The marketing yarn

I am a fibre and yarn manufacturer. What is the role of marketing in my enterprise? Must I focus on it?

_ S. S. Swamy, Ahmedabad

Swamy-ji, while production is back-end, marketing and branding are front-end disciplines. Needless to say, each is important in its own way.

While production is about standardisation, quality, consistency and more, marketing is about putting a face to what is produced. Marketing helps add zing to what may be an otherwise boring product.

Indian units that manufacture both fibre and yarn and finished products of every kind are very good at the back end, and a bit on the back foot when it comes to marketing and branding. This is the big gap to fill. Manufacturing units need to adopt and adapt to a totally new mindset on marketing. Marketing is no longer someone else’s core competence and someone else’s business. Marketing is as important a function of a manufacturing unit as any. This is the change in mindset that needs to be cascaded into the manufacturing segment at large.

Once there is a buy-in into this mindset, you will see the entire industry morph from being a mere “maker” to an aggressive ‘marketer” as well. Marketing is no rocket science. It is not as alien, even. Marketing is a lot of common sense bundled into a science, art and philosophy that is called branding.

Is youth marketing for everyone? Must I also jump in? I manufacture a ready-to-eat savoury item.

_ Payal Rohit, Shillong

Payal, the young are always an important category in any marketing economy. In many ways, most products and services are leveraged with the young in mind. No brand ignores this segment. The young are not only consumers, but are also opinion-makers for products and services.

This trend will deepen as India becomes younger and younger. The median age of this country is 26 years. This age will dictate all product development.

You can learn a lot from the snack food category, the QSR category and indeed the category of FMCG, which have been leaders in this space. The future will see even categories such as auto and pharmaceuticals gearing themselves to the young.

As of now, the soft categories of consumption have been touched. As the years roll by, expect harder categories such as durables and auto getting embraced in this movement as well deeply.

In your re-engineering exercise, first remember that products need to be tactile. The young are very touch-and-feel oriented. Second, the cosmetic value of products is appreciated more by the young. Add to it the bells and whistles that the young like. These could be features such as the ability of brands to be technologically enhanced and advanced.

It is about the language of advertising as well. The young love the language of the young. The tone, tenor and decibel of advertising needs to be young-altered. This is not a tough call at all. Expect advertising to get irreverent and in-the-eye as well.

Customising advertisements by target audience and geography could be the next big thing in the field of TV broadcasting. Is this an opportunity?

_ Jayaraj Menon, Chennai

Jay, TV has grown to be too much a mass medium. While it makes sense to be able to reach width from the perspective of content, from the perspective of advertising, width means messaging that has to be mass-reach-oriented and indeed lowest-common-denominator in its approach.

TV has to continue its quest for width in terms of content reach. In terms of advertising it needs to behave like a local newspaper does. It needs to segment regions and preferences and dish out advertising in that manner. This is cost-efficient as well. The future of intelligent advertising points to this. Expect lots of it.

In a sea of ‘massification’, the target audience notices the niche of fine-tuned geographic messaging. Advertising , advertisers and broadcasters can benefit from this immensely.

Once television as a medium is able to fine-tune its logistical issues of delivering local advertising on a national content-oriented medium, expect print to feel the pinch. Television rules even today. I guess it will rule even better and bigger once all channels are able to offer this to the advertiser.'

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. askharishbijoor@gmail.com

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