Brand Rezonance

I am not going to use the now-commonplace “R” word, but talk about its lesser known cousin, returns. More than anytime else, the benefits which you get out of every rupee spent is taking up centre-stage and has moved from being relegated to corporate boardrooms to being talked about on the streets by all business-owners. It has become the dire necessity of every business to differentiate.

So where do we start?

Before beginning on deciding a print promotion strategy, you may want to sit back and decide the whos, whys and hows. Who will receive the material you’ll lovingly fabricate, why should they keep it with them and how will it help you get more business? Here are 10 tips.

1: Start with your personal announcement tool: In case you are wondering what this is, it is just what your business card is supposed to do. Would you like people to remember your card when you dole it out generously at networking events? Then it is imperative that there is a conversation around it. Get an innovative title, get bold graphic design, experiment. For example, if you are a CFO, you could change it to Minister of Finance. Of course, being cheeky also means that you need to develop the ability of being able to carry it off.

2: Include a memory hook: A good tagline can do wonders in helping people remember you. Add this in all your material. I once knew of a printer who “could print everything except currency.”

3: Size does matter: Walk into any print shop and you will instantly be greeted by various sizes of print material. A4, A3, Letter. Fuddled? If you are not able to decide which size is right for your brochure, do some research. Several times, brochures have worked just because they were of a different size than average. The same goes for all your print material.

4: Guerilla print campaigns: If you are planning a direct mailer campaign, better make sure it is more than just a piece of paper. If you can customize it to a target segment, then it could be the icing on your cake. For example, a campaign targeted at architects could have the messaging printed on blueprints.

5: Culture works: In certain cases, aligning a direct mailer campaign to a cultural artifact could help convey the message creatively. For instance, kites have been used by several companies to communicate messages that relate to it. And then, our country has no dearth of cultural pointers; one has to just make sure they are used sensibly.

6: Give them something useful: Since you will invest time and effort to design and produce promotion material, it may be worthwhile to make it useful. Common ideas that work are calendars, year books, diaries, scribble pads and post-its. Invest in a design agency that can help build the theme of your products and services into these articles.

7: Customize if you can: Remember, if you are looking to generate new sales leads through the print promotion campaign, not everyone likes to receive the same communication. Personalise or customize if you can, add a bit of flavour by a handwritten note of greeting or thanks.

8: Include a newsletter series: Newsletters are simple, effective methods of print communication and have unusually long shelf life. If you can bundle a whole lot of useful information along with a bit of your product or service related material, newsletters often end up being retained by most recipients as compared to brochures. As an example, an IT systems provider could include useful tips in each issue as a cover story, say about open source applications that reduce costs.

9: Occasion-based marketing: Annual occasions, festivals or events provide a special avenue to help build recall for your product or service. Say, you send an intelligent prank along with your material so that it reaches your prospect on the 1^st of April. Needless to say, one needs to heed tastes and sensibilities while running such a campaign.

10: Plan your execution: The entire print marketing schedule for the year should preferably be planned in advance with tracking mechanisms in place. It is also important to follow-up through digital methods. Also, in keeping with environment issues, one should plan well to avoid any waste.

Digital marketing also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet and other devices.

The Zinnov website is highly visible to searchbots by virtue of its content arrangement.

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it refers to digital media such as the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media; however, Internet marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management.

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience. Therefore, businesses have the advantage of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results quickly.

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively. Nearly all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers can use a variety of methods: pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, or pay per action. Therefore, marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience.

However, it has its own limitations as well; nothing goes without any disadvantage as all modes of communication have their own advantages and disadvantages. Like for internet marketing Information security is important both to companies and consumers that participate in online business. Many consumers are hesitant to purchase items over the Internet because they do not trust that their personal information will remain private.

Recently some companies that do business online have been caught giving away or selling information about their customers. Several of these companies provide guarantees on their websites, claiming that customer information will remain private. Some companies that purchase customer information offer the option for individuals to have their information removed from the database, also known as opting out. However, many customers are unaware if and when their information is being shared, and are unable to stop the transfer of their information between companies if such activity occurs.

Therefore a proper security system should be in place which does not leak out the customer’s information, this way the companies will also be gaining the confidence of the customers.

Sahan BN

Sahan is Business Solution Thinker at ReZonant

With global warming reaching to an alarming high, most of the companies are leaning towards green marketing. Hike in fuel prices have even accelerated the process of environmental awareness through green marketing and advertising. So what is green marketing actually? The ads that actually focus on the green products or speak about the company’s future intention to launch environment friendly products fall in the category of green advertising. The hope that was initially generated with green marketing advertisements has been hurt by the notion that sustainable products do not really carry on their environmental promises.

Green marketing still has a long way to go and there is no denying that the situation is improving. People are waking up to green. From organic food to hybrid cars to energy saving appliances to reclaimed furniture growing number of consumers are ready to buy sustainable products these days than ever before. But the question here is whether it is happening at a right pace? One of the strongest regulating bodies for this could be the government. Since more and more advertisers are seeking to promote their eco-friendly credentials the responsibility lies on the government to set a standard for sustainable products in order to prevent deception and degradation of product quality.

Green marketing gets tougher with people being skeptical on the quality of such products. It is also the responsibility of the company that they should keep in mind that customers are unlikely to compromise on product features such as quality, price, availability that come with traditionally manufactured products. Therefore it is good to for the companies to realize that there is no single marketing strategy for a company to sell green products. As manufacturers tend to believe in the business of sustainability there is increasing number of organizations coming up with environmentally sustainable products.

Grocery chains also began patronizing sustainable eating with organic food that is actually recycled from the leftover food available in the hotels. Dozens of companies are finding values in practicing food conservation. With soaring fuel prices car companies are turning towards the same. Most of the automobile manufacturing companies are designing fuel efficient hybrid cars. However, one needs to understand that green marketing is not just green advertising, which includes environmental awareness and concerns of a company while promoting its products. It is all about using the communication channels and media to persuade consumers to pick up more sustainable products and in turn, help companies realize the market need for their eco-friendly products.

Rahul Vij

Rahul is a Business Solution Thinker at ReZonant

How does one go about getting an email strategy in place that does not include stinkers from people who did not cherish receiving the email one so lovingly fabricated? After all, your labor of love needs to be presented and sent, to quote an oft repeated cliché, at the right time to the right place. What does one do to make your time and investment in email marketing worth the while? A few handy tips:

1: Ask the all-important question: You may have a great email marketing deal your partner came up with, but the question is, are your customers regular readers and recipients of email? It will not help your cause, if most of your customers turn out to be people who check their email once in a while, probably to post the latest family development on their favorite Yahoo groups. If, on the other hand, your product is the toast of always online, always connected users who believe that life without a Blackberry is not worth living, give email marketing a shot. For example, email marketing would work great for a seller of Blackberry phones.

2: Where small is big: Now, we all love to tell everyone everything about our business, so much so that with just a few sittings you have given a crash course in your business, but have you realized how much your recipient wants to see? Keeping it short and sweet as a concept works great not only for mini-skirts, but also for emails. They should be simple enough to be read on all devices.

3: Is it useful? A typical business email user gets close to 200 mails per day. You don’t want your email to be the proud 201^st delivery into his mailbox, that clamors for attention. What if your email were actually useful to him. For example, the Blackberry seller would probably like to send a “Tip of the week” for using the phone and then tantalize the viewer with some cool accessory pics.

4: Don’t give the viewer yet another decision to take: Most of us despise taking decisions, especially those that have no immediate bearing on one’s life. Such as an unsolicited mail which forces the viewer into another decision. “How soon to send this mail to the trashbox”, wasn’t exactly your original plan of email nirvana. Instead, help them with tips to take other decisions.

5: Package it well: Once you decide that email is the way to go, it is better to get professional help. Get hold of a creative writer who can help fabricate your email. Get hold of a designer who can make it look presentable. It is your brand which is at stake out there.

6: Opt-in lists: If you pinned your marketing hopes on the “1 million guaranteed contacts” CD which you recently purchased from your friendly neighborhood software vendor, the only thing that is likely to come your way is a barrage of spam-angry responses. Do not get a generic database; procure an opt-in list instead. Opt-in customers are those who have chosen to receive mails on selected topics.

7: Organize your campaigns: Any email campaign has to be sustained in order to be successful. Use professional emailing programs to get your campaigns organized.

8: Build mechanisms for tracking: You need to know how your emails are doing. Are they opened, viewed or trashed? Important insight that will help you refine your campaigns further. Get a good emailing software or use an on-demand online model to give you reports.

9: Plan in advance: You should have clarity for at least 6 months with respect to your email campaign. It is not good enough to run just one or two campaigns and wait for results. A consistent brand is a good brand. For example, a mobile phone user may not have an immediate requirement for a Blackberry, but he may need one after 6 months and if your email is not there in his inbox at that time, your competitors will be more than happy to engage him.

10: Prepare a response mechanism: And wonder of wonders, if your email marketing does hit bull’s eye and customers revert back, plan your response. If you are left in the lurch without a proper response mechanism, the whole email investment may go down the drain.

Good luck and happy emailing.

MP Hariharan

Google. Sony. Toyota. Pepsi. Adidas. How were the biggest brand names coined? Different anecdotes about different brands are famous. While Google is said to be one followed by a hundred zeros, Adidas is supposedly an acronym that stands for All Day I Dream About Sports. While we do not know for certain how believable these brand-anecdotes are, we do recognise on almost a daily basis the icons these brands have become in world markets.

So how do we create names that might become icons of the future? Here are a few simple tricks:

New word, renewed interest – A new word or a lesser used one will always grab more attention than a word from the dictionary; simply because people will make double-sure they pronounce and spell it right. When a Japanese electronics major was looking for a name that sounded the same no matter which language it was spelled in, the term Sony was coined.

Size does matter – There was a time when longer names seemed more impressive, but with the decline in people’s attention span, smaller names have become the norm. So, KISS it. No, didn’t mean the romantic gesture, I meant Keep It Short, Stupid! 

Old wine, unusual use – An old over-the-hill word used in a contrasting context will leave people searching for context, just like when a wacky technology start-up named itself Apple and almost instantly earned invaluable aspirational value from every tech-geek.

Has to have a ring to it – A name will have greater recall if people enjoy saying the name. Poppins. Beetle. Laughing Cow. Rings-a-bell means will-be-remembered. 

Speak, if not spell – If it’s spoken not like its spelled, it might make a mark.  Garment brand Enyce, pronounced ‘E-nai-chee’ rose to popularity soon after its launch, simply because youngsters wanted to join the correct-pronunciation bandwagon. The sales followed. The snob-factor might work with certain demographics.

Perfect or Almost Perfect – iPod. A two syllable word where the first syllable is formed of just one vowel and the second is a 3-letter word containing two consonants. The fun part is, both the syllables get equal emphasis while speaking. It is this minor imbalance that perhaps makes the name so interesting. Similarly, FCUK’s suggestive mischief makes it famous bordering on infamous.

Keep forgetting old rules – In a market where fads die out every few years, how do you make sure you keep coming up with more contemporary names? Keep forgetting the old rules and evolve with the task. Once in the flow, coining icons is not rocket science.

Saurabh Kejriwal

Saurabh is Creative Thinker at ReZonant.

As a kid, I would visit my dad’s office sometimes. It was an elegant teak panelled office with wood and glass walls neatly compartmentalized into a big hall and a few cabins, one of which was my father’s. I would tip-toe into his office, making sure even my footsteps were muffled, since the average decibel levels were quite low. A big picture of about a dozen white men in the reception, without any caption, was the only meaningful piece of an Environmental Graphic. They were, I was once told, the board of directors of the company in the UK.

This one time, I was hanging out near the pantry, and this guy familiar to me walked up and asked me if I was having fun. I didn’t know what to say, so I said, no. He nodded, “Yeah, it is a boring office, isn’t it?”

That’s what companies wanted those days, an elegant, non-distracting workspace which suggested seriousness regarding work. Casual interaction was limited to washrooms and the cafeteria, or in smoking zones.

Years later, in my first EG project for the India centre of a big financial corporate, I learnt that to attract and retain the best talent in the market, the company not only wanted to pay their employees well, but keep them engaged. What engagement meant though, the picture was much clearer later.  

Take the average 8-9 hours people are expected to spend in office every day. Back in the day, in most offices, they would come in at 9, work with a certain pace, take about 2-3 breaks in a day, and leave soon after 6. That would fulfill the expectations of the company nicely enough.

Over time, the simple, non-distracting ‘follow the book!’ workplaces have given way to vibrant, well-branded, ‘Let’s try something different today’ workplaces. Wacky graphics, witty lines and ‘food for thought’ inputs are scattered on walls and bays, while cafeteria graphics suggest finesse and hunger-aid. Receptions are adorned with bits from the corporate image, and meetings rooms with thought-challenging messaging.

The need for engagement within a workspace comes from the need to provide a vibrant, fun, open environment which stimulates imagination, constantly delivers subconscious messaging regarding the company values and culture, and helps employees move faster, refresh quicker. The whole aim is to shape the path employees walk every day, in their natural course of work.

And while it may have all started with new-age companies’ need to stand out, a real part of the job is also to make sure no two workspaces seem alike, for no two work-cultures are alike. From themes as diverse as ‘think lateral to solve problems’ to ‘we side with the customers in business’ to ‘we are work-execution specialists’, workspaces have evolved to speak about the company through great design.

When it comes to Environmental graphics, great work has been done around the world, and the way most of it has evolved stems from same need why it became so popular in the first place, to be different. While some may call these thinkers, ‘experts in environmental branding’, I personally feel there is no such thing. How good you are is a direct result of how well you understand the company and the audience. There are no fixed rules, all it needs is the need to understand the soul of a company, and paint the town with sharp graphics that speak the soul.

The final result, if simple, witty and well-crafted, will define a project well done. If people come to work every morning, and for the next 2-3 years, not say, ‘Man, office ambience is so boring!’ - I would consider it a project well done.

Saurabh Kejriwal

Saurabh is Creative Thinker at ReZonant.

It’s not always that you crack your headlines with ease. Even the greatest copywriters struggle from time to time. So the next time you’re pulling out your hair and blaming the writers block, try out this simple process.

Step 1: In a single simple sentence, write down the benefit and the supporting facts - XYZ washing machines uses less electricity and water by using a new technology that uses the machine revolutions to generate extra electricity and refilters one load of water again and again to be used in all cycles.

Step 2: Now, think of how this benefit actually translates to tangible benefits for the user. Write them down. 

a.   Saves their money by cutting down electricity and water bills

b.   Their future generations have a better environment when you don’t waste natural resources such as energy and water

Step 3: Now, connect these to the actual product. 

a.   Wash your clothes with xyz washing machines and save money.

b.   Wash your clothes with xyz washing machines and have a better environment.

Step 4: And there you have the big thought behind a good headline. All that’s left is to think of clever ways to rewrite the same thoughts and connect it to a visual. Always try and have two approaches – one serious/emotional and one with humor.

a.    Cleaner clothes can mean a cleaner environment.

Visual: Product sitting on green grass amidst trees with birds and butterflies sitting

on it. 

b.    Wash your way to the bank

Visual: An atm like booth, where instead of the atm the washing machine is kept. Security guards on both sides. People standing in line with their laundry baskets.

Now spend a good one hour writing your body copy to support your headline. Your first sentence in the body copy should always support your headline. And so should you last sentence. Throw in the other benefits and facts in between. Repeat the product name again and again. Keep the copy down to 5 short and sweet sentences.

For more secrets on writing body copy, stay tuned.

Jeevan Sebastian

Jeevan is Creative Director at ReZonant