An interesting feature of Insights is their ability to hide in plain sight! For instance, let’s consider the most googled, most popular (yes, more than politicians and celebrities!) and THE most ‘common’ term these days – “Corona / COVID-19”. Over the past couple of months, we have read (and continue to read…) about its adverse effects on health, economy and of course, our lifestyle.
Among the tsunami of job losses and layoffs, pay cuts, furloughs and bankruptcies, there are heart-warming stories of a set of organizations and entrepreneurs who have not only navigated their business successfully through the turbulence, but have actually thrived in it! Examples are all around us, but seemingly invisible. This version of ‘Insights & Intelligence’ summarizes a few such examples, hopefully triggering an inquisitive mind to look for other such examples and learn from them.
‘Coopetition’ – Art of Collaborating with Competitors
Yes, it’s true and it’s happening all around us. Seemingly competing organizations/enterprises are working together towards the common goal of reaching out to consumers.
Dunzo, a delivery services player helps deliver food, groceries, medicines and just about anything from a point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. Dunzo’s successful marketing campaign launched during COVID-induced lockdown was built around the strategy of ‘Coopetition’ in the interest of customers.
Take a look at their online digital campaign which ‘educated’ customers about the delivery options available for medicines, food and other essential items in their city during the lockdown. It also successfully helped build brand recall by actually complimenting their immediate competitors and help position them as ‘Superheroes’, facilitating mutual support and of course, shared resources/infrastructure for successful and a safe delivery of essential items. Competitors acknowledged in the campaign included Swiggy, Zomato and eat.fit in the food delivery segment besides 1mg, PharmEasy, and Myra in the pharma delivery space.
‘Ability to Adapt’ – From Zero to about 2 Lakh PPE Kits per day…
“Ability to Adapt” is not a new concept. Nature has been a proactive teacher of an ability to adapt since millions of years, sustaining species which adapted to change and eliminating the ones which didn’t.
Taking a cue from it, 41 producers of textiles from Punjab obtained a clearance from the South India Textiles Research Association (SITRA) to manufacture Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits for use by healthcare professionals involved in screening and treating COVID positive patients. A typical PPE kit will comprise of mask, eye/face shield, shoe cover, gown and gloves.
The result? Textile units of these players which were running idle, rapidly adapted to production of about 2 lakh PPE kits per day, triggering export orders, besides ensuring employment to their workers.
Looking for a Laundry Service? – Just dial your Nearest 5-Star Hotel…
Seriously? Yes, it features as yet another new emerging normal in a COVID era!
5-Star hotels, known for their exclusive but relatively expensive service are among the businesses worst hit in the COVID era. Lockdown-induced restrictions on travel and stay, along with an economic downturn have triggered a string of closures and staff layoffs. Driven to the wall, a few hospitality businesses, particularly 5-Star hotels have taken up the challenge of exploring previously unchartered market segments, banking on their existing infrastructure facilities, including offering laundry services.
Banking on the ‘hygiene concerns’ of people in a COVID era, 5-star hotels across cities such as Pune and Gurugram, are offering Laundry services, complete with pickup and drop options for customers. Positioning their ‘internationally certified’ equipment and facilities as the ideal answer to hygiene concerns, the 5-Star hotels such as Conrad Pune, and Hyatt Regency, Gurugram plan to give a tough fight to established commercial laundry operators.
House Keeping and Home Deliveries too…
Laundry is only one of the new service lines introduced at 5-Star hotels. For instance, Hotel Green Park, a Chennai-based 5-star hotel is offering ‘housekeeping services’. The new business vertical is aimed at offering disinfection and sanitization services for offices and residential complexes.
‘Drive-through takeaways’ and ‘Home Deliveries of Signature dishes’ are among the new service lines introduced by the leading 5-Star hotel chains across cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Delhi and Gurugram among others. For instance, ‘Marriot on Wheels’ is an initiative aimed at home delivering exclusive menu comprising of ‘Signature’ dishes. The home delivery service lines highlight quality and safe food ingredients, with international standards of hygiene during preparation, packaging and delivery of food items. Westin at Gurugram is currently offering a ‘Drive-Thru’ service, where customers can place their orders and collect the food after 45-minutes from a dedicated pickup junction located in the driveway of the hotel.
Learning from Failure – Interesting case of Kent Atta & Bread Maker
Success is a lousy teacher, while Failure often teaches the best lessons! Obviously, there is a lot to learn from failures, particularly from those who failed to ride the wave of adversity to their gain!
‘Focus on hygiene’ ranks among the favourite marketing approaches in a COVID era. However, ‘positioning’ and ‘communication’, the two basic pillars of success need to be in sync with the strategy to succeed. Failure to communicate the intent behind the idea resulted in the failure of a marketing campaign from Kent RO for its Atta & Bread Maker machine.
While trying to highlight it’s USP of ‘automation taking care of hygiene’, the campaign used a reference to domestic house help (‘maid’ or ‘bai’), discouraging people from allowing their domestic help to knead the dough. The statement “Are you allowing Your Maid to knead atta dough by Hand? Her hands may be infected” led to an outrage on social media about the portrayal of housemaids as infection carriers.
The ad, featuring popular actresses Hema Malini and her daughter Esha Deol as campaigners, was criticized for its derogatory positioning of house maids and domestic helps at a time when they were already facing discrimination from housing societies across the country. The marketing campaign was withdrawn after multiple users on social media flagged it down and reported it to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI).
The ad, featuring popular actresses Hema Malini and her daughter Esha Deol as campaigners, was criticized for its derogatory positioning of house maids and domestic helps at a time when they were already facing discrimination from housing societies across the country. The marketing campaign was withdrawn after multiple users on social media flagged it down and reported it to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI).
‘Insights & Intelligence’ is a newsletter offered towards sharing real-life examples of management concepts. It is compiled by Harshavardhan Gaddalae, the Managing Director of Medha Research and Consulting Pvt. Ltd. (www.medharesearch.com) as an aid towards bridging the knowledge and skill set gap between industry and academia. While the intent of this newsletter is not to share exhaustive information, it will hopefully trigger an inquisitive mind to look for other such examples and learn from them.
As a Business Leader at Deloitte, IBM, TCS and SIS Infotech for over two decades, Harsha has led multiple strategy, people, operational and change management roles in Research and Consulting, establishing and leading high performance cross functional teams and service areas based in India and US. Key leadership titles held over the past two decades include ‘Practice Leader’, ‘Service Area Leader’, ‘Strategy Leader’ and ‘Executive Manager’.
In his current role as Managing Director of Medha Research and Consulting Pvt. Ltd., Harsha empowers market and business leaders in Information & Communications Technology (ICT) and Automotive Industry domains to leverage advantage of research- driven insights in decision making. He may be reached at harsha@medharesearch.com for any feedback or suggestions.