MAGMA is the magazine of the marketing forum at Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education. The magazine aims to develop students' marketing skills by sharing the latest industry news and trends. This issue includes summaries of an online matchmaking site launching an anti-dowry game and a Mercedes commercial promoting a new safety feature to make airbags obsolete. It also has an article about the importance of embracing failure during innovation and another discussing how marketing concepts from books still provide guidelines but must be challenged.

1. Volume 1, Issue 1
Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education
MAGMA MAGazine of MArketing An initiative by the SIMSREE Marketing Forum
What is MAGMA? Why MAGMA?
MAGMA stands for MAGazine of/for MArketing. This is the magazine of the marketing forum of SIMSREE. This magazine is aimed at development the marketing acumen of students of SIMSREE by sharing the latest developments in the world of marketing, discussing emerging trends and analyzing the latest hits and flops in the fields of advertising, promotion, branding, market research and all things marketing. In contemporary literal terms, the word “magma” stands for the hot, fiery, molten material lurking beneath the surface of the earth. That is how we, the students of marketing at SIMSREE see ourselves: full of energy, potential and ideas just waiting to break the surface, just waiting for an opportunity. We see the SIMSREE marketing forum as a sort of an incubation ground for us to polish our skills as marketeers. And MAGMA is our communication with the rest of the world !!!
Latest Marketing News
Shaadi.com launches Angry Brides
In a bid to fight the dowry menace, the online matchmaking portal has launched an online game titled Angry Brides inspired by Angry Birds. Available as a free application on Facebook, it has already attracted more than 270,000 'likes '. The game spans three levels where the player gets to interact with three bridegrooms carrying a heavy dowry price tag. The player needs to strike the dodging grooms with a range of weapons spanning household items like rolling pin, sandals, utensils, and brooms. Each strike decreases the dowry demanded by the groom, and adds it to the player's points called the 'anti -dowry fund', which can be published on their Facebook wall/Timeline. http://facebook.com/AngryBrides
Goodbye Airbags
Mercedes attempts to makes airbags obsolete in its new TVC .In its latest TVC for its new B - Class variant, Mercedes marks the advent of its “Collision prevent assist” feature. The ad titled “Thanks, Airbag” signals the change in emphasis where Mercedes is trying to ensure that the airbag is needed less and less. Along with adaptive brake assist, the Collision Prevention Assist feature uses radar to look for likely collision targets in front of the car and seeks to prevent any head on collision. The ad can be found at
http://youtu.be/LWNYKXBx-K4

2. Volume 1, Issue 1
Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education
Innovation and the Book
By Pranav Koli, Member
Just the other day, I was going through the Brand Equity supplement of “The Economic Times” (Yeah, I do read it ... sometimes), on the last page there were a list of bad advertisements this year. I agreed with some of the items on the list, disagreed with some, but nevertheless, that list got me thinking: “Why do advertisements fail ?”, “Where do these Ad Men go wrong ?”, “What can be done to stop such a disaster from happening?”.
Luckily, I did not have to look too far or too long for an answer. There was another article on another page of the same issue which, in effect states: “The fear of failure is choking innovation”. Ad makers are sticking to what they know to be safe options rather than venture out into the unknown, preventing innovation and creativity which are the very pillars of marketing. The article talked about when the medium of TV advertisement first came into being. People initially thought of it as “radio with pictures” or “print ads with sound (and motion)” and advertised accordingly. Only when people started thinking of TV as a completely different entity, were they truly freed of their shackles and began truly utilizing the immense potential it had. People came to the TV with all sorts of crazy ideas, some of them became instant classics, many tanked miserably. But these failures are the ones that taught the industry much more than the successes ever would. In any creative and innovative industry, failures are a fact of life and we have to learn to embrace them, accept them, learn from them and finally move on.
That is the business we, as marketers are in, the business of venturing out in the unknown.
After people came to embrace the media of TV advertisements, came the reign of internet advertising. The industry has just come to terms with it when we are faced with a new challenge: –The era of social marketing has dawned. With the
emergence of FaceBook, twitter, YouTube and other social networking media, we find that the promotion of a product is lesser and lesser in the hands of a marketer and much more in those of the customer. Twitter, not just a social networking site, but an entire new medium in itself, has greatly changed the way people communicate. Companies are quickly jumping the bandwagon to utilize these new media, but we have seen many a company burn their hands while trying their inexperienced hands at these new tools.
In these rapidly changing times, how relevant has classroom education and books remained? The 4P’s marketing mix model is more than 50 years old, Porter’s Five forces model more than 30, the Value Chain concept 25. Do any of these concepts have any significance in today’s market? Ask any marketer and he will always refer to the book – the one we marketers have come to lovingly call as “The Kotler”. Even when you look into “The Kotler”, you will see concepts, guidelines and steps to undertake any activity, but most importantly, there are cases and example of companies, who did not stick to these guidelines, went above and beyond what was expected and emerged as market leaders. So that’s what these books teach us – not what has to be done, but the very minimum base guideline of what must be done. We have to know the rules of the game, before we can rise to challenge them. And for learning these things what we need to do is not just learn to love “The Kotler”, but to go above and beyond that – industry analysis, brand analysis, ad analysis, case studies. We should learn from the successes and failures of those who camebefore us
Only by learning what has already been done can we be true to our field as marketers – that is to ‘do something different’, to be creative, to innovate…

3. Volume 1, Issue 1
Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education
The tapioca story
This short story is a part of a larger article titled “Tapioca and TATA nano : a PR story” by Sajith, a PGDM student at IIM Calcutta, batch of 2103 published on “The Marketers” website. The article is a good insight on why the TATA nano could not achieve the success story everyone had envisioned for it. It is a very good article and I urge everyone to visit the original article at http://www.themarketers.in/tapioca-tata-nano-some-pr-lessons/
Also known as Cassava, this tuber is a staple food for about 500 million of the world population, mostly in the tropical regions. Like the Potato, Tapioca too originated in the Andes and was spread across the world by European traders.
It was the second half of the 19th century and the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore was experiencing a severe famine. The King was looking for cheaper, easy to grow alternatives for rice and found the solution to be the Tapioca tuber brought by the Portuguese. Tapioca was perfect for the population’s need and geography. Cheap to cultivate, has similar carbohydrate content as rice and can be used with the same side dishes as rice. But making the whole Kingdom adopt this new crop was a problem. Pepsico and Kellogg’s turmoil in India show how difficult it is to get into people’s food habits.
Anyways, the King had enough marketing acumen to know that even at the Bottom of the Pyramid, people look for value and that brand positioning is critical. The King couldn’t just issue an order to get it adopted by the masses saying it’s cheap and easy to cultivate and cook.
And thus born was the mother of all marketing tricks.
The legend has it that, the King cultivated the tuber on a field adjacent to the palace, with a fence around it and the army deployed to guard it. Announcements were made in true royal style around the kingdom about the Special Royal Plant imported from Portugal exclusively for the King and the royal family. The announcements also described in detail the cultivation and cooking of Tapioca, including how to recognize when the plants are ready for harvesting and replanting. And of course, there were severe penalties involved if anyone is found meddling with the exclusive crop.
So when the crop near the palace was ready for harvesting, the whole country knew exactly how delicious tapioca dish is and what to do if you get hold of some. And one of those days, for reasons known only to the King, the army was withdrawn from the crop’s guarding duty. And no marks for guessing - the people were thus tricked into stealing the whole crop overnight.
And it is the second most common staple food in the state of Kerala to this day.

4. Volume 1, Issue 1
Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education
Advertising Goals Pyramid
When you are advertising or running any other promotion campaign, what should your goals be?
Awareness - First and foremost, you must let the consumer know that your product exists! All advertisements do that.
Functional Attributes - Once your consumer knows you exist, next you have to tell him what your product is and what it does. Appeal to his rational side. Most advertisements do this as well.
Emotional Benefits - Now that your consumer knows that your product exists and what it does, let him know how that is going to affect him and benefit him. Appeal to his emotional side. This is where many advertisers falter.
Trust – Finally, build a relation of trust with your customer. This is the most difficult to do and very few campaigns manage to do this. This is because this step is not a function of the advertising alone but of your product and its track record.
There are a very few brands which have managed to build a relationship of total trust with its users. Some of them are Dettol, Colgate and Apple. When this happens, you brand becomes a "Cult Brand". We will discuss the topic of Cult Brands and how to build a cult brand in a later issue.
Invitation for articles
We at the SIMSREE Marketing Forum had great fun creating this first issue of MAGMA. We look forward to come out with numerous more issues. But to be able to achieve this, we need help and support from you, the reader. We hereby, invite all our readers to contribute articles to MAGMA. You may write articles on any topic pertaining to marketing or MBA in general. If you are basing your article on someone else’s, please provide full credit to the original source and it would be nice if you could include a link to the same. If you find any article which you think merits attention and would like to share with everyone else, please send us the same.
Send in your articles to : simsree.marketing.forum@gmail.com
Any comments, suggestions, complaints, critique, encouraging words ?? Get in touch with the SIMSREE marketing Forum at : simsree.marketing.forum@gmail.com
Trust
Emotional Benifit
Functional Attributes
Product Awareness