Real life experiences help us understand things better. They provide us the first person view of the matter so that we relate to such things from close quarters. One such fascinating experience was the workshop on Concept development conducted by Mr Visvanathan, General Manager - Marketing Services, Cavin Kare.
The theme of the workshop was to give a first hand view on how a 'good' concept for marketing any product is developed. The various insights that get into making a concept and finally testing it. The effectiveness of the concept can also be tested , thereby giving us means to understand the life cycle of the processes involved in this.
Practically, how brand managers do this exercise is what Mr.Visvanathan took us through during the sunday guest sessions at CBS and it was an exciting journey right from the beginning. As it is a capsule course specially made for Chennai Business school, Mr.Vishy set the stage initially by asking a plethora of questions both at abstract as well as application levels. Then came the seam-less inputs from him, which made is to think differently in conceiving, analysing and finalising about any product concept. It’s always important to understand what goes through the mind of a customer before he buys a particular product. This is the key point for any marketer, using this the product concept for selling it to the customer is developed.
In a nutshell, if one could answer the following questions, one can peep into the mind of a brand manager when he is working on a concept development:
What is the accepted customer belief pertaining to the product in contention?
What are the benefits provided by the product to customer?
What are the reasons to believe this?
Think u can crack them!!!:)...
Another important aspect is the differentiating factor among products and their relevance to their target group. This point was constantly reiterated by him, as he said that most marketers get this wrong. They always concentrate on the differentiating factor and miss out on its relevance. We could actually understand the concept of developing a concept(now that’s called playing with words!!;)) by working on the idea ourselves for brands like Sunsilk shampoo, Meera Herbal Oil and a few more.
But the icing on the cake was when he finally made us to correctly crack those questions mentioned above for various products, putting us in the shoes of a brand manager . Now that’s what you call a really rewarding experience. It never seemed to be just another sunday as we got one more arrow in our marketing quiver. Sharp.
By Pradeep , Marcom Varsity ,CBS
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