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

Product Launch of Creo - PTC Product

It was a Tech product launch event of PTC’s new product concept: Creo®. It was hybrid product launch event. Hybrid because the physical event was taking place in Boston, whereas PTC has facilitated viewers like me sitting in India through a virtual web event i.e. the live video streaming or a webcast. I can say that there were hitches in viewing the web event. Later on PTC admitted that there was heavy traffic hitting this virtual event which led to section of online viewers the event inaccessible.

The launch of the product Creo® which was earlier touted in a name of Project Lightening®; kicked off with a typical catchy head start. Only in the beginning the head start drama of event was able to generate curiosity among the participants and viewers. The head start drama portrayed four prisoners being brought behind bars (jail). The quick replay of the event is available here. The idea was about to imbibe in viewers’, users’ mind that with this product customers’ CReativity, EffiCiency, ValuE, teamwOrk (CREO) will be unlocked.

To me, the drama where prisoners represented Creativity, Efficiency, Value and Teamwork being constrained in a jail and projecting the analogy of this design software to unlock these propositions to customers' gain by releasing the prisoners, did not click well, rather it was a kiddish attempt.

But I must say, after this planned drama, with the entry of Mr. Jim Heppelmann, CEO of PTC the event was set to rock the viewers. He every aptly described the background of how the current CAD market stagnated & product interoperability, varied user expectations (simple vs. sophisticated users) etc are bigger issues in product design space. The solution to these design issues by PTC is projected as Creo®. It Mr. Jim shared the deep thoughts given in

(a) identifying problem areas & solutions to those,

(b) selecting the product name as Creo® which as he said means I Create in Latin, and in some European language it also means I saw, I create. The product design process is about creating new product so this name seems very appropriate.

Later on the other presentation covered the demonstrations of the product concept. It was amazing to see how different breed of product user can use it in different ways. The 3-D modeling, Direct Modeling, etc will touted to become so much adaptive and easy to use with this solutions.

There are four technologies as a part of Creo® product are unveiled, these are include:

• AnyRole Apps^TM – different set of apps for different set of people/roles.
• AnyMode Modeling^TM – to help users do designing in modeling mode such as 2D, 3D direct, or 3D parametric
• AnyData Adoption^TM – Interoperability by allowing data generated from different CAD tools
• AnyBOM Assembly^TM – This is to integrate with PLM software addressing serial number generation issues.

With Creo® PTC is trying to rebrand its existing products such as Pro/ENGINEER^®, CoCreate^® and ProductView^® as

• Pro/ENGINEER as Creo Elements/Pro
• CoCreate as Creo Elements/Direct
• ProductView as Creo Elements/View

This new product containing new architecture based on Common Data Model, various Apps, modeling tools is scheduled to be made available in Mid-2011.

To me, things which had a great appeal in this event were

1. The live demos, showing gamut of Direct Modeling, 3D Modeling were eye catching

2. The problem areas discussed by customers, users themselves were highlighted through videos (which even criticized Pro/E® for being not-so-easy-to-use, etc and these customers were present in the event made it realistic) and the it has been a good attempt to project how Creo® is being developed after understanding customer, consulting them to solve their problem and it will add Value to their system.

3. A vision: PTC created 3D modeling software twenty years ago. Pro/E® was pioneer in this space and is a leader as well till today. With Creo®, PTC wants to introduce a product which will share similar vision of serving customers with a product which will change market dynamics henceforth and will give PTC a leading edge for years to come

Who drives the capital market ? (?)

There are active Capital Equities Markets, Bond Markets, Commodities Markets and such similar financial instruments' markets present in almost all developed & developing countries. And if you are watching TV and screening through channels, you would have come across a set of channels that are dedicated to news, discussion related to these markets.

- Do you ever wonder how these markets actually function and behave (sentimental vs. fundamental) ?
- Do you keep hearing words like 'market fundamental' or 'fundamentals of the company' or 'fundamentals of economy' over and again and especially when equities market tumbles down.

Some 4-5 years ago, I heard a story about a man-from-city (MFC) who goes to village-close-to-jungle and offer them to buy monkeys caught from jungle from them and to sell those to foreign circus owner in city. Then how he (MFC) was able to fool the poor-village-people with rising prices for monkey, then poor-village-people starts fighting among themselves to grab more monkeys and how MFC takes away most of the money from them.

Why I am talking all these?
I came across this ET article FII biggies cashing out on listing gains. It claims that the FIIs like CityGroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, etc aggressively bid for share allotment for initial public offering (IPO) and book the profit by selling those shares on the listing day itself.

Entity	Company IPO	No. of share sold
Citigroup	Indosolar	22.2 million
Goldman	Orient Green	3.4 million
Merrill	Microsec Financial	Exact Number not available
Morgan Stanley	Prestige Estates Projects	Exact Number not available

Generally, if you look at holding pattern of the listed company, apart from promoters, it's major financial institutes who hold 10-20% of the holding and retail investors hold somewhere around 10-15% of the stake in the company. It is a very obvious characteristic of Retail investor: that they are dispersed and not united whereas the not many FIs hold stake in a company and 'can' form 'cartel' and from above example, I keep guessing if this is the case.

Even if you are tracking the statements by regulator (in this case Securities Exchange Board of India i.e. SEBI), SEBI in last month has criticized the Investment Bankers for placing higher premium for companies going public. The investment Bankers are those people, who help companies/government in underwriting, issuing securities i.e. making a company - public listed. So coming back to SEBI's discomfort with Investment Banker: SEBI Chairman - CV Bhave pointed out that since Investment Banker sets higher rather unreasonable premium at the time of listing and or last couple of years (with some exceptions) the listing of companies has dismayed the investor because on the day of listing, the opening price of share of companies have been much lower than the list/bid-band price. Thus investment bankers are not keeping in mind the interest of investors while deciding on price-band.

I will just say that, when regulator says that interest of investor are compromised ; it means the fundamental of the company becomes questionable and retail investor will turn its back at IPOs (Can I say, CIL is exception? ).

There is a famous term in investment banking:: 'Chinese Wall'. It refers to information barrier/ firewall maintained to isolate the investment related decision makers /centers from others who can influence them.

With above examples in mind, and recent incidents in US capital markets; sometimes the the way such market function; fundamental of market become questionable and it's the responsibility of prime stakeholders i.e. FIs, regulators, corporations to make sure, market fundamentals to be highlighted as prime factor of putting money into it.

Zandu Baam hui, Darling tere liye

These days it's common to see as 'something' gets popularity, it is dragged into some or other controversy. It's not so difficult to guess what I want to say. The producer of this year's so called biggest block buster movie of Bollywood - Dabangg received a legal notice from Emami Ltd.


Zandu Balm now owned by Emami is a /has been a flagship product for Emami. As Emami claimed, the producer of this movie has used their brand name in an Item Song without company's consent. It's true that it takes years for a company to build a brand which has high 'brand recognition & Brand Recollect' values. Zandu Balm definitely has such higher brand recollect characteristic. Moreover Zandu Balm & Tiger Balm enjoyed the position of brand synonymous to Balm category. (Apart from Vicks Vaporub - which was considered as a part of subcategory) .

Cutting the whole story short, Emami claimed that the brand equity for Zandu Balm has been devastated(?)/ impacted because of the way Zendu Baam word has been used in the Item Song starring Malaika Aurora. Arbaaz Khan - the producer of the movie was in fix because of the issue.

Mr. Pralhad Kakkad, a well known media personality; brilliantly mediated between Arbaaz Khan & the company by suggesting that Malaika Aurora to promote Zandu Balm product for the company and company will take back the legal proceedings against the movie producer.

Now I am wondering how the advt. would look like, Malaika Aurora Khan wearing a typical saari costume (a simple dimple, gharwali style) and coming out of kitchen in-all-tired-mood and complaining Arbaaz khan about the Peeth-Kamar Dard (Back pain) :p Then Arbaaz Khan jumps off the sofa (keeping his cap intact, which he has used in the Videocon DTH Advt) and grab the bottle of Zandu Balm (as quickly as he has been delivering stuffs each time Abhishek orders for) and starts applying balm (only a portion of back is seen) and immediately after this shot, Malaika jumps off the bed & start dancing to the tune of 'Munni Badnaam Hui,.... ,... Zendu Baam Hui, Darling tere liye".

But what will happen to Bipasha Basu who has been signed up by Emami to endorse its products. (Zandu Baam hui, Darling tere liye - Part 2 ??)

-Dhan

Corporate Microfinance in India

In last six months, the micro-finance sector in India has been seen in news headlines. It is primarily attributed to SKS Microfinance. SKS Microfinance, the firm which went public successfully in Aug 2010.

In October 2010, The board of director , SKS Microfinance sacked its CEO Mr. Gurnani and appointed Mr. Vikram Akula in his place. The public news claimed that has been a result of power struggle. Many new articles speculated that Mr. Vikram Akula, a founder of SKS Microfinance used Mr. Gurnani until the company got listed successfully. To add this list of speculation, it was Ms. Malini Byanna (ex-wife, co-founder of SKS M) has accused Mr. Vikram Akula in many ways. (Ref: ET news). The bad part of this interview for SKS Microfinance was that she allegedly claimed lack of governance & malpractices followed at SKS Mifcrofinance.

Now there is one more blower for SKS Microfinance. The agents of SKS Microfinance were found illegally pressurizing borrowers. If proved, police can arrest the CEO Mr. Vikram Akula.
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They say, now putting money in micro-lending is the way to earn higher return. So the high networth individuals are also seen pouring money into this business. To my knowledge micro-lending existed in earlier days also. This business (on its bad part) has taken lives of many poor people in villages-the rural India. It's just the 'corporatization' of such business is seen in the form of SKS Mircofinance.

But on the good side of it, it does help the self help group/small group of women- small businesses by making easy finance availability. It's a good step taken by Mr. Manmohan Singh govt. by bringing in the regulator in the business of micro-financing in the form of NABARD.

Monetory Policy Dilemma

Out of prominent securities market in the world, the Indian stock market is definitely unique market, as India is an developing country and growth of Indian economy has been significantly characterized by to domestically consumption (rather than export as in case of China). And if you look at the capital market indicators (Indices) across globe; Indian Sensex & Nifty are certainly has shown significant growth.

Now !!

Coal India Limited (CIL) set to rock Indian Stock Market with its big ticket IPO worth Rs. $3.9 billion or close to Rs. 13,000+ crore.

• Qualified Institutional Buyer (QIB) are eligible for more than 50% of the subscription available

• It means Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) have an attractive proposition to buy
• It means in this quarter significant amount of Forex inflow is likely to infuse liquidity in Indian economy
• It means, already alarming inflation is likely to see newer heights
• It also means that our own currency the Rupee will appreciate ($1= Rs.39; Rupee appreciate means its equivalent value against US dollar increases i.e. the Rupee movement from $1=Rs. 40 is an appreciation of Rupee & depreciation of dollar against each other)
  
• The appreciation of Rupee means import (Oil in particular) will be relatively cheaper and exports (software/services) will be costlier
  
• It means Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to either curtail Forex Inflow or Raise key monetory policy indicators (most likely interest rates)
• If interest rates are to increase, it will in turn again attract more Forex money inflow
• So it will be interesting to see what would happen to Forex money inflow

* Short term prediction
** Implication of curtailing Forex Inflow has not been predicted here.

"Low rates are not a free lunch, but people are acting as though they are"

IMF's Ex-Chief Economist Raghuram Rajan & Chair person on OERC of OECD Mr. White have expressed concerns about the Fed's decision to extend near zero Interest regime. Mr. Rajan feels that such lowered interest rate for prolonged period offers bad incentives for financial firms. It's nothing but prolonging pain by propping up housing market & keeping home prices from falling. So both these economists have suggested 2 % increase in benchmark rates of Fed.


Source- here