Sustainable Marketing

As the name suggests, NO!, it does not mean sustaining our marketing efforts. I had the same idea but the bubble burst when our guest faculty C.D Mitra, who has a keen knowledge on this topic explained to us that sustainable marketing is the ability of a company to adopt practices to contribute to make this world a better place to live  environmentally.

This concept is still in its infancy, as quite a few organizations have adopted sustainable practices. Its a difficult task to integrate environmental friendly products with profits. A lot of money is spent by huge firms in research to develop their products. Business cannot afford to spend so much, which is why it’ll take time for this concept to become more accessible.

Sustainable Marketing is not just focused on environment, but also on other aspects of a business.
Anything which can help a business to optimize its practices, building strong relationships with the customers, businesses or the society is also part of sustainable marketing.

Lipton Ice tea is known for its green practices. It uses sustainable farming practices, with all their tea estates. they are in process of sourcing all their tea from “Rainforest Alliance Certified” farms by 2015. Also, Lipton is taking up many CSR initiatives like, planting trees in Kenya under the ‘Trees 2000’ program.

Sales & Distribution Management

Sales, according to me is the most boring job in the world, it has no purpose in relation to life. Its completely a by product of the capitalistic world we live in. Having said that, as a system I find it truly fascinating because their main purpose is to convince people to buy their product or service.

The term sales management relates to the process of planning, directing & controlling selling activities which are conducted in a business.

There is common misconception that sales is a completely separate aspect of a business. Whereas in-fact, sales comes under the concept of Marketing.

Since Lipton is backed by two giants HUL & Pepsi, it has a group of talented individuals handling their sales management

The main sales & distribution objectives of HUL are as follows:

-To achieve their sales targets

-To make sure that effective & efficient dealers are chosen.

-Constant evaluation of their dealers.

-To maintain good relations with their distributors.

-To make sure the product reaches the consumers on time in all target locations.

-Use of appropriate promotion strategies to increase sales.

In HUL, there is no personal selling involved, products are wired through intermediaries and are sold to these intermediaries.

Analyzing Consumer Markets

The topic itself suggests the analyzing consumer markets. Its an important role that a Marketing Manager has to perform, especially in a country like India. India as compared to other countries is a lot more diverse and complicated. The consumers have over the years become more demanding and have become more picky when it comes to choosing a product. As I must have mentioned in my previous post that consumers are at the center of an organization’s existence. It vital to understand everything about a consumer’s behavior, because this understanding will eventually help in shaping our products according to their needs.

                                                                       

Consumers can be affected or influenced by various factors which broadly include  cultural, social & personal. India as said above, is a diverse nation with people following different religions cultures etc. Different classes or culture systems consume differently. For example, Brahmins ideally do not eat non-veg, so a product from Venky’s should never target Brahmins as it they not consume it and also it will hurt their sentiments.

Social factors explain how social roles in society affects our behavior, that is, our society can be divided into various groups like those who are experts in various fields or maybe it can be divided into primary and secondary groups based on our choice of reference.

Another factor is personal factors, which may perhaps be the most concentrated and important one. Personal lives play an important role in our daily decision making process. Events like marriages, promotions etc influence on our buying habits a lot.

The pioneer in understanding needs of consumers is afcourse the famous Mr. Maslow. Its one thing that every student whether it be science, commerce or arts knows about. Its very relevant, easy to understand, and has a well laid out structure. In the structure presented, Maslow has divided Human needs into 5 stages. I believe Lipton ice tea comes under the fourth stage, that is, Esteem needs.

Analyzing Business Markets

So Business Markets does not really come under the purview of my product because for lipton, its consumers who are their main source of revenue and not other businesses.

Business Markets behave and react differently as compared to consumer markets.

Business Markets	Consumer Markets
More rational in their buying behavior	More irrational in their buying behavior
Not the source of demand	The demand is derived from consumers
More systemized and organized	More unorganized as compared to Businesses but still has a structure
Personal Relations play in important role	Personal Relations are not required, just the mirage of personal interactions are needed.
Fewer sellers & buyers	More sellers and buyers

Branding

Branding is a term used to differentiate one’s product with another. It involves the process of creating a logo, packaging, designing, labeling etc. Its important to position one’s brand as superior to its competitors. It helps in creating a better image in the minds of the consumers. Consumers associate themselves very closely with the brand of their liking.

Therefore it becomes our duty as future Brand Managers to understand & maintain the values we want to communicate through our brands.

Lipton’s brand values are heavily dependent on its history. It has over 100 years of experience in tasting, buying & blending tea. They are experts in the Tea business. They are a hundred percent dedicated towards providing superior values to their customers by constantly improving their products through their research facilities and tea estates they have employed.

Keeping in mind that Lipton ice tea is handled by HUL in India, they have an additional backing when it comes to delivering their promises.

The brand has successfully established itself as the number one choice when it come to ice teas, mainly because of few competitors, but also because of the experience they have in this field.

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

Earlier, the world wasn’t very crowded nor complicated. The population was growing very slowly, overall progress of nations and kingdoms were slow as well. But things changed quite dramatically once the concept of capitalism was introduced. People started demanding more better products and more specialized ones. The behavior patterns changed of every individuals dividing them into sets of informal groups who do the same things, follow the same topics, and have similar hobbies etc.

Therefore a need came to focus products on these groups to gain maximum advantage and to earn maximum revenues. This is not to say that other groups are left out. Its just that while marketing a product, the marketer’s focus is only on the selected group or technically known as the Target Market.

Markets may be segmented into geographic, demographic, psychographic & behavioral segments. Basis of segmentation depends on the attributes of the product. For example, if its an ice cream, then it would probably work well in regions where temperatures are high. A very basic example, but the best one to explain.

Lipton Ice tea, have divided their Targets into two sets, one who are the consumers on the go, that is, students, professionals etc who lead a busy life. Two, who are more health conscious.

They have position the drink as a healthy alternative to other cold drink. Also that its tasty and refreshing. they have maintained this positioning in India ever since their arrival, whereas abroad they have changed it overtime.

Their main targets are people between the age of 18-30, who are mostly Millennial's.

Promotions and IMC

Lipton Ice Tea and its product category is in its growth stage. Though, during the launch of the product in India they had used various promotion and advertising strategies to create consumer Media.

The below photo show the print ad used by lipton ice tea in the USA, which communicates the message that th e drink will brighten your day.

The photo below is where lipton ice tea is advertised Out of Home on highways on bridges with a creative placement in India.

Integrated Marketing Communication approach hasn't quite yet been adopted by Lipton maybe because of lack of competition. One factor that affects the advertising budget is the competition and clutter in the same category, which is why heavy spending is not required in their case.

Most of their communication strategy is spent towards persuasive advertising by positioning themselves as a healthy and refreshing drink mainly targeted at young population. Its persuasive for now because its still in the growth stage in its PLC.

When it comes to promotions, they have sampling promotions set up in malls and supermarkets for consumers to experience their product. For PR, very few articles have been secured by them, which can be inferred that they do not want to be dependent on PR. They would want to leverage their brand presence abroad just like Starbucks did recently.

They did have a national 'Get Refreshed Naturally' Campaign with a 360* marketing approach which included offline and online engagement with the youth. They also started a microsite which was integrated with social media like Facebook, twitter etc. The site also included a fairly simple advergame.

Another major campaign was the 'Chill Out Surprise' campaign, which mainly focused on twitter and was a huge success and this is what Ms Rashi Goel, the Brand Manager of Lipton Ice tea had to say about it,

”Lipton Ice Tea is a delicious beverage that gives instant refreshment so it helps people "Take a Chill Pill" in the middle of a busy day. The "chill out surprise" has been a very effective brand activation wherein we have surprised our consumers with moments of relaxation and refreshment in the middle of their normal working day! This brings alive the brand proposition and helps our consumers experience the brand promise first hand. It also goes to

demonstrate yet again how social media portals like Twitter (in this case) make it easy for brands to directly connect, interact and gratify their consumers".