SENTIMENT MARKETING
Can we use sentiments as an effective marketing tool? By asking this question I could raise many eyebrows. But around 35 years ago a group of youngsters in a pretty remote village in Kerala could put this into practice. I was a member of that group and we were not aware of what we were doing really. But when I now find the fruits of our yesteryears’ efforts and I feel proud of it.
35 years ago, I was studying for commerce graduation and very little knew about marketing techniques. We were a group of ten and out of this five including me were running tutorial classes for students from pre-school (at that time there was no KG classes) to 10th Standard in a shed attached to my house. On one holiday, while we were engaged in our usual chatting in the office room, some one brought the topic of the festival in the Siva Temple in our village. This temple had a special ritual that every year the doors of Goddess Sriparvathy used to be kept open for 12 days starting from the day on which the Star Thiruvathira falls in the month of Dhanu (December/January). There was a belief among the villagers that if the unmarried women could come here and offer Pattu (A piece of Yellow or red Silk Cloth) and Thali (a pendent made of gold which usually the bridgoom ties on the neck of the bride at the time of marriage), next year they would come with their husband to offer prayers. This was a belief among the rural folk and people from nearby villages used to visit the temple. Though there was some rush on some days, the temple authorities were finding it difficult to meet the cost. Hence some of the families used to offer to meet the expenses for conducting one day’s pooja. This festival did not get much publicity and more ore less confined to our village and the adjacent vilalges. Though the elders had attempted to convert this as a big festival, they had to drop after two years because of lack of public support and financial crunch.
This was the background when we discussed about this issue. We were quite discouraged with the failure of our elders including my father, but decided to try our hands on it. But we did not have money to start the process and no body was there to finance us because they thought that our efforts would also be a big flop. We had only our self confidence and the severe criticisms from our elders with us as the start up capital. We needed funds to print notices, make hoardings, build two big shamianas one in the junction in front of the temple and other in front of the Sriparvathi Devi’s sanctumsanctorium plus the allied expenses. At the that time the marriage of one of the group members’ cousin sister was to take place and with his influence we managed to get the work of decorating the shamiana and the house on condition that we would take all the decoration materials with us and no cash payment need be made. The father of the girl agreed to this and accordingly we all together did the decoration work excellently. After the marriage we collected all those materials so that we could use the same thing in the proposed shamianas for the temple festival
The next issue was about printing of notice. We decided to contribute our one month’s fee collection for this purpose which we could take back once we start getting collections. Thus we printed notices. We collected old white dhotis from the houses for decorating the shamianas on condition to return them after use. We collected jute sacks which we attached tightly to a wooden frame to make hoardings. One of our group members was a carpenter and he helped us to make the frames. We did not have money to pay charges to artists for writing the hoardings. During those days walls of houses were painted with lime with a pinch of blue. We applied the same paste on the jute sacks to make white background. We did not have money to buy paint. So we bought some black oxide and red oxide from the hardware shop and also used blue ink tablets to write the boards. Our punch line was about the “unmarried girls get married with in one year”. At night we took these hoardings to places like Kalady, Aluva, Perumbavur, Angamally etc. and placed this at prominent places. Our teams visited as much places as we could, distributed the notices and collected contributions. We also arranged a procession on the first day from the Mana (house where Namboodiri families lived) where the divine ornaments were kept and took them in a decorated chariot with the accompaniments of percussion instruments and bhajans. Though the number of persons visited had not increased substantially, that year we could manage the festival without loss. We repeated the process every year and slowly the flow of pilgrims started increasing.
When we found that our efforts were getting good results, we managed to get published the reports on the festival in the leading news papers. Then people started coming from other places too. The interesting part was that every year few girls got married after visiting the temple and that became proof of our claim and these experiences went around by word of mouth. More than 35 years have passed since we started this process and I left the village in 1978. Now the temple is known not only in Kerala but across the world for this festival and lakhs of people visit during these 12 days. A number of dignitaries come to this temple every year to pay offers. The festival has now become a big event of the village and generates income sufficient for the next one year for most of the families in the village.
Many years have passed and I could realize that we were marketing the sentiments only when I started teaching business management students. My colleague, who was a marketing lecturer used to quote this as an example of marketing strategy. Yes! Now I can proudly tell that sentiments are excellent tools for designing marketing strategies. Later or many other temples also using this technique, may be with out knowing the intricate aspects of marketing.
Sentiments can be used as an effective marketing tool only if we can instill confidence among the people by showing the positive results. Once a few people see the results and believe it then they will spread the message around and soon the news will spread rapidly attracting more people; the increase will be geometrical. Using Sentiment marketing is very dangerous also because in this process we are playing with the beliefs of the people. If they find that what we were propagating is false, they will turn against us and will produce negative results. In stock market operations also we use the sentiments to a great extent to push up the prices of scrips.
Can we use sentiments as an effective marketing tool? By asking this question I could raise many eyebrows. But around 35 years ago a group of youngsters in a pretty remote village in Kerala could put this into practice. I was a member of that group and we were not aware of what we were doing really. But when I now find the fruits of our yesteryears’ efforts and I feel proud of it.
35 years ago, I was studying for commerce graduation and very little knew about marketing techniques. We were a group of ten and out of this five including me were running tutorial classes for students from pre-school (at that time there was no KG classes) to 10th Standard in a shed attached to my house. On one holiday, while we were engaged in our usual chatting in the office room, some one brought the topic of the festival in the Siva Temple in our village. This temple had a special ritual that every year the doors of Goddess Sriparvathy used to be kept open for 12 days starting from the day on which the Star Thiruvathira falls in the month of Dhanu (December/January). There was a belief among the villagers that if the unmarried women could come here and offer Pattu (A piece of Yellow or red Silk Cloth) and Thali (a pendent made of gold which usually the bridgoom ties on the neck of the bride at the time of marriage), next year they would come with their husband to offer prayers. This was a belief among the rural folk and people from nearby villages used to visit the temple. Though there was some rush on some days, the temple authorities were finding it difficult to meet the cost. Hence some of the families used to offer to meet the expenses for conducting one day’s pooja. This festival did not get much publicity and more ore less confined to our village and the adjacent vilalges. Though the elders had attempted to convert this as a big festival, they had to drop after two years because of lack of public support and financial crunch.
This was the background when we discussed about this issue. We were quite discouraged with the failure of our elders including my father, but decided to try our hands on it. But we did not have money to start the process and no body was there to finance us because they thought that our efforts would also be a big flop. We had only our self confidence and the severe criticisms from our elders with us as the start up capital. We needed funds to print notices, make hoardings, build two big shamianas one in the junction in front of the temple and other in front of the Sriparvathi Devi’s sanctumsanctorium plus the allied expenses. At the that time the marriage of one of the group members’ cousin sister was to take place and with his influence we managed to get the work of decorating the shamiana and the house on condition that we would take all the decoration materials with us and no cash payment need be made. The father of the girl agreed to this and accordingly we all together did the decoration work excellently. After the marriage we collected all those materials so that we could use the same thing in the proposed shamianas for the temple festival
The next issue was about printing of notice. We decided to contribute our one month’s fee collection for this purpose which we could take back once we start getting collections. Thus we printed notices. We collected old white dhotis from the houses for decorating the shamianas on condition to return them after use. We collected jute sacks which we attached tightly to a wooden frame to make hoardings. One of our group members was a carpenter and he helped us to make the frames. We did not have money to pay charges to artists for writing the hoardings. During those days walls of houses were painted with lime with a pinch of blue. We applied the same paste on the jute sacks to make white background. We did not have money to buy paint. So we bought some black oxide and red oxide from the hardware shop and also used blue ink tablets to write the boards. Our punch line was about the “unmarried girls get married with in one year”. At night we took these hoardings to places like Kalady, Aluva, Perumbavur, Angamally etc. and placed this at prominent places. Our teams visited as much places as we could, distributed the notices and collected contributions. We also arranged a procession on the first day from the Mana (house where Namboodiri families lived) where the divine ornaments were kept and took them in a decorated chariot with the accompaniments of percussion instruments and bhajans. Though the number of persons visited had not increased substantially, that year we could manage the festival without loss. We repeated the process every year and slowly the flow of pilgrims started increasing.
When we found that our efforts were getting good results, we managed to get published the reports on the festival in the leading news papers. Then people started coming from other places too. The interesting part was that every year few girls got married after visiting the temple and that became proof of our claim and these experiences went around by word of mouth. More than 35 years have passed since we started this process and I left the village in 1978. Now the temple is known not only in Kerala but across the world for this festival and lakhs of people visit during these 12 days. A number of dignitaries come to this temple every year to pay offers. The festival has now become a big event of the village and generates income sufficient for the next one year for most of the families in the village.
Many years have passed and I could realize that we were marketing the sentiments only when I started teaching business management students. My colleague, who was a marketing lecturer used to quote this as an example of marketing strategy. Yes! Now I can proudly tell that sentiments are excellent tools for designing marketing strategies. Later or many other temples also using this technique, may be with out knowing the intricate aspects of marketing.
Sentiments can be used as an effective marketing tool only if we can instill confidence among the people by showing the positive results. Once a few people see the results and believe it then they will spread the message around and soon the news will spread rapidly attracting more people; the increase will be geometrical. Using Sentiment marketing is very dangerous also because in this process we are playing with the beliefs of the people. If they find that what we were propagating is false, they will turn against us and will produce negative results. In stock market operations also we use the sentiments to a great extent to push up the prices of scrips.
