Hello, We Are Listening!

Three months ago when the Rs 135 crore cosmetic major Lakme Lever placed an advert in leading national dailies, inviting consumers to come up with their own whacky shades of the Elle18 nail enamel, the response was stupendous. Letters are still pouring in telling Cadbury India the different situations for munching the Perk chocolate bar. And Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Hindustan Lever is sitting on a fund of information on what consumers think is their dream detergent.

Certainly, interactive marketing is catching on as marketers are looking at ways and means of involving consumers. Call them contests or promotions, but companies are increasingly using market research as a tool to develop communication. While Nestles Polo Mint was one of the first to have initiated the concept a few years ago, Cadburys, Lakme and Hindustan Lever all claim that it is the first step towards relationship building. They claim that while the responses may not exactly come in handy for product development, it no doubt gives insights into the brands core buyers. To put it simply, companies want to show consumers that they care.

 

Says Arun Adhikari, divisional vice-president marketing, detergents of Hindustan Lever, In todays competitive world and advertising clutter, performance may depend on building relationships between the brand and customer. Adds Deepak Sethi, director sales and marketing at Cadbury, The activity induces consumers to get involved with the brand and it breaks the clutter.

In fact, it is the offbeat creative which hooks the consumer. Take the Hindustan Levers ad for its 38-year old Surf brand, asking consumers to say what they expected from their detergent powder. Released in November, it was mainly to create noise before the launch of the premium Surf Excel Power.

Today, managers at the

Rs 7,200 crore Hindustan Lever are pleasantly surprised by the 80,000 plus letters that have poured in from different parts of the country. The exercise was more than positive. For what was just an advertising gimmick, they were able to extract valuable market information. And for a company which is known to spend upwards of Rs 10 crore on market research, they have acquired information that no other research methodology would have shown.

According to Adhikari, the objective was to get a sense of some of the fabric wash problems on a large scale and then build a relationship. In the Rs 1,500 crore detergent market, both Surf (market share four per cent) and Procter & Gambles Ariel (market share 2.5 per cent) detergent have been giving each other a scrub. This kind of interactivity creates a condition for the positive attitude for the brand and positive learning from the brand, he says.

Agrees Sonia Singh, marketing manager at Lakme. The month-long Elle campaign launched in October last year was mainly to create excitement around the brand and call for consumer involvement. It was the outcome of a leitmotif in their in-house research findings. Our ongoing research has shown that in grooming products, women are never happy with what they get, they always aspire for the dream colour. We wanted to launch a shade which was unconventional, she explains.

For the Rs 350 crore Cadbury, it was more to create hype around one of their star brands. Launched two years ago, Perk was the answer to Nestles Kit Kat. Today, with a 12 per cent market share compared to Kit Kats 14 per cent, Cadbury has identified the chocolate coated wafer snack segment as its thrust area in the Rs 400 crore chocolate market.

So, for the past two weeks, a host of channels in the country (Sony, Vijaya TV, Asianet and Trivandrum Doordarshan) have been running a Perk spot six to seven times a day. It is inviting consumers to write in about the different situations they consume the chocolate. There is nothing creative about the commercial, but Cadbury hopes to solicit over 30,000 responses. Says Sethi, We did it because it was beyond the ordinary. The objective was to create more brand saliency, more hype and consumer involvement.

Clearly, marketers vouch for the efficacy of the exercise. They claim, that at times, interactive marketing scores over classical market research, especially for brands with heritage. As Adhikari says, In market research, you get answers to questions you ask, but in interactive research, you capture what is high on peoples agenda without any preconceptions.

Secondly, it is the quality of findings. Unlike market research which is restricted to a sample size, here there is no limit on the responses. With an invitation to communicate with the brand, the responses which are on a wider scale are from consumers who are more involved in the brand or category.

Where research scores is in the depth of information. Interactive marketing is more spontaneous than its traditional counterpart.

So how useful are the findings? Does it throw up information that companies dont already know?

We knew the kind of responses that we would get, but the degree of feedback surprises you. It reinforces your hypotheses, says Lakmes Singh. All the same, the number of shade combinations have given Lakme ideas for product development.

It is still too early to gauge the responses for the currently running Perk campaign. But Cadburys Sethi says that while there will be an initial rub off on sales, the long term objective is to use the ideas for future communication.

However, Hindustan Lever claims it can leverage the findings. For one, the responses have thrown up a range of stains they hadnt thought about. Besides, there were ideas on packaging which would all aid product development.

Clearly, with more and more marketers ready to listen to consumers, interactive marketing is becoming an important tool in communication. As Adhikari, quoting a Chinese proverb says, Tell me and Ill forget. Show me and Ill remember. Involve me and I will understand. This probably could be the first step towards a long term relationship.