question hour. It’s time to show some drive!

It’s time to show some drive!

Cab aggregators such as Ola and Über are promoting a fair bit. What’s missing?

Indore

Patra-ji, what’s missing is possibly differentiation and big action. Über has been a staid and stodgy brand in India thus far. It may have a lineage of excitement that is young, funky and global, but India has seen little or none of it. To that extent Über is another Ola or a Meru. A pari passu brand in a pari passu market for cab offerings.

The brand has had its down-moments in the country and one just hopes all this is behind them. It needs to think of a serious revival and resuscitation. It needs to think of segmenting the market clearly and must aim to own a profitable piece of it. It must not aim to be everything to everybody, as it will fall between many stools of expectation then.

The first thing to do is beef up its availability and service standards in India, which is unfortunately not what it is globally. After attempting and perfecting that, the brand needs to think funky. What can it do?

Plenty.

An Über-pregnant for those expecting a baby, an Über-Valentine right through the month of February. An Über-KittyParty service and maybe twenty different things for which I would send them my professional bill.

Ola is actually attempting it. Ola just ran a contest on its Ola Auto bookings. And an iPad contest for a couple of days. And recently, with Myntra in tow, a Look-Good kind of contest that had Myntra bringing goodies on an Ola booking (See page 4). Those who tried the app on the day of the contest, however, are more put off than on, as the cabs were just not available.

Operators need to be, therefore, careful before they commit themselves long and thin on such campaigns that irritate many and please ony a few.

When I see e-commerce advertising across players, there is little to distinguish from, today. Why? Where has uniqueness gone?

Hyderabad

Shonali, uniqueness has taken a bit of a vacation, for sure.

It just does not matter anymore. No one stands out. One is spending massive money on what I call ‘discount-vertising’. Each of them is getting back to the days of the dotcom being and becoming a commodity rather than a brand to be chased and a brand to be proud of massive customer-loyalty bases.

I do believe e-commerce players understand that there is a great degree of consumer promiscuity between each of these sites. To the consumer today, ‘FlAmSna’ is it. The top three brands of Flipkart-Amazon-Snapdeal fused together is one brand for them.

All others in this space belong to different brand structures. When you want to buy an epilator online, ‘FlAmSna’ comes to mind, as one offering, and you will visit each one of them and decide which offers the lowest price, and you check out.

The trap the top three sites have walked into is a trap of their own making. The top three have created the discount-minded animal.

They have encouraged promiscuity, and the consumer fuses these three brands together as one in his and her mind. I will now call it “brand-fusing” and am in the midst of writing a paper on this subject.

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