At least Let me Pee

The competition amongst brands is so fierce these days, that the marketers and brand managers are doing anything to grab the eyeballs and when I say anything, I mean anything.

One of the most private places of a person called “Restroom” is today full of brands, In India this concept is slowly catching up in the metro cities in the form of multiplexes, where we see advertisements in the restrooms being put up.

Statistics say that on an average a man spends around 55 seconds in the Loo and a woman spends about 105 seconds in the loo. (http://bit.ly/fEH2Mp)

One of the early adopters I came across was PVR cinemas, they did not promoted any brand, and instead they were involved more into self branding, as they claimed that they save water when people go to the restroom.

How this thing works is extremely simple, while a person is in the restroom he has a time window for few seconds, brands place their promotional message a little above the sight of a person, so when he stands he automatically looks up and reads the message, thereby reaching to the ultimate objective of message being consumed.

Not only at the pissing place, but brands have also looked upon the mirror, when a person goes to wash his hands, some sort of stickers/flash advertising have been noticed.

With the mall culture catching up and the youngsters increasingly spending their time in Malls and multiplexes opens up a big opportunity for the brands to take that few second window to deliver their message across.

Catch them young

Marketers today are increasingly focus on the teens and the pre teen’s category (8-13) as they are most exciting and emerging target market which can be focused on, let’s take the example of a newspaper say Times of India which has a school program called the TIMES NIE (Newspaper in education) going on, the strategy was pretty clear the objective of such an initiative was to catch them young.

The idea was to make them used to one type of format, which will continue through their rest of life, a similar initiative was launched by the immediate competition HT with the name ‘HT PACE’

Similar examples can be quoted from other major products like Mcdonald’s, they started off their marketing by targeting the kids with their Happy meals which focused on the free toy

Also one of the insights which can be derived is they also play a major role in the decision making process when it comes to purchasing of high involvement products like cars, LCD’s that’s is when Hyundai tried to woo the kids by coming with new colors and competitions.

There are a lot of other examples through sectors like ICICI in association with cartoon network opened a child account, Surf excel promoted its event color your future, one of the best campaigns was of Bajaj Caliber, the ‘Hoodibaba’ campaign which really grabbed the eyeballs of teens

The pester powers which are vested in today’s kids are something which marketers really look forward to leverage upon.

So, to sum up the teens and the preteens market is so hot because –

· It is the fastest growing segment amongst all other age categories

· They serve as the future customers once tapped at an early age

· Marketers look up to the pester powers of the children as they have major influence in the decision making process