Fascinating facts about marketing

Marketing is one of the most fascinating subjects to teach and to learn. The subject is easy to relate and deals with products and services that are used every day. Marketing appears simple but can get very complex. For example why is that watch advertisements always show 10:10! Or for instance why is baker’s dozen not 12 but 13. How Hyderabad accounts for almost 50 per cent of Thums up’s all India sales? or why the entire top management of Coca-Cola never travels together! Read on and be amazed

Coca-Cola: Easily the most recognised, most popular brand name in the world, Coca-Cola has a fascinating history. It was invented by John Pemberton, a pharmacist in 1886. Coca-Cola was initially a prescription drug that it could only be dispensed by licensed pharmacists. The top management of the Coca-Cola will not travel on a single flight. If they all travel in a plane and if that plane crashes, the world would be deprived of its favourite soft drink. Even today the concentrate for the bottling plants throughout the world comes in sealed packets from the Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Red is happiness: Coca-Cola with its aggressive promotions, its iconic hour glass shaped bottle and innovative sales promotions has captured the world’s imagination and stayed a step ahead of its fierce rival, Pepsi. The huge popularity of Santa Claus whose costumes are always red can be attributed to the marketing muscle of Coca-Cola. The best way to show and express one’s happiness is to drink and share a chilled bottle of Coca-Cola. That is the power of association and persuasive communication.

Pepsi: It was first developed in 1880 by Caleb Bradham a pharmacist and industrialist from New Bern, North Carolina. He named the Cola after Peptin an enzyme found in Pepsi. Right from the start Pepsi-Cola was playing catch with the leader Coca-Cola. Pepsi knew that it could not match coke on the taste, marketing and on the recall front. So it hit upon a novel idea, it started offering more cola at the same price. It started offering more quantity than Coca-Cola. It steadily gained market share and was seen as a serious competitor.

The nail in the coffin was when it conducted ‘blind trails’. In these blind trails both Coke and Pepsi (without revealing the brand name) were given to cola customers and they were asked about their cola preference. Much to the delight of Pepsi and to Coke’s horror most customers, especially the youngsters preferred Pepsi over Coca-Cola. Pepsi made this big news and gave it so much publicity that even Coca-Cola believed the blind trails. This incident led to the marketing goof up of all time. Coca-Cola Inc. withdrew its iconic Coca-Cola and introduced a new one. The new coke was not liked at all and Coca-Cola had to beat a hasty retreat and was forced to reintroduce its old Coca-Cola.

Surprisingly Pepsi has done very well in India. It entered India first and has consolidated itself. Coke which entered later found the battle quite tough. Coke goofed up on believing that its own brands can take on Pepsi like everywhere in the world and neglected its Indian brands like Thums Up, Limca and Maaza. By the time it realised its mistake Pepsi had stolen a march on its illustrious competitor. Coca-Cola is a poor third in India and trails both Pepsi and Thums Up. India is one of the few markets in the world were Pepsi sells more than Coca-Cola. It is a fact that Coca-Cola finds very difficult to digest.

Pepsi once ran an advertisement promising a Harrier jet to anyone who collected 700,000,000 Pepsi Points, a gag that backfired when a participant attempted to take advantage of the ability to buy additional points for 10 cents each to claim a jet for $700,000.

Students’ of Marketing get puzzled at the success of Thums up, the Indian brand that remains very strong even after the entry of global brands. The strong taste, the rugged image and its Indianness has made Thums up a favourite with the Indian customers. And a substantial sale (nearly 50 per cent) of Thums up comes from Hyderabad, Coca-Cola was puzzled. Subsequent research had the answer. Hyderabadis love their oily biryanis. Most customers automatically order Thums up with their plate of biryani. It is believed that the strong Thums up acts like a digestive and relieves the feeling of heaviness in the stomach. Most restaurants in Hyderabad offer a combo of Biryani and Thums up.

Kentucky fried chicken and Colonel Sanders: KFC (Kentucky fried chicken) remains the world’s most popular chicken. It is very interesting to note that the name has been shortened to KFC so that customers don’t feel guilty about the fried part. Saying KFC is not only short and sweet but also takes off the uneasiness associated with fried food which contains excess calories. The picture of the man on the KFC brand is that of Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC who franchised his business when he was 62-years-old. Colonel Sanders is famous for his secret recipe for frying chicken in a pressure fryer that cooks the chicken faster than pan frying.

Watch advertisement always show 10:10: Many of us have wondered as to why watches and clocks in photographs and advertisements mostly show the time as 10:10. The main reason is aesthetics. There are a number of visual advantages of having the hands of the watch set at the 10:10 position.

One is that the hands are kept from overlapping each other. Having them on both sides of the watch face ensures that the hands themselves are visible and can be appreciated. There is symmetry and beauty in the presentation. The position also allows the hands to look nice on the face of the timepiece.

Another reason is that key details on the face of the watch or clock usually remain visible at 10:10. The logo of the manufacturer is usually found printed below the number 12, and sometimes next to the 3, 6, and 90’ clock positions. Logos found under the 12 are nicely framed or centered by 10:10 hands. The 10:10 hands look “happy” due to the fact that the hands look like a smile (or like a “V” as in “victory”). Timex once showed the time as 8:20 in their product photos but 8:20 was perceived as a frown, and Timex decided to go back to 10:10.

There are a number of other beliefs about the 10:10 time. Many of them attribute it to a historic event (e.g. Lincoln/JFK assassinations, the dropping of the atomic bombs) but most of the beliefs are unsubstantiated by facts.

Why a Baker’s Dozen is 13 instead of 12: There are two main theories for why a baker’s dozen is 13 instead of 12, but most think it has its origins in the fact that many societies throughout history have had extremely strict laws concerning baker’s products, due to the fact that it was fairly easy for bakers to cheat patrons and sell them less than what they think they are getting. In Babylon, if a baker was found to have sold a “light loaf” to someone, the baker would have had his hand chopped off.

Why would the bakers give 13 and charge for 12? There are two theories. The first is that bakers would sell 13 loaves to vendors, while only charging them for 12 which allowed the vendor to then sell all 13 at full price; thus, they’d earn a 7.7 per cent more profit per loaf.

Yet another theory is that it was simply a product of the way bakers bake bread. Baking trays tend to have 3:2 aspect ratios. The most efficient two-dimensional arrangement then of loaves/biscuits/whatever on such a tray results in 13 items with a 4+5+4 hexagonal arrangements, which avoids corners.

It was important to avoid the corners because the corners of a baking tray will heat up and cool off faster than the edges and the interior, which would result in not cooking anything on the corner evenly with the rest. But this theory doesn’t explain why they would sell them in batches of 13 for the price of 12, but at least explains why they may have commonly made them in batches of 13. Jell-O monitored the amount of smiley faces and frown faces used on Twitter. Whenever the national average of smiley faces was more than 51 per cent, Jell-O released coupons to those who recently tweeted frown faces. Talk about targeted marketing!

Kraft Foods rotated their square Shreddies cereal by 45 degrees, and re-marketed them as the new “Diamond Shreddies”. The new product showed a large increase in sales and test groups even reported a difference in flavor. This shows us how it is all about how things are marketed to us.

Total War-Rome: Rather than use the marketing budget on advertisements for Total War-Rome, the game developers hired a group to create (entertaining) Youtube videos about the Punic Wars and Roman History. They suggested this group not to mention or market the game, “Just teach history.”

LendUp: It is possible that loans could be refused in USA if the person is unpopular on Facebook. A San Francisco based start-up ‘LendUp’ checks the Facebook and Twitter profiles of potential borrowers to see how many friends they have and how often they interact. The company views an active social media life as an indicator of stability.

Web app: The web app pulls data for people on social media sites. It crunches all the information, highlights topics where people are most influential, and generates a score for everyone between 1 and 100. The higher the score, the more influential a person is. Marketers use these scores to target their advertisements to opinion leaders.

By:Dr M Anil Ramesh