A taste to reckon with...

They call it the largest Marketing Fair in the nation,
I would remember it with the word – Congratulation!

The superheroes descended from thin air … sometimes, with the rain god;
With the biggest stall to manage, we managed eyebrows and applaud!

Here goes an account of what happened and why,
Yes, you will agree with me – we never let any mouth dry!


18th and 19th of November 2006 – TAPMI saw one of the biggest and best fairs organized this year. 15 live projects came into action with as many as 4497 people responding to what we called – Road shows, Banners, Advertisements, all over town! There were a lot of apprehensions, as usual, amongst the juniors – seeing all this for the first time! Does this really work? Are we already professionals? Too many questions and just one answer to them – almost one week before –

BRANDSCAN 2006

Project Leaders took places of role models. For some, they were marketing gurus and for others, simply – just another boss to ignore! For Team Amul, Rajesh was simply the one with the softest words, adorable smile and a ready action plan for a daunting project on Market Research for “Amul Shakti”.

I still remember the first formal meeting at the TT room where after the formal induction; everyone was bombarded with marketing jargons! I remember sitting down and taking notes as I was in class and listening to Kotler!! Awareness, Perception, Preference, Availability and Post Purchase Behaviour – we were supposed to test Amul on 4 out of these 5 parameters. We were lucky that we were one of the few lucky groups to get a live project – Amul Shakti’s sales had stagnated and we were finding out – WHY? Under the guidance of our PGP chairman and more number of targets to achieve, we set out on a journey to discover painters, designers, loggies, gamers and most importantly, marketing geniuses within us!

What attracts children the most? How do we incorporate games in our themes? Who can paint well? Once we answered these questions – we came up with our theme – Superheroes! With Superman, Batman and Shaktimaan getting their dresses painted at 11 in the night, the team of 19 enthusiasts worked in full flow to design a 60 feet by 20 feet stall!! There were moments when all the planning was going wrong, but we stuck together to distribute the tension and work smartly.

I always thought things well planned can’t go wrong in the last moment! But I was proved wrong – we never planned for what was not in our hands. First, the stall had a completely different outlook. Secondly, we never thought nature would play against us!!

But, we had the power of Amul Shakti! With a skyline of Superheroes guarding us against all odds, we set out in our venture to gauge the audience of their perception of our brand. Our target audience was married women with young children. With 13 parameters to test and two blind tastes to conduct, on the first day, we overshot our target of respondents in the case of children! Their enthusiasm cannot be put into words and similarly, our happiness! Our Hot and Cold Blind tests were a rage amongst the children, who kept coming back for more! Needless to say, we had to suffice a few hungry stomachs of our institute as well!

The second day couldn’t have been more eventful. Rain Gods were angry with us – they had spoiled our stall a little bit – but we were one of the luckiest one in this regard. As the audience started flowing in again, by around 6 pm, all were brought down by the fury of water. However, we managed to rope in close to 50 clear respondents and successfully saw a good show.

Needless to say, there is much more to Brandscan than that has been put here. Listening to 3 rock bands pouring great music in the middle of a drizzle; children, dancing on stage to awesome latest music and of course, our own Rafi singing at the Antakshari! How can one also forget filling up questionnaires, first in the afternoon heat and then, in the evening rain – from women who don’t know the difference between a Health Drink and Coffee?

I think we did well. In fact, we did really well. There was a lot to learn for the juniors – team work, patience, actual field work and of course, showmanship!

Cheers to Team Amul – we tasted every emotion in a span on ten days!
The rest – I guess – just tasted our brand!