The De Beers Story – Creating & Manipulating Demand

A lot of us believe that De Beers’ success story is based on the fact that it controls supply. However, the company has unlocked greater value for itself through it’s marketing campaign through which it has managed to create a permanent aspirational demand for a product which basically had no demand earlier.

The ‘a diamond is forever’ campaign was launched in 1914. The aim of the campaign was to connect the product, which basically is a commodity, with feelings of love and commitment. The campaign was able to do just that and the diamond became the symbol of love and the standard stone to be used in any engagement ring. The impact of the campaign was so strong that the trend is prevalent even today and is showing no signs of any change going forward as well. In fact, the diamond is now a standard gifting stone for occasions such as anniversaries, birthdays etc. as well.

What De Beers was able to do was to move its product out of a zone where people value it based on pure supply-demand factors and into one where the core demand and value comes from human emotion and aspiration.

The Tesco South Korean Story – The Customer Can Lead to Marketing Hacks

Tesco Homeplus had emerged as a strong player in the grocery retail market in South Korea. However it was at the 2^nd position and was looking at a way to reach the top position without increasing the number of stores and overheads associated with them.

They started thinking of what problems and changes customers were facing in their daily lives. The 2 most significant ones were that smartphone usage was growing rapidly and also that free time was becoming scarce.

The company decided to use both of these observations and came up with a strategy to take the store to the customer rather than vice versa. They created ‘Virtual Marketplaces’ in locations where people generally waited everyday. Using their smartphones, customers could simply scan the products they were interested in and could complete the purchase online itself. The goods were then delivered directly to the customers’ homes.

The company was able to use 2 factors which were not related to each other and helped convert the customer’s waiting time into shopping time. The sales of the company increased instantaneously and it became the largest online retailer and a close 2^nd in the offline space.

Tesco Homeplus Success Story

Nailing Celebrity Advertising

Using celebrities in advertisements has become very common nowadays. Be it for television, radio or newspaper advertisements or for product launches, brands are spending huge amounts of money on getting the biggest celebrities to advertise for them.

Celebrities have a reach and a brand associated to them. Companies want to connect their brand to the brand of these celebrities so that the reach and impact of their advertising messages becomes higher. When 2 brands combine, it has an additive effect. However, to ensure that the effect is maximum, the brands should be complementary so that a synergy can be created. If brands with different attributes combine, very less value is created. For example, I recently saw a popular Indian actress advertising for a residential real estate project. I simply don’t understand why.

A good example of a brand nailing celebrity advertising is Puma. The brand signed an endorsement deal with the football legend, Pele, for the 1970 World Cup. First of all, this was a good fit as the brand and the celebrity have common attributes, sports and fitness. Puma also came up with an ingenious hack to get its message across. Part of their deal involved Pele intentionally asking for time at the beginning of every match to tie his shoelaces. When he did, the cameras would automatically pan down to see what he was doing and would end up highlighting his Puma shoes.

Marketing Hack – Build Email Lists

An email list is probably the strongest marketing tool a business can have in its marketing repertoire. From the first day itself, a startup must focus on building an email list. Email lists can be created using Gamification. Users can be offered freebies and incentives to induce users to share their email ids.

Email lists are a good marketing tool owing to the following reasons.

One to One – The communication between the business and the customer is personal and one to one.

Higher Engagement & Conversion – Emails can be sent on a regular basis to inform users about latest updates and happenings. This leads to increased engagement with the customer, which eventually results in a higher conversion rate as well.

Marketing Hack – Hit at the Customer’s Emotions

In this ever increasing competitive market, it becomes very difficult for a brand to build and sustain a place in the customer’s mind. Brands are now experimenting with different messages to the customer and one such message which leaves a mark is one which hits out at the customer’s emotions. Connecting emotionally leaves a lasting impact and enhances the brand’s value significantly.

Nivea is a leading brand for skin creams. In Brazil, the company experimented by integrating a Bluetooth beacon in their magazine ads, which could be torn out by parents and made into a wrist band for children. Parents could download an app into their smart-phones which, coupled with the wrist band, could be used to track how far the children would be from their parents when in public places like beaches etc. This sent a message to these parents that Nivea is not just a company selling products to it’s customers, but is one which cares about the customers’ children as well.

Marketing Hack – Have a Socially Responsible Marketing Strategy

Combining a social action with your marketing/sales can prove beneficial for your startup. It leaves a positive image of the brand in the minds of the customer, resulting in word of mouth for your brand. Linking such an activity to your sales is a good way as it makes the action ongoing and sustainable (as it comes out of the profit).

WarbyParker is a lifestyle e-commerce startup selling eyeglasses which has successfully done this. It runs a ‘Buy a Pair, Give a Pair’ campaign. In this campaign, the startup tallies the total number of glasses sold in a month and contributes to it’s non-profit partners in developing countries. The contribution covers the sourcing of the glasses and an amount which is used to train men and women in developing countries to give basic eye exams and sell glasses to their communities at affordable prices. This has worked as a major factor in ensuring that this startup has sustained in the past few years, when we have seen a lot of lifestyle ecommerce stores closing down.

Marketing Hack – Try before you Buy

Sampling or trying a new product before purchasing gives a customer a whole lot of confidence and value for money spent. This is a great way for businesses to get additional visibility and to increase their customer conversion rates as well. Most FMCG companies either offer small satchets of products for free or at a nominal price. This is primarily to make customers try out the product.

An interesting application of this hack was seen by me in a startup based in Gurgaon, India. Fitnessathome is a fitness equipment rental cum sales startup. Customers can take an equipment, say a treadmill, for rent and if they like it, they can purchase it and the rental amounts they have paid will be deducted from the sale price. The startup’s main margin comes through fitness equipment sales and they have seen good results with this ‘try before you buy’ tactic used by them.