The Consumer pt1

I have asked myself and fellow learned marketing gurus what defines a consumer? or who is categorized as a consumer? most of the definitions I get are related to something like this: A consumer is a person or group of people, such as a household, who are the final users of products or services. technically this does place me as a consumer, I tend to have a different view of who a consumer is as far as marketing is concern.

when we run our ads and promotions we target consumers to generate interest in what we are saying so as to be compelled to purchase the product we are talking about. I don't depend on ads and promotions to purchase, I take risks and eventually make judgment without influence. I sit to help position products and have then have a successful Cycle if not long one and help the products develop loyalty in the market.

There are certain aspects we need to look at when a product is out to be sold, the seller should have adequate know how of the product and can offer information about products. I will narrow my talk to Pepsi Products in Kenya. This is a second attempt to create presence in the market dominated by coke products. (Alvaro tried, i just dont know were they reached) The IMC adopted by coke is dominating and the products even children can identify and for that, the marketing team at coke has captured the market well. 

Pepsi is a dying giant, and my prayer is the sooner the marketing manager for Pepsi will realize better ways to have the product in house holds the better for the brand. Pepsi offers a huge variety of products, the range is amazing and from my experience with the products I would say this (my personal ratings) I prefer Mirinda Fruity to Black currant, I prefer Mountain dew to Sprite, I prefer Mirinda Orange to Fanta orange and the Diet Pepsi is much better than diet coke. In addition they have Lemon twist which is awesome with cocktails. The question is who knows this???

Mirinda Fruity logo

I have walked to a shop where I ( these are 5 different occasions) these are the pointers I saw and must be addressed:

1. There is no form of advertising to show Pepsi products are available 

2. we are in hot climate most of the time there are no coolers to serve me a cold Pepsi beverage

3. The shop attendant has no idea of the Pepsi products he is selling (5 different shops)

4. Competition products are well displayed in the branded coolers to serve the thirsty customer who needs that cold soft drink in the heat.

5. There is just 500ml plastics Bottles available there is no variety of the product at all in terms of quantity. 

These are the pointers i picked which would make a huge difference for a consumer product. There is negative differentiation and competition is seen to be doing well.

Lets come to the billboards done, first of all billboards are below the line marketing strategies, for a product which wants to take up the market share for Coke there is need to be much on the the above the line marketing strategies, the traditional methods - Radio, TV.....secondly the format of the artwork shows one product Pepsi Cola, and there are several other products in the market under Pepsi, why ignore them. This is pure cannibalizing the other products and they seem lost and out of place.

Pepsi Lemon Twist

These are some of the factors that will lead to product failure, not that the product is not good but the marketing techniques are killing it. what we are faced with each day are consumers and they need to know and identify with a product so that it can be well positioned in them. In my next posting The consumer 2 I will provide free tips on how to position a superior product with inferior marketing strategies used on in.

 Try Mirinda Fruity, its one great soft drink.

Nivea No Stress sweating campaign

This is the Nivea No Stress sweating campaign. This was an in Mall activation it does fall under outdoor advertising. The execution was done well in terms of branding and the print details. This has been the most common pointers we look at when executing an advertisement, we look at the delivery of the media and its general execution. In my opinion when this is the case, the Nivea advert was done perfect.

There are other factors which we need to ask ourselves from the branding done, first this is pillar branding is done on the food court of a mall. These are some of the questions I would particularly ask:

- What were the goals of this particular advert?

- Did the mode used to advertise represent the true image of the brand?

- How do we measure effectiveness of the mode chosen for advertisement?

These are some of the questions that come to my mind, they can be broken down to various elements and other sub questions. I will give it my approach and my view on what i feel about the mode chosen to advertise 

My reaction/ answers
From my first post i mentioned there are 3 goals which we look at when an advertisement comes to mind. I will use them as my basis for my analysis. I will assume my place as a consumer of the product or a potential consumer. The Advert is at the food court to a Mall (no names in this case, I am not carrying a campaign rather its a scientific review) 

Is the advert informative? to my opinion it is informative, i will walk to the mall's food court and I will notice the branding done. The product is Nivea, the design chosen being at the mall, i will walk to the pillar to read what it is all about. I will see it is a Deo from Nivea. Being in the mall I will assume the supermarket in that mall will have stock of the product which means i can actually go and see the price and maybe try out if it has a great fragrance. I have given a typical scenario of someone who has the time and is not in a hurry above it is the target audience. there is the case of the person who is not the target audience the elderly, he/she will still notice the advert but may not bother much about the product and what it is all about. This gives us the limitation of Print adverts are not interactive. To some level the advert is informative and has created some attention to it.

Is the advert persuasive? This is rather difficult to measure, but did it persuade me? no it did not. to some extent its not as easy to pull persuasion from a Print advert, well some do. The advert has emphasized on the aspect of being stress free, and the Deo will play a role to ensure stress from swear and body odor is not an issue. question is, can someone do without it? it does answer the question of why you need it, but the question of is it making me go to the shops and buy it? this will lead to the measure of the impact of the advert at that particular mall. can we comfortable link the sales in the supermarket in the mall to the branding done there? to my opinion, this has not made me feel persuaded to buy the product.

Is the advert constructive? this is evident in that Nivea is already a brand that is well positioned in the market for the products they provide.  The advert just emphasizes the position the have and the differentiation they have as far as competition is concern. in my opinion i feel this is well communicated and represented.

Did the mode used to advertise represent the true image of the brand?

 The execution was done well, and the printing and installation is very presentable. Nivea the brand is a well established brand and if i may say its if a certain class and by using the products it shows your class, that is appealing and one that everyone want to be associated with. Most products fail to deliver loyalty and even one time customers because of poor execution. This dwells with the designs and the mode of advertising. one would say content is what maters than the mode of presenting it, and may go further and say platforms are many to execute like youtube and online blogs. I will still insist if you have content have a better delivery platform, this way you reduce the noise.

How do we measure effectiveness of the mode chosen for advertisement?

effectiveness, this is debatable. it depends on the goals of the campaign, was it to create awareness or to drive sales? this can be confirmed by Nivea. At the end of the day we all want to drive sales even if it was just for awareness.

In conclusion
in my own opinion, out of 100 the advert got a 68. it did deliver the information about Nivea  it did not persuade me but still held its ground on competition.

as i said this is my own opinion, you are free to correct or to add on.

Thanks 

Advertising

This will be a brief introduction to my life line and what I love best. I wont dwell much on the details of the definition because there are forums where this is already done and it will be more like a repetition. So to the laymen who are not inclined to marketing as profession this is the best way I can describe advertising

"it is a form of communication for marketing and used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience  to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering. The main aim is to have desirable results after the activity"

Advertising has in the past limited to consumer goods but over the period it has evolved to other sectors. These would be Services, politics, etc. 

There are aspects which are looked when developing an advertisement, again this is not a class so I will make my points as brief as possible. To my understanding I will say these are the goals of advertising:

•  Informative - inform the targeted consumer about the product in question, the pricing the location of this product.
• Persuasive - to some level it will still some roles of informative. it should be able to answer the why? The aspect of differentiation with the competition 
• Constructive - this too plays a role of being informative and can also be persuasive. (How) does the product (re)define the competition, consumer or the society?

With these 3 goals in mind an advertisement can and will achieve its desired results.

I am a Scientist, and my Science is Marketing. I have taken Marketing to different level, from the normal business practice. I will give my individual views towards advertisements in the country. Being a marketer views of other consumers towards an advert is key. I am not paid to make statements, i may give negative feedback from the science and mechanics of Marketing. so its not hate but feedback.

Being that I do this for the love of Marketing and its for free, i don't walk with bodyguards so don't rough me up when you meet me at the club because i gave a honest feedback towards an advert either on the billboards, TV or Radio.

Cheers

George

The Marketing Scientist.