The Amateur's Scratchpad

When one jots down the pros of guerrilla marketing, it is impossible to figure if it has any loopholes. Even though guerrilla marketing works four out of five times, it is obviously not the go-to strategy every single time. Here are the five loopholes that guerrilla marketing come with:

1. Time issues: While it is true that most of the guerrilla marketing campaigns work like a dream, there have been many a times when the strategies have almost and completely failed and that was due to the scarcity of time. As guerrilla marketing campaigns are often very creative, they take their own sweet time to click with the audience. Thus, the team working has to be really patient to see the ultimate results, many of which aren’t guaranteed.
2. Risky content: Guerrilla Marketing campaigns often follow no rules. Thus, sometimes a risky content may backfire on the brand. It can so happen that the content might look well-made to the makers but it may go down the hill with the consumers. Hence, with guerrilla marketing there is no full proof plan.
3. Unspecified target group: While a huge reach is one of the biggest pros of this type of marketing, the same pro can turn into a con very easily. Since, there is no specified target group, the content can reach to any kind of crowd and that might not yield positive results every time.
4. Use of emotions: Guerrilla Marketing campaigns often target the emotion side of people in order to get the product or the service sold. When a marketing campaign focuses purely on negative emotions like anger or fear, the result might not always be good.
5. Competition and distraction: Brands are always trying to surpass each other in terms of publicity. Thus, when one brand opts for a guerrilla marketing technique the competition brand takes the same route too. And in this process, distracting advertisements, posts and infographics are made which are not suitable for certain age groups and even locations.  This gives a rise to unhealthy competition among brands disrupting life of consumers.

Last week in my blog I had talked about Guerrilla Marketing and its historical origin along with why it is the most followed form of marketing around the world. What is it for which both big and small brands cater to Guerrilla Marketing? Turns out, it is not only it’s pocket friendliness that attracts marketeers in order to engage a consumer base?

Listed down below are five pros as to why Guerrilla Marketing is the go-to strategy for marketeers:

1. Simplicity: We often think that the first simple creative idea that pops up in our mind is definitely not the best idea and that is why it gets rejected left and right. But, one of the biggest aspects of Guerrilla Marketing is that one can execute the simplest idea and achieve a highly satisfactory result. Most of the successful guerrilla marketing campaigns are based on the simplest of ideas.
2. Target Audience and Reach: Guerrilla Marketing helps to filter out the specific group of people and thus determine the target audience of the product or the service. Also, since guerrilla marketing doesn’t have to abide by so and so rules, one can make their product or service reach to a huge crowd. Thus, another reason for marketeers to opt for guerrilla marketing is that it can give their campaign an enormous reach.
3. Flexible and Fun: Guerrilla Marketing as a process of marketing is the most fun and flexible because well, there are no barriers. One can come up with the whackiest of ideas and churn them out. Also, one doesn’t need huge man power in order to execute the ideas since they are so uncomplex and that is another great reason for marketeers to chose guerrilla marketing over anything else.
4. Pocket-friendliness: One of the biggest reasons why Guerrilla Marketing is a favourite of the publicists is because this form of strategy is the most budget-friendly form. The ideas being simple, the cost is low and thus it doesn’t burn a whole in the pocket of the brand. Also, in spite of being so easy on the pockets, this form of marketing brings back huge profits.
5. Impact: The last but not the least reason is the impact that is generated through this form of marketing. Guerrilla Marketing helps a brand to position themselves in a way through which the consumer remembers the brand for a longer time and hence the brand recall is higher. When the brand recall is high, the sales figures go higher.

These are the pros for which marketeers cater to Guerrilla Marketing most of the time. But that doesn’t mean there are no cons to this process. Guerrilla Marketing campaigns have often failed and those failures have been huge! We will talk about the loopholes of this form of marketing in my next blog.

We often hear how marketeers are ready to go to any extent in order to make their products or services sold out. In this process, marketeers often take the help of a process of marketing called “Guerrilla Marketing”. Now, where did this term “guerrilla” come from? We all must have heard about “Guerrilla Warfare”, right? Guerrilla Warfare is a form of warfare where armed civilians can use small tactics and strategies in order to fulfil their purpose. We can call it a form of ‘luck by chance’. Similarly, Guerrilla Marketing is a form of marketing where unconventional strategies are used by marketeers in order to sell their product or service. The term “Guerrilla Marketing” is supposed to have got its recognition from Conrad Levinson’s 1984 book “Guerrilla Advertising”.

In today’s world, Guerrilla Marketing is extensively used by almost all small and big brands in order to catch the attention of consumers. The concepts of guerrilla marketing are very innovative and creative. There is absolutely no format that one needs to follow while coming up with a strategy or a plan. The main objective of guerrilla marketing lies in the fact that through the process it needs to create a buzz, create a need gap for the particular product or the service, make consumers aware and then eventually go viral. Guerrilla Marketing campaigns can include anything to everything like huge sales and discounts on products, free giveaways, PR stunts, publicity stunts etc. As long as your activity is generating buzz and attracting consumers, you are free to do almost anything.

Also, Guerrilla Marketing campaigns do not draw a big hole in the pocket of brands which is another big reason why brands now a days are opting for this kind of marketing rejecting the traditional route. Even giant brands like McDonald’s, Gold Toe etc. take the help of Guerrilla Marketing. Not only consumer retail brands but Grammys and UNICEF recently turned to Guerrilla Marketing too for more people reach. These types of campaigns are budget-friendly and thus, brands do not think twice before implementing them. After all, the loss is minimal, isn’t it?

Not only being an ease on the pocket, but Guerrilla Marketing has other pros too along with a lot of cons as well. We will talk about the advantages and drawbacks of Guerrilla Marketing in the next part of this blog. Till then, let your creative juices flow without a barrier!

It’s been a year now that I am staying in Mumbai. Last year, this same time I came to Bombay for an internship. For a person like me who is way too imbibed in the roots and culture of her city, it was quite a bug decision to move out and come two thousand kilometers away. However, I made up my mind about moving out of my comfort zone. The moment I stepped into the city I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I missed how lazy Kolkata was and one the other I was excited about how busy this city was.

The next day I went to my office, my first corporate experience. As I stepped in, I could feel the buzz building inside me. I was assigned to a desktop and a desk of my own. “Would it be like school?”, I thought to myself. Very soon it turned out, it was not an inch like school. When we are in school, we are often excused for our mistakes and are taught with patience. But here, one has to take the responsibility of mistakes and learn new things on your own if situation demands. Soon, I realized that this was a place where you got to fight for every tooth and nail. With a few ups and downs, I spent three months in the city.

I came back here again in the month of August, but this time to study. Well, this time was worse than the previous one. I didn’t like the place I was staying at. Kurla wasn’t as posh as South Bombay. But, I had little choice. As our classes in college started, I started getting used to the place, used to the dingy hostel room, used to the roads where humans and cars both can get on you, used to the nasty food. After almost six months here, I won’t say I have started loving the city but it has surely grown on me.

Maybe it’s not because of the time but because of the people who are around me- the girl who comes to my room every day to check on me, the egg seller woman who gives me onion salad for free, the restaurant delivery boy who gives me ketchup pouches, the panipuri vendor who listens to my rant of how bad panipuris are. Now, I feel more independent and confident as ever unlike the last time when I saw my parents leaving. The point here is, maybe, Bombay doesn’t give you homely feels but it surely gives you teeth!

This is my second year in a row that I have not been celebrating New Year’s Eve or New Year.
Why you ask me? The reason is I am either travelling or making preparations to start with
something new. Like last year, I started this year too with an internship in Genesis BCW, a
public relations firm. Unlike last year, I didn’t feel lost and lonely the previous day. Last year
when I had come to this city for the first time, I was absolutely clueless and when I had seen my
parents leaving, the cab taking them away, I felt like the loneliest person on earth standing in
the middle of a crowded street while the rest of the world functioned just fine. This year when I
landed at the airport, all alone, instead of feeling lost I felt independent.
The second day of the year started with me reporting to the office. Being the anxiety-driven
person that I am, I reached almost an hour before the required time. Honestly, I wasn’t very
nervous about how my first day would go but I was a little conscious and alert for sure. Anyway,
after that all four of us met the HR and she made us do all the formal documentation, we were
given our sectors. I was put in Consumer Tech. I was a little skeptical about how the experience
would be for me as I had no idea about the corporate side of brands. As the day advanced, I
was given my tasks for the day and my manager explained them clearly to me. I read about the
brands and what they did, understood what the agency does for them and what are the things
expected from me.
It has been a week now and every day I have learnt something new. I have also discovered
qualities that I never thought I had in me. And most important of all, I am not always scared and
nervous unlike the last time. What a difference can a year make!

Earlier this month, I had an opportunity to be the part of a Tweet chat. This activity was a group assignment and today, in this blog, I would like to pen down the experience that we had while arranging the chat.

Before I begin, what is a tweet chat?

A Tweet Chat is a live question and answer session on Twitter revolving around a particular topic having a guest and one or more moderators. The moderator posts a set of questions to which the guest answers subsequently.

The first thing that we had to do was to choose a topic. We went with “Emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world of Public Relations and Communications” and invited Mr. Aseem Sood, CEO at Impact Research and Measurement Pvt. Ltd, Director and Fellow, AMEC as our chief guest. The next step was framing questions around Artificial Intelligence and its measurement for which all of us engaged in extensive research and study about the topic and finalized seven questions. Then began the laborious part where we had to make separate creatives for each question and everyone’s introduction. While two people from my team took care of the creatives, me and one other took care of the spreadsheet where we had to write down every tweet, their word count, name of the person who would post the tweet, the GIF or the creative that would go with the tweet and the exact timings at which they would be posted. The entire gearing up process was quite tiring because we would have to stay back in college after classes and do the extra work but nevertheless, the process was exciting too.

The time of our chat was from 9 P.M to 10 P. M at night and once we started, the chat went very smoothly. Before the chat, Ms. Ancita Satija, the moderator of SocialPowWow gave us access to the tweet deck which is basically a media dashboard application for management of Twitter accounts. Each one of us introduced ourselves one by one and then posted our individual questions. Our guest, Mr. Sood was very amicable and considerate who co-operated with us and answered the questions properly with their chronology. After the chat was over, Ms. Satija shared with us the impact of the chat. There were 504K impressions in an hour and over 400 mentions of the hash tag in one hour with about 25 users at the chat. It was an amazing learning experience and I would love to do it again sometime in the future.

With the end of December, we, the twenty (#20of2020, Oh! C’mon! We are PR students. We will come up with a hundred hashtags!) of School of Communications and Reputation (SCoRe) finish the first leg of our program. The next step for us is an internship of two months at different PR firms. I am going to Genesis BCW which has been my first choice since the second year of my college and now that I have got my long-awaited opportunity I am hoping to make the most of it.

So, what do I want out of this internship?

Working on one/multiple new sectors: This is not the first time I will be interning with a PR firm and thus, I have a very basic knowledge of how a typical PR internship works. In my previous internship, I worked on the Brands and Lifestyle sector but this time the thing that I am looking forward to the most is working on a sector or multiple sectors which I am not really well-versed with.

Learning perfect documentation: I am “that” person who likes documentation. In the corporate world, documenting every step of what one does is immensely significant. Hence, I want to sharpen my documentation skills and make them perfect.

Making new connections and learn work ethics: Until now, we were in the warm cocoon of our educational institution where we were still allowed to make mistakes. But, when one works in a professional environment the dynamics of how a person should behave changes drastically. From this internship, I want to learn the work ethics of how one should behave in an office environment and also make new connections whom I can approach for help and learning in the future.

Work on a campaign: Although, I know that campaign planning is not something that an intern is given to work on but I am hoping to at least be part of a campaign brainstorm session so that I have a fair knowledge of how it’s done from scratch! *fingers crossed*

Be part of a crisis: What happens when a brand hits a certain crisis? Not that I purposely want any brand to run into crisis but it would be really amazing if I can be present during a crisis management session and have a live demonstration of how these crises are managed.

Coming to what I am going to contribute to my employer, these are the following things:

Punctuality: As we have been taught at SCoRe, “If you’re not ten minutes early, you’re already late!”, I am hoping to make this my “mantra” and follow this diligently.

Proactiveness and Volunteering : I will try to be proactive for any kind of work or activity offered to me. Also, I will try to volunteer for every kind of work without thinking how big or small it is.

I am looking forward to this internship and I hope to make the most out of it.

What does the word “ethics” mean? It is the set of moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity. Public Relation professionals are famously known as “spin doctors” which means that one of the biggest roles of a PR professional is manipulating stuff and getting the work done. But, is it really so?

In the ethics of public relations, honesty and openness are hugely critical. The client is always advised to be completely transparent. The PRSA code of ethics talks about things like advocacy and honesty. Ethics is important in public relations because this profession is all about establishing credibility. The difference between advertising and public relations is that one is paid while the other is earned. One can only earn trust if there is honesty and transparency. Thus, it is very significant for a public relations professional to earn the trust of the people they are working with.

The three ethics that all public relations practitioners should follow are:

1. Integrity: Integrity means being transparent and honest. Public Relations professionals as well as their clients should be completely transparent with each other so that even in case of a media disruption, both the parties can balance the situation hand in hand.
2. Confidentiality: When a client hands over a project to a PR firm, the client should trust the experts in handling the project by putting their trust on the firm.
3. Loyalty: Public Relations professionals should always be loyal to their clients and never put out confidential information about the client to the outside world.
4. Credibility: Credibility once lost can never be restored. Thus, PR professionals should always keep a check on the fact that they are not doing something that can take a toll on the reputation of their brand.

All said and done, ethics at the end of the day is something that depends on the person itself. In cases like a rape or a glitch in a political party or a Me Too movement, it is completely the decision of the PR professional how ethical he/she wants to be.
But, in a general scenario, one should always abide by the ethical rules of the profession.

To think about it, there are more than ten thousand issues all over the world that needs to be solved. Starting from global warming to human trafficking to wastage of water and other natural resources to violence and terrorism, there are just more than enough problems that need our immediate attention. But, if I had forty thousand rupees, the first issue that I would like to address is the issue of hunger and malnutrition.

According to a report by Food and Agriculture Organisation of India (FAO), India has the highest number of undernourished people in the world. Almost 15 percent of the country lives under malnutrition. The International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Global Hunger Index showed that India’s ranking has slipped from 97 in 2016 to 100 this year. Likely, there are hundred other reports and surveys which talk about the statistics of hunger, poverty and malnutrition that is spread all over the country. The biggest irony is one part of the country has more than enough food and that part doesn’t think one bit before discarding “n” amount of food, while the other part is dying without it. And then, there are several other health hazards that follow undernutrition.

Thus, if I had 40k, I would spend it on eradicating hunger as much as possible. I would take common people as “influencers”. People who we can relate to, real-life situations we can connect to, will make it easier to make people understand the significance of a good meal followed by the reason why even one “roti” can’t be wasted. In order to understand why food can’t be wasted and what needs to be done to save excess food, people need to first realise the situation of hunger in India and who better than common people to explain that? Thus, this will be my public relations strategy.

One of the most important things in life is good health. Without a proper health, it doesn’t matter how willing you’re but you will never be able to make anything out of it. Thus, let’s make good health first! One step at a time to make a better India!

Author: Ashwin Sanghi

Publishing year: 2014

Publisher: Westland Ltd.

We, as human beings are very attracted to this thing called “luck”. How many times do we regret or at least grieve or let out a sigh when something “lucky” happens with someone without the person actually putting in any kind of effort. We think luck is hard-crack and that those who have it are sorted for life. Ashwin Sanghi is an entrepreneur by profession who also writes purely out of passion and in his first non-fictional foray, 13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck, has talked about thirteen unique ways through which he thinks one can derive luck in his/her favour.  

Sanghi has started the book with one of his personal anecdotes. He was present in a literary event where he was approached by a lady who asked him, “What is the point of working hard or developing one’s skills if it all boils down to luck?” This question felt very valid to him and thus he started to think that how humans have tried almost everything possible to improve their luck down ages- Romans sacrificed animals, Hindus used numerology, Europeans used exorcism and so on. Here is where it dawned upon him that maybe there is no strategic formula towards luck or being lucky. It is simply that sometimes fate favours some people and for those who are not automatically favoured by their fate have to put in that extra effort to generate luck. In this context, he has mentioned the three R’s: Raise, Recognize and Respond. These three R’s mean that it is not always necessary that luck should be present, we can and have the ability to create good luck by increasing the opportunities that come our way, recognizing the valuable ones among them and responding to the recognized opportunities.

The next chapter in his books talks about the two very important aspects of good luck. They are Attitude and Approach. While the attitude part focuses on how one feels about something or someone the approach part focuses on one’s way of dealing with a situation or handling a challenge or a task. The author here has also given the instance of Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire who conducted an experiment to prove the point that “lucky” people are lucky because of their approach and attitude towards life.
The correct attitude and approach makes one “the luck harvester”. But, what do luck harvesters actually do? They follow the concept of Six Degrees of Separation. It is a theory which was formalized by Frigyes Karinthy and popularized via John Guare’s play which basically says that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away. Thus, for one to be lucky, one has to pay heed to intuition because lucky people listen to their intuition and then develop it. The second step to harvesting luck is experimenting because lucky people are always willing to try new things.        The third step is taking risks. Lucky people take calculated risks, cut their losses, and learn from their mistakes. In these chapters, Ashwin has literally given examples of hundred people ranging from Mukesh Ambani to Jeff Bezoz to Chetan Bhagat to Azim Premji to Satya Nadella and so on! My favourite example from this chapter of luck harvesters has to be the one with Ratan Tata. Had he not pulled out his Nano project from West Bengal, the subsequent success may not have happened in Gujarat and if Singur in West Bengal haven’t had happened, the Sanand land deal might not have happened as efficiently as it did. Here, Ratan Tata took a calculated risk by setting up Singur, then cut his losses by exiting Singur.

The second part of luck harvesting according to Sanghi is staying positive. Lucky people stay positive, persevere and cultivate a thick skin. He has exemplified this with the example of Indira Gandhi. The sixth step is becoming lucky is staying alert. Most lucky people have realized that calming the mind is a key method to increase alertness. The author, in this context, has taken the remembrance of when he visited a meditation camp in Igatpuri near Nashik to strengthen his alertness. Lucky people make the best of bad situations and that is the seventh step of getting bloody good luck. The eighth step is confidence and lucky people develop their confidence and use that to communicate. The ninth step to good luck is staying informed almost always. One should be like a sponge and keep absorbing knowledge from wherever it is coming from. Being updated with knowledge always comes in handy along with good luck. The next step to good luck creating a full circle is goodness. Lucky people are aware of the thing called “karma” and they abide by the rules of it. They do not wait for being the witness of things they just know that karma will complete its entire rotation and bit the ones who do wrong.

The last two steps of being lucky are to be passionate and having the power to unlearn. People who are lucky are also aware of the thing that they are passionate about and most of them have found out a way of turning their passion into their living. Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of Reliance Industries and India’s definitive rags-to-riches icon, is believed to have said, “Does making me excite me? No, but I have to make money for my shareholders. What excites me is achievement, doing something difficult.”
And lastly, everybody should have the power to unlearn and then learn new things. Somebody who refuses to unlearn a certain thing will face severe stagnation in growth and that will eventually lead to a thousand other constraints in his/her life. Learning and unlearning both are equally important for a person to grow as well as be lucky.

After all these steps, the last step that one needs to follow is “leveraging”. One has to understand and realize his/her priorities and has to leverage it properly and then only luck will come. Ashwin ends his book by saying that lucky people not only implement the thirteen steps to attract good luck but they are also able to objectively appreciate what they already have and that is what is very significant.