samip-jain-blog - Tumblr blog

[samip-jain-blog]

The Last Mile Challenge

When I think about the Last Mile Challenge, Amazon and Uber come to my mind. After doing more research, I found this company Zipline (https://flyzipline.com/) who are using drone technology to deliver blood to save lives. 

They are operating in Ghana and how their simple technology innovation is saving lives. It’s difficult to rely on the transit system which they have and doing the last mile delivery using road transit method will take a lot of time. They solved this last mile problem using drone technology. 

Zipline didn’t follow the default way to do the job and took a very different approach. There are several other companies who are taking a different approach to overcome the last mile challenge.  Google will likely start the drone delivery service in Australia (source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/alphabet-s-drone-delivery-business-cleared-for-takeoff-by-faa) 

It’s interesting to see how big companies are focusing on bringing the perfect technology and how Zipline just made it so simple to use and started early.

[samip-jain-blog]

dark side of fairness

How a brand can shape the culture and change the mindset of millions of people?

As part of the Branding class this week I’ll be writing about Fair & Lovely. 

Historically, there is a notion of dark skin vs fair skin tone in India and companies tried to take advantage of this emotional point to make money.

To get into the user’s head, the company applied two strategies - commercials which portrayed real-life scenarios and have Bollywood stars for the ads. Because we keep Bollywood stars as our role model so if they are saying something during an ad that is going to be true and most of the customers are going to follow it blindly.

Fair & Lovely was not the only company doing this, there were many other companies followed the same strategy. Now, this brand image was associated with Bollywood stars. This racial discrimination definitely put the brand on top of Brand Resonance Model, but they didn’t understand the feelings or judgments associated with it. 

It’s surprising to see that CEOs of Emami and HUL were defending their brand, this kind of behavior shows that brand ethics was missing inside the company and it also reflects the culture of the company. Going further into brand ethics their leadership was cultivating wrong (discouraging) behaviors which led organizations like Women of Worth to come forward and fight for women’s empowerment. Thanks to YouTubers who made this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOccdzGw8MU

Based on the complaint that was registered, their product never worked (this reminds me of why I never believed in any ads). They created a perception among customers that it will work. The company sure had a good branding skill without a good product.

PS - If anyone is interested in reading the fairness regulation - https://www.ascionline.org/download.php?f=images/pdf/press-release-on-asci-sets-up-new-guidelines-for-the-fairness-products-category-2-.pdf

[samip-jain-blog]

Fly with customer satisfaction

My first international travel was with Qatar Airways and I have always taken Qatar since then because of their high-quality service. I loved the entire experience starting from boarding. My baggage was taken care of, enough staff to answer my questions, and in-flight service was great. All these little things made my experience amazing and made me travel with Qatar.

Qatar is generally expensive in comparison to other flights, but I feel it’s worth it. So, definitely focusing on customer service was a great move and Singapore Airlines moved in the right direction.

Singapore Airlines focused on three important things - customer satisfaction, punctuality, and on-ground service which I believe is crucial for the customers. I loved how they trained their employees to anticipate problems and solve it before customers approach with their questions. That’s a great strategy to build empathy and make customers believe that airlines care about them and would take an extra step to make their experience wonderful.

Another thing I liked about Singapore Airlines is that - Punctuality. There is another airline Indigo in India who follows something similar. They anticipate the maximum flight time and always arrive 5-10 mins before the estimated arrival time. This made me wonder that “wow, they do value time a lot”. Initially, I thought this just happened with me but later I realized that this is part of their strategy.

Last but not least, Singapore Airlines also focused on the post-flight experience which many companies struggle to achieve. I call these airlines - “customer-centric airlines” who can create a benchmark for the other airlines.

[samip-jain-blog]

go big or go home?

This post is about Concho y Toro, Latin America’s largest wine exporter as part of MIT Sloan Branding class. 

This case study has discussed a few important branding concepts - bottom-up strategy, top-down strategy, or having two separate brands as in case of Ford. The ideas are really interesting and it worked out for few companies based on their specific problem statement.

After reading this case study, I started wondering what are the other companies who have broken the “default” status of their competitors and what was their strategy. In this case of wine, it is clear that brand name also associates with the country name and the perception we have of that country. As we read from different experiments, it doesn’t matter what brand of wine users are drinking. If we attach a label of a country let’s say France then it will impact the taste.

This led me to think how a telecom provider “Reliance Jio” in India disrupted the market by introducing a new SIM card which includes high data connectivity and voice calls for free. They applied few different marketing strategies like a new brand and bottom-up strategy which eventually led to success. For an instance, they were providing high quality product for free for more than 6 months. This strategy helped them to build trust among consumers that they can rely on the network. Once that trust was established, they launched various new products like Jio Phone, Jio TV, Jio Chat, Jio Music, Jio Cinema, etc.

I also want to point out this great article about Jio - https://www.ft.com/content/3f1fe4d6-e4e0-11e7-a685-5634466a6915

Focusing on the core strength and quality of product plays a key role. As its CEO Eduardo Guilisasti said, “To succeed in global markets, the first step is to inundate the mass segment with a low price–good quality product—’value for your money.” I agree with this, but the question I keep struggling with is to have a high quality product, then price will be high, then how do we balance this? Should we act like Jio and take a big risk?

As the CEO mentioned, “If I have to make a choice, our priority is the product; then, marketing.” I think this line summarizes it all, focus on quality of product.

[samip-jain-blog]

A Beautiful Mind

This blog post is part of MIT Sloan Branding class. This post is about Behavioral Science and Nudging in the UX

“Nudges seek to boost self-control or activate a desire” - I think this is extremely important for companies when they are launching a new product/service. Teaching a customer like what Intel did with speed was really effective.

Understanding the latent needs of a customer and then targeting those specific points will create more empathy. Something like Google Duo ad who are using non-traditional way of passing a message along - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaELToe1K2A

I also liked the example from one of the readings where two school cafeterias want their students to consume less junk food. The second solution was clever than the first one as they were changing the perspective of their users. “Changing the perspective” or what you want people to see is quite a fascinating way to tell a story.

Another example which I liked was Gym-Pact, a small change in the system which made me think that they literally care about people. I also like how brands these days are using some sort of social message through their advertisement. One such example which I still remember is from British Airways - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFb01yTR9bA

Playing with these little things can create an impact on how consumers perceive a brand.

[samip-jain-blog]

Intel Inside

Intel is one of the most important companies in the world which literally runs the world. Hence, branding is important where the message has to be clearly conveyed. “Intel Inside” branding strategy achieved the goal.

As Intel was coming up with the latest product every year they had to build a branding technique which could solve the challenge. And their solution of creating an umbrella brand that could span successive generations of products was impressive. 

Intel already had the advantage of being first in the market and coming up with new products. I think their naming convention like 286, 386, Pentium processor created a perception of brand “Intel” that every computer had their processor inside. Also, combined with Intel logo on OEM’s products created a big difference.

As more and more companies were using it, trust and reliability were built and Intel became the default processor in PC/laptop domain. I believe they were successful because they were focusing on core value which they were providing. I think to have a great product and core value displayed properly helped them to reach consumers directly. 

In addition to this, when a minor flaw was discovered Carter decided to replace all the processors in the market. This reflects their seriousness about the issue and they would anything to make it right. 

When one of the competitors AMD came up with a 1GHz processor, Intel could have lost the market size but they developed 1GHz and also became the first to come up with 2GHz. They were trying to keep up with the market and through innovation, they were bringing faster processor. Through rigorous market research, they knew customers need speed and one of their branding strategies was to get consumers to pay more attention to microprocessors.

This indirectly made PC/laptop manufacturers to be updated with the latest microprocessors because that’s what consumers were looking for. In short, the strategy was brilliant and the goals were achieved.

-Samip Jain