Monthly Archives: October 2007

Weekend Rollade, comeback marketing and insomnia attack! (Part dos)

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Comeback marketing… What is that about? Well, you all know Burger King, this hamburger fast food chain store once opened its door for business in Indonesia, sometimes in the 80’s/early 90’s. But for whatever reason it closed down and Indonesia had its burger shot from McDonalds, A&W, Wendy’s, the not so dead but not alive Jolly Bee, the deceased Arbys, the recently opened hotshots and the many small local burger joints. All of them are barely survive on selling just burgers, or they shift their selling strategy and survive by selling something that the Indonesian market wanted. McDonalds nowadays sells more fried chicken then burger, so are A&W, Wendy’s and the likes. This is because as most Indonesians’ are Muslims so chicken are considerably safest animal to eat, it’s also cheap. So how are the burger only joints? They suffer, they choke, they are dieing sloooooooooooooooowly, case in point, Hotshots. If you happen to read this and live in Jakarta, at Kelapa Gading area, just go to La Piazza and see the void of buyers at Hotshots counter. The burger itself is one of the nicest, I love it… But it’s price is something to be left for the rich to enjoy.

So, a burger joint is not the best idea to open in Indonesia is it? Not really, and here it is, comeback marketing in its full glory! Burger King is back and what do you know? They have 4 registers, and each are full of people queuing to buy the burger. How can this be? How can something that came back from the dead sell something in a place where people don’t necessarily consume that particular product?

The answer is very simple my friends… Coming back from the dead or in the case of Burger King, a hiatus, is sometimes a good thing. Sun Tzu mentions that retreating is a way to live and fight back another day, therefore there is no shame on doing that. Burger King while on its hiatus really done their marketing work carefully, and answers what Indonesian’s really wanted, affordable and fresh.

So Burger King now adopts an open kitchen concept where customers can see their product being cooked directly in front of them (with safety glass of course), and what do you know, it’s quite cheap. One average burger of Burger King is half the prices of Hotshots burger, which are freshly grilled also, with the same gimmick Burger King used.

Comeback marketing is not simple, and like the above example I haven’t elaborate more on the subject… Hey! It’s 4 o’clock in the morning and I haven’t slept yet! So pardon my absent minds. I will elaborate more next week, but let me give you all a snippet. Comeback marketing is tricky; first you need to know why the company left a particular region at the beginning. Then, you need to know why they are coming back to that region. Lastly you need to know how the company are going to approach the surely changed social condition of the market… Till next week.

So about my insomnia… according to Wikipedia, I have a transient insomnia, caused by a short term anxiety… D’oh, I’m broke and there are really important stuff I need to buy. Ah, what the heck… I’m used to being depressed and my body is starting to shut off anyway. Damn it! Tomorrow is a busy day too, I’m really hoping for that day when I can sleep, knowing that when I wake up, there’s that special somebody next to me.

Weekend Rollade, comeback marketing and insomnia attack! (Part uno)

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Well, it’s that time again finish the week with a closing comment of my cluttered and crazy approach to make sense of a cluttered and crazy marketing and the world in general. First let’s discuss about why Honda still insists using female model to promote Vario whereas Suzuki and Yamaha promote their competing product with both female and male (you’ll be surprised). On part two we will discuss about the silly termed comeback marketing and (if anybody cares) about my insomnia attack.

If I may talk seriously for a while… Why Suzuki and Yamaha uses two person that represent all group of users is that… Dum dum dum dum… They are just an average joe and jane, they are not celebrity, heck! They are not even famous… But Honda? Whew, Honda uses Agnes Monica, the current Indonesia’s hottest sexiest actress/singer/public figure/what not (I didn’t find her hot or sexy though). In advertising term, Honda is using Celebrity endorsement campaign, where in one; a celebrity becomes the representation of that product image and positioning. But is it effective?

Celebrity endorsed advertisement is like the debate of the century in the marketing world. Who actually benefited from the relationship between the celebrity and the product/brand? From one perspective, the advertiser expect that the celebrity star status will stick to their product, giving it a faster recall on the target market and audience minds. However, there is the catch that the advertiser actually promotes the celebrity and actually making the celebs more famous because of the extra “air time” and the product… Meh, what product? I just saw the celebrity on that ad.

On 2003, Madhukar Sabnavis, country manager for Discovery, Ogilvy and Mather India even wrote on rediff.com that celebrity endorsement is a diseases, stating that it (celebrity endorsement) sprout from advertising agency/marketer inability to promote the product using its own strength. Ouch… Madhukar even goes to state that celebrity endorsement is just an easy way out… More ouch.

I couldn’t agree more with Madhukar… (if you guys noticed, I used the name quite often, because I don’t know if Madhukar is a female or male). Sometimes the use of a celebrity will bring about the cult following effect, where fans of the celebrity will expectedly uses the product she/he is selling. However, this became a trap also for the hiring party… Why? Because that celebrity person needs to be used again and again and again and again… Buuuuuuuuuut, today people are getting smarter you know. If you read at my post entitled “Hypocrisy Marketing, the worst kind…” people nowadays are able to discern paid individuals to endorse product. So does that means something? YES! It means that people know that celebrity is just another paid individuals and their credibility is going down. So instead of using high paid celebrity, why not just use average joe/jane to promote the product?

With agreement on Madhukar excerpt , I see that Honda is just wanting to take the easy route, using celebrity to promote their product, whereas Suzuki and Yamaha believed wholeheartedly on their products they don’t need to pay much for an endorsement. Am I dissing Honda? The same Honda I have a motto over it? (my motto: I may change for the better or for worse, but Honda will always be there) Um, yes. The lack of marketing effort of Honda Indonesia both motorcycle and automobile really worries me. I may uses harsher words, but suffice to say, I have this urge to know how the marketing mind behind Honda Indonesia works.

I’m sorry… Goodbye…

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Well, on this special day, I would like to say farewell to a very deared colleague of mine, Bayu.

Throughout the two years we had together… Well, to tell you the truth, it’s the two years most fun I ever had with a colleague, ever. If there’s a reason why I always went back to my current workplace it’s all because of him (and the relaxed atmosphere).

Now that he’s moving away, I sincerely hope he finds a better job to support his family and where that job might be, I hope he finds the best of friends.

So here’s to you Bay,

I’m sorry… Goodbye… Well, I think I used the wrong sentence from a song, what about this one… If I could run away and hide away, forget the way I feel, but your memories still haunting me, convincing me it’s real… Now you’re not here… Now you’re not here…

Marketing 101: Target Market & Target Audience

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Rewriting the entry, will be done shortly

Target market and target audience are essential elements that determines the tone and manner of a marketing strategy. However, the proximity of meaning between the two sometimes trap “green marketers” in formulating a strategy. In my field of work and in my teaching days, I always found people who mistook target market and target audience.

The concept is very simple, yes, but I admit I too used to mistake the meaning of both. Target market is literally means to which we target that general product/service too, while target audience is the people that we expect to purchase or use the product/service. In short, target audience can become the target market.

One of the extreme examples I used on the class to describe the definition of target market and target audience is baby milk. The baby consumes the product, which means they are our target market. However, babies doesn’t go around shopping the milk themselves, it’s their parents job. Again, this is oversimplifying target audience and swerving too close to buying process, with the parents acting as the buyer while the baby as the user. However, the information is given to the audience about the benefit of the product towards the target market.

When talking about target market and target audience, we also uses buying

Let’s take another easier example with less ambiguous but more general. Let’s take Honda entry level scooter, the 2010 Beat. For purists out there, no, this is not the “mini NSX”, this is a small two wheel scooter that spearheads Honda effort to sell scooters in Indonesia. We can see everywhere the tone and manner of Beat’s promotion, from billboards to printed ads, they all depicts famous young stars riding the bike. The visuals alone indicate a strong relation to the young, perhaps those who are still in high school or in their college years (indicated by the figure the stars imposed).

Target market wise, these young people are Honda key target but, do they have the money to buy it? At US$1,2K or roughly Rp. 12 Million, the bike is rather expensive for somebody with no main income outside from monthly allowance. This is where we are seeing the expansiveness of target audience and the focused target market.

Honda Beat with its catchy younger tone visuals is targeted to the young, this is its target market, however, the target audience for the beat is all people who can drive a motorbike. A little bit extreme and lazy observation, but I wanted to exemplify the meaning in the simplest way possible. Even though the Beat is targeted at young people, there’s no fault at older people or other people from other discipline of work to own the Beat. As a matter of fact, there’s the bonus of resonating message from the initial campaign. Beat’s marketing effort is directed towards younger audience, sometimes, “older” people would like to be associated with this “young” image and thus bought the bike even though they are outside the target market, and even audience.

Most often, I saw seniors or older people driving around in the new Honda Jazz, and as fast as I can think, wow… Those guys are really young at heart. They should be driving Mercedes or perhaps Accord, but no, for whatever reason they drove a Jazz instead. I don’t see them as incapable of buying upmarket products because of economic reason, I just saw them as wanting to be associated with the image created by the product (Jazz = young & hip).

The definition of target market and target audience can be found on many books and sources. They are after all the basic element for a marketer to base the overall marketing strategy and approach. However, there is one thing that pique my interest… On his book, Marketing Management by Philip Kotler, he omits target audience altogether and just refer target market as a sole base value to be considered when creating a marketing strategy. Well, a good move, but personally I think that the book is intended towards advanced readers who already understand the boundary of audience and the real target market.

Some uses psychographics and demographics to create distinct barrier between target audience and target market. One of my marketing professors defines that psychographic and demographic creates core target market while outside of those influence comes in the target audience. Let’s put those in graphics shall we?

Applying that to Honda Beat core target market, we can see that

Okay, so last week I blabber about how Yamaha changed the target market of Mio from female to male with the introduction of Mio Soul. I expect other brands will follow suit (Honda & Suzuki) because as far as these eyes can see, all automatic scooters are being driven by the male population. However, yesterday I saw an ad about Honda Vario, they still use this popular actress to promote the brand alone, without any hint whatsoever to indicate that this scooter is a unisex bike. On the other side of the competition, Suzuki launched Skywave, the successor of the not so popular Spin, an automatic scooter. The advertisement clearly shows a very macho man and a very sexy woman, just like Yamaha did with the new Mio soul.

So will this bring about wrong image delivery to Honda Vario? After all, people aspire to the “representation” of people displayed on the ad. Well, the answer is not that simple… First of all, if anybody remember how Honda Jazz (Fit) is advertised here in Indonesia, then people will acknowledge that Honda used a pair of popular female singers to endorse the product. So does only female buys Jazz? No, does only young people buy Jazz? Not so much.

Here we have what I would like to call, “splash damage”, the message that originally intended towards specific target audience spreads to other expected segment. When people buy something first they have to go through what marketing defines as The Buying Process, yes, a process. In it, people will go through several phases, first people will acknowledge/know the product, then interest will grow, decision making is formed and action is taken to buy or not to buy. Yes, it is AIDA we are talking about here, the basic skill we learn at faculty of communication, but do you notice there’s a few word that I leaned? (pardon the pun)…

Decision making, what is all that about, and what it got to do with Honda Vario? Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know. But one thing for sure, this has got to do with target audience and target market. When you sell a baby’s milk, do you create:

a. Advertisement for the baby

b. Advertisement for the mother

c. Advertisement for the father

Sane people will choose mother or father, but the product (the milk) is consumed by the baby, so why not create an ad for the baby? Anybody who asks of this should be shunned out of society immediately. Of course the baby couldn’t comprehend the ad, they doesn’t even comprehend why the sky is blue or why daddy hump mommy at night in front of them. Thus this explains the very basic of the difference between target market and target audience; with the baby being the target market and the parents as the target audience.

Anyway, back to the matter, so why is Honda still uses a female representative to promote Vario? Simple, because Honda Jazz is promoted by two female singers and we all know that most Jazz drivers are male.

Hot of the press! Updates galore! Last weekend rollade I close the week with a completion of Marketing Garbage entry. So Honda uses a famous actress to attract customer and consolidates its presence using the hottest spokesperson in the town. But waaaiiitt… It seems that I’m too fast from making a judgment, because just a couple days ago (I think on sunday) I saw an ad of Honda Vario with that hot spokeswoman and a hot spokesman, another handsome pretty face which I don’t know the name of because I’m too busy writing a blog thingie.