Garnier Fructis Ads

Couple of days back I watched a Garnier Fructis Kid TV commercial. It lasted for some 30+ second. As the commercial got over, I realized that there appears to be a common theme in Garnier Fructis commercials be it hair oil, shampoo, hair conditioner, shampoo+oil, etc. So I looked for some more Garnier Fructis commercials on web and here is the observation: Commonly, in Garnier Fructis advertisement (selectively discounting Kid one) shows

1. A lead character is a female, surrounded by her group of friends/boyfriends.
2. A male character slithering his palm over long hairs of the lead female; (in one commercial, other females were also seen playing gently with lead female's hairs)
3. As the commercial is about to conclude, the lead(er) female walks confidently towards the camera with a lulu attitude, leaving behind her group of friends (seen in background)
4. Even in commercials aired in India are seen with one or more non-Indian chaps (white guys: just to make a guess- may be US, EU fellows)
   

Looks like, Garnier Frcutis commercials revolves around the fantasy a young girl would have that she is being admired in her group of friends and carries herself confidently with them. And it is attributed to her beautiful/long/shiny/etc hairs.

By the way, the theme what Garnier Fructis is using definitely different than what Pantene (P&G), Head&Shoulder (P&G), Clinic All Clear (HUL), etc are using. I am not sure the Clinic All Clear commercials with Shahid kapoor & Asin T are going in which direction (they tend to portray that having dandruff is a shame when you are considering yourself as representative of mod-young generation or something like that)

Of course Dove (HUL), Olay (P&G) the premium hair care products are positioned as above the class products and are having different theme in positioning their products.














(Video Source: Youtube)

Delicious Pizza & Pricing part-I

In India, the market size for organized Pizza sales is guesstimated to be at Rs 1500 Cr and rapidly growing (as usual because of rising income level & growing affluent higher middle, middle class). Dominos Pizza and Pizza Hut are the dominant players in Indian market.

The Pizza retail chain majors, I have been visiting for last 7-8 years are

1. Dominos Pizza (Link)
2. Pizza Hut (Link)
3. Smoking Joes (Link)

I was thinking of looking at the Pizza prices for quite some time, So I collected the pricing for of their OOTB offering for Pune location. (The data collected is taken from respective company websites & pamphlets )

Here is some data compilation, basic number computation I have done. There are interesting pricing strategies applied by market leaders and as you can see, there are market followers as well




Though, this presentation is partly done, I wanted to publish it anyway; for the very reason that after seeing it half-done I will work on it to complete it :-)

:Dhan

Facebook to launch messaging service

The Facebook co-founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook would launch messaging services for internet users in an event organized in SF, CA.



Apparently, I came across some news, blog posts, twitter updates where people claimed that facebook messaging service is an alternative to gmail. But as clarified by Mark Z, such is not the case:: "Facebook messaging service is not gmail killer". He has proposed a different propositions for users. For Facebook, the target user group is the one who want to use email for personal, informal, seamless access. It has a concept of Social Inbox Prima facie, it looks similar to Google Buzz integrated with gmail but of course with Facebook touch.

No sooner did Mark Z, announced about Facebook messaging service than people started posting messages like "Can't wait for facebook email", "I want it first", etc in literally hundreds, thousands in nubmers. It gives the kind of craze users of facebook have, about the facebook products.

Going beyond the announcement and if I can read between the lines (:-)) I feel, this is an attempt to get into the online advertisement business in aggressive manner.

• Looking at the trend in last few years, the extent of User Generated Content (UGC) made available online has multi-fold (e.g. videos uploaded in youtube, photos on Facebook, picasa, etc)
  
• Such user generated content and people accessing these UGC are going to be the huge, huge market for electronic publisher, online advertisers to help companies reach to their target customers (and good part of online publishing is it's relatively more & reasonably measurable than prevailing mainstream media)
  
• Now with the messaging services in its kitty, Facebook will have even more user data with it to make it a revenue generating proposition in longer run
• Recently, I came across a study where it claimed that in North America, the average time spend by a user is as good as spent on Facebook, as it is on google search. Earlier, google search used to have more share of average time spent by user in online surfing
• Look at it this way, even google is aware of the fact that out of the online traffic hitting youtube has single largest source originating from facebook
• This make a good reason for Facebook to unlock avenues to generate revenue through its online product offerings to user

I think, Facebook Management is well aware about their user groups/customers. Facebook user wants to have communication which is informal, easy, quick and a fun experience. If this is true then which all corporations can think of using Facebook as a medium | as a serious medium | to promote their products, services:: value propositions to user is reasonably understood. Can every other corporation, company expect to get similar outcome on money spent on online advertisement: specifically on Facebook? I guess, not!

:Dhan