Quiver full of ideas

Vipin Kumar

PRODUCTS target specific users, but their ads don't. That's why we sometimes hum and haw when the five-year old at home wants to know what Kama Sutra is when the ad is flashed on TV. This sort of incongruity is a problem for companies too, for they may not get the desired results as the ads don't reach the targeted audience.

Enter Brandquiver. This Delhi-based company, promoted by Times Internet and Turner Morrison, seeks to address this very issue by leveraging on the Internet. After 17 months of existence in the topsy-turvy world of dotcoms, Brandquiver has not only survived but is also on its way to break even. Before we take a closer look at this start-up's offerings, let's first find out how it survived the bust.

``We are not a dotcom,'' says Rajesh Menon, Business Head, Marketing. ``We changed ourselves three months after we started as a dotcom,'' says Menon, whose visiting card conspicuously misses the .com tag. So when Brandquiver was launched as ``brandquiver.com'', it was meant to be a meeting place for all those in the advertising and marketing fraternity. The revenue model: advertisement. But soon the company cottoned on to the fact that ad revenues may not sustain it. So it decided to shift its focus to brand consultancy for the Net.

Brandquiver's make-over necessitated that it go in for re-training people and beefing up some departments like say, creative. Also, it decided to drop ads from the site. Today, the company offers online brand-building, online consumer research and Internet marketing as its main services through what it calls the `3M' model (Measure, Meet and Manifest).

``A lot of companies want to leverage the Net but they don't understand the technology of the Net,'' says Menon. ``Traditional advertising agencies are so used to mass media that they also don't understand this new medium. We come in here with our services, designed for the Internet.'' Since assuming the new avatar, Brandquiver has had clients such as TVS, Inalsa, Sahara, Lacoste, Tata, Sony, Electrolux and Timex.

Menon cites what Brandquiver has done for TVS Scooty. ``TVS wanted to target Scooty at students who have passed Std 12 and about to enroll in colleges. This might not have been possible through advertising in the mass media.''

Brandquiver found that Webdunia.com, a vernacular portal, was attracting the same bunch of students by displaying examination results on its site. A Web site, ``tvs-scooty.com'' was created and linked to Webdunia.com. To attract the students, a contest, `Guess your mark', was also devised. Those who could guess their marks right were promised a TVS-Scooty.

``In one-and-a-half months, we had 1.5 lakh students registered with our site. Then we started targeting this community with offerings from TVS-Scooty, such as special financial packages,'' Menon says. The programme is still on and its early days to measure its impact on the scooterette's sales. Some of the other services of Brandquiver are direct e-mail, research to check customer satisfaction and online sampling.

Meanwhile, the company is entering new waters. It has developed an e-mail campaign automation tool named ``Falcon Version 1.0'' and plans to market it aggressively. This tool would help e-mail marketers to send out their message to the ``right people at the right time and at the right frequency.''

``We developed this software for our internal use but then we realised that there is a market for it,'' says Menon. Falcon is priced in the Rs 1-3 lakh range.

Brandquiver is poised to break even this year itself, Menon claims, as he projects a turnover of Rs 8 crore for the year. The company has 30 people on its roll now. It is also opening an office in Singapore. Brandquiver has not had any venture capital funding yet as the promoters intend to keep their stakes intact for some more time.

Although the company claims to be the first integrated brand consultancy, competition is certainly hotting up as online advertising revenues start to increase. A number of large agencies have created special divisions to develop ads for the Internet and even portals such as Yahoo! offer special packages for advertisers on its site. ``Traditional ad agencies are our main competitors,'' Menon concedes. But the best thing about the Net is that it gives room for everyone to grow.