Social Media and New Markets

Though they are pretty average in China, they have some other key geographies an segments with Audi rating 1 million cars for its 2010 target, in the US..China however, sells 1 million cars a month and they are probably ahead on hybrids also.

That brings the next moot point. Why would anyone forego his small budget and pay a high premium for a hybrid? Prius is a good story, so is the small car revolution be it BYD or Nano or Maruti. Also distribution is important.

VW chairman making his point clear in front of the Touareg hybrid..Touareg area sub saharan tribe that brave the Sahara..

However , VW launch budgets in India seem fine for a small aspiration, not a large footprint of a Suzuki. Is that just the test phase?

Related Reading:

We take pride of place as the undisputed #1 in all Marketing , Social Media and Advertising subjects courtesy the in-depth analytic engagement measurement criteria of postrank. It has given us great satisfaction to follow each of our instincts as Advantages.us brands spread themselves as #1 in Business, Finance, Banking and all things TWITTERONE for it was a job well done and the world was going some place better.

Even as we speak, the IPL juggernaut rolls on, NFL Combine gets candidates ready for the draft and Reebok just tries a XXX campaign as Coke puts over on all the radioactive social viral brands like P&G, Pepsi and more. They are all here. And it was all enabled by that Content Marketing System, the gem which is undoubtedly getting a rough deal in the market as a blogging platform.

What WordPress gives you, some times unknowingly, goes far beyond simple blogging and journo licences for day-bloggers. This piece of software and the linked Web partners are one up on the best in Online, digital media and offline conventional marketing engines. Also, WordPress is literally 10^6 ( A million times ) better in saving you from spam, digital advertising pots and the myriad scams that give the internet a bad name and make it a scammy, spammy non-live game..To be in tune with the social web must have been a constant race for that which started as a blogging engine, but they have done it and we must all make use of that to grow the web’s own franchise. It’s not just Facebook, It’s not just Facebook and Twitter but it ’s definitely Facebook, Twitter and WordPress and these are all tools you need to carry your trade, whatever that may be.

Here we are and here you are, we will be with wp.com for a while just because it’s so cosy here. I hope they give me a call to discuss growing their business somewhere. That would be something to talk about…

Related Reading:

India’s Investment rate is a piggish 36% . People seem to have an innate strength from having put their money in a FD. While HSBC Canara’s new dimpled cheeks shone in the baby showers on OOH Media, ( new ad speak /for bored upwardl y mobile salaried Twenty-somethings and senior bystanders watching Flat panel screens across Cafes, theaters and Super Malls ) Religare also launched a $25 million ad budget , covering its own brands at Religare Enterprises, Religare Life, Religare AMC and lately its Macquaries run Wealth Management venture

Religare Macquarie Pvt Wealth

The education whim is likely to continue to be the winning motif in all such publicity campaigns, leavin room to defend marketing expenses for insurance fund administration or advisor fees on your portfolio and looping all possible positioning and targeting ambitions into an endless market development broadcast rather like a new age Aldous Huxley or George Orwell government tellng its citizens about good governance.

Religare already has 452 towns in its umbrella, even the $1 million budget Macquarie getting nine offices in cities like Coimbatore and Guwahati. Will we have enough cash currency to fill the airtime for such dollops of marketing thru educative print and cost of retirement ads?

Related Reading:

Or , The good campaign

The ‘other’ campaign is at TWITTERONE.COM

One Car at a time..

This campaign does not need anything else. Add direct projects at dealerships and nothing to it. The Punch Buggy.

Related Reading:

Should they be at the Electronics Show? Or the Chicago Auto show?

Everyone’s pushing electric hybrids now, even as Prius gets brakes out and Volt isn’t ready. Kia has the Kia Ray which came out at the Chicago Auto Show. If! got it before us, the designers that they are..But Cars still belong to an auto show.

Related Reading:

From highly woven storylines for Max New York Life Insurance, to the overarching philosophical muse in ING’s ‘paisa sirf paisa nahin hai’, Indian Financial Services customers have seen a highly variable range of service delivery and brand communications for Indian Banking. In that the suddenly functional campaigns of HDFC Bank that advertise the one button withdrawal, is a disruptive change of the desi variety. The other extreme is the HSBC OBC Canara Bank JV without a single advert because of pre launch post launch issues, and even they are doing more than 2000 Crores in Premium

This disruptive change may not redefine much for the market but may not turn away obdurate customers from the banks’ new business offerings. While ICICI Bank keeps losing one mini mandate each day after its last innovations in I-Direct and Direct Insurance and Mutual Funds, HDFC Bank has timed the innovation well to take up that space at the front of the bus reserved for the innovator we will follow.

The campaign lacks finesse and even the sadly monotonous Traderacer campaign from ICICI bank may win one or two face-offs with HDFC Bank. If the ING Vysya campaign comes back, Aditya Puri and Keki Mitstry are in fact as good as lost. But then, this ATM advert is not the only one HDFC Bank is doing. Their reputation is safe and even vibrant among shopkeepers and small business as they try ingenious ways to remain in local touch.

This campaign could do with some good WOM. Esp, as Cashcow.in tells us, we are also sitting on new Cashbacks at retailers, millions of new POS machines and online micropayments need a leg up. Mobile Banking is coming with RBI approval soon, and among Indian owned banks, ( not the other 75% FDI, the soul is Indian ;lol) with a rural reach to boot (small towns with money)  HDFC Bank just has to pip ICICI Bank. Standard Life Insurance venture is also doing well in the market place, presumably cost control cutting out any flashy advertiing. But having messed up the Credit Cards dream with false lists and unseen craters of human depth, they better man that counter and the call center desk responsibly.

As the local MF market also showed us, there is a lot of money out there that can come through and go back with a single good idea. India’s GDP could well nigh triple with the amounts we have in the shadow economy. In parity terms we do double the size of US economy, but we don’t advertise that either.

However, HDFC Bank/HDFC as a brand are mroe wedded to the idea of Projects and POP promotions esp with pricing offers and tie-ins. That part may earn them first look customers, but the marketplace is competitive with other private sector players and they may need to move the focus to more brand facing advertising campaigns and even participation in Sport

Also, it is time HDFC adopts a regional strategy as is the wont of the teens ( 2010-19) .  Also apart from JPM that is likely on top of such trend making innovation, any functional campaign would have to reach the high levels of the Citi and HSBC WOM , e.g. the contactless payments exercise floated by Citi India which has ten times the word of mouth and really good scaling up for the bank despite its global troubles.

Related Reading:

Will Brangelina break up? Rain in Los Angeles and other such lymes & rhymes

The time when there was no banking crisis in the air is now distinctly 5 years ago. But the world survived on other controversies in that time. In 2007 and 2008 when the markets were engaged in the biggest beastly moves that really changed the denominations of the investors dreams twice, the media including the business papers like WSJ and FT were going through a churn of megalithic proportions. That News Corp has turned a profit last week, was thence an epic saga’s anticlimactic first break.

Leno vs Who else

The show isn’t over yet by a long mile. Conan will be back in a few days. Jay Leno has managed to be the King and beat others to the new preferences of a DVR drunk time shifted audience that is demanding content from the networks. Even smaller stations in mid-town America will be more demanding now and if and when Conan comes back with another $30 million, he may just realize his folly in messing with the King. That one’s a no show, really There cannot be any Conan vs Leno and it won’t be a paying proposition for Rupert Murdoch or Lachlan either. Star was not, for so many years in the Asia Pacific even as it was on the fringe of the most watched TV programming and really his network was a quality assurance program live for the upwardly mobile audience in the region stuck in competitive jobs with ever growing salaries and ever increasing uncertainty. Today there are more cars in China than in the US in one year and an Indian household is likely to spend $100,000 of disposable income for the latest in dining, gadgetry that’s closer to the heart and so many more avenues of entertainment than ever before.

Of ‘Gate’ Receipts and Gross

Avatar’s paid off for Murdoch, adduning $324 million from movies to the bottomline and his news properties delivered another $260 million for the year which is an eye opener. His MySpace is undergoing pain and his paywall experience needs to be refined by his market’s readers and publishers. But anyone who can see content delivering the windfall everytime, I’d say has he right mind to do the job.

The newly available avenues of entertainment and content across digital web, cameras and video capturing devices, mobiles and iPads/iPods are exponentially generating higher demand for quality ‘content’ and real entertainment without boundaries and each element raising the bar of expectations. Also increasingly, all these channels are looking similar as it becomes easier for content to propagate without overtly changing form, whether it is news, or a business document with video or an entertainment megathon like Avatar, or the Harry Potter series. You will see more of that in a while.

I think the Web Marketers of these last 5 years need to move aside and sit and learn the social experience, see the uniformity of content and let digital media grow as a part of the social whole than an alien world of misplaced metrics. The revolution is here. We’re on it. And no Letterman is not the next ticket to paradise.

Oh BTW, thanks to aci Stephen at the Independent for just four words..
and Saurabh wh came up and asked me ( on Aardvark) how many digital cameras are being sold in India..

Related Reading:

Some Neon, Some clean Fun

Hyundai’s Joel Ewanick on the other hand will continue to upscale Hyundai’s offering from cheap small cars. The company guaranteed new buyers a year’s worth of gas at $1.49 per gallon after early 2009 ads promising good credit history failed to click. Hyundai’s advertising has ben the exact unremarkable variety with cash backs, discounts and a full screen car close up that has characterized informed Car advertising in the US for the past two decades.

Related Reading:

According to the Adage video Podcast, Audi’s budget for the year is up 20% selling more Clean Diesel to Americans against the odds. It’s campaign last year proved that it doesn’t take much to send all the 1.5 million BPD of Saudi Oil back. The campaign is a refreshing reminder to Dodge, Ford, Nissan and BMW that they need not just their car models on a highway in their next advertisement on the network.

Related Reading:

Audi sold 82,716 cars in the US in 2009, no mean feat considering the recession and the great reputations of the Hondas and the Toyotas. It’s Diesel campaign for the first time put something other than a car on the road for its leitmotif

It’s Audi’s third Superbowl now and Scott Keough, Audi CMO makes a great ambassador across Forbes, Adage and other business knowns, publishing his great victories as VW steals the thunder from GM and Ford and the niche luxury car makers looks on. It helps that the makers of the Prius and the Insight have their hands full with millions of cars in recall and that Sporty Contracts like Maria Sharapova for Landrover and Tiger Woods for Buick are no longer available. As Scott Keough mentioned to Forbes last week:

The migration from luxury cars is playing into Audi’s hands. Consumers are separating old luxury with brand baggage from new, sleek, light luxury. They’ve moved away from old badge brands, but they’re moving toward substance and technology. We’re finding that people appreciate Audi for being an understated brand.

According to the Adage video Podcast, Audi’s budget for the year is up 20% selling more Clean Diesel to Americans against the odds. It’s campaign last year proved that it doesn’t take much to send all the 1.5 million BPD of Saudi Oil back. The campaign is a refreshing reminder to Dodge, Ford, Nissan and BMW that they need not just their car models on a highway in their next advertisement on the network.

Hyundai’s Joel Ewanick on the other hand will continue to upscale Hyundai’s offering from cheap small cars. The company guaranteed new buyers a year’s worth of gas at $1.49 per gallon after early 2009 ads promising good credit history failed to click. Hyundai’s advertising has ben the exact unremarkable variety with cash backs, discounts and a full screen car close up that has characterized informed Car advertising in the US for the past two decades.

With Digital Advertising revenues up 15% for 2009, linkages to online business models have become critical for Superbowl campaigns since last year as well when Go Daddy, Careerbuilder and E*Trade successfully converted their euphoric ad response into instant online Karma. Audi however has tougher eggs to fry with each unit purchase of the advertised product costing a tangible % of the cost of production of the advertisement and even its $2.6 billion Superbowl insert charge paid to CBS.

Audi’s 2009 Ad dented the value proposition of the Prius and set new standards for Car Advertising in the crunch season.

The other Superbowl campaigns continue to work around their old favourites, Coke using anime in the Avatar campaign, more than a couple of banned commercials in, with KGB the newbie also adding a couple. Doritos campaign is still choosing the winners and CB and EA will be their toning down their inital ads. Bud’s burning down a house made of beer cans alone.

In Car business, Toyota has to get a Social Rebound budget to make up for $1.6 billion lost in 4 weeks of Sales shutdown ( 20000 Cars at $20k per week)

Related Reading: