madhouse musings!

Recently, we bought an ad. package of 4+4 (you buy 4 ads. you get 4 free) in HT city at Chandigarh. Almost 2 years into the movie rental business now, Chandigarh remains our lab to test and try things out. Our members in Chandigarh are the ones I really need to thank, for they have helped us in shaping our service and fine tuning it to suit the general population.

Coming back to the package we bought, we decided to publish one ad. each Friday. It made sense as that is the day when new releases are listed, and if our ad. was present beside the ad. of a multiplex, the chance of our ad. catching a movie buff’s eye was high.

We had 8 ads. in all, to publish over 3 months (almost). We planned a print schedule based on the inputs we had about what time during the month do people make purchase decisions, when are they pre-occupied with other things, etc. For instance, during diwali people have other things, such as buying Gold, preparations for puja, card parites, etc. on their mind and they may not bother too much about movie releases. Therefore, it made sense to skip an ad. during Diwali.

We thought we would plan an ad. series, with each ad. talking about one USP of ours and culminating with an ad. that highlights our features as against competition in the market. After some thought, I concluded that 8 different ads. spread over three months is too long a time for our audience to remember individual ads. Therefore, it was best that we chose specific messages we wanted to send across and repeat these messages over and over.

Repetition is for recognition. If a person saw my ad. last week and it did not initiate him, if I repeat the same ad. this week, it will help him recognize our previous weeks ad. and will initiate him this week. Therefore, I proposed that we limit the number of ad. designs and repeat each of them over and over again.

Here are some stats related to the ads. we published:

1. Ads that spoke of Madhouse as the largest video library in the region saw 35-40 enquiries with 50% conversion rates.
2. Ads that had a message about our low rentals again saw 35 – 40 enquiries with 75% conversion rates.
3. The one ad. that highlighted all our features, over the competition, saw 7 enquiries and 2 conversions.

Surprising, since most of us really liked the ad. that highlighted our features. Many friends and family noticed the ad., they commended its aesthetic excellence. We all thought we had a winner of an ad., expected enquiries to pour in. But, nothing like that happened. Contrary to all our assumptions, we hardly got any traction to that particular ad.

It is important that we identify the key features of our product, which our target customers relate to and use our communication to sell those features. In madhouse’s case, low rentals was a sure seller, leader in a particular region was a good selling feature too.

For any new product / service in a market, especially so a startup such as ours, it is of utmost importance that we use the marketing channels intelligently. One could spread themselves thin by indulging in expensive above-the-line channels and gain nothing from it, except for a burnt pocket.

Focus on the target customers, their profiles, means to hook them to your service and innovative methods to reach them are vital. Not glamorous Page 1 advertisements, no fancy campaigns, no frills. Just pure entertainment. By way of a satisfying movie rental service in our case.

The last two years of my career, as a co-founder of Madhouse, a media & entertainment startup, I have interviewed and interacted with innumerable kinds of people across the organizational spectrum.

Personally, for Madhouse, it was a dilemma finding good talent to hire when we started the company. Considering the fact that we choose to work out of non-metro, smaller city, there were a few challenges to deal with.

Typically, in a metro or a larger city, one solution for hiring needs is an external agency. As I went about exploring that route, I realized that I had only a handful of agencies to liaise with. Three of which were large agencies with regional offices in my city. Two of them were local, small time firms.

While the larger ones demanded huge amount of deposits even before they could sit for negotiations; the smaller ones who were ready to work on per-transaction basis, were unprofessional producing below-standard candidates to interview. One of the local agencies I choose to liaise with also indulged in unprofessional, fraudulent activities. They encouraged a candidate to lie about her experience and pay package; to earn a quick buck. I was surprised at the foolish, yet brave act of this agency; I terminated our relationship with them immediately after and my word-of-mouth about them is definitely not positive.

One way to hire good talent, I found, was through reference, reference of employees, friends and family. People I hired through this route were dedicated and hardworking. This helped, but only up to a certain point. Soon, I was again looking for avenues to find good talent.

www.naukri.com was one good find. I was apprehensive about the results initially since we were in a smaller city, but to my surprise many of the local talent are present online. For us at madhouse, www.naukri.com is a trusted brand to hire good talent, today.

Currently, we are looking at hiring for positions higher up in the management structure. We floated the job description through friends and acquaintances as job postings in e-groups of top business schools in the country. We were apprehensive that the talent we are looking for may incline towards an established brand and may be start-up averse. Surprised, we were to see resumes pouring in from freshers to experienced top talents in the country.

For a start-up, especially those in the pre-funding stage (as we are), it is very important to be frugal and innovate in its approach. At Madhouse, we are now very used to thinking up innovative, cost-efficient, and effective avenues. For companies like ours it is important to hire talent that believes in the company philosophy and is in sync with the company culture. It is more important to have people who are aggressive, have the passion to think beyond the normal, innovators in their own little way.

When I see the madhouse team, as varied as they are in their backgrounds, all of them are vital stars in the constellation called Madhouse. Stars, those shine better by the day, to enhance Madhouse’s position in the vast Indian market. I am confident that as we expand we will add more such and better stars to the Madhouse constellation. And, I am also confident that there are avenues where I can find that talent.