Guest Lecture by Mr. Tushar Murdeshwar, Johnson & Johnson

SIMSREE was proud to have on campus yet another distinguished personage, Mr. Tushar Murdeshwar, alumnus of the 1993 batch of SIMSREE and now Head of Marketing, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products Division-India. The topic for the day was ‘Integrated Marketing Communication.’

The lecture started with a note on how different media channels have sprung up and grown in India in a relatively short period of time. Just two decades ago, television used to be the main mode of communicating with the masses, via short commercials on just a handful of television channels. But with economic progress of the nation, media has also grown in terms of the various channels offered as well as in terms of reach into the nooks and corners of the country. The fact that the customer has also evolved has just added to the complexity, with information being bombarded on the customer every second of the day.

Mr. Murdeshwar also commented on TVR ratings, a measure of how many people can be reached through the medium of television. A point worth noting is that the ratings have seen a drastic reduction over the years from 16%- 24% representing peak viewership to a meagre 2.5% at most today.  Hence, it has become crucial for the creative media agencies to make the brand message more focussed to create a sharp distinction between them and their competitors. He then spoke on copy strategies, that is what a television commercial should say. The key elements of these were ‘Who?’, ‘What?’ And ‘Reason to Believe’.

He demonstrated the above concepts with the example of Neutrogena-right from how a brief is given to a creative agency by identifying the key problems, key challenge and core target segment to business objective, strategy to be followed, and equity challenge. Ultimately, a way to establish consumer connect is identified by hypothesis testing and building a database of information on consumers.  He stressed on how it is important to create relevance for the product category by highlighting the core purpose-why it is necessary to use the product and what need gap it fulfils.

According to sir, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is about the right person, the right message connection, the right channel mix and the right impact. The effectiveness of advertising can and needs to be measured. He emphasized that every big idea must connect with the audience, differentiate & stand apart, and be scalable-that is grow well with the business, and the key is that “Less is More”.

He further continued with the steps to be taken once the big idea is arrived at, with the communication objective being used to tell (i.e. awareness generation), recommend and engage (two-way communication) with the customer to finally come up with the integrated communication strategy and plan, an integrated channel plan, and integrated selling plan.

The lecture concluded with an example of J&J’s treatment of ‘Top to Toe’ and an interactive question-answer session with the audience. It was indeed a very interesting and informative session and we hope to see many more of the same in future.