Team PRiSM

Note:These are some indicative questions and answers for the kind of questions asked in
interviews based on previous year experiences. You are advised to prepare more questions on
similar lines and cover the concepts well. For queries, feel free to approach any of the
contributors.

Section 1 - Popular Marketing Concepts

1) Explain ATL vs BTL promotions

The ATL or above-the-line propagated traditional marketing channels that strived to reach
a mass audience with messages that reinforce a brand communicate general product
information or inspire an emotional response. i.e. ATL focuses on
- Mass Reach
- It creates Brand Awareness
- And has no direct consumer involvement.
It thus has the vehicles like: Print Advertising, Hoardings, Electronic Channels and the
Radios.
While the “Below-the-line” initiatives, by comparison, acted like traditional direct
marketing efforts – they aspired to establish targeted relationships between marketers and
individual consumers, and offer comparable ease in measurability. i.e. BTL
- is consumer defined .
- It generates Trial.
- and has direct consumer involvement.
It thus has vehicles like Events, Road Shows, Dealer level activities, Consumer
contacts,mobiles etc.

2) Brand extension vs line extension vs Variants

Brand extension- brand extended to new product category (dettol antiseptic to
handwash/soaps)
Line extension - multiple offerings in same category: eg bath soaps (HUL)= lux, dove,
liril, lifebuoy
Variants- same brand same category but slightly different offering eg: lux (white, green,
pink etc)

3) Tell us about SEC Classification?

4) Give example of psychographic segmentation and behavioural segmentation?

psycho= what we desire; behavioural= what we actually do

5) Is marketing more important or sales?

Sales is a subset of Marketing activity and denotes the final transactional process. It
gives tangibility to measure marketing efforts. Both are important however their
 relative importance changes company, industry and categorywise. P&G vs ITC, FMCG vs
Industrial Products, Mutual Funds vs Savings accounts

Section 2 - Brand Management

1) Which is your favorite brand and why?

Must link with your likes, thoughts and personality. Bring out various dimesions while
explaining like packaging, colours, positioning, impact on recall value, emotional
connect, jingle etc.

2) Tell me about your favorite brand. (try to be unique, can also talk about personalities as
brands)
For this question you are expected to mention the following:
a) Category to which the brand belongs to and the nature of the category (stage of PLC,
fragmented of not, market/brand size and share if possible)
b) Unique positioning of the brand in the category - Explain this wrt competitors citing
examples from the brand’s advertisements
c) Variants or brand extensions of the brand

3) How do you understand/analyse a brand?

Same as above

4) What is your favorite/worst ad?

Analysis based on STP, whether all three match & what has been the progression (any
positioning changes, how was it communicated for example surf excel
http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/29311_Surf-Excel:-Dirt-is-good-for-impunity
another good example - visa http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/brand-
equity/is-bharat-finally-catching-up-with-india-for-visa/articleshow/22993703.cms )

5) What does the advertising of X brand communicate?

Positioning, functionality, packaging, identification, usage ritual, etc

6) What are the brand’s competitors and what is this brand’s positioning with respect to
them?

7) Brand’s these days are increasingly looking towards brand partnerships and brand
promotions in movies. What are your thoughts on this trend of brand communication?
Nokia-Chennai Express, Fed-X-Yehjavanihaideewani, Fevicol&Zandu Balm –Dabangg
Section 3 - Caselets/Exercises/Guesstimates

1) Tell me about a business that you would like to set up and how would you go about it?
The interviewer is basically testing your 4P, STP, 3C skills for any product/service that
you plan for your business.

2) Develop a marketing strategy for a sunfeast glucose in rural india

What you need to know:
Competitor: Parle-g, Tiger
USP used for positioning- natural wheat
What u have to answer!
a) Whom
Target group:Rural family, daily wage earner (Not homogeneous TG)
b) What
Glucose: (Value for money),
24,36,48,72,136,300 grams (rural market prefers smaller SKU's)
c) How much
2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 rupees-keep in mind price sensitiveness, choose smaller mix with lesser
prices
d) How
Promotion-Painting/posters in shops,
Loyalty schemes- highly important in rural areas
Ads-Tricycle, Mandi, FM radios
e) Where
Competitive benchmarking- used to answer "where" should I place the product i.e. place
it wherever the market leader is. If not, chose traditional outlets i.e. Kirana and paan
outlets
Distribution- Hawkers, SHG-self help groups, sub distributors at periphery(town) level,
stockists instead of distributors within villages
Homogenity inoutlets- Kirana stores, Paan shops

3) You have a territory and how will you increase sales in it?
One can either increase the WIDTH (number of outlets you sell to), or DEPTH
(increase the amount you sell per outlet).
i) WIDTH: Check the overall universe of outlets in the area, and figure out how you
can service all the outlets in the area, without incurring high costs, but getting
good returns in sales. Basically here, you push the stockist to provide extra
salesmen to make sure you cover the extra outlets, or ask existing salesmen to
cover additional outlets.

ii) DEPTH: Let’s say that you have Surf 300 gm selling in all outlets. But other SKU’s
of Surf are not selling much in those outlets. So now you push other SKU’s also
into the outlets you are already selling to, this leads to an increase in sales per
outlet. You can also start selling Surf Excel and RIN in the outlets that are taking
only Surf at present. This is called increasing depth in the outlets.

4) Your brand has a market share of 85%, how will you keep it or increase it?
Here more than the retailer, it’s a household brand to the consumer. So if faced with
 competition, you should give consumer promotions like 1+1 offer etc. to retain
market share.

5) You have 5% market share, how will you increase it?

Here your brand is not in the consumers mind itself, so there’s no visibility.
i) You could either ask the brand manager to advertise more and generate some
PULL, but his budget will be constrained.

ii) OR, you give discounts to retailers in the area. Now he gets a better margin by
selling your product instead of market leader. So he will keep it in good stock,
and push it to the consumer, and hence the sales will improve.

Section 4 - Sales and Distribution

1) Who are the members of a distribution channel?

Mother hub, CNF agents, distributors, wholesalers, salesman, retailers, stockists

2) What is the hub and spoke model?

Focus on decentralization, give examples like HUL

3) Name some channels of distribution?

Grocery, Chemist, Modern trade, wholesale, direct are some of the channels

4) How would you increase the reach/sales of a certain product?

Talk about increasing reach to number of outlets (which region, why, growth factors) OR
increasing the amount from existing outlets (use retailer incentives, consumer
promotions) - elaborate on both these points.

5) Brand X is the market leader but now showing stagnant growth - how would you revive?
This means that wherever brand X is present it is doing well so either the company can
explore new markets (rural, similar regions outside country) or new segments of
consumers (on the lines of STP, macro factors which would lead to another segment use
the product)

FMCGDistribution:

Factory->Central Depot->CFA->Stockist->Wholesaler->Retailer->Consumer

Margin structure:

· Stockist-5%

· WS-2%

· Retailer-10%
 · Customer-MRP

Rate structure:

· Retailer- MRP/1.1

· Wholesaler- MRP/1.12

· Stockist- WS/1.05

· All the rates are after putting in VAT 5%

Note: The structure might vary from firm to firm and change over time.

Section 5 - Job/Career Related

1) Which brand would you like to get associated with and why?
choose a product which brings high correlation between product attributes and your
personality traits

2) Sell X item to us or sell yourself to us.

Try to understand needs of the person you are selling to, what he values more what
attributes are of his preference. mere functionality never gives any premium or POD.
hence create it by emotional or aspirational connect. (Sell comb to a bald guy to remind
him of his good old days)

3) What is needed to be good in sales?

a) Leadership and people skills to handle your people well and maintain relationships.
b) High levels of energy and persistence to keep calling people to get things done.
c) Commercial sense to use your budgets judicially and get results.
d) Analytical skills to figure out opportunities from data in hand.

4) Why sales ?
In the long term I would like to get into senior management positions. The FMCG
sales role is like mini-CEO thing, which give me wide exposure across people
handling, finance, operations, sales and moulds me better to handle stress. I also
like interacting with people and travel. It gives me wide exposure into real markets,
and makes me worldlier. My execution skills are honed only in sales. Even becoming
a brand manager in the future will be better if I have field experience in seeing how
customers and consumers react.

Subjective to personal opinion but should broadly cover attributes which are required in a
good salesman. (extrovert, ready to visit places, live just out of suitcase life, jugaadu, must
understand psychology of person on other side etc)

5) Why marketing?
The concept of identifying or creating a consumer need and developing a product for
it and then, going on to target the right segment, and position it for the consumer
and making sure it reaches him through the right channels is really thrilling, I like the
real nature in the job, and the job gives a feel of directly providing value to
consumer. Hence I like it.

Roles:

Brand Manager: Every major brand has a brand manager who is in charge of brand
performance (sales), advertisements (ATL), BTL activities, and general brand positioning,
maintenance etc.

Only that specific brand like Odomos comes under the purview of the brand manager, and
he tries to make sure that the brand works well by allocating budgets to various activities
in order to boost sales. He also tries to understand and analyse consumer feedback, and
develops variants and line extensions to make sure the brand survives the changing
market place.
Odomos cream to Odomos oil or lotion or gel is an example of a line extension whereas
Odomos Rose flavored cream is a variant of the normal Odomos cream.

Area Sales Manager: He is in charge of sales across brands for a territory, usually a state.
There would be territory managers below him, who will have sales officers reporting to
them. Essentially a state may have 6 divisions, each handled by a territory manager, and
each district under the division would have a sales officer. Each district would have 1-3
stockists, who would be handled by the sales officer. The stockist would employ salesman
from his side, to ensure day to day sales and delivery. Between the Brand Managers and
Sales managers, there will be some Channel/Customer marketing managers.

In FMCG, the consumer is the end consumer while the customer is the
retailer/wholesaler. These channels like, Wholesale/Retail/Chemist/Bakery/Modern
Trade (Big Bazaar) also need to be taken care of to ensure effective sales. Each channel
needs a different strategy, placing of products and discounts to make sure the products
reach the end consumer in the desired manner. The same strategies could also be used to
increase sales.

The Wholesale channel is important because it gives access to remote outlets, which
cannot be accessed through direct distribution. The retailers in these areas come to the
Wholesaler in big towns and buy items. The wholesaler plays a key role in the retailer
buying your products. Hence you would push for your product to be on the display
windows and give him discounts to push your product etc. Similarly with different
channels different sales strategies are adopted.
Commonly asked HR questions (Summarized):

1. Tell me about yourself.

2. Tell me something that's not in your resume
3. Why Marketing?
4. Why this company?
5. Which is your favorite brand, and why?
6. Which is your favorite marketing campaign, and why?
7. If you were a brand, which brand would you be? (Expected to correlate brand values
and characteristics with personal characteristics)
8. Was there a situation where you went against your ethics because that felt right?
Explain
9. What was one challenging project/situation that you have gone through?
10. Which is your favorite cartoon character? Why? (Disney)
11. Which is your favorite jingle?
12. Give me one reason why we should not select you for this firm.
13. What are your strengths?
14. What are your weaknesses?
15. Do you think digital marketing will replace conventional marketing?
16. What are your past learnings which align you with a sales role?
17. What is one ad campaign that you don’t like at all?
18. If you are given a choice what will you choose, marketing or sales?