Google’s Product (P) focus- Other Ps, ‘set to zero’

There has always been a debate among marketers and strategists of which P among the 4Ps of marketing mix is more important. And the answer has always been that it depended on the industry and the market scenario. The answer will remain the same until marketing remains in the corporate world.

Yes, circumstances decide the importance of the individual element in the marketing mix. Looking at the Indian marketplace specifically with an example of the telecom industry, price has become the differentiation factor. There isn’t any attribute or benefit that one service provider offers which the other doesn’t. Thus the customer decides the operator on the basis of the least costly and nearest available.

With white goods and, to a certain extent automobiles, promotional spend has been the major driver. Although there is a product differentiation, it isn’t a compelling reason enough for the product sale. ‘Place’ continues to be the dark and unsung with an exception of FMCG where it is given its due.

Few times, if at all, is the product the focus. In a country like India which is very price-sensitive, marketers have always been focusing on the price, and rightly so. The case isn’t the same in the developed markets. R&D isn’t seen as a off-shoot of strategy. Rather it is thought of as a cost centre with intangible consequences resulting in lack of its effect measured on the P&L. thus the urge to spend isn’t always compelling enough for the marketer. It is seen as a luxury rather than a necessity and the axe always falls first on R&D when the going gets tough in the economy.

Thus we see an Intel, IBM, Oracle or a Google R&D centre in India but not a R&D centre for a Tata or Reliance or a Bajaj. Cost reduction resulting in low-priced products always seems the easier option.

Internationally speaking, Google with its phenomenal growth has always thought of Product development as the focus. Its first product offering i.e. the search engine was free with no promotional spend (all was word-of-mouth). Then came the email service, Gmail. Again it was free with no promotional spend. Other products such as Google Maps, Blogger, Orkut, Youtube followed. All free with only word-of-mouth publicity. It is imbibed in the Google culture where the engineers are given 20% time from among their working hours to pursue their own product for the company. The result is for everyone to see. A gamut of services, all free for the end user.

In an interview, the number 4 in the Company after its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schimdt, Mr. Nikesh Arora said that Google was working on Google TV which was the future of TV and internet in a seamless network. The new philosophy for Google is to ‘set to zero’ the 3 Ps-price, promotion and place with entire concentration on product development. Currently if you have a look at the number of services on offer, its quite staggering. A testimony to the Google’s endeavor of spotlight on product.

Why Screenagers are a Marketers nightmare

Screenagers continuously move from screen to screen and they have plethora of content to look at. The attention span is less since they so not know what they want. The are as capricious as any spoilt child. This is a set of people who are not awed by technology but see it as a natural evolution. They thrive on technology and they are the ideal choice fro new technology products.

But as they say, every coin has two sides or rather it is like a two-edged sword. They will immediately throw away a bad product or an un-user friendly product.

Screenagers tend to be an extremely well-informed lot which enables them to see and switch from one thing to the other with great accuracy and immediacy. In a sense, their ability to process large amounts of information simultaneously is rather staggering. Even the speed with which they switch between screens is constantly rising. One screen that is facing an erosion of sorts is the oldest screen of them all, TV.

The attention spans of these people are at their lowest when they are watching television, while it’s extremely high when they are on the Internet or on the mobile. I think the 15 second advertisement will soon be history. With multiscreens comes the multitasking behaviour, which crunches attention span to five seconds or less. That is all the time we as marketers will have to communicate our message, our positioning and make an impression. TV will have to interact with the other screens and that advertising ideas need to remain alive in that scenario.

Given that they are the prime target audience for numerous brands, marketers suddenly find themselves chasing shadows. They don’t like their screens being filled up with sales pitches, they have short attention spans and time is always at a premium. If they are in a car they have no time to stare at hoardings since they are busy with one or the other screen. One of the big challenges as a marketer is to find non-intrusive ways to access them.

SMS blasts are hugely ineffective and irritatingly intrusive. The internet media was saved by Google’s search engine discovery — which led to the birth of data marketing . We need its equivalents for mobile phones, gaming consoles, etc. marketers need to pull up their socks to tap this difficult market. While mobile and the internet as media are being increasingly consumed, the time spent in communication for these screens is less compared to the Television.

A lot of interaction across screens are visual led, rather than information intensive, communication targeted at consumers particularly on the Internet and mobile phones need to be of the same nature. Unfortunately, that is not happening.

Integration of these 3 screens is the most essential for success and to understand the want of these screenagers. If we treat each screen as a different world, we have lost at the first step itself.

Catch them young is the way forward since they are at a very Impressionable years. Not just these screenagers, but the general population is moving towards digital too. Mobiles are the answer to get near the populace since that gadget is with almost everyone and is available 24x7.

The truth though is that as of now nobody knows how to deal with this situation. For years marketers and agencies have agonized over the remote and today the remote seems like a dream compared to the nightmare that multiscreening is. Because at the end of the day, the problem is how do you reach a Milind Patil, a twenty-something from one of the four metros who stares into his phone screen every now and again either messaging or reading messages.