SIDHANT JOSHI

Many Chinese smartphone manufacturers save billions of dollars and humongous amounts of effort in Research and Development by simply getting inspiration from some other smartphone giants like Apple, Samsung or LG. This is highly beneficial to the company and its customers, as the premium features previously found only in high end smartphones can now be found in much cheaper smartphones. This not only saves them precious resources, but their profits and customer base only climb through the competitive market.

In line with such simple but highly effective marketing strategies, we have massively popular brands like Coca-Cola, Spotify, Absolut, and our local favourite Amul. These brands have amazing products, but their competition does too. What sets these brands apart are their advertisements, marketing campaigns, strategies and plans which took the marketing world and the consumers by storm. Coca-Cola is one brand we all got on our vocabulary ever since we could barely speak. “Coke”, as we all know and go about it, has left an everlasting imprint on our speech. Even while addressing any aerated drink, the word “coke” comes to mouth. This simple move has led Coca-Cola to stay ahead in the market with highly volatile carbonated drinks market. The “Share-a-coke” campaign, which revolves around the

idea of sharing a coke with the world, not only boosted their sales to a record-
shattering level but also further formed the vibes-image of their product. Their whole strat has been very simple, with very few but on point moves which has brought them to this stage of worldwide prominence in brand presence.

Spotify, the music-streaming app, is in a market which shreds up the whole brand for once small wrong move. It has extremely dominating competitors like Apple Music, Google Play Music, Guvera and Saavn. It takes a very sophisticated marketing plan from the in-house creative team of Spotify to be the leading streaming app. They stream concerts, podcasts, and have massive song library. They exist in just 14 countries, but people like me in countries where Spotify doesn’t provide its services loyally use it. Their adverts target a personal chord with the crowd, which results in a curious user base. Successfully placing a humorous spin on the “weird” highlights of the previous year(“3,749 people streamed ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it on the day’ Donald Trump was elected president”), the campaign proved the power that lies in creative marketing based on audience insight alone.

Absolut intricately manages all marketing and manufacturing campaigns in order to serve people with the best. Unlike other contemporaries, Absolut takes pleasure in ensuring a classic experience for all its consumers. Absolut maintains its partly premium stand by ensuring that the products are sold through high-class outlets. Alcohol brands have a setback in advertisement as they aren’t directly allowed to advertise alcohol to the public. The creative teams at these brands come up with the wackiest of ideas to sell out and make the right demographic of people aware of their product. Absolut have had many such ideas. They have the “Absolut Blank” campaign, which promotes the culture of art along with their brand name. They tied up with famous contemporary artists like Vikram Seth, and used their product bottle silhouette as a blank canvas. The art aspect related with the higher sector of society they aimed for, and led on to massive collaborations with art shows, which furthered their name in the premium market.

This is all what the marketing world is about, knowing your product, your customers, their needs and their connection with the product and exploiting all the received information to implement ideas and plans which can change the world for the product and the brand.