Mumbai: Shoppers are in a frenzied state during festive season, all thanks to the volley of discounts e-comm sites keep hurling their way. The same tactics with minor variations that off line retailers have been trying since the time all retail was off line. However some of them are getting a lot smarter, leaving lessons for the wiser ones to pick up.

The numbers are few and far between: we dug up these anecdotes after several conversations. A telling statement on how few traditional retailers look beyond the obvious, perhaps?

No doubt discounts work, but when everyone in the market is making the same moves, some new strategies need to be deployed to win. Here are a few of the best:

Even big brands need to behave like next-door kirana stores:

Charanjeev Singh is the founder of SinghStyled, a one-of-a-kind online platform exclusively for Sikh men’s grooming. For the last two years, Godrej Nature’s Basket store in Bandra has kept a firm grip on his mother’s orders, he tells us. “They regularly call to check if she has something to order, even if she needs a lemon. The follow-ups started from the time she said, “Oh! we order from bigbasket.com now.” The store now calls her in excitement every time carrots are in stock. “They know mom will definitely order,” says Singh. The kirana formula is season-agnostic, basically. It has never depended on discounts.

Beat users who research offline but buy online at their own game

Singh was out buying shoes one day and heard an interesting development about German sports accessories brand Puma. “Most of the off line shoes you see at the store are not available on any online carts. It was true for the pair I bought as well.” Traditional retailers have been

whining about users checking products at their stores and then buying online. But different assortments for each channel makes it obvious who went to the store and who got a pair of shoes on the cheap — given the same models are on offer across all sites, at similar discounts.

Ensure the ads don’t become a blind spot

Three years ago, getting an ad on the front page of any leading publication used to be a brand’s most coveted dream. Suffice to say, in the festive season that’s no longer such a unique or exciting position. Even a few clients don’t care about it as much as they used to given the front page shows up after seven pages of jacket ads. Even those eventually become blind spot for readers because there are just so many, and almost all of them are of the “never-before-offer” on a mobile phone or TV variety.

Which brings us to a gif doing the rounds last week on how news was ruining people’s ad-viewing experience in papers. Speaking of gif and memes, Karthik Srinivasan, national lead of social@Ogilvy, shares an interesting one. It’s built around the ads for a Chennai-based retail

Chain called Saravana Stores – one of the largest family-owned and run retail chains in India. The ad in question has the owner’s son Ss Saravanan sharing a frame with leading actors and actresses from South India. So how did it get meme-fied? “The memes suggested we better buy from Saravana Stores lest this guy keep appearing in its ads,” says Srinivasan. It sure did get noticed: the argument about whether this is the best way and if all publicity is good is one for another day.

This is an interesting anecdote Kiran Khalap, MD and co-founder of chlorophyll brand consultancy, shares with us. He tells us about MM Mithaiwala, a popular chain of sweets, snacks, and savouries, headquartered in the Malad suburb of Mumbai.

“Every year when the academic results are out, MM Mithaiwala offers students to bring their marksheets along. If you have secured a first division, you get a box of best savouries from the shop. And people flock to shop.”

There are so many things right about this strategy. There’s a perfect brand fit with the occasion: you celebrate your success with MM Mithaiwala sweets. And you don’t discount your product, you actually make it exclusive and aspirational.

Source: Times of India