“We are reaching out”

As Rameet reveals, McDonald’s is up to some interesting new product and service innovations, even as it looks to better leverage the web as a medium

The much-touted ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ experience and customer satisfaction is at the core of everything that McDonald’s does. As times have evolved, the company has also re-invigorated itself and consolidated its position. Rameet Arora, who has taken charge of driving growth for the brand and the business last year when he moved on from Colors, talks to mona mehta about the new initiatives and the use of the online medium:

How has the “Breakfast Menu” strategy taken off in terms of generating targeted revenues?
The breakfast menu added a new day part to McDonald’s as the outlets serving breakfast had to open at 7 am as opposed to 9 or 10 am. The campaign to promote the new breakfast menu was based on the research done that showed that at least 60% of the working population has breakfast on the move at least once a week. The creatives show breakfast items such as a hot cup of coffee and a muffin or pancakes, with an antonymic play on words like ‘Rise - Shine’, ‘Wake up - Get up’, ‘Grumpy - Chirpy’, ‘Skip work - Skip to work’, and ‘Morning - Good morning’. The copy also read ‘Good morning. Great breakfast’. This helped establish McDonald’s as an all day dining destination catering to all meal times.

What new delivery touchpoints are you planning for the Indian market?
Customer convenience and service are highly critical factors in driving growth in any industry and key impetus is on product and service innovation and customer orientation. McDonald’s today has evolved from just attracting customers to their restaurants. McDonald’s is increasingly reaching out to customers leveraging a range of innovative retail formats ranging from Kiosk, drive through’s and MYF. McDonald’s also has outlets at various petrol pumps for which we have formed an alliance with the leading oil companies of India like HPCL, BPCL and most recently IOC. In addition, McDonald’s India has also given consumers the convenience of formats such as home delivery and web delivery through which they can enjoy their favourite McDonald’s products.

Keeping in mind where the customer is and the fast reach of the web, McDonald’s has successfully explored the medium of technology to reach out to the consumers. McDonald’s was one of the very few food brands to extend reach to customer through QR code technology.

What is your take on promoting/launching new McDonald’s products through the internet? What are the challenges?
The advancement of technology and the widespread reach that the internet provides a brand is unquestionable in today’s tech savvy scenario. However because internet is such a dynamic field, we are just as good as our last idea and innovation in this medium is of key importance. For the launch of the McSpicy range, McDonald’s launched its first ever viral campaign. A video uploaded on Facebook and YouTube showed the other products at McDonald’s anticipating the arrival of new competition in the form of the spicy products. This viral campaign was supported by the microsite, specially created for McSpicy. We used QR codes for this campaign, which allowed customers easy, on the move access on their cell phones. With the McFlurry launch, we have taken a step ahead with QR technology and are working with Image recognition technology, where anyone clicking on a picture of McFlurry will be directed to the McDonald’s website/McFlurry microsite.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Just update us on your M&A budgets please!

The security industry is desperately looking for ideas to cope with increasing threats to companies in cyber space, & most ideas are coming from start ups. So how do the leaders cope?

At times, the manner in which we relentlessly surf the web and exchange critical and non-critical information over the web so nonchalantly does cause a lot of surprise. We aren’t really thinking of our vulnerability to cyber attacks in those moments, are we? And that’s after the spate of attacks & breaches on companies like Sony, Bank of America, Wipro, et al & even on national networks that have made headlines. The recent one affected top defence contractors to the Japanese government like Mitsubhishi Heavy Industries and shocked the world. If they are vulnerable, where are smaller companies, or even average consumers headed?

For security companies, of course, this is a sign of business opportunity as well as a challenge to match the dynamically changing security needs of the organisations of today. As per Gartner estimates, the global security software market aggreagated a turnover of $16.5 billion in 2010, a rise by 12% yoy. The market is led by Symantec with a revenue of $3.12 billion in 2010 (market share of 18.9%) followed by McAfee with revenues of $1.71 billion (market share of 10.4%) and TrendMicro with a revenue of $1.04 billion and market share of 6.3%. It’s still a highly fragmented market, considering that the top five vendors account for 44.3% of the global market. The battle for market share between these top five in particular is only going to intensify in the coming months, and there is a lot of inorganic activity expected, since a number of the new innovations in this increasingly complex arena lie to a large extent with smaller companies and start ups. “Products within the security market are undergoing rapid evolution, in terms of both new delivery models – with security as a service showing increasing popularity – and new technologies being introduced, often by startup companies,” asserts Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner.

At the top is the bitter rivalry between Symantec, McAfee & TrendMicro. Symantec continues to be especially aggressive on acquisitions and has acquired 25 companies since 2005. Its recent deals include Clearwell Systems for their eDiscovery Solution this year, and acquired Verisign’s Security Services (for their online identity protection portfolio), RuleSpace (URL filtering functionality), PGP Corporation & GuardianEdge (e-mail & data encryption) and Gideon Technologies (standards-based information security solutions) in 2010. McAfee has become a unique case. Its CEO had promised at least 3-4 acquisitions every year in early 2010, but the company was itself acquired by microprocessor giant Intel for a whopping $7.7 billion last year. Intel’s sudden diversification to this space has surprised many. The company hopes to bundle hardware security capability with McAfee’s software credentials to be able to undo some of the disadvantages it has of not being there in the mobile space and facing increasing competition from rivals. The number 3 player TrendMicro acquired mobile encryption player Mobile Armor last year to boost its capabilities in the mobile space. The acquisition of TrendMicro expands its portfolio to serve the growing cloud space. As remote management of infrastructure becomes a reality with increasing cloud adoption (globally a $1.6 billion market as per IDC), it is becoming a huge opportunity for security firms.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Planman Technologies

JWT The Retro-Brigrade!

Their First Big Campaign Delivered Unexpected Results. Presenting the Cannes Lions Gold Winners this year – Vanguards of the Retro-Brigade: Anupama Ramaswamy & Simran Sahni

They have not stopped beaming since the time they bagged their first Cannes Lions Gold this year for the Fujifilm ‘Inner Smile’ Campaign. The campaign was not only well gulped down by the international jury at Cannes, but it has also brought home a whole baggage of awards including 2 awards at the Goa Fest, 5 metals in Adfest and 2 in Spikes! And the creative minds behind all this haven’t lost their lust for more!

Their repartee on the same goes thus, “After all, who doesn’t want to be Piyush Pandey or Prasoon Joshi and redefine advertising with their work and simultaneously win lots of awards? Greedy? But that’s us!” These girls with the Midas touch are flag bearing representative of the new leadership race at JWT Delhi – and Anupama Ramaswamy, Senior CD (ART) and Simran Sahni, Creative Director apparently take no prisoners.

But the road that took them to the Lions Gold was not adorned with candy floss. As they reveal (and that too almost in unison), “Our first faceoff was a typical meeting at work where the senior pairs you up for a project. It was an LG commercial brief and we were working in Lowe Lintas at a very junior position at that time.” This was in the year 2005. After their maiden assignment, the duo again teamed up for small assignments for clients like Convergys and Lowe.

However, to really catch the big fish, one has to go deep into the ocean; and the duo did that! The one big opportunity that elevated them to notable status (and also made them take advertising seriously!) was of Apollo Hospitals. Call it destiny’s undoing – the two were not even briefed for it! Anupama shares, “That was the campaign that we did just for the heck of it. But eventually, we loved it and showed it around proudly. Surprisingly, it was the last round of the pitch and the agency presented only that campaign, which later made them win the account.”

Their first impressions on each other are dispassionately honest! “It was very comfortable working together in the first project. As we worked on, we listened to each other’s ideas... There was no ego among us, especially from my side, about how art directors think! Also, Anu was very polite with my scribbles and rough layouts,” exclaims Simran. To this, Anu adds her own take, “She is one of the most positive persons I have met in this world of skeptics and cynics. She is a complete believer and the spark between us was instant, as I could tell her any of my thoughts without (the apprehension of) her judging me.”

The duo that has managed to grab 13 awards in their relatively short career span and has enabled many exceptional commercials to see the light of day including the award-winning Woodland outdoor campaign, Lay’s, Boost, et al is currently investing their hearts and souls in Nokia. That’s the biggest account on which they are working in full swing currently.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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‘Penning’ a new brand odyssey

Deepak Jain’s vision has transformed Add gel from a regional brand to a household name in India. He shares with Shephali Bhatt how he owes it to his father and his insights from Gen Y

Deepak Jain
COO, Add Gel

In 1990, his father M. C. Jain started a company with the brand name Advert Pens, and in over a period of two decades, during the journey that saw Advert transform to Add Gel, they have grown in terms of quality, in terms of value, and in terms of scale. With operations in more than 40 countries right now, Add Gel has a strong brand image accompanied by a vibrant consumer recall in the country.

Deepak Jain, now the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Add Gel, has been an active part of the company’s operations for eight years. He shares, “When I joined the company, the corporate and export sector growth in our product category was minimal. I saw that this is the upcoming area that has to be tapped fast. I started with corporate sales, met clients for promotional activities, and then shifted to handling exports. And now more than 1500 companies know me by my name and my face. They rely on my services”. Talking about challenges, he simply comments that challenges are never within the organization but outside. Jain’s mantra is quality and good service and he believes that the customer should feel proud when he is holding an Add Gel pen. “And we have succeeded in achieving that in the past decade,” he says.

Sharing an anecdotal learning from the past, he says, “One thing that I have learnt is that every product has its own market. Be it any segment, automobile, electronics or any FMCG product, there’s a volume market and there’s a niche market. We have already succeeded on the niche market front for we deliver the best quality, but at a higher price of course. Our customers have accepted that if it’s an Add Gel pen, it has to be expensive; it has to be a world class quality pen. Even today, our competitors come up with cheaper low quality products with less than Rs. 10 as the MRP, but we don’t have anything that’s priced at less than Rs. 20. In fact, our largest selling pen is Add Gel Achiever, which is priced at Rs. 40. And we are still growing in volumes.”

Now, Jain aims for Add Gel to be in the top 20 big brands of India, in terms of brand recall value and consumer perception, and obviously sales turnover, but all the more, he wants people to know that Add Gel is the company that they can rely on.

On being asked about the tricks of the trade that he has learnt, he says, “You need to be smart, need to be fast, you need to stick to the fact that the consumer is always right. Moreover it is very important for you to gain respect in whatever field you are working on, in terms of the commitments that you have made”.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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