Ingredient Marketing...

When Intel launched the Intel Inside
campaign in the 1990s, many marketers thought
the chip giant was nuts. Who cared about the
microprocessor inside their PC? Turns out Intel
created a branding sensation and raised
awareness of the importance of ingredient
branding, says professor John Quelch. Today's
best example: The Boeing Dreamliner. Key
concepts include:
• The provider of a final product or service
will compromise its own brand-building to
add the ingredient brand on the package if 4
conditions are met.
• The Boeing "Dreamliner" ingredient brand
is sure it will appear as prominently on 787
fuselages as "Intel Inside" did on PCs.
Editor's Note: Harvard Business School
professor John Quelch writes a blog on
marketing issues, called Marketing Know:
How, for Harvard Business Online. It is
reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge.
Why do we pay more for an orange with a
Sunkist sticker? Because inspecting the outside
of the orange doesn't guarantee the quality of
what's inside. We need the assurance of the
Sunkist brand. A variant on this theme is
ingredient branding: putting the brand of an
ingredient on the outside of a product to
increase its appeal.
When is the provider of the final product or
service willing to compromise its own
brand-building to add the ingredient brand on
the package as well as in advertising? There are
4 conditions:
1. The ingredient is highly differentiated,
usually supported by patent protection, and so
adds an aura of quality to the overall product.
Think Gore-tex for water resistant rainwear.
2. The ingredient is central to the functional
performance of the final product. Think
Shimano gear systems on performance bicycles
or Monsanto's Nutrasweet, added to Equal
sweetener.
3. The final products are not well-branded
themselves, either because the category is
relatively new, because customers buy
infrequently or because there is low perceived
differentiation among the options. Think about
all of Dupont's ingredient brands for clothing,
from Rayon through Lycra.
4. The final products are complex,
assembled from components supplied by
multiple firms who may sell the "ingredients"
separately in an aftermarket. Think cars with
Michelin tires, Dolby stereo systems and
Champion spark plugs.
Today, the most impressive—and
unlikely—ingredient brand promises to be the
Boeing 787. On July 8, 2007, Boeing unveiled
the 787 to the public. Over 650 orders have
already been placed by more than 40 airlines
with the first test flight not even scheduled until
May 2008. In addition to being built from
composite materials rather than aluminum and,
therefore, more fuel efficient, the plane's design
includes many in-cabin innovations—including
superior humidity and climate control and lower
cabin pressure that will make air travel more
pleasurable.
For the first time, Boeing has branded a new
product, naming the 787 the Dreamliner. And
All Nippon Airways, the archrival of Japan
Airlines, which placed the first 50 orders is
already touting the plane as a differentiating
"ingredient" in its advertising. Boeing is betting
that passengers will seek out (and pay more for)
tickets on airlines that offer Dreamliner service,
especially when they are taking long-haul
flights where cabin comforts are especially
important. And you can bet that the
"Dreamliner" ingredient brand will appear as
prominently on 787 fuselages as "Intel
Inside"—perhaps the most famous of the
ingredient brand campaigns of the last
decade—appeared on PCs.

Psycho(logically) speaking........

You know sometimes I'm tired of telling ppl how I came to do an MBA and choose media as a career...... & when i do manage to finish my story, all i get is "oh. i see!!!!!!!!"
Anyways, doin a B Sc in Psychology is not a very easy task according to me.....comin from a family of engineers and pure science graduates, no one would have even known theres a course for such a subject.... I had classmates who joined the course onl so that they could pass through the subjects without studyin anythin...... in my opinion, u need to study any damn subject u take, no matter how lame it might be.....
When i began doing psychology, i had a tough time tellin ppl it has been accepted as a science and not arts anymore..... I personally had great ambitions.... like do an MSc in clinical psychology and later do a Phd in it and become a clinical psychologist. But i guess life took a different in my final year. I had no clue about an exam called CAT (Common Aptitude Test), for me it jus remains a 4-legged creature which comes home and drinks all the milk...... I also had no clue why ppl wrote such an exam..... all the entrance i had heard of till then was jus AIEEE, TNPCEE, IIT-JEE, and the like....went for this coaching class..... cos my mom said so..... she said she saw manager material in me, god knows why!!!! all she said one day was i see u as leading somethin with great confidence, it'd be good if u did an MBA... tht was the first time she had said anythin abt my studies.... until then it had always been my choice......
Anyways, went to these CAT classes, wrote mock-CATS after mock CATS and i mus say, i began enjoyin writin these exams, especially, the logical reasonin and the english parts of it.... yet somewhere i knew i wasnt being serious..... had a deep interest in consumer behaviour, which was subject in graduation..... which i'll write more abt in later blogs......
somewhere deep down me, i knew i wasnt givin it my best shot and i still kept my options open abt wantin to an MSc..... then i figured tht my parents had paid an amount tht was more than my 3 yrs college fee put together jus for my coachin class....... then applications to colleges consumed another lumpsome amount....
Though i still have no clue why they gave me an admission, cos i actually said tht if another college was to offer me admission, i would reject this offer......the day i became actually serious abt MBA was my first day in class, MBA.... i was surrounded by these ppl who knew their stuff..... who knew wat accounts, operations, systems, finance and marketin was....... i was clueless..... i had the only idea os HR cos i thought as a psychology major, thts wat am supposed to be doin....... but no!!!!!! soon i realised tht marketing was where my interest was and more specifically advertising....... towards my second year i became much more serious abt my classes....... took things more seriously and was extremely particular abt wat i did.....

One thing i realised in my shift within these fields is tht........ everyone does this at some point of time or the other...... in a way its good to taste different waters, so tht u know which water suits u the best... i have frnds with clear cut thoughts and decisions on wat they wanna do from the beginnin..hats of them, but its also important to step onto different mats, before u find the right one, tht helps u wipe off the dust.....if i were to start experimenting with my career, i would probably be taking a risky step and a few years down the line, am probably takin a dangerous and unforbidden step........ but then again whos perfect??? lets see wat i think of this blog tomorrow if i ever take a turn in my career again ;)