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You need to keep the excitement levels up to retain interest. Be it business or be it personal relationships; if things get stagnant, the relationship starts to falter. You may have a popular product, you may have the best quality product too, but if it gets boring, it is doomed.

Beating boredom was a challenge that these brands had to overcome. One was Ariel. A detergent is not a very interesting product category but Ariel did some interesting stuff, which got people talking about washing. At the Stockholm railway station, it set up a glass box which had clothes revolving on a stand. In front was a robot which squirted out chocolate, ketchup, jam etc. The game was, if you managed to aim well and stain a cloth, it would be washed then and there with Ariel and given to you for free (of course, stain free). The best part was that you could play this game on Facebook too! Washing suddenly became fun and got people talking about it.

So when the movie Green Lantern was about to be launched in Brazil last month, the moviemakers thought of an interesting idea. They put green LED lights on bicycle tyres and when the wheels started spinning, the lights made the logo of Green Lantern on the wheel, along with the release date of the movie. It caught the attention of the young viewers who found it cool, apart from making the cycles more visible to car drivers… which was an added bonus!

Apart from giving a good product, give people something to talk about, give them a good story and it will sell your product more. Marketing is not a one-time activity; rather, it’s a continuous process and many a time, doing something out of the ordinary just works like magic. Amazon.com has launched a new feature on Kindle (its e-reader). While reading a book, you can also send tweets to the author of the book and ask him questions. His answers will come in your e-mail. It just makes reading a bit more interactive and fun!

After all, you need to break the monotony and do different and interesting things to remain relevant. Throughout history, great entrepreneurs have not just worked on making a good product, but also on finding interesting and engaging ways to inform the public about them. Many of these stunts today have become historical events. When newspaper publisher Henri Desgrange started a bicycle race to promote his newspaper, he never in his wildest imagination thought that it would be the world’s most awaited bicycle race. Tour de France, started more than 100 years ago, today promotes a whole lot of brands and is one of the most loved events. Similarly, when Atlantic City wanted to attract tourists to its city, it thought of a novel idea of starting the Miss America Pageant in 1921. The event has snowballed into a big show watched by millions even today. Pillsbury launched its Pillsbury Bake-Off as a one time event never knowing that the idea would be such a hit that this would become its annual event. Even today, the event has not lost its popularity.

Many of these ideas are simple and not really expensive, but they work – much like some low-budget movies that work in spite of being made in a simple manner. This one gave Hollywood its famous star apart from five sequels. The movie in question is Rocky, inspired by Chuck Wepner’s fight against Ali, made on a small budget of $1000,000 the movie broke all expectations and records as it became a super hit and grossed $225,000,000!

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We all love ‘Anna’! He seems to have united India and its youth. But is India really one, especially when it comes to business? This is one country where all the laws of marketing will fail, because it’s so diverse. If you have just one theory, then it will not take you anywhere. India changes every 200 km. Yes, a few basics remain the same across India, but a lot changes too. For starters, language changes (we have 192 official languages and dialects), culture changes, traditions and festivals change, food habits change. If this is not enough, think about it – even the geography and political views change. Yes, it is vast, but it is not an easy market. Only the hardy marketers will be able to survive and thrive here.

THOSE WHO MISUNDERSTOOD INDIA

A lot of multinationals have come into India but failed – not because their products were not good, but because they failed to understand India’s culture. Globalisation has been the new trend, but ‘standardisation’ will not work always. As a marketer, you need to be sensitive to each culture’s identities and its unique regional preferences and customise your product offerings.

Our local markets are not barren as many multinationals thought. There are very strong players in almost every local market. Take the case of Kellogg’s. Apart from the taste not really matching the Indian palette (we like to put warm milk with sugar in our cereals, unlike the west that has it with cold milk), it under estimated the presence of local competitors like Mohun cornflakes (priced lesser than Kellogg’s) and Champion (whose price is almost half as that of Kellogg’s). Retail chains may never be able to understand the bonhomie that people share with their local kirana shops or the Mom & Pop stores as they are popularly called in the West. They share a bond and enjoy a mutual level of trust (giving things even on credit to their favorite customers) that big retail chains will never be able to enjoy. CavinKare challenged the multinationals in various segments. Earlier, it was Clinic shampoo and Fair & Lovely fairness cream (both from HUL) that were touted as the only good options. But homegrown brands like CavinKare are giving them a tough fight. CavinKare used sachets to sell its shampoos. It understood that the consumer was not willing to buy a whole bottle. But a small sachet was a luxury she could indulge in. [Today, 40% of the shampoo market consists of sachet buyers.] It used India’s weakness for ayurvedic products and ensured that its fairness cream Fairever – with saffron and milk – promised not just fairness but also good skin, and quickly cornered a significant chunk of the market share from the giant HUL and its brand Fair & Lovely. So strong has been this positioning that it made Fair & Lovely change its positioning from “badle aap, badle zindagi” to “gorepan se kahi zyaada, saaf gorapan”, meaning “not just fairness but a clear skin too”. CavinKare understood the Indian consumer and her changing needs, and this homegrown brand has become a formidable competitor today.

Going the ayurveda way, Emami too has managed to keep the biggies out of the way with unique Indian brands like Boroplus, Navratan oil and Fair & Handsome cream, that command a significant market share today. Marico’s Parachute oil is way ahead of HUL’s Nihaar. Agreed. Products like hair oil are distinctly Indian and MNCs may not have an edge here, but even when it comes to products like toothpaste and hair color, our Indian brands are doing a pretty good job! Dabur toothpaste is giving Colgate and HUL a tough fight. In the hair color sector, Godrej still has the largest market share (more than 30%),with L’Oreal coming a distant second (a market share of 19%).Just because a brand has a foreign tag is no guarantee that it will be perceived as superior. It needs to match the local sensibilities too. KFC entered India with its American menu of chicken wings and wraps in Bangalore. The Indian consumer did not identify with it and it had to pack its bags and leave. In 2004 when it did come back it had a vegetarian menu, rice meals and Indianised chicken recipes. It survived.

Tupperware designed a beautiful ergonomically sound, rectangle spice box for the Indian housewife. It bombed. She was used to a round one for years and however good the rectangle box it did not work for her.

Marketers with a keen sense of observation have succeeded here. Maybe not many people can afford an Omega or a Rolex, but people love to own a good watch, and no one grabbed this opportunity better than Titan. It realised that the only watches available in India for the low-end were poor in quality and lacked after-sales services or even warranties. Today, Titan dominates the watch market and offers very good quality watches with warranties and service networks for not just the consumers at the low-end but also, pure gold watches for the ones with deeper pockets. This local hero is a big, dominant player.

These local champions have overcome all obstacles and have made their own roads. If Indian roads were not good, then Tata Motors came up with cars and trucks that had a strong and rigid suspension system. Not state of the art, but its vehicles had easy maintenance. Poor infrastructure could not deter Amul from going ahead and conquering the market. If farmers could not reach out to the company, then the company decided to go to them. Amul is an amalgamation of more than 13,000 cooperatives. It installed Automatic Milk Collection Systems in the villages, where farmers went and deposited their milk. It was immediately measured for volume and fat content and the farmer was paid instantly. It worked well for both the parties, and till date, Amul rules the Indian markets. Open your refrigerator and you will find the Amul butter packet there too!

The reason some Indian brands have become so strong is that they have understood this country and its problems well, and have found innovative ways to work around them. ITC (which began operations as an MNC in India in 1910, but whose ownership has progressively Indianised over the years) – has been in India for close to 100 years now and has understood its problems like no one else has. It realised that farmers had no access to markets or any information about markets. So it installed a PC in the house of the largest farmer in the village, providing him and the rest of the village, a window to the world. This not just improved the knowledge and awareness of the farmers, but made them fall in love with ITC. Any competitor would find it tough to break this bond. It also ensured that ITC got a steady supply of good quality soybean for its processing plant.It takes just one strong homegrown brand to shut out a huge multinational. Only those have got it right can do so.

THOSE WHO UNDERSTOOD INDIA

While many MNCs faltered because some assumed the Indian market was behind their home market, or thought it was not yet ready for superior products, other failures thought that the “foreign” tag would be enough to attract the consumers. Thus they became myopic and failed to adapt or innovate. Such brands failed or were forced to leave the Indian market, even as so many local brands filled the void. However, there have been a whole lot of MNCs who have kept their eyes open and survived. They realised that the product could be made in any part of the world but it was important that the product be “Made FOR India” for it to succeed in this market.McDonalds knows that food is the most culturally sensitive product, and everywhere it has gone, it has ensured that its menu is customised to suit Indian tastes. Pizza Hut has a full-vegetarian restaurant in places like Gujarat et al, where the population is mostly Jains. Nowhere in the world will you find another only vegetarian Pizza Hut. LG believes not just in localisation but micro-localisation. Its microwaves have an idli mould for the south- Indian market, and a plate for heating kulchas for the north. It sells bright colored refrigerators in Punjab, for it does not get stained easily with the strong spicy and oily cooking of that region. Samsung’s phones now have an Indian calendar too. Perfetti Van Melle knew its old distribution system was weak, so it created its own network of 5000 distributors, did not give up on the rural market and today, is way ahead of competitors. Hyundai saw that most foreign car manufacturers were selling their old models in India. It entered with new models. It even customised the Santro to suit Indian roads. It used its technical expertise, which the local manufacturers did not have and today, it holds the number 2 spot in the automarket – just behind Maruti, which has been in this market for 25 years.

THOSE WHO WILL BE THE NEW MNCS

As these homegrown brands learnt the hard way to survive in developing markets like India, they found a whole new set of business opportunities opening up for them in other developing markets. These markets had similar problems and opportunities. So Tata Motors found that its vehicles were in demand in many African countries where the infrastructure was not good either. ICICI Bank and many others too saw an opportunity to do business in the emerging markets of Sri Lanka, Africa, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia et al. They have mastered the art of functioning and adapting in difficult markets, and are thriving like never before in these places. These new emerging markets are the future of business, and with markets of the developed world shrinking, it is only those companies who can do business in these very markets that will survive and thrive. The MNCs of the developed world are suddenly realising that the companies they once brushed aside as small homegrown brands, have become the new and powerful multi -national giants of the emerging markets.

India is diverse and difficult. But it has proven to be an apt training ground for its homegrown brands, to prepare themselves for the future. Those who have succeeded and survived here, will be able to survive anywhere, after all there is no place in the world like India!

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This is a brand that has made the world sit up and take notice, for not only is it worth millions, but it also teaches us important lessons in Brand Building. The day she changed her name from Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta and rebranded herself as Lady Gaga, a star was born, both for the music world and the business world. Single handedly, this ‘Lady’ has shown the world how to build a brand and how to do business in today’s crowded market place.

A BUSINESS MODEL OF THE FUTURE

Lady Gaga is not just a singer, she is the way of doing business in the future. If you want to ensure that your brand will survive in 2025, it’s time to learn some quick lessons from the Lady. She understands the system the best.

The business model of the future has some new rules now. However, some ground rules never change. For starters, your product has to be good. Everything depends on this. Like all good brands, she first ensured that her product is good. Yes, her music is good and she can sing. She works hard on her lyrics, writes them, conceptualizes the music, the video and the costumes. Working on her piano, she ensures that her “core product” i.e. her music is of great quality. We all know one simple fact; no amount of brand building will do you good if your product is not world class. Secondly, you need to understand your audience very well. You need to keep a finger on the pulse of the audience. No one has been able to understand the market the way she does.

She knows what excites them and what intrigues them. Many may find her costumes outlandish, but they work for her and her fans wait for her next appearance, just to see what it is that she would wear next. Whatever she does, she has them eating out of her hands. The third lesson one learns from this entertainer is the benefit of staying “in-the-news” all the time. This is not an option, but it’s a necessity of today.

In today’s market place, if you are ignored, you are doomed. That is one thing this Lady has mastered. She cannot be ignored. Every appearance of hers is well thought of and crafted. Be it a bird’s nest, a model of the solar system on her head, or be it her meat dress, she never fails to grab attention. In fact, she will go to any extent to grab attention. In one of her interviews, she recalled an incident where, during her early days of struggle, she was playing at a bar (in USA) filled with drunken NYU students and no one paid a hoot to what she was playing. She says, “I started playing in underwear at the piano,” and suddenly everyone was looking at her and listening to her song.

Just creating a buzz is not enough; you need to know the right places to create the buzz. The audience of the future will be spending a lot of time in cyberspace. Whenever Lady Gaga makes an appearance, she does it with one intention – to create the maximum buzz there. With over 145 million blogs in cyberspace, more than 50,000 new blogs being created everyday and over one million new blog posts being posted each day, the internet is a very crowded place today. To get noticed, to be written about by maximum people, requires a very sharp marketing mind. Gaga has her moves scripted so well, for she knows exactly how to get talked about. Just a great product will not get you noticed. You need to get the tongues wagging. Gaga cares not whether or not you like her, all she cares aboutis the degree of buzz that every act of hers will generate. While she works on her music, she meticulously works on how to make clips that would be lapped up by YouTube, how to dress and what to speak, so that the twitter world will start chattering! Brands too have to ensure that if they want to survive, they must have a strong presence in the cyber world, for the audience of the future is going to be here.

Her every act is a practiced, well prepared and well targeted marketing gimmick, to help build the Lady Gaga Brand. She obsesses about every little detail and it pays. Businesses of tomorrow have to remember, that if their products are not being talked about, they would disappear soon, however good their quality.

CHANGE YOURSELF AND YOUR CUSTOMERS

To be constantly talked about, you need to keep doing new and different things. Your brand needs to keep innovating all the time to grab that “top-of-the-mind” awareness in the consumer’s mind. Be it Madonna, or Kishore Kumar, or Lady Gaga or Big B. They all kept experimenting, kept changing, kept reinventing themselves and dared to do things others would not. They survived. Probably a lot more talented artists didn’t.There is no perfect recipe for success. In today’s market place, brands need to move quickly. They need to know what’s cool, what’s new, and change themselves accordingly. At Cannes 2011, in June, Publicis & Contagious introduced a new concept called the “Five Percent Club”. They urged brands to take risks and invest 5 percent of their media spends into something different, something creative, outrageous and not just depend on the mundane, 30 second advertising commercial to build their brands. Heineken found a new way of engaging viewers during a football game. No, they did not just advertise, but introduced an interesting iPhone application, which rewarded viewers with points (that they could redeem later) every time they guessed the winner correctly before the game ended.

To survive, one needs to change their way of thinking. The companies of tomorrow will only be those who are willing to scrap conventional ideas, who are willing to try out new stuff and most importantly, who are willing to fail – just like Gaga who has never been spotted in an ordinary pair of jeans ever. She is always dressed to suit her image, for every second she is doing some different stuff – with just one purpose – to be noticed. Your marketing plan too should be such that every penny spent is for the purpose of making your brandstand distinctly apart from the competitor. Get noticed, you will get customers.

Until now, it was the job of the advertisers and marketers to change the audience. Before 1948, diamond rings were not synonymous with engagement or marriage the world over. Then came a campaign, “A Diamond is Forever,” and changed our thinking forever. Even in India, marriages used to be traditionally associated with gold jewellery, but De Beers, with its intelligent advertising changed that too. By linking the eternity of a diamond (it’s the hardest substance on Earth) to the eternity of a bond, it changed cultures. While everybody in America was manufacturing, marketing and selling long, sleek cars, the VW Beetle changed the people’s perceptions with the help of its “Think Small” ad campaign. Santa Clause used to be depicted as a skinny, stern, and scary figure, until Coca Cola created the chubby, cute and cherry Santa, and changed the perceptions of the world. All sports shoes were more or less similar until Nike changed it all. It is impossible to differentiate vodka on the basis of mere taste, but Absolute differentiated its product on the basis of its unique advertising and created a niche market where none existed. Marketers have changed audiences and their perceptions, but this new generation of customers is different & marketers need to change their ways to adapt to this audience.

Times are changing fast and so are the rules of marketing. Today, you need to stand out, shout out, and look out (for new trends) or else be prepared to be shut out (forgotten) by the consumers. The biggest fear for a brand is if it fails to get attention. Lady Gaga and other shrewd marketers know only one success principle, “Love me or hate me, but you can’t ignore me.”

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The US government was assessing whether security was compromised after Google Inc said hackers from central China  tried to hack personal Gmail accounts used by senior US officials.

The Executive Office of the President, which includes the White House  and related offices, blocks access to outside email services such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail on its networks within the complex. Other agencies also have firewalls to block access.

Here is what various government departments and agencies said about their policies on personal email accounts:

Federal Reserve

“Board officials and employees are not allowed to use personal email accounts for business purposes,” a Fed spokesman said. “We’re not aware of any problems.”

Justice department

The Justice Department declined to say whether Attorney General Eric Holder was a target of the hack or whether he has external email accounts. However, Holder is a gadget aficionado and loves talking about his iPad.

Employees at the main Justice Department headquarters are allowed access to external email accounts like Gmail and some employees keep their smartphones on their desks.

Securities And Exchange Commission

“The SEC does not use Gmail, and the agency’s email system blocks employees from accessing any personal Gmail accounts they may have,” said spokesman John Nester.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

The CFTC only has email accounts for work and have firewalls to stop access to Gmail and other personal email accounts, an agency spokesman said.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

“We do not use Gmail for any agency business,” said NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner, who said he was not aware of any attacks on personal Gmail accounts held by officials who work for the US nuclear safety regulator.

The agency’s firewall does not block access to Gmail or other personal email services that use a webmail portal, and its policies allow employees to check personal email on an occasional basis, he said.

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IIPM BBA MBA Institute: Student Notice Board  
  
In the  year 1973, renowned economic visionary Dr. M.K Chaudhuri founded IIPM best business school . Now it has 18 branches through out India. Delhi campus is the International  campus of the institute. IIPM offers premium courses in BBA, MBA and EMBA.

Operation Management in Food and  Beverages Industry – IIPM Bhubaneshwar
 
The workshop was basically centered  upon the food culture & operations of hotel industry in India  .The guest speaker shared some of his experiences with the industry  to the students. Mr. Roy also spoke about the scope of MBA graduates  particularly in hotel industry in Bhubaneswar & also in other  metropolitan cities. Students also found it quite fascinating knowing  about the varied food habits of people of different nations. Mr. Roy  also lighted on the basic Organizational structure of a particular  hotel. The later part of the workshop was basically an activity where  the whole class was divided into two groups & each group were  asked to present their suggestion on a particular Indian cuisine that  can resemble to a Chinese cuisine without adding on anything to the  inventory or buying anything extra which is not included in the  inventory.
 
GOP Session at IIPM Bhubaneshwar 
 
As they say “Immature poets imitate but the mature poets steal”.  Innovation we cannot say its stealing rather it is the combination of  beautiful ideas picked up may be from anywhere with the resolution to  make it happen. The development of analytical insight, the knack for  discovering novel solutions to problems might be one of the most  erudite forms of learning that we can hope to achieve. However a  night of sleep after being exposed to a class of problems more than  doubles the likelihood of discovering just such a novel solution.

The entire session was hovering around a surprising connection  between the memory and imagination and of course Strategic Intuition,  which is the key to innovation. The so called key to innovation  includes four simple yet very important steps: 

  
• Examples from history   

  

• Presence of mind   

  

• A flash of insight   

  

• Resolution

 

 

INDIA’S BEST COLLEGES, INSTITUTES and UNIVERSITIES
 
  The students of PGP (10-12) SS & FW batches had an opportunity to visit the MASQATI Diary farms & Diary on 18th of January, 2011 under the guidance of Prof. Shirani Nayar, Associate Dean. The visit was very exciting and informative and the students learned the various aspects involved in Production like inventory management, product design and preparation, control, packaging and distribution.
 
  MASQATI DIARY LTD is a family run business into Diary farms and Diary products for the past 40 years and caters majorly to old city region & other parts of Hyderabad. MASQATI DIARY is a renowned name in Hyderabad in terms of quality and taste and is a 100 crs turnover company. MASQATI DIARY LIMITED is into production of Toned, Double toned and skimmed Milk, Icecreams, Flavoured milk,Lassi, Ghee, Paneer, Curd, Butter etc.
 
  The chief Engineer of MASQATI DIARY, Mr. Srinivas accompanied the students during the visit that guided the tour and gave an insight into the entire production process and the various processing facilities and technologies they are using. The students were taken step by step through the various mechanisms in the factory and each process for all the different kinds of diary products were explained in detail. The packaging, Quality control and testing are explained in great detail which shows how much they adhere to the value of customer’s well-being and trust. The students were also briefed about their project and business plans. He concluded by explaining about their future expansion projects and how they are planning to expand their market share & promotional activities.
 
  The students had great fun when they were shown through their various cold storages at -23 degrees. The students were given free samples of their Ice creams, flavoured milk and other products.
 
  It was a great learning experience for students in terms of knowledge and also the practical considerations and problems for such industries.
 
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