PLANNING FOR THE NEXT MILLENIUM
The Interactive @dvertising


The Internet is certainly the communication medium for the new millenium.

Alyque Padamsee, the doyen of Indian advertising, recently, speaking on CNBC Channel, highlighted the power of Internet as the emerging medium for advertising. He said that one should not fear that Internet, the communication medium for the new millenium, would overshadow the TV and press media, like TV did to the cinema advertising. Press/print advertising continued to thrive despite TV which did give print an initial setback because of TV’s wider reach. Today, both have become complementary. Likewise, Internet and TV will complement each other.

The difference between a TV bulletin and an Internet web site is the delivery format and in turn, the control. TV relies on brief narration—same for everybody to meet minimum common needs in limited time. A web site, by virtue of hyperlinks and back up databases, does not have such limits, with the control now in user’s hands. Each individual surfer—an active news seeker—chooses what he wants, and in whatever detail. Live "video streaming" is possible too.

The Internet has actually boosted the market for the print media, as the Net, mostly, operates on scripted words—be it e-mail or news sites—which are transmitted faster than pictures and sounds. Newspapers—though late in realising the Web’s threat and potential—are now making up for lost time by creating web sites of their own. For instance, classified advertising, which is believed to account for more than 40 percent of ad revenue for many papers, is believed to be doing even better on the Internet. However, it is not enough to be on the Internet just from fear of being left behind. It is still the content which is more important.

Internet: the Global Media
Alyque said that Internet is expected to emerge as a cost-effective media not only for global and mass marketing but also to reach niches. As global village materializes, the customers will analyse much more microscopically, enabled by Internet. It may be interesting to study how trend-setting channels like MTV, Cartoon TV, National Geographic, Discovery, etc., are developing or changing young minds which can be used for say brand building.

Alyque also felt that Internet will help even small brands survive and continue. Indian products like sandalwood paste and hair oil will, thus, always have market, and globalization of Indian products/brands like Paan Parag and Skikakai will take place. More so as an NRI population of 15-20 million can be accessed through Internet.

Web Sites: "Interactive" Is the Key
Most sites look like the brochure of the company put up on the Net. The sites need to be "interactive" so that the customer can get an instantaneous reply to his/her query enriching the experience. World over, corporates are utilising the Internet to reach out to their consumers and investors by being able to have a continuous interactive mode of communication with them. If the experience is rich enough they will visit again and again.

Web-based Yellowpages
Web sites can be used like yellowpages. For instance, the Net helps car buyers to quickly find the right price of a car and empowered with information drive hard bargains. Most car dealers in the US now have web sites or are linked to some automotive web site. One such on-line car-buying site www.Autobytel.com is believed to have a network of 2,700 dealers on it, each paying a monthly fee to the site. Another US success www.Autoweb.com—launched in 1994—which also puts dealers and customers together and charges dealers $29 for each new lead. It claims to have generated $1 billion in on-line car sales in December 1998 alone.

The Marriott Experience
Bill Gates in his latest book "Business @ The Speed Of Thought" cites the Internet experience of Marriott —one of the world’s largest hospitality company which put together its first on-line reservation system in 1996. Marriott says, "The Internet is all about service—providing service to customers in a way that’s faster, friendlier, and more personal than they or the company has ever experienced before. And service is Marriott’s business. We don’t even own the bricks and mortar in most of our properties."

Bill Gates’ Recipe: How Good Is Your Web Site?

Actually it’s easy to judge the quality of your site: use it yourself. Is the experience easy? Is the information well organized? Can you quickly get answers to questions? Is it easy to gather goods into the electronic shopping cart—or is it hard to search for items, and do you have to jump back and forth? Every company that touches a consumer electronically has to build products that work intuitively. You need to be sure to rigorously test anything you put up on the Web for customers. You get only one chance to make a good first impression.

  • A successful web site requires the creation of a new customer experience that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the Internet.
  • Success on the Web requires high-level corporate understanding of the Internet’s capabilities and support of early test-and-invest projects.
  • The majority of your interactions with customers on the Internet will involve support rather than sales, and the word-of-mouth nature of the Internet means it’s very costly if customers have a poor experience on your site.
  • A good web site can help turn salespeople into consultants.

Source: "Business @ the Speed of Thought" by Bill Gates

Marriott was one of the first companies to build an interactive home page to enable user to find a Marriott hotel by any combination of location, onsite facility, in-room amenity, and recreational offering. Marriott’s site has links to more than 1,000 other web pages. Linked web pages describe shops, restaurants, and other attractions close to a hotel. An integrated mapping system gives you access to more than 16 million businesses and points of interest all over the world.

The web site being "interactive", Marriott is able to personalize it for each and every visitor. The information, kept in a database, is presented to the site visitor according to the visitor’s search criteria. The back-end software is dynamically adapting the site as a session—depending on his or her interests—goes on, taking every visitor through a different experience. It currently averages 15,000 hits a day. Marriott has found that the more "interactive" a site is, the more business it gets from its visitors. Marriott plans to enrich its web site and personalize it further by adding a customer profiling feature. Ultimately it plans to use multimedia capabilities, enabling the visual experience of a property.

The HLL Strategy
Hindustan Lever Ltd—the first Unilever arm to have a web site—has identified the Internet as a key component of its strategy for facing upcoming challenges in the new millennium. Its own site www.HLL.com is being revamped into an "interactive" site and there would be one web site for each product.

HLL has many instances where the Net helped in customer care. An IIM Calcutta student got his "hard" toothbrush replaced by a "soft" one after a couple of e-mails. A housewife in IIT Delhi, after getting spurious "surf", used e-mails to get raids carried out on the dubious manufacturer. A consumer in California could get his favourite "Pears" soap (manufactured only in India) using e-mail.

Earning Loyalty
Today when the web sites are offering various incentives for surfers to log in, "interactive" may be a far cheaper way to earn loyalty.

By Niraj K.Gupta, Voice and Data, June 1999.