Advertising: The Awareness Builder

Advertising plays an important role in successful business ventures. It entails identifying and selecting the media that provide the greatest amount of exposure for a business and developing effective, yet appropriate materials for each medium. It is more than running an ad in a local newspaper, on a radio or television station or just simply hanging a sign outside the business and waiting for the customers to purchase product. It requires that one knows his product - that is, the selling points - and that one develops literature that can arouse the customers' consciousness levels to the point that they are curious enough to investigate it, and then raises their need or desire levels to the point that they are willing to purchase it.

The media formats that can be used are:
Newspaper, radio, or television ads (newspaper advertising is the least expensive and television advertising is the most expensive of these formats). Professional advice and assistance may be needed when developing ads for these media formats.
· Business cards
· Classified ads in the local newspaper
· Direct marketing
· Telemarketing (this format can be expensive, also)
· Yellow Pages advertising
· Sampling - mailing or distributing free samples of your product or a flyer about your service to the public.
· Advertising in community-based magazines or newspapers.

In this paper the endeavor is to develop an integrated marketing communications plan built around the Reliance's core strengths. For the last few years, the focus has been on emphasizing Reliance’s heritage as "Dhirubhai Ambani Initiative" The problem with the old tagline, however, is that many in the youth (an obviously prime target market) perceived the tagline to mean that the service was "old." At the same time, the company was developing a quality initiative to increase the quality of service -- and the quality of customer care. The new tagline that has emerged is: "Changing India…Changing lives".

To achieve the objective we have looked at the company's current communications -- Website, handouts, flyers, ads, etc. and analyzed it as a brand. The major changes that are noticed belongs to the domain of TV adds that the company is showing these days which have clearly ceased to mention Dhirubhai ambani’s name, rather they communicate the quality of the service that reliance is providing along with a host of features and benefits and that too for rock bottom prices, something that has not been offered by any of the other service providers as yet. Looking at those commercials it can be deciphered that reliance is not trying to please a particular segment , rather it is trying to mass market its services by coming up with a range of TV commercials that are addressing to different market segment. Here one may come up with a question that how can one same service or a product can cater to the needs of a variety of customers? The answer to this lies in a range of handsets that reliance is able to offer with each having different features that fulfill the needs and requirements of different segments. Also there are optional services like R-world that one can avail only if he is ready to pay an extra price. The marketing strategy clearly stands out to be differentiation on quality and price. All this is really helping reliance, particularly reliance India mobile in emerging as one of the strongest brand name in the telecom market built up on quality initiative rather than on the name of “Dhirubhai” that sounded irrational in a competitive market and was not really successful in capturing the attention of the young and educated India. Finally the paper focuses on developing recommendations on what needs to be done to strengthen its branding and image.


Few words for Reliance Infocomm

Infocomm Vision
Increase India’s teledensity by providing connectivity and mobility at disruptive prices affordable by the masses.
Broadband applications for enterprises to enhance productivity.
Triple play for the home segment to fully meet customers’ needs for information, communication and entertainment.
Leverage digital infrastructure (fiber backbone) to realize the full potential of India’s talent pool
Platform for building a global Infocomm business Ushering in ‘A New Way of Life’.
Infocomm Strategy and quality initiatives
Fully integrated across the entire Infocomm Value chain covering:
Ø Content Applications Network Service CPE
Ø Ubiquitous network providing 100 MBPS of bandwidth per CPE
Ø Digital distribution network fully capable of offering:
Ø Voice, Video & Data
Ø Using CDMA 1x/EV-DO, FTTB, LMDS technologies
Ø Customer ownership through control of last mile


Introduction
1.1. Problem Statement
Producers of all goods and services — from cookies to cars, from on-line data to distributed database management systems, from ATM drivers to portfolio management companies — have frequently confronted a situation in which their offerings no longer perfectly match consumer preferences. The extent to which the two are mismatched could vary from marginal to catastrophic misalignment (as in the case of Ford’s Edsel). In all cases the sellers face the same dilemma: to what extent do they change the product (respond constructively to market place demands), to what extent to they advertise the virtues of their product (in an attempt to change market preferences), and to what extent do they use advertising deceptively (to attempt to change the perception of their product to a less accurate, but more favorable set of attributes, more in line with market preferences). The sellers’ dilemma in effect represents the problem of choosing from two basic strategies that are open to them; product modification and advertising. Product modification involves making changes to one or more attributes of the product to bring it in line with the market’s preferences. Advertising presents two different sub-options. Sellers may advertise either the virtues of their product (in an attempt to change market preferences) or they may use advertising deceptively (to attempt to change the perception of their product to a less factually accurate set of attributes more in line with market preferences).
Each of these strategies has different cost implications, depending on the nature and complexity of the product, the size and spread of the market, and the gap between desired perception and current market perception of the product. However, as we shall see below, the nature of products and services, the costs associated with changing them, and the costs associated with communicating these changes to consumers, have all been profoundly altered, even transformed, by the net. The selection of the optimal strategy from among the three has always been dictated by costs and benefits: Changing the product is expensive. If done well and communicated well to consumers, however, the benefits will include current sales, credibility with consumers, and future sales. This strategy offers an annuity value, akin to the value of good will or of brand strength created by a satisfied set of buyers who will probably be repeat buyers and who will also help persuade other buyers to adopt the product in the future. As an example, consider firms that invest in quality and constantly bring out high quality upgrades of the product. They often do so for one of these two reasons. (1) It is possible to extract higher rents from a customer base that is convinced about the product’s quality, and (2) the firm’s reputation for quality will often be transferable to a variety of products and brands offered by the same firm. The firm’s reputation for delivering customer satisfaction acts as an annuity for the firm, representing a stream of rents that will accrue to the firm in the future.
Changing market preferences sometimes is often both expensive and time consuming, and is thus rarely effective. Given the costs associated with changing the market’s preferences, a firm may attempt to do this only if the benefits of engineering such a change can be disproportionately reaped by the firm itself. If, after an expensive campaign to change the market’s preferences, the profits could possibly be competed away, the firm’s incentives to undertake such a campaign would stand diminished. Citibank made considerable investment in direct mail and media advertising to convince retail consumers that they could get their credit cards from any bank, not merely from the bank where they maintained their checking accounts. This has profoundly transformed the credit card industry, but much of the benefit has been captured by monolines — banks that only offer credit cards, and would have had no customers had Citibank not created the conditions that allowed them to compete effectively for profitable customers. Finally, in some instances changing the perceptions of the market may be infeasible; for example, this would be an awkward time to convince many people that smoking is actually good for their health. In some instances, changing the perception of the product may be the least expensive option available, or it may be the most valuable. Even if the purchaser is dissatisfied with the initial purchase, collateral sunk investments made by the customers may preclude them from returning their purchases, in which case this option is quite attractive to the firm. Moreover, if the product
purchased has long term switching costs, then consumers may be forced to buy upgrades or supplies from the original seller, providing the firm with an annuity value and further justifying its choice of this strategy. Alternatively, if returns are high and the damage to consumer credibility is long-lasting, lying would be a very poor strategy. These choices are even more significant today. This is in part due to the many ways in which the net reduces the barriers to entry and decreases the costs of providing information to consumers. However, these choices have also become more significant in part due to the different nature of information production goods (such as database management systems) and the higher switching costs associated with consumers’ initial selections. There is a clear distinction between the options open to the dissatisfied buyers of an information consumption product such as say, an Encyclopedia on a CD and an information product , say, a relational database. The significant switching costs associated with latter drive sellers to adopt very different strategies in marketing these products. The advent of the Internet has lowered barriers to entry to an extent that has resulted in a proliferation of products and services. This proliferation has in turn imposed a cognitive cost on the buyer who wishes to inspect products and services in order to make an informed choice. Thus the role played by a brand in mitigating the “cognitive clutter” is becoming increasingly significant. In the financial services industry, the reduction of barriers to entry allows anyone to offer financial services, and therefore the role of a brand as a surrogate for more complex measures of quality becomes increasingly important.
1.2. Role of Brand for Different Product Categories
Brands play different roles in different classes of products. The importance of brand in the case of physical consumables arises from the ease of communicating any statement to the consumer and for what the brand signifies. When the attributes of a product can be easily changed, such as in the case of a cola or a cookie, the consumer is only too aware of the fact that the product can be easily reformulated between two successive purchases. A consumer’s decision problem while shopping for a physical consumable, say, a cookie, is two fold – (1) how does she decide which cookie to buy? and (2) once she identifies a taste that she likes from the many that she has sampled, how can she be sure that the taste will remain unchanged in the future? For the sellers of these products the primary use of a brand may be to assure the consumer that the product has not changed and will not change. The risk of brand dilution in this class of products stems from buyers’ perception that the seller has changed the product or that the brand no longer signifies immutability of the product attributes that mattered to them. When Coca Cola changed its formulation, there was much criticism from the market and its analysts, forcing the company to revert to the old formulation soon. In the class of products known as information consumables, branding plays a role somewhat different from the one discussed above. Products such as the Wall Street Journal, the Encyclopedia Britannica and ZD Net’s electronic product rating service are all examples of information consumables. An Information consumable is characterized by a cost structure very different from that of the physical consumables. An Information consumable is a high first copy cost product which means that it is costly to produce but cheap to reproduce. It has a very low marginal cost that is often negligible, especially in the case of digitizable information products, but is characterized by a very high investment in acquiring the capability to produce a specific kind of information. It is often exceedingly difficult and in some cases impossible

2 Creating the Advertising Plan for Reliance
Developing an effective advertising plan requires that consideration be given to budget, competition, customers, advertising vehicles and consistency.

Budget
In developing a business plan, one must be sure to include some expenditure for advertising. For start up or small business owners, one can think in terms of 3-5% of his total projected annual revenues. If 3-5% is not viable, one can go for 2% or whatever is affordable. The point is: put something in the budget to reach your potential customers. As a comparison, large consumer product companies like Reliance infocomm spend as much as around 25-30% of their revenues on advertising. We need to think in terms of resource allocation when developing an advertising budget. One might be spending more time than actual money in the start-up phase of business.
As far as Reliance is concerned, it wouldn’t face any problems regarding the budget as it has deep pockets.

Competition

Be very aware of your competitive edge. What is it that your product/service does different and better than your competitors? Be sure your competitive edge is highly visible in your advertising approach.

Do a little research on the kinds of advertising your competition is doing. Sometimes your competitive edge can be that you do a better job of advertising. Has your competition purchased display ads in the yellow pages? Design a better ad. Purchase a larger ad. If your competition is leaving flyers on customer’s doors, do something else. Choose another way to get information to your customers. Find a way to stand out from the crowd. Here in this area Reliance stands out to be quite impressive as it ha
s already revamped its contact centers and also the billing systems that was actually giving problems to many customers due to which people started considering it bad on quality which is certainly not the issue these days .Also it has come up with innovative services like R-world that keeps the subscribers abreast of the latest news from around the world . Reliance is able to publicize it through the TV ads and print adds that really communicate the message in a complete and immaculate way to the target audiences. Also they have shed the “dhirubhai” name from its ads and focusing on the features and the wide range of handsets to woo the young customers.

Customers

identify your perfect customer. Determine who is most likely to buy your product/service on a continuing basis. If your customers are individuals, give some thought to some key issues that might be important. Consider their age, gender, income level, geographic location and lifestyle issues.

If your customers are other businesses, look at issues such as specific industries, size of company (either number of employees or sales volume), geographic location, etc.

Once you have visualized this individual or business, and then consider - Where are you likely to find them? In what kinds of places do they congregate? What kinds of publications do they read? What kinds of television programs do they watch? What radio stations might they listen to?
Here the major customers are middle and upper class people between the age of 18 to 40 who are mostly either students or professionals and people who are mobile most of the time. The business model is largely B to C. Therefore Reliance has come up with its own retail stores called “Web world” at most of the commercial market complexes where the target segment can be addressed. Also reliance is coming up with TV and print ads in popular TV channels at prime time and most subscribed news papers respectively on a perennial bases.

Advertising Vehicles
Choice of advertising vehicles is dependent on the issues discussed earlier: budget, competition and customers. Since most start up businesses have limited advertising budgets, advertising vehicles might include:
Networking

After determining where your potential customers are likely to congregate, put together a plan to be visible in those places. Join your local Chamber of Commerce, Rotary or professional trade association and attend meetings regularly. Join a committee, volunteer to help on an event or find other ways to be useful and noticeable.
In case of reliance it has come up with its own retail stores called “Web world” at most of the commercial market complexes. Reliance Web World is a nationwide chain of retail stores for digital entertainment and communication and also serves as a one-stop-shop for Reliance Infocomm products and services.

Each store contains three key modules –

A Customer Convenience Centre,
JAVAGREEN a gourmet coffee bar and
A Real Broadband Centre to showcase Broadband connectivity through applications like Video Chat and Conferencing, Multiplayer Online Gaming, Digital personalized music, Digital theatre, Digital photo imaging, Virtual office and Real Broadband high speed internet - about 100 times faster than the dial up access in today's homes.

Publicity

Writing great press releases (be sure the information is really “news”, put who, what, where when and why in the first paragraph, and use double spacing), then identify the appropriate writers or editors at local newspapers and magazines and begin relationships with them. Locate trade publications in your industry and send press releases regarding new product/service offerings, new personnel, etc. Reliance is quite often doing that and that too in the best selling newspapers.
Also, Reliance has started sponsoring events associated with youth like the Olympic torch relay held in Delhi that is giving it a young and sophisticated image.
Another medium to address the target customers is the web site. The Reliance web site is quite well maintained and contains all the relevant information on the company’s products and services. But still lot has to be done to make it interactive and e-commerce enabled. This is one front where the company hasn’t been able to do something outstanding.

Print Advertising

Ads in community or specialty newspapers, ads in community publications such as monthly magazines newsletters can be cost effective. Postcard mailings are relatively inexpensive, sent to the right target list with an appropriately attractive offer. Flyers distributed in targeted neighborhoods or at focused special events can also be very effective. Reliance is quite often doing that and that too in the best selling newspapers






Conclusion

Whatever advertising vehicles are selected; the key to all effective advertising is consistency. Studies indicate it takes 8 impressions of the same message to reach a customer who has never heard of your product/service. It takes 3 impressions of the same message to reach an existing customer who knows you and may currently be using your products/services. The choice of vehicles is important; consistency is critical. Whatever advertising you choose, do it and do it often. An integrated marketing communications plan has all parts of tactics working together. For example, if the marketing communications plan calls for print advertising, the same theme of print ads should be reflected on web site. If customer gets the same message and visual clues in both places, they are much more likely to comprehend your marketing message. By doing this, you will build your brand with that customer who will remember you when they are ready to buy. The marketing strategy of Reliance clearly stands out to be differentiation on quality and price. All this is really helping reliance, particularly reliance India mobile in emerging as one of the strongest brand name in the telecom market built up on quality initiative rather than on the name of “Dhirubhai” that sounded irrational in a competitive market and was not really successful in capturing the attention of the young and educated