Archive for April/2007

Al ir a un restaurante en Barcelona y pedir una Coca-Cola, me he encontrado con la sorpresa: En vez de la lata de Coca-cola tradicional de toda la vida, me han dado una nueva lata. Las diferencias con la anterior son evidentes: Más alargada, con el mismo contenido, y con ligeras variaciones en el contenido y dibujos. Vamos, que mantiene lo esencial de la anterior, pero cualquiera se puede dar cuenta de las diferencias.

En cuanto ha vuelto el camarero me he abalanzado sobre él y le he preguntado al respecto, que si era una nueva lata, que si era una promoción, etc. Y su respuesta ha sido muy interesante: No se trata de una promoción sino de una lata exclusiva para hostelería. De tal manera que Coca-Cola, de ahora en adelante, sólo va a comercializar en hostelería esta nueva lata y la tradicional botella de 20 cl.

Porqué han hecho esto? Muy sencillo, para evitar que la hostelería pueda comprar las latas en hard discount o en grandes superficies, para revenderlo a su vez a particulares.

Se puede pensar que al fin y al cabo a Coca-Cola le da igual donde se compre. En todo caso va a ser Coca-Cola el que venda! Ahora, aun siendo esto último cierto, también lo es que la marca tiene que controlar sus canales de distribución, política comercial y de promoción.

Por la propia dinámica de los hard-discount y mass merchandisers, la marca se ve forzada continuamente a lanzar promociones del tipo 3×2 ó 5+1 para ganar espacio en el lineal, en el catálogo y en la cabecera de góndola. Promociones necesarias, pero que lógicamente van a suponer un menor margen para la marca. Con lo que si encima dichas promociones son adquiridas por la hostelería, a la que puede salir más barato comprar la promoción que hacerlo a su mayorista habitual, el efecto negativo en margen se dispara.

Al manejar envases diferentes y hacer consciente al consumidor de ello, se obliga al Canal de Hostelería a comprar a través de los mayoristas elegidos para tal fin, que manejarán las promociones que Coca-Cola estime y no se podrán beneficiar de lo que se haga en otros canales.

Aparte de lo anterior, se van a dar otros efectos beneficiosos:

1. Poder desarrollar promociones exclusivas para cada canal.
2. Controlar muy bien las ventas , el stock y su rotación.
3. Poder aplicar en definitiva la política comercial que crean más adecuada para cada Canal.

Innovación al poder. Que desarrollos de producto como éste nos van a ayudar a controlar la definición e implantación de políticas comerciales.

Conocéis algún caso parecido? Creéis que es una buena idea? Es sostenible?

Ignacio Gafo

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean and Professor of Strategy

What would you think of an application or system that would allow national tourist agencies better plan their foreign marketing campaigns knowing just how many from each nationality (identified from their mobile-phone network) spend most most of their time in town or how many prefer the beach etc. In Rome marketing departments might soon have the possibility to know the exact concentration of people who pass their advertising banners, or in what street they should open their shop knowing just how many will pass by.

In this blog there have been many references to innovation in marketing and with this in mind I would like bring your attention to an article in The Economist that I read last month regarding a project currently being implemented by the Town Hall of Rome along with MIT and Telecom Italia. It involves the collection of anonymous data from mobile-phone networks to create image maps that show how people are moving around. Real Time Rome, as the project is called, would allow ambulances and fire engines reach their destinations a lot more quickly with the increased traffic knowledge it provides, as well as many other advantages particularly useful for municipal governments and has many business applications, especially in the field of market surveying.

In the past such information “was collected via traffic helicopters, roadside cameras, police patrols, sensors embedded in roads, tracking units in vehicles, data from public-transport turnstiles and surveys. But the resulting picture is often inadequate, expensive—or both.” Rome´s transport authority says the new system will allow them to scrap an annual survey that costs 60 euros for each of the 2,000 respondents.

If you prefer hearing about the project in audio then here is a BBC audio intervew of Carlo Ratti, the director of MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory that is the inspiration for the project.

According to an architecture adviser to the Mayor of London and the director of last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, at which MIT displayed a prototype real-time map of Rome (see picture) “London is preparing for a projected additional 1m inhabitants in the next 15 years, and people-movement maps “will be invaluable” in planning housing and transport. Politicians will take to the technology because it can provide solid statistical backing for politically unpopular planning decisions.”

According to officials in the town hall in Rome, urban planning will be greatly enhanced including expansion of their metro system, reallocation of their 2100 buses (bus timetables could take account of hourly or daily variations) and better placing of traffic lights etc. Furthermore, a better evaluation of commercial property could be made, based on the frequency of passers by.

“We already have many cities onboard, including Florence and Rome in Italy, and Zaragoza in Spain,” said the previously mentioned Carlo in an interview with CNET News.com.” Furthermore, Mobilkom Austria, is working with MIT to create movement-maps in the city of Graz.

Technorati Tags: IE Business School, Santiago Iniguez, Marketing, eMarketing

Las descargas ilegales de contenido a través de Internet ya han acabado con el negocio tradicional del vídeo (que se lo pregunten a Blockbuster) y están haciendo lo propio con la música, los programas de software… Sin que hasta ahora se hayan puesto más soluciones que las legales.

Numerosas redes P2P (Peer 2 Peer) o redes entre iguales permiten a los navegantes de la web bajarse de forma gratuita y fraudulenta numerosos contenidos con copyright. Uno de los más importantes y populares es BitTorrent, un protocolo diseñado para el intercambio de ficheros y un programa cliente creados por el programador estadounidense Bram Cohen y que se estrenó en la Codecon 2002 ganando gran popularidad al permitir que mucha gente descargara los mismos ficheros sin que unas descargas ralentizasen a otras. Para lograr ésto el protocolo fuerza a todos los descargadores a compartir las partes que tienen de los ficheros con otros descargadores, de modo que cada miembro de un enjambre contribuye a la distribución del contenido.

Pues bien, ahora BitTorrent cree haber encontrado la fórmula perfecta para mantener la descarga de archivos de forma legal, sin cobrar al usuario y con un buen servicio que deje satisfechas a todas las partes. Está llegando a acuerdos con los propietarios de los derechos para poder pagarles y así legalizar las descargas con los ingresos procedentes de la publicidad que tendrán que ver quienes quieran completar las descargas.

El piloto se ha puesto en marcha con varias series de TV americanas cuyos capítulos pueden ser descargados de forma gratuita a cambio de ver publicidad al principio de cada programa. El modelo, desarrollado conjuntamente con YuMe Networks, permite a los anunciantes actualizar la publicidad en tiempo real cada vez que el usuario visualiza los programas descargados y realizar un seguimiento de las campañas. Si el piloto funciona, pronto se desarrollarán modelos similares para todos los tipos de formato de fichero susceptibles de descarga.

El primer anunciante en apostar por esta nueva forma de e-marketing ha sido el fabricante de videojuegos Eidos Interactive para promocionar la nueva entrega del clásico de Lara Crost: Tomb Raider- Anniversary.

¿Creéis que el “experimento” tendrá éxito y pronto veremos el fin de la piratería digital?

Un abrazo.

Manuel Angel Alonso Coto

A new format of advertising is finding a gap within more traditional marketing techniques in our country. It is called live advertising and consists of live performances offered in public spaces to passing by spectators. Therefore it is a combination of a spot and outdoor ad.

A metro station that had been abandoned years ago in Barcelona is bein used for the launching of the new model of cars make NISSAN, which will be called Qashqai. OMD, TMB and JC Decaux agencies have worked together to organize everything. Line 5 passengers get really surprised when they discover a station whose existence they did not know since darkness prevented it to be perceived when travelling between Sagrada Familia and Hospital Sant Pau stations. They can see the 500m2 live ad during the 12 seconds the metro takes to pass across the old station.

http://www.controlpublicidad.com/actualidad/object.php?o=40490

Live advertising gets the brand out there, it entertains and surprises people and it’s a third of the cost. These ads are cheaper than traditional print or TV work and can generate as much or more attention. But because their success is dependent on outside forces, the risks are high. Bad weather, major news events, uncooperative government officials and competing stunts can easily derail them.

It’s not such a new format in the States: three years ago, during last year’s Summer Olympics, TBWA creative director John Merrifield promoted Adidas by hanging climbers from the sides of 33-story buildings in Tokyo and Hong Kong so they could race a vertical 100-meter sprint. The winning racer took home $10,000. The year before, he and his team hoisted two acrobats 12 stories above ground to play vertical soccer on giant Adidas billboards in downtown Tokyo and Osaka. As word spread and he racked up awards, Merrifield found that not all his e-mail was congratulatory

Since live ads are not yet an established category that is measured on its own, it is difficult to count them. But there are clues. The growth rate of outdoor ad spending—the category that many live theatrical projects fall into—is accelerating. Overall outdoor ad spend rose 9 percent in the first half of 2006, to $1.7 billion, compared to the first half of 2005, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The growth rate from the first half of the previous two years was 5 percent, followed by 4 percent. Officials at the Outdoor Advertising Association of America report they are fielding significantly more calls this year from marketers looking for ideas for living billboards and other forms of theatrical marketing.

Do you think we will be seeing more of this advertising format in Spain soon? Old Chamberí station in Madrid Metro line 1 (wich does exist though much consider it a urban legend) might come back to life…

Manuel Angel Alonso Coto

Imagine going to a party. All the sudden a lady shows up with a Loewe purse. Some years ago there would be no doubt that the purse had to be original. However, nowadays people would doubt if that purse would be original, fake,…… or rented! Yes, you are reading it properly. A new service for renting luxury bags in Spain has just arrived. It has been available in the USA for some years and has just been introduced in Spain.

What are the consequences for the luxury brands? What is it going to be the effect in the loyal customers of the brand? Is there something that the brand could do about it?

I would not like to be working in Chanel, Loewe. Carolina Herrera or any other luxury brand. From my point of view they are facing a tough problem, which is affecting directly the perceived value of their brands.

Why would you pay a premium price of more than 600% for a complement, dress, shoes or purse? Value? I don’t think so. Quality? I don’t think so either. Exclusiveness? You are getting close. Recognition and admiration? I think you are there.

Read more…

The other day I read an article in El País where the journalist criticized some companies for advertising products that he was unable to find in the stores. I don´t remember how he termed them, but I will call them Ghost Products.

I actually know the details behind that particular advertising he was advertising, and I can assure you that the company announcing the products knew that they were gonna be out of stock in short and unable to restock it in a reasonable time. So, if this is the case, why did they decide to go ahead with the announcement? Does it really make sense in spite of affecting negatively your customer satisfaction?

Read more…