Tata Docomo fascinating "Kids"... Is this a new Target Segment...??

The other day while flipping through the "Financial Express" newspaper,my eyes felt on an aricle saying "Tata Docomo launches "comix-on-the-go" service".Isnt it a great concept?

Well, i feel its a good VAS (Value Added service) to attract the Kids to use this service. Majority of the Kids population in India doesnt use Personal Mobile phone.They are very fascinated to use the VAS in their Parents phones. Now, this behaviour has been studied by Tata Docomo and it came up with this new service.

This comic application provides a number of animated comics like Mickey Mouse, Akbar Birbal, Suppandi, Manga, Devi, etc, accompanied with theme songs and sound effects. Initially this comic application can be available only in handsets like Nokia N97 as it runs on symbion S60 user interface software. Meanwhile Tata Docomo is working to provide this comic application in other handsets as well.For bringing in this content, Tata Docomo has partnered with Japan-based Zero-Sum Wireless Solutions. This service is available at Rs 20 per comic book and will remain valid for a year.

Now this has become a new trend in the cellular phone Market. Its competitor Airtel has also introuced this service. These operators are now targeting the Kids as their new Segment.Will this trend be implemented by the other competitiors? is a major question in the minds of the people.Lets see this in the coming future.

Tata Docomo is now famous for introducing such new trends in the market. It entered into the Market with a bash by introducing the Per-second billing and it has its followers. Now, the comix-on-the-go service, Airtel has become a follower of this service too. What will the Next-Big-Thing of Tata Docomo...??

Big Brands and its Extension Failures....!!

Hey readers, Branding is always been one of the subject of my major interests.I like to dive in the world of the brands and understand their behavior and the strategies applied to differentiate it from the others.The study of Branding is definitely a hobby like thing for me. Guys, here in this post i have come up with a synopsis of understanding of the Big brands and its extension failures.Before that lets understand the basics of Brand Failures.

Defining Brand Failures

A Brand is a failure when its presence in the market leads to: -

• The withdrawal of the product/brand from the market for any reason;

• The inability of a product/brand to realize the required market share to sustain its presence in the market;

• The inability of a product/brand to achieve the anticipated life cycle as defined by the organization due to any reason; or,

• The ultimate failure of a product to achieve profitability.

Failures are not necessarily the result of sub-standard engineering, design or marketing. Based on this critical definition, there are hundreds of bad movies that have reached â cult status and financial success while many a good movies have been box office bombs. Other premier products fail because of competitive actions. Sony Beta format was a clearly superior product to VHS, but their decision to not enable the format to be standardized negatively impacted distribution and availability, which resulted in a product failure.

So, why does brand fail...?? There are number of reasons for this. Here are some of them:

1.Wrong Positioning.

2.Lack of Differentiation Strategies.

3.Ineffective Promotion, including the packaging message.

4.Not understanding the Target Market Segment

5.Incorrectly Priced-too high and too low.

6.Poor timing of Distribution.

7.Misleading the Market research that did not actually reflect the consumer's behavior of the Targeted Segment.

And lot more......!!


There are numerous examples of Brand Extension Failures. They are:

1. Coke's launch of Black Cherry Vanilla Coke and Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke failure miserable

2. Pepsi's Cafechino looks like a disaster in India as very people have actually gone for it

3. Virgin: The company was able to stretch its considerable brand equities from the entertainment to the travel industry. Virgin Airlines is a success. But does anyone remember Virgin cola? Virgin vodka? Virgin jeans?

4. Ready-to-eat pizza from Amul, India

5. Dulux paints with a unique selling proposition of 7-day fragrance

6. GPI, impressed by the rising working women population and their increasing smoking habits, launched "Ms" cigarettes amidst much fanfare, exclusively for this segment. You know where Ms is today -- nowhere in the market! The company lost out heavily in ad and promotion expenses, not to count the lost (wo)man-hours. GPI did not bother to research the smoking habits of Indian women. Our women actually prefer popular men's brands!

7. Ponds Toothpaste had been a dismal failure.

Learnings: The key to successful brand extensions: the determination that the proposed extensions are consistent with core brand values. Brand extension ideas should not emanate from management's point of view, but from the consumer's.

All about a commonly misunderstood term..."Marketing"

Well readers, Do u know what marketing is all about..?? It always happens that the term " Marketing" is always misunderstood as pushing your product into the market,to generate some revenue from it. But is this Marketing all about..??

I say no,before you get into deep about Marketing you should get the basic impression what marketing is.This post will give you a basic idea on what marketing.Think about marketing as "inbound" and "outbound" marketing.

Inbound Marketing:

It includes the Market Research to find out:

1. What specific groups of potential customers/clients (markets) might have which specific needs (nonprofits often already have a very clear community need in mind when starting out with a new program -- however, the emerging practice of nonprofit business development, or earned income development, often starts by researching a broad group of clients to identify new opportunities for programs)

2. How those needs might be met for each group (or target market), which suggests how a product might be designed to meet the need (nonprofits might think in terms of outcomes, or changes, to accomplish among the groups of clients in order to meet the needs)

3. How each of the target markets might choose to access the product, etc. (its "packaging")

4. How much the customers/clients might be willing pay and how (pricing analysis)

5. Who the competitors are (competitor analysis)

6. How to design and describe the product such that customers/clients will buy from the organization, rather than from its competitors (its unique value proposition)

7. How the product should be identified -- its personality -- to be most identifiable (its naming and branding)

Outbound Marketing includes:

1. Advertising and promotions (focused on the product)
2. Sales
3. Public and media relations (focused on the entire organization)
4. Customer service
5. Customer satisfaction

Too often, people jump right to the outbound marketing. As a result, they often end up trying to push products onto people who really don't want the products at all. Effective inbound marketing often results in much more effective -- and less difficult -- outbound marketing and sales.

Source: Referred to the books of good authors in my Campus Library.