I used to feel it was so easy to get overwhelmed by all the praises I got for my guitar-playing…..and then a few days back I discovered the magic of Warren.

Warren Mendonsa at the young age of 25 has truly touched me emotionally, with his Vai and Satch remniscent music. The ex guitarist of Mumbai based band ‘Zero’, Warren has supposedly moved out to Auckland. A few days ago, I by chance stumbled upon this site online that had his new solo album available for free download (his official site for the album) titled Night in Shining Karma

Neat site layout, with a online streamer and tidbits about the concept, his gears, etc. sprinkled around - the main focus of the site is undoubtedly the mellow and heart-warming music churned out by this wizard.

Starting off with a mellow and Floydish ‘Incense’, Warren sets the mood for the journey into his heart with much elan. If you`re travelling, I`d suggest ‘Soar the Sky’ - makes me feel like this is the very track I’d want to hear when I’m driving my vehicle on a rainy day through some serene ghats…forgetting the world outside.

2 of my personal favorites have been ‘Anuva’s Sky’ & ‘Bombay Rain’. ‘Anuva’s Sky’ supposedly is dedicated to his lady love and the composition says it all - you can feel his emotions in this track - they stand out clearly. ‘Bombay Rain’ is one more track that shows off Warren’s emotional music quotient in abundance. He makes the Strat cry, moan and at other times let out a crunchy tone rummaging thru the fast "Cats & The Fiddle" track.

Definitely a "dekho" is "Blue for Gary" for all those quintessential blues junkies.

P.S: If you liked his music, please make sure to donate generously through the site

Hail Warren! We are not worthy! *BOWS*

Days and months have ticked past, since the last time I smelt for scope for understanding human behaviour at the loo…guess its time to take another leak….ermm I mean a “look” at the story – let’s cut the chase, and get to the topic!

Retailing as a business has been on the advent in India, with majors like Pantaloons, Marks & Spencers, Big Bazaar, taking up those huge mall-spaces to build what we call “Brand-share” and “Mind-share”.

We go down that swanky, spic-and-span oblivion of items we never knew existed, or were of even use to us – shampoos in myriad sizes, chocolates in heaps that`ll make every kid crave to be a store-boy, the best of the cereals and much more. Do we actually take a minute to think why we ever feel at ease at these stores? Why the new entries are placed in the immediate left of the counter? Why the doors are meant to open into the right?

Its been proved by some mad guy by me that, in a new environment (we aren’t talking of totally barren lands here) the human mind tends to notice the object placed/present in the immediate left of the entrance. A logical fallout is the reason why doors were planned to open into the right – to accentuate the process of looking to the left.

Do you ever realize that when you push the door open towards the right, you tend to look towards the other direction (the left) a bit more than on the right? The next time you visit that super-mall, remember to notice it!

The case of the Subconscious-Preference Map: Let’s get out of the super marts for a while and move into something from Part 1 – the red pack of Colgate.

Colors I believe have an integral part to play, in addition to a lot of other considerations, when it comes to creating that subconscious perceptual map – let’s say you never had jam after you were a kid, and we sent you in a super-mart full of them…would you go for the yellow mango ones, or the rainbow colored apple jam? Or what about navy blue colored Pineapple jam? No? You might be partially color blind for all reasons, but the truth is that you would buy a pink colored Mango jam! Did this color matter when you came into the store, that it should, now that you have to choose between the 2 bottles? Funny eh?

My explanation is simple – you might not have a preference mapping for certain things, but you mind subconsciously develops a preference pattern for things you have eaten, used, experienced, etc. since ages! You can feed an alien, blue mangoes, just because he never saw a normal one; his mind has absolutely no preference mapping for (a) its color (b) its taste (c) its shape.

That is the very reason why you would see Colgate launch Gel in blue, but never change the generic white paste branding to any color other than red! Coke would lose its essence if it were pink; Pepsi would go from fizz to fizzle without its blues! A classic case from the Indian scenario is when Pepsi launched a special blue colored edition to relate with our “Men in blue” – the blue colored cola bombed big time in the market. Well, it tasted just the same, but then every time you had a bottle, your mind said, “Hey wait, something seems wrong – I don’t feel at home with this bottle”

Back To Square One: Jerry Seinfeld puts it really well when he says that the best part of being “back to square one” is that we know exactly where we are – there is this sense of security about the term. Imagine someone saying “There! We’re back to Oval 29” – Well I think our “subconscious preference maps” are very much rooted here.

Familiarity is what, for me, forms the cornerstone, the keynote, and the bottom-line of why we tend to be finicky about certain things which we didn’t even thing would matter. Animals feel secured in their natural habitat – they fall ill in a zoo. Our human minds too feel at ease only when the so-called “natural habitat” is prevalent – I mean, there is this sense of security when things are just how they are expected to be. Looking for CDs, search the drawers near the computer; want some sugar? Check the shelf where the coffee is kept.

I tend to do that, since that’s where those things are kept in my house – so my mind guides me subconsciously to look for those things at those places at the neighbours’ (well, finding it there is a different story!).

The Benders: A question that comes to my mind, is whether this was such an impressionable thing to factor in that brands would never be able to change. What if Coke wants to change skins and turn green one day? Well then, Santa wore reds the first time Coke blended Christmas with the joy of celebrating with the cola. Will the kids be ok with a green or a pink Santa? Will habituated ‘Orange’ users feel odd with their Pink-ed new look?

Also, are there any products, brands, or facets of life where we never have a preference map? Imagine being given a choice in hell between boiling in oil, being poked with hot spikes or being bitten by vipers – it never crossed my mind, but I guess I`ll opt out of the oil since I still remember that Diwali celebration where some hot oiled poured on my hands. Did I really need to have a preference map for that? I don’t think so, but can we really stop our minds from creating one?

The Bottomline: Well now, is there supposed to be a bottomline and an end-note? Or are we just once again getting into the rut of expecting one, since every other article similar to this that we read, had one? Think…

“Idle mind is devil’s workshop”, they said. True in my case, I guess, as I tread towards the place least expected to apply my concepts on consumer behaviour. It is a part of office life to visit the loo everyday – most people do! But then how many of us do realize that there is a trend in our reactions, a specific sub-conscious direction that we tend to follow when we push that door open to enter…

I happened to notice this when I realized that I had a tendency to constantly visit a particular loo-compartment almost every time I went through the routine. That was ‘my’ compartment – there was this belonging I felt when I entered that area; a kind of feeling that makes you feel at home… I decided to intentionally drag myself once, to another compartment to understand if it was just plain inertia, or a bunch of signals my brain sent across, when I pushed that big door open. No! Things seemed different. You suddenly feel you are in one of those simulated environments and suddenly they changed the landscape! A logical question that came to my mind was “Am I just reading more into things?” – the answer came when I started noticing some regulars at the loo follow a similar practice. Each one of them had their own favorite compartment, which they would go to blindly, if they did have a choice.

The bigger issue I can smell out of the loo-exercise is the familiarity that our brain develops to landscapes, abstract items, objects that actually never consciously attract any customer preference… Well this article has a two-pronged approach – (a) my logic relating the human mind and the land and the environment, and the bigger issue related to more of deciding on the perfect landscape / environment for the marketers. This article deals with the former. Loo-compartments and the case of the subconscious sense of belonging The first thought that came to my mind also led me to try to understand more about the so called “regulars”. Afterall, if I wanted to draw any correlation between their thinking and their habits, I would need to know more about them in the first place! Before we start off on this bizarre journey into my idle mind, let’s get the loo-geography into place, so that our minds can talk on the same levels.

The first person (henceforth A) was typically a shy person at work, not the kinds who would be boisterous and loud and make his presence felt on the floor. A bit low on confidence at times, but a decent worker nevertheless.

Loo compartment preferred – 1.

Second preference – 2.

The second person I studied – loud, laughing, making jokes – a person who tried to look macho, and tried to make himself heard all around the office floor. Preferred compartment – 3.

If you notice carefully, you’d realize that there is a peculiar pattern in the way we decide where we want to go, once we push open the door. The guy in the center would use the center compartment even if all others were vacant. At the same time, there are the “busy” ones, who would prefer compartment 4 or 5, mainly because maybe their mind triggered signals – “its Personal, and also closer to the door – go for it!”

Reasons may also depend on the kind of tool the person owns – feeling shy and secretive is so often seen in public urinals, where while some just don’t care if the gay guy next doors peeks, some try to cover and get as much privacy as possible. I also decided to accept that in addition to some mental reservations for their preferred compartments, the users certainly are also guided by inertia and are habitual users of their zones – much akin to what we do when we enter the store….you enter a supermart looking for a toothpaste – how else do you think that red pack of Colgate locks automatically to your focal radar? What I seek to project through this article is that perhaps the human mind makes a preference map even for those things where preference ideally wouldn’t matter consciously – you don’t wish everyday that Ramu brings the milk, but one day when a stranger arrives in the morning, you do feel that “change” in the routine, no matter how sleepily shut your eyes are!

Generally marketing theory has always assumed that consumers would have a preference map in their mind that would lead them to ask specifically for Brand A, when the market would have hundreds of “me-toos”. My theory just tries to extend the theory to claim that the preference map always exists – consciously for some items, subconsciously for others. The subconsciously triggered ones almost always happen as a ritual with the person not even realizing that he is doing such a thing. However there needs to be some starting trigger that would have led to creating the first prints of such a preference map in his/her minds – which may be both internal or extraneous to the user.

I used the innermost compartment because I am not proud of my tool….or maybe its just that the initial times when I came to this place, that was the only compartment available to me – a sort of habit that forms, and continues. Or maybe its just that there is some issue, such as cleaner bowls, proper water-flow etc., that led to the initial decision making process. Similar issues extend to what continues in Part 2 of this article, where we actually flush out the loo-tales and get down to business! (to be continued…)

A few weeks back, I was playing word association with a friend of mine back home from work - word association for those blinking blindly, is a simple game where you ask someone to name anything - say apple. The other person is supposed to tell you the first thing that comes to his/her mind when the word is said. Then you take that word, and get what marketers call “Top of the Mind Recall” for that word, and so on.

Well the objective of this post is not to start a chain of word associations amongst readers, but to talk about how this term is not something new to the average consumer. Every day - day in and day out, you wake up, wear, use, throw, preserve, gift, and aspire to buy what is beautifully called “a brand” in marketing terms. Well I call it a beautiful term because it subliminally hides a lot of depth behind that innocuous looking word.

A brand according to my understanding, is much more than a bundle of utility, much more than what mom would go and purchase all of a sudden without looking for a choice, something that separates one product from a host of others in the market, when almost all of them offer the same benefit.

Right now on my mind, as I write this post, a picture of a brand haunts like a ghost…
It refuses to leave, and is always on my mind, when I`m at work, or when I unwind…

Well the Hutch dog has been all over the place - be it small cutouts with the mutt guarding small stores, or posters outside retail stores, or be it those huge towering hoardings at highway junctions. Hutch entered Mumbai, and yes they did certainly beleive in making it BIG.

To start of with for the average non Mumbaiite, Hutch has had a pan-India presence, except for Mumbai, where it was branded as Orange; why orange? - I still dont know! Someone once quipped in our Branding class that perhaps it goes well with the brand’s tagline - “The future is bright. The future is orange.” Well as this blogger says, the future for Mumbai has turned PINK now!

Mumbai’s most envied telecom brand has changed its colors - from orange to Pink… what intrigues is, however, WHY PINK?

Well as I happened to read some interesting facts on K’s blog about how Orange as a brand had to be returned to France Telecom, by Hutch; the change was inevitable, and the company needed to get its orange hues out.

Hutichison Essar’s Corporate Vice President Group Marketing, Mr. Naveen Chopra says

“We believe the time has come to refresh this brand and inculcate a new ‘Hutch spirit’ which will make us more vibrant and promising for all.”

Websites and marketing gurus all over the www have been giving their views of how effective this new color could be to the brand - would the customer be able to say Hutch, when his friend says the word ‘mobile’ or is the future Pink & Shocking for the brand? Time will tell…

(Part 1 of a series on importance of brand imagery)

Other sources:
http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=13981914

I was going though an article talking about how G.A.P jeans were offering customers a free song an iTunes if they were to merely try on a pair of GAP jeans - my mom was quite amused about how they think its going to help in anyway. I read out the article to her and she quipped - “Customers gain. If I were to be given such an offer, I`ll try them everyday and get free downloads galore!”

Well what’s not totall madness, is as they call “marketing” - my mom calls it madness, I call it a mere case of dual existence…

Co-branding (also called Dual Branding) has become a rage in the marketing arena, with companies realizing that isolation is not after all the best policy. Buy a Filmfare magazine and get imitation jewelry free? What’s the relation? What’s the connection? Or free Duracell batteries with a magazine, which costs much lesser than the pair of cells? What’s cooking?

The markets of yesterday saw companies focusing on the customer thinking about “How can I promote my jeans?” The marketers today believe that the myopia needs to clear off to a “How do I define my customer?” approach. By saying, “defining my customer”, i don’t mean getting back to classroom and assessing who the target consumer is. Defining a customer means more in terms of creating a persona for the customer, or rather shaping the customer.

Lets take a small example: Consider that i am a dealer who sells fashion accessories and jeans. One of my target customers would be the youth, who want to look hip. Now lets analyze this a bit more.

Customer Profiling - Fashionable India youth

Demographics: Age group of say 15 to mid 20s, SEC A & B max (SEC = Socio Economic Classification), atleast college educated

Psychographics: Fashion conscious, looks more to belong to his ‘cult’ or ‘peer groups’, wants to be updated with the latest gizmos in town - mobile phones, fashion accessories, computer and media related gadgets, ready to pay for a premium product which makes him look exclusive.

In such a case, we can certainly identify some items that he/she might be interested in:

So if I were a clever marketer, I would easily identify items or rather products, which would define or rather, shape my target audience. After all, a person buying designer jeans cannot live on bread alone! He would also look at other items that would add to moulding his persona or his “outer self”, which many a times also have an important role in defining the “inner self” or feel that one gets after using a product/service.

What the gurus say?

Kotler, Philip (2003) defines Cobranding as “two or more well-known brands are combined in anoffer” and each brand sponsors expects that the other brand name will strengthen the brand preference or purchase intention and hopes to reach a new audience.

Kafperer talks of co-branding being quite beneficial such that:

Taking from the gurus:

In terms of defining the youth, a company cant perhaps do half as good as what two can, when they join hands… one of the positive take-homes from a co-branding exercise would be the fact that sales of a totally unrelated product would now help sell urs!

The advertising frat always laughed it off saying “Everyone knows that 50% of advertising goes waste – its just that you cant find out which 50% it is!”

Co-branding can be an effective medium to reduce ad-spend and still maintain more of “mindshare and heartshare”, as Kotler would put it.

Moving closer home - some Indian examples:

“Bharat petroleum corporation Ltd. (BPCL) has formed an alliance with Bank of Baroda (BOB) to launch a co-brand credit card Bharat BOB card. The deal works in favor of both the parties. BOB hopes to expand its current customer base. The bank charges 2% fee for this service. the petrol company on the other hand scores on customer orientation and an assured customer base.

Another Indian example is Diners club Citibank British Air ways card. Diners club has been providing the exclusivity of their charge cards through Citibank. The charge has to be paid every month and their targeted customers are business executives, who are mobile and frequently travel abroad. Diners club Citibank card along with facilities and privileges offered to a regular cardholder provides automatic membership to British airways executive club. Every Rs.50 spent on the card earns the holder one executive club mile and as such is a part of the frequent flyer program. This enables additional benefits to both the brands.”

The Final Word : I would say that Co-branding can be like a dual edged sword – G.A.P may well end up being generous with the iTunes downloads and end up not selling even a single pair of denims…on the other hand, the prospective customer would perceptually link iTunes with Music – with style – with class – with exclusivity – and finally with G.A.P…..what happens on the other side of the road…only time will tell.

Reads:

Kapferer, Jean – Noel. “Strategic Brand Management” Kogan Page India Limited.: New Delhi (2000)