Customers as Owners

We all shop. What we buy the most is from the FMCG segment. The regular grocery every month. While buying say a soap, we know if its a Dove or Pears. But do we know which one is from Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) and which one is from Procter & Gamble. I agree that there should be brand loyalty, but do the FMCG companies really work on building customer loyalty  towards the umbrella brand? Do we really know care if Close-Up is a part of HUL or not?

The concept I'm talking about is to increase awareness about the Umbrella Brand and build loyalty towards the same. Take a regular buying scenario. HUL, say issues a loyalty card where you can earn points for every product you buy which belongs to HUL. Let's say you earn 1 point for every Rs. 100/- of purchase.The differentiating factor here is you can convert these points into shares in the stock market. One share of HUL today is worth Rs. 252/-. You have to shop for Rs. 25200 to be eligible to buy one share. For a family of 4, this amount can be achieved in 5 months of shopping(taking the average basket size to be Rs. 5k). The benefits of starting such an activity are many:

• The shares purchased without really spending anything on the share price will soon start fetching gains for the consumers.
• The customer would start taking note of whether the product belongs to the umbrella brand or not. 
• The number of people purchasing from the secondary share market starts increasing. 
• Layman starts tracking the performance of his shares in the share market. 
• This would open up infinite opportunities to market products differently in an industry which is fragmented by ads.
• Customers when made owners would start tracking the performance of the company and would wish well and contribute to its growth in their own ways. 

The main challenge here would be to educate all the retail outlets across the country on the loyalty programme and tracking the loyalty points but I'm sure with IT being what it is today, this would be a cake walk for the MNCs. Any FMCG giant reading this? 

How do I make you watch my Ads

The most important question on every marketer's  mind -  How do I ensure people watch my ads. To reduce the ambiguity, they hire the best ad agencies in the world to create the most witty, most visually appealing advertisements. They then go about figuring out a list of shows that people love watching. Based on the TRP rating and their budget, they short-list a few. Once this is done, they advertise and hope that maximum prospects who belong to their target group watch these ads. But do people really watch these ads? I for example love watching ads and don't usually switch channels. But there are a whole lot of people out there who do, who know what they can watch in between when these expensive ads are being played. 

The big question is how do I make you watch my ads? Here's what I think is an idea to make sure people watch your ads. 


Let's take a reality show like "Kaun Banega Crorepati". KBC has had an amazing track record and there were millions of people across the country who watched this reality show. 


The Idea - 5 minutes before Amitabh/Shahrukh announces a short break and requests people not to go anywhere, they should ask people to take a guess.. A guess on how long the break would last. This should be sent as an SMS. Say, Mr. X guesses 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Someone else guesses 3 minutes and 13 seconds. If you made the right guess you win goodies. As simple as that.

A couple of rules out here - You can make your guess only in those 5 minutes. The messages sent before or after the 5 minutes would be invalid. 


When the ads are being played, a timer would be ticking on one of the corners of the screen based on where the channel logo is placed. 


This way, to see if their guess is right or wrong, people would be glued to their TV screen even during the break.. Any marketer reading this?