A new Harry Potter movie’s just released reminding us once again of the remarkable brand story of the ‘boy who lived’.  Many may argue that Harry Potter is just a passing fad but in a world of intense competition, indistinguishable products, impenetrable advertising clutter and increasingly marketing-savvy consumers, the success of Harry Potter is well worth considering.

Four success factors can be tentatively identified, the first of which is Narrative. Contemporary corporate culture have exhausted single word solutions such as synergy, re-engineering and run the gamut of acronyms and mnemonics such as CSR, 4Ps, 3Cs. Businesses have belatedly discovered the power of parables, anecdotes, yarns, myths and more making storytelling the management method of the moment. However, the Harry Potter narrative suggests that it’s no longer enough to tell a single story coherently. It must be a majestic brand story, a magical brand story, a multi-faceted brand story.

The second success factor is Ambiguity with Harry Potter comprising a mix of genres: mystery, boarding school, coming of age. Now this is not a word that brand managers are particularly comfortable with, having been taught that images, logos and positioning must be consistent, coherent and clear-cut (Volvo is safety, Marlboro is freedom, Virgin is fun). However, the very idea of the one-idea-one-brand is increasingly untenable in today’s profoundly paradoxical world (Red Bull astutely combines hedonism and health).

The third lesson that Harry Potter teaches us is mystery not just in the sense that we still don’t know exactly why Potteresque fads and crazes occur. Marketers utilize this tactic and understand that mystery, enigma, intrigue and “how they do that?” are an important part of any brand’s appeal. Consider the self-help management gurus, who claim to possess the seven secrets of success, leadership, efficiency, effectiveness, time-management, corporate well being or fame.

The fourth and final lesson is entertainment that the Harry Potter phenomenon has in spades. The fan reactions, the memorabilia, theme parties, critics, marketing release frenzies are all enormously entertaining.  If nothing else, Harry Potter reminds us of the easily forgotten fact that marketing is great fun. Yes, fun!

The secrets of Harry Potter’s success are thus fourfold: Narrative, Ambiguity, Mystery and Entertainment. Or NAME for short. Of course, this method cannot be taken by every brand but it goes to show that in the fast-changing, fad-prone, hit-driven, increasingly global world, there are no hard and fast marketing rules. Anything goes as long as it works.

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A recent argument that I had with a friend made me think a little. For sometime now I have been going around extolling the virtues of using Facebook and Twitter as as effective marketing tools. But when you get up from the chair in front of your laptop and then move away from the walls of your office, you realise that social media still has a long way to go, in India at least.

All examples of SMM success stories, all stats on popularity of Facebook, etc are still linked to ‘Western’ countries. Search for these in Google (as I did) and rarely will you see a result thrown up that features an Indian company that did wonders with social media.

I wonder why this is. Are we lacking in marketing maturity? Or perhaps social media marketing has limited application in the Indian market where most of the population is still illiterate, let alone not having access to an Internet connection! (On the other hand, everyone I know and their grandmother is today on Facebook!) Or perhaps Indian orgnanisations still have more trust in traditional marketing methods. Or is the problem a combination all these factors and then some more?

Would appreciate different viewpoints on this.

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While attending a social media webinar the other day, I heard an interesting new term being used – inbound marketing. Traditional marketing is ‘outbound’ marketing – where you push your message out far and wide through advertisements etc.  This method is losing effectiveness for many reasons - one, the information that you as a marketer are putting out is not new anymore, since the customer today can get all the information he wants from the Web; and secondly, because today the customer is inundated with so much information,  he/she has excellent methods to block you off, like spam filters, fast-forward controls on TVs etc.

Inbound marketing is where you enable yourself to be ‘found’ by people who are looking for information/ marketing assistance/ products etc.  You do this by creating an excellent website, and enhance it with SEO techniques, blogs etc, thus setting yourself up as an expert that visitors can turn to.

I liked the analogy used to differentiate outbound and inbound marketing:

“…… traditional marketers looking to garner interest from new potential customers are like lions hunting in the jungle for elephants.  The elephants used to be in the jungle in the ’80s and ’90s when they learned their trade, but they don’t seem to be there anymore.  They have all migrated to the watering holes on the savannah (the internet).  So, rather than continuing to hunt in the jungle, I recommend setting up shop at the watering hole or turning your website into its own watering hole.”

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All of us know the worldwide phenomenon called The Da Vinci Code.Circa 2003, I heard about it from my brother, who had downloaded the e-version online.Just out of curiosity, I started reading it. Within minutes, I was hooked. I spent the next few hours exhilarated at being transported to a different world, and Robert Langdon was pursued till the last page of the book was reached the next day.

Soon, I bought the other books written by Dan Brown, and within a month I had covered all the novels that he had written.And the mind thirsted for the next novel starring Robert.Well, it’s taken Dan Brown almost 6 years to come up with the next book based on Robert Langdon’s adventures.

And here’s where the marketing bit comes into being. All we know about the book is that it is titled The Lost Symbol.And it hits India on September 15th,2009. And we are not even given a one line plot about what the book’s all about.Guess only Dan Brown can make people wait and queue up for a book about which we may not even know a thing. There comes a time when companies, and people, become a market unto themselves, and there is no further need to sell them.The product sells itself.

For the rest of us though, the challenge is find new and innovative ways to reach out to the consumer, who is bombarded with a million images on a daily images.And in how you distinguish yourself from your competitor, lies your salvation and your success.

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Recently, I was writing a piece on International marketing campaigns – both those that fell flat and those that succeeded. The common goofs that I read about, included translation mistakes, not understanding local culture, not tuning the product to needs of that market and so on. The ones that made it had researched their target’s needs well and fine-tuned their offerings.

Most of the examples that I used were in the B2C space – Coca Cola, P&G, HSBC, McDonalds, Nestle. So I wanted to start a discussion on this forum, on some examples in IT.

My understanding is that for companies such as SAP, Oracle etc., what may be more relevant could be change in strategy, for each market, rather than change in product (other than for compliance standards maybe).

What do you think?

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Customer satisfaction (CSAT) studies are an important input for managing customer relationships – at Prayag, we have been part of quite a few for some of our cleints and have found it to be a particularly enriching experience.  Why is understanding customer feedback important for your company’s business? You need to remember that your customers are more than happy to talk to a neutral entity (the firm conducting the CSAT) and are more often than not more open in their feedback. Yes, the project team would have a fairly good grasp at the operational level – but I’m pretty certain that  very few companies would have a grasp beyond that. We  have seen cases where not so positive feedback from high-value accounts are unanticipated – this is clearly a case of totally inadequate account management efforts. 

The benefits of CSAT are multi-fold – however, the key is for the company to take the feedback seriously, prepare an action plan and implement the changes and finally sustain the periodic feedback mechanism. One of our clients has done a great job with this whole process – they have a half-yearly feedback cycle and tied the KRAs of the account managers and project teams back to the customer satisfaction. Having a stringent review mechanism also in place ensured that changes were actually implemented. The results were definitely worth it as their customers were clearly pleased with the importance accorded to their feedback and the subsequent attention they received from their vendor. Clearly, CSAT studies are a worthwhile investment and help you understand your customer better – the question is how many companies appreciate the role it can play and be willing to invest?

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