word “Juggad” which simply means “workaround” or “Resourcefulness” and which is the integral part of every average Indians routine life.

With the announcement of 2010-2020 as the Innovation Decade” by our Hon’ble President, If right stimulus is provided, we are the country to with potential to rule the world many decades to come………………….

Just doing it…………………Hero Moto Corp Way……………

In today’s era of fierce competition, product, media and information explosion along with fragmented consumer segments, it is getting very difficult to occupy the space in consumer mind day by day. But there are very few companies come out as Winner in such a tough condition and Hero Moto Corp is one of them.
The brilliant campaigns like “Hum me hain Hero” make herculean task of repositioning of brand looks very easy.
There was lot of scepticism about the future of Hero Moto Corp. after the split from the joint venture for almost four decades and it was really tough task for Hero Moto Corp. to come out of shadow of Hero-Honda and establish its different identity in the minds of millions customers.

But with the recent “Hum me Hein Hero” campaign they have undoubtedly won the first round by successfully establishing the brand in the minds of Indian customers

Let’s talk about the creative part of the campaign designed by the leading advertising firm Law & Kenneth. The message is woven beautifully to evoke the positive emotions, (confidence, self-belief, realizing the power of self, the feeling of “I have it in me” in the form of song. Which really reaches out to the every Indian and it becomes more relevant on the backdrop of recent Socio –political environment in the country. The campaigns really struck the chord with the Indians by saying every one of us have “HERO” inside. The word “HERO” is in prevalent in the societies across the world, it means someone who has solution to all the problems and who comes out Winner all time and every time.

Along with the message part Hero Moto Corp. have been equally good in the execution. The music and singing by AR takes it the new height altogether, every time you hear the commercial you wish to hear it more & more, also it really touches one’s heart and evoke the positive emotions every time.

The slice of life approach in the execution of the message also adds tremendous value in the communicating massage.

They have not stopped at just creating and airing it but the have gone one step further by providing user generated content platform, where people from various walk of life and upload it on the website and if lucky they can be the part of TV commercial along with AR. The source mix of the campaign is strategically designed which has AR –The legend, common people.

At the end I would say Hero Moto Corp has excelled in crossing the first milestone of establishing their unique identity in the millions of Indians. I am sure this campaign will be remembered for longtime in the history of Indian Advertising Industry.

The biggest contradiction: 1 billion plus corrupt blame it on few thousands

The year 2010 was the most shocking year for the Indian community across the world due to outbreak of scams. Scams involving very high profile politicians, corporate and bureaucrats, they were questioned by various investigating agencies followed by high profile arrest in the first time in the history of country.

With the outburst of these scams, all sections of the society started discussion on corruption, its root cause, the solutions and the people responsible for it etc. TRP based news channels held useless long debates with experts in the various fields to pocket the big fat advertisement revenue. So much discussion had happened on the topic of corruption since then that, I bet every citizen of our country has the solution to it.

Most of the India population holds the opinion that the politicians, bureaucrats and the corporate people are the real culprits behind all this but if we take a microscopic look at the society we come to know that we the common people of this country are more responsible for this than anybody else…..

If we observe our daily life we get answer very easily for the same.

Only 45 % of people vote in our country in spite of holiday declared by the GOI on the day of election, if election comes on Friday we planned long weekend trips)

Nobody can question the elected members because of the two; either they have not voted or taken money for voting.

No body wants to wait in the queue either at the RTO office or at the temple (pay more and get privilege of special darshan)

Nobody wants to pay the tax…..nobody ask for bills (In some cases even for the transactions).

The first thing CA tells you is that he will help you to pay minimum tax by exploiting loopholes or even by doing wrong things

Farmers are happy with one time loan wavier than permanent irrigation infrastructure

(60,000 Crore on loan wavier……could have strategically used to irrigate the millions of hectors of land providing permanent solution for all the problems to farmers)

The most threatening thing is the moral of our country has touched the rock bottom level, earlier in school day teachers and parents used to impart on young generation that “truth never gets defeated but it comes out in light sooner or later, one needs to have give time and be patience. Here lies the biggest contradiction, as in today’s competitive world nobody have time and patience and that why truth is defeated not once but always. Everyone in today’s world is in hurry nobody has time and patience that’s why nobody cares about the truth and that’s why we have new saying nowadays “Sach bolne se kuch fyada nahi hota”

To end just small story: once a person asked Swami Vivekananda, What is Poison? Swami answered him saying “Everything in excess is poison”…………today people are running after more and more and more and in this conquest of getting more n more people are forgetting the difference between the rational and irrational means of achieving things and that’s why I think everyone of us responsible for the situation of our country today……………

The Big Lost Opportunity: - CWG-Delhi

We won big…..and we lost big…..that’s how one can explain the CWG –Delhi. Our sportsperson brought us pride and OC brought shame to India.
It’s honor for every country to host the international sporting event as it provides the world stage to showcase the capability of the country, management acumen and skills require to make these events successful which in turn helps the host country in building the positive perception across the world, attract more investment, attract more tourist, fuelled the export growth and many others potential benefits…………
Few examples:-
Sydney Olympic games: - Increase in the economic activities due to increase in tourism
FIFA world’s cup in South Africa: - Help to build South Africa as a brand and Increase in tourism
Beijing summer Olympics: - Increase in ranking in the nation brand index, Positive image across the world, huge investments in china
There is other side to it as well as it took many years for Athens and Montreal to paid up there bills after the Olympic events…………....


Now let’s discuss the positive outcome of CWG-Delhi:-
1. Medals and More Medals:-
First time ever India has won more than 100 medals in any international events which are quite moral boosting to athletes. This will certainly fuelled ambition of more and more athletes to win medals at bigger events than CWG.
2. Motivation: - We have seen that many athletes won the medals are from tier2 or tier 3 cities which is certainly a motivational to the youngsters from smaller cities and rural areas to consider sports as full time career and succeed.
3. Infrastructure:-Because of the games at Delhi and Pune in recent past….at least we have some international facilities now ready with us which were not the case few years back.
4. Positive Perception across the nation: - The success of the Indian athletes has helped in changing the negative perception the population across the nation.
5. Sponsorships: - we can be certain now that there will be more and more sponsorships to games other in cricket crazy nation.


Negative sides of CWG-Delhi:-
Corruption charges: - very unfortunate thing could happen to any country hosting the international sporting event, which could have been easily avoided with clean and rational people in organizing Committee.
Dent to the image of India on world stage due to poor and late completion of facilities:-it has raised the doubt across the world on India’s capability in building the infrastructure for the mega sporting events
Utilization of infrastructure:-Thousands of corers have been spent on building world-class infrastructure for the games but its has been observed in many countries that the infrastructures is not utilized properly after the games which should not happened in this case.
Rewards: - No clear system for rewarding the medal winning athletes in India
The Road to Olympics:-It seems quite difficult now for India to compete for hosting the Olympics in 2020, by virtue of negligence and poor show by our organizing committee. All the culprits should be punished and Indian government should replace them with the rational and qualified people.

Internet Marketing -The Beast Unleashed

Well, I don’t think any one of us have any doubt about the power which has revolutionized the way of communication and the way of living....Marketers across the world from multinational companies to small retails shop owners have started using the Internet for communicating about the product and services. It has become integral part of IMC programs of most of the leading brands and have recorded consistently upward trend in media expenditure on internet since last 10 years and it is expected to grow exponentially in coming years because of growth in IT-Infrastructure across the world, More and More use of laptops and Smart phones, Fierce competition among the service providers making it affordable to masses and innovative services available on internet.

I just would like to share the basics of internet marketing:-
Let’s take look at what makes the internet marketing so lucrative:-

Reach: - Global
Scalable: - Highly Scalable campaigns can be designed
Content: - More and precise content & more freedom for the creativity
Interactive: - It satisfies the most fundamental condition of communication Process i.e. Interaction
Viral in Nature:-

Measurable:- This one of the most important characteristics of the Internet marketing..marketer across the world struggled to measure the results of the campaign and which is the most important part of any campaign. We can measure the number of visitors on the site, the links they click, the time they spent on the webpage/website which are very valuable indicators of the success or failure of the campaign

Economical: - Cost to reach per user is less than the other media vehicles

Analysis: - In depth analysis can be done about the geographies of the campaign, Buying and Psychological behavior of the customers based on the information they search and the communication they exchange on social networking forums


4 p's of Internet Marketing complementary to the 4 p's of marketing are:-
1. Permission: - Well, till date most of the marketers are practicing Push marketing but it is losing its essences in the era of information explosion, media explosion and product explosion, customers don’t want to get bombarded with huge information through variety of media but they are more and more selective in getting information from right source it helps the marketers to reach to interested customers base rather than mass marketing.
Internet marketing offers:-
Clear Optin
Clear Opt out
Customer- Chosen content & frequency
Relevance of the content

2. Participation:- Its psychological need of every human being to have someone to share the thoughts, information with like minded people......at the same time it has become crucial for marketers to listen to what their target say about the products, services and what they do. Internet addressed the same need in appropriate way for both the marketers and mass population. Marketers are using MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more to interact and engage the customers.
Brand Engagement
Reference /Forwarding the content via mail/SMS
Brand Participation / Involvement
Social Networking (build the communities of like minded people)
Market research / Expert views / Improvement on product quality & Services

3. Profile:-The customers need to feed in the personal, social and professional data during the registration on most of the sites which offers the better segmentation and targeting to the marketers.

Capture the crucial information Age, Income, Employment details, location, Area
Target right customer group
Know Your Customer (What they do & don’t?)

4. Personalization:-
To personalize the marketing communication in effective and economical way is the biggest challenge to the marketers. Internet marketing helps the marketers to send the personalize communication on mass scale in more cost effective manner.

Internet marketing is the only media have recorded more than 12% during the recession and is expected to grow with the more than 12% in coming years. Internet marketing will very soon overtake the print media which on second rank in media spending.
So, every marketer irrespective of the location, size or type of the product and services should use internet marketing to optimize the marketing efforts.

Mobile Media - Application to Different Industry Segments

Well in my last blog I discussed mostly about applications of Mobile as ‘Media’, basically about the marketing and promotion of products & services to the mass base using various tools like SMS, Blue tooth technology, GPRS & WAP site & social networking.

But this tiny thing has much more to offer to every segment of the business and also to the basic industry segments like Manufacturing, Agriculture, and Banking. The mobile base services to these segments could be instant reporting, VAS and functional services…

Manufacturing Sector:-
Most of the Indian basic industry segments were busy in implementing the enterprise wide transactional software like ERP and reporting tools like SPSS, SAS, and Cognos to assimilate the data generated in the various functions and analyze them to monitor, take corrective and strategic business since last decade.

I think most of the large scale & medium scale organizations already have at least the basic ERP system installed.

Application of Mobile:-
Now the tools like SMS or interactive WAP sites can play the major role in communicating the daily reports & analysis to the Top & Middle management by taking the reports from ERP or BI tool.

Now let’s take Scenario: -
Auto parts manufacturing company with turnover of Rs.100 corers have four manufacturing units in two different locations & having head office at third location. The company has implemented the ERP at all locations which generates the daily & weekly reports. The SMS or WAP integration with the ERP or BI system, can help the department heads of Finance, Sales & Marketing, Production, Stores & Purchase and quality with the daily & weekly reports directly on their mobile everyday & anywhere about the key performance indicators of the each function.

The same can be applicable to most of the other manufacturing segments as well depending on the KPIs

Agriculture Industry Scenario:-
Well this is one of the industry segments in India, has so far dominated the share in % GDP of India and still is unorganized and under developed. Majority of agricultural output still depends on the rainy season. The condition of the farmers across India is in worst stage since last five to seven years where farmers are taking the route of committing suicide after they find they are not even capable to feed their family through the output from the land they sow the seeds into. But as an Indian I feel very ashamed of farmers’ suicides happening in our country. There could be 100s of reasons behind this but the truth is its reality and number is not negligible………………..

Well since 1991 we are progressing in every segment except the agriculture in spite advance technological breakthroughs like BT varieties seeds available in the market.

The problem:-
I think there is something major problem in the communication of information to the grass root level i.e. to the farmers about the Weather conditions, Market trends, Govt. Schemes (which most of the times never reach to farmers and misused by local politicians middleman and bureaucrats), Allied business, Availability of Finance, Soil testing methods, Use of bio fertilizers etc…..

The Solution:-
VAS for farmer to update them periodically about the minute details about the above mentioned areas.

Financial sector:-
Financial sector is the early adopter of the various tools offered by mobile technology. Be it in the form of Mobile WAP site by Share index (BSE, NSE), VAS by share broking firms, VAS, mobile banking and M commerce by leading banks across the globe, also the alerts & updates about the insurance by insurance segment

These are really a much needed service to the end customers as they wish to be updated all the time about the share prices of their portfolio, do the financial transaction on the tip of fingers without moving anywhere, pay your bills on the move and get your account statement on your mobile.

I think M-commerce will grow exponentially in coming five years as it offers all the ease required by the end customers against only one concern about the security of information
of users account.

I would like to discuss the application of Mobile based services to other industry segments like Entertainment, Retail, hospitality, Education, Transport & logistics and service in next session.