Harley Davidson to zip on Indian roads by 2010

Legendary American motorcycle maker Harley Davidson is ready to setup shop in India.

Yes, the iconic and cult brand Harley Davidson, which has enticed and charmed over a million bikers around the world and it continues to do so with the same enthusiasm and energy that it had 108 years back when William S. Harley made his first blueprint drawing of an engine designed to fit into a bicycle.

Harley Davidson has officially announced on its website that the company will make its foray in the fast-emerging and promising Indian market with its range of elite cruiser motorcycles. The model-range and its pricing are still under wraps as the product is yet to be launched. The 110% import duties on bikes, which effectively doubled the cost of these motorcycles for Indian consumers.

The import route for bikes above 800cc was opened in mid-2007 when the Indian government traded mangoes for Harley Davidson motorcycles. Yes, you read it right. For last 18 years, the Indian mangoes were banned in the US since the American government believed that the Indian farmers were using too many pesticides. In April 2007, the US government lifted the ban on Indian mangoes which meant that the Indian farmers could now be entitled to farm subsidies. In return, the Indian government revised the rule of importing high-capacity powered two-wheelers to India allowing bikes above 800cc to be imported legally in the Indian market.

However, the excise duties charged by the Indian government on 800cc and above capacity imported motorcycles are extremely difficult to overcome in order to gain a manageable profit margin. Hence Harley Davidson, which was the key factor in opening up the import route, held back its foray into India in 2007. The Japanese bike-maker Yamaha was the first one to make use of the import trade policy to launch its flagship model the YZF-R1 and its street-fighter model, the MT-01. Suzuki and Honda have followed suit by bringing in their international flagships to India and now Harley Davidson is all geared up and ready to roll into the country with its extensive range of life-style cruiser motorcycles.

Harley Davidson Motor Company president and COO Matt Levatich told ET: "The high tax burden is a disadvantage to our products, but we are looking at the vast opportunity in the world's second-largest two wheeler market. Gradually, we expect the niche bike segment to grow with infrastructure improvement and a buoyant economy."

India's seven-million strong motorcycle market does not have a big share of super bikes or high-powered bikes that Harley Davidson makes, but the US firm is banking on the growing popularity of such products. Bike makers who are present in the segment include Suzuki with its Hayabusa and Intruder models, besides other companies such as Yamaha, Ducati and Honda. These firms together sell over 400 units a year in the domestic market. Harley has not set any targets but is looking to sell in excess of 100 bikes next year. It will bring 15-20 bikes to India from its product line-up of over 200 models and start with the flagship cruiser Fatboy and Night Rod Special models.

Gurgaon is Harley-Davidson India Base!

The company has already established a subsidiary in Gurgaon, Haryana and has also started the hunt for dealers.  Leading the Harley-Davidson subsidiary in India is Anoop Prakash who will be posted as the Managing Director of this venture. The initial phase of expansion into the market involves locating and finalizing dealers in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Punjab.

The first bikes will only be delivered in 2010, which isn't too far away. Its going to be an exciting year ahead and expect the fireworks to kick off at the Auto Expo in Jan! 

Liril 2000

After a long long time, the iconic Liril is back. Yesterday I saw the new tvc for Liril. The campaign looks foreign, complete with foreign models and settings.The ad claims that using Liril will rejuvenate those 2000 body points to keep you FRESH...

The question here is that why that iconic brand was faded over from the market? What exactly has happened that a brand as iconic as Liril would need a crutch, and an international one at that? Why would the brand that once was defined by sizzling models — Karen Lunel, Pooja Batra, Preity Zinta, Tara Sharma, Anjali Jathar to name a few — exhibited playfulness and appealed to youth suddenly move into a family domain? Liril without the girl-in-the-waterfall - is the brand is going backwards instead of going forward? Will new Liril 2000 be able to regain its market share?

The new ad has a touch of class, The new tvc talks about 2000 points in our body which when touched will refresh us!!!! The ad uses the theme of a playful interaction between a father and baby to drive home the power of touch and these 2000 sensitive body points. But it does not gel with the brand image of Liril that we had in our mind. Liril always tried to position by sizziling models – Liril girls in the waterfall. Some of the Liril models became household names once they were chosen as Liril girls. Customers will decide whether the new makeover of Liril works or not.

HUL vice president - home care Sudhanshu Vats believes that Liril needed the makeover to become relevant to a whole new generation. He says that in the earlier context, the lady using the bath to escape into a world of fantasy does not hold water anymore in a society that’s increasingly moving from a joint family set-up to a nuclear family: “Closeness and bonding are the current needs.” The touch proposition of Liril he says fits in with that.

This is not the first time, the brand has attempted to move away from its past. When the brand’s market share that was once at 14% of the overall soap segment — putting Liril among the top three Lever soap brands, the other two being Lifebuoy and Lux — began sliding, Liril tried every variant trick.

• Liril had a shower gel in 1994, a cologne variant in 1996, Liril Rain fresh in 1999, and even an Orange and Icy Blue variant followed by an Aloe Vera and Lemon introduction. 
• The company keeps constantly shifting its stance on the brand moving the Liril girl from bathing under the waterfall, to bathing scenes in the desert, the Iceland’s, the car wash.
• After the dumping of the famous imagery of Liril girl and the waterfall, the brand has never recovered. The fall of this iconic brand was accelerated by some stupid campaigns like Uff Umma and mindless product-line extensions like Orange Liril.
  

Another interesting development is that the entire product has also being changed. The brand packaging has been changed to dark green and the shape of the soap is also changed.

This new brand Liril – 2000 is completely replicate the earlier ads but they can creatively be able to take the advantage of that brand image which is still there in consumer’s mind. Today the brand has a lowly 1.3% market share by value. It is too early to say whether Liril 2000 will be able to regain its market share or not. Virtually it looks like that Levers is firing one final arrow into the dark in the hope that it will somehow strike bulls-eye.  The consumer will decide everything …… 

Journey of Liril: Liril to Liril 2000

1975-87 Karen Lunel (The Liril Girl) - Liril comes alive!, Come alive to Liril freshness, The freshness soap, Makes a fresh new woman of you

1987-90 Sonali Mehta - With the exciting freshness of lime, The original freshness soap

1991-92 Anjali Jathar - Nimboo ki sansanati taazgi, Taazgi ke do roop, Liril taazgi, Rushing, gushing fresh

1993 Pooja Batra - Non-stop fresh

1994 Ruchi Malhotra - Aah!

1997 Preity Zinta Aah!

1999 Hrishita Thakker - Taazgi mein tunn

2001-2002 Tara Sharma - Ice try karoge, Taazgi meri marzi

2004 Deepika Padukone - Uff-Umma

2004 Candice Boucher La-I-Ra-I-La

2009 Rejuvenates all 2000 body parts of your body

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Geo-Marketing

Geo-Marketing means using geographic information in the process of planning and implementation of marketing activities. Geomarketing Research is the use of geographic parameters in research methodology starting from sampling, data collection, analysis, and presentation. Geomarketing Services are more related to routing, territorial planning, and site selection whereas the location is the key factor for such disciplines. It is designed to locate customers, their characteristics, the presence of competitors, potential turnover in a region of a particular product based on region, expected market share, identifying location of new branches, expansion possibilities, promotion and advertising activities.

It can be used in any aspect of the marketing mix - the Product, Price, Promotion, or Place.

Functions of Geomarketing:

· Helps identify and matching products and promotions with lifestyle and consumer buying behaviour

· Delimits the catchments area

· Helps identify retail sites

· Uses GIS to identify trends in a market

· Predict sales

· Design sales territories

· Media and advertising according to geography

Company decisions draw their life-blood from the information upon which they are based and that information must be processed. Geomarketing is able to cast a light into the darkness of many a question by bringing unwieldy data into a local context and then presenting it in an easily understandable format as a map. It is often possible to make even very blurred interrelationships clear in this way. The core base of Geomarketing is the digital map; it can either make or break the concept. Equally important, though, is the association of data with these maps using some place-based component. With relatively simple GIS systems, one can map where their customers are coming from, especially if you have access to detailed neighborhood boundary information that can be uploaded to the GIS system. That could lead to some interesting insights.

The methodology Geomarketing is successfully applied in the financial sector through identifying ATMs traffic generators and creating hotspots maps based on geographical parameters integrated with customer behavior.

A typical example for different web content by choice in geo marketing and geo targeting is the FedEx website at FedEx.com where users have the choice to select their country location first and are then presented with different site or article content depending on their selection.

Professional implementations of Geo-Marketing are still few, though the demand for it is consistently growing.

More articles: Viral Marketing, Guerrilla Marketing

Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey - Trust, Value and Engagement in Advertising

Advertising plays a very important role in promotion of any product. It is a form of communication used to help sell product and services. Advertising drives consumer choice, promote competition and help in getting better value for money.  

But is that how the average consumer perceives the benefits of advertising? 

NIELSEN’S annual ‘Trust in Advertising’ study shows that consumer trust in advertising is low. Public discussion of advertising tends to focus on its alleged contribution to societal problems. In response, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) launched in 2008 a global industry campaign to champion the value of advertising. The aim is to ensure that lawmakers and key opinion formers better understand the benefits of advertising and that these are better reflected in the policy making process. 

Respondent Profile: 25,000 consumers across 50 markets from Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East

Objective: To find out customer attitudes toward trust, value and engagement of advertisement.

The objective of the survey was to provide a better understanding of consumer perceptions of the benefits of advertising.Survey Analysis said that 

• A vast majority of consumers see advertising as playing a key role in the economy:
• 80% of the world’s consumers believe that advertising helps create jobs
• 72% say advertising contributes to economic growth. 
• 68% of the respondents believe it helps to reduce prices by stimulating competition. 
• A clear majority of consumers across all markets also understand the importance of advertising and sponsorship as a critical source of funding for sports, the arts and the media.

The survey reveals interesting discrepancies between attitudes by region.

• Europeans are more skeptical about the informational and entertainment value of advertising. 
• Only 50% of Europeans agreed that advertising is a useful source of information, compared to 81% of consumers in Latin America, 75% in Asia-Pacific and 71% in North America. 
  

Overall, the results show broadly consistent, largely positive consumer views about the economic benefits of advertising. Europeans are the most hesitant, in clear contrast to the emerging markets across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

Consumers realize advertising “pays the bills for much of the content they enjoy -- and, for that matter, that it helps the economy to function." - findings of a newly released global survey by Nielsen.

You can download the report here

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/trustinadvertising0709.pdf

For more information visit www.nielsen.com

Coffee Shops give "Hospitality" a new meaning

The British coffee shops of the 17th and 18th centuries offered more than food and beverages. They were centers of political and philosophical debate, frequented by artists, philosophers, intellectuals, merchants and financiers. Because the entry fee was set at one penny, the coffee houses were dubbed “penny universities” in which, it was said, a man could “pick up more useful knowledge than by applying himself to his books for a whole month.”

The wide social influence of these coffee houses can be appreciated by two interesting examples. Jonathan’ Coffee House in Change Alley, London, was one such popular coffee establishment. It was frequented by stockbrokers, and eventually became the London Stock Exchange. Similarly shipowners and marine insurance brokers visited Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House on Lombard Street. It later became the centre of world insurance and the headquarters of Lloyds of London.

It was the coffee houses of England that started the custom of “tipping” waiters. People who wanted good service and better seating would put some money in a tin labeled “To Insure Prompt Service” (TIPS). From this came our modern word “tips”.

The coffee houses of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries provided a new dimension to prevailing attitudes regarding “hospitality” and in a sense, were the forerunners of our modern hospitality establishments offering a wider experience than the mere basic products of traditional innkeepers.

Source: www.realcoffee.co.uk