Ek Machchar Aadmi Ko: The Journey of a Mosquito Net

Let's admit it. If there's anything that a human being values today above all else, it is sleep,  a sound sleep. People would do anything to get a sound sleep - pills, drinks, smoking, reading, music and what not. 

There was a time when sleeping without trouble was not much of a trouble. But today's modern day life style makes sleeping, a big deal. Surprisingly, even after all the care is taken to ensure a sound sleep, one thing that people fail to account for and get reminded only in the night is "mosquitoes". We all know how our parents used to tie this big and ugly mosquito nets that often got entangled and required so much of tying and removing all the time. Many people despise such old mosquito nets and instead decide to sleep in the open. And that invites the attention of mosquitoes, for they detect their prey by the carbon dioxide that we exhale. Many instances of  Malaria, Dengue, Filaria and other diseases like skin cancer etc are often caused because people refuse to use mosquito nets. After the arrival of mosquito repellents children are more exposed to the risk of asthma, lung and respiratory problems.

It is in such a scenario that a company decided to produce a mosquito net that you will fall in love with. After a comprehensive study of consumers and the problems they faced with the usage of old ones, they decided to build a mosquito net that solves multiple problems of users. It requires no tying, no removing, minimal washing, it can be folded easily and carried as a back pack. As the diagram here shows, it is a simple yet effective use of Engineering principles.

Aptly called the Comfort Mosquito Net, the design has been made so simple that even a child can operate it easily. This beautifully designed mosquito net is now a trend among consumers who not only use it for sleeping but also to read and do meditation, as it gives ample scope to sit inside. Based out of Bangalore, the company is geared up to serve customers in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and even Delhi. With the new e-commerce capabilities coming up, they will be delivering these bed nets across India.

This is one of the finest examples of how technology can be used to meet marketing needs. Technology has indeed got the power to alter consumer behavior. 

Now, sleep is indeed a Big Deal !!

Is it time for an MBA in Political Management and Governance in India

If there is any job in India for which you apparently need no qualification whatsoever, it is being a POLITICIAN. But the times are changing and Parties are realizing that more the candidates are educated and equipped to handle the situation, the better it is. In fact, most of the parties have now employed highly placed lawyers to front face media. The likes of Arun Jaitley, Manish Tiwari, Lekhia are all lawyers. Added to this the recent events in AAP have clearly indicated that candidates need some kind of a formal training in Governance and Administration.

No matter what the route to politics is, once elected, the leaders have the same goal of delivering a greater common good. We already have MBA in Marketing, HR, Finance, Systems, Productions and more in India. It is time to introduce MBA in Political Management. It can bring together the elements of all the existing streams plus give a special focus on Governance. Aspirations of people are endless, managing them smoothly without hurting or creating ill-will in the society is the need of the hour. Are our Universities and Institutions listening?

AAP yahan aayein kisliye ?

The people seem to say “hum ne bulaya isliye”. AAP’s surprising victory appears to be a big case study in itself for the politicos, but it is definitely so for the Marketing guys. Right from the go, the product Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had captured people’s imagination. POLITICS was something that everyone in India wanted a genie for. And AAP was on the scene. The ensuing scenes may not have been as rosy as the Alladin rubbing the Genie, but AAP was able to effectively summarize the collective angst, aspirations and that quintessential integrity & honesty which individuals often seek in their own self. In a market that was dominated by one clear leader, a challenger and a dozen local brands ( SP, BSP, NCP, Shivsena et al), AAP has carved out a niche for itself that appears to have a pan national market.   

Now that they have won the mind-share ( and a substantial vote-share), it remains to be seen how good they prove at governance. Arvind Kejriwal is an ex-IAS officer and will know the way to handle bureaucracy carefully, but his other poet colleagues and psephologists need to be really trained on this aspect. On many other counts like selection of candidates, raising of election funds etc, AAP has set in new trends. They can take “train the leaders” as another first trend that they will set for other parties to follow.  If not actual power, they are going to keep the quality of the leader & challenger brands (like Cong & BJP) on a "continuous improvement" path. On any other day, it would have been a cake walk for BJP to form a Govt. at Delhi. With AAP as the quality service provider in the market, any unethical move on the part of the BJP or Cong would severely dent their image and actually make AAP take a moral high ground. 

Overall, I can see the AAP having carved out a niche from an election that was left to the half-hearted efforts of “the others”. Right moves and AAP is bound to appear on the national scene with a bang. 

JWT, Ford Figo, Bobby Pawar and the silence of CII

Well, we all know the fiasco. So let me get to the point. What has happened in JWT ( Bobby Pawar exiting along with its creative team), is not something new. It keeps happening all the time in other industries albeit never getting into the 1st page of Economic Times.

The Management culture has become so fragile that it simply cannot stand the test of values and corporate governance. I am all the more surprised that corporate bigwigs who raise an eyebrow at the slightest slip of the Govt, are today silent, perhaps sending a message that all are in the same boat.

It is impossible to believe that Ford did not know anything about the ad (it seems they were not even supposed to see it !!). $2 billion is the annual advertising budget of Ford and without doubt the entire Management team at both JWT and Ford would be involved in the creative process.CII is quiet, as is ASCI. The people who took the real hit were the team of Bobby Pawar for believing in the creative process which the advertising industry so beautifully flaunts.  

The Pope Francis Tweets. A leaf for Indian Babas?

I say why not? The transition to Twitter appears so natural. After all it is so well stated in Hindu scriptures..."Kaalaya Tasmainnamaha..". Go according to the times. Tools like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest only add arsenals to the communication channel for these traditional institutions. However, no institution can afford to stay aloof or they run the risk of getting irrelevant. Youth is not just a sweet target market for the big corporations but also for these Pontiffs, Mullahs, Swamies, Babas and Gurus. 

But social media is a two-way channel. As much as it can be used to communicate your thoughts, it has the ability to shape your own thought in the process and prove to be a pain for those intending it to use it like a newspaper. Many of the Indian Babas ( recently Asaram Bapu and Baba Ramdev) have already experienced this without even their own conscious knowledge. Their comments have been appreciated as well as dissected for sharp criticism. 

At a totally different level, the social media is a channel that has the potential to transform these traditional institutions from being closed systems to interactive systems, ready to assimilate new things and embrace opportunities for change. The Vatican has taken the first step towards it. Can our Babas afford to stay behind?

Marketing the NGO: How to add the Trust factor to organized philanthropy

A few months back, I ended up giving a small donation to an NGO, which went into the critical care of a child admitted in a local hospital in Bangalore. The NGO had brought detailed documents about the child and credentials from the hospital to establish a sense of confidence and trust when I donated the money. 

Of late, however, I have seen far too many NGOs not taking this critical initiative to establish that trust factor with the customer. They will call from some obscure number from Delhi or some other place. They will have a shoddy looking website with messages that aim more at emotionalizing you than establishing trust or confidence. Above all, there is no mechanism for a donor to cross verify the credentials of the organization from a trust worthy third party.

Governments can play a major role in this. Every NGO which is working towards raising funds for such causes should have a unique number verifiable from a website owned by the Government. Every quarter the financial statements of such organizations should be made available at this website for donors and public to see and verify. 

No brand can survive without Trust and it holds true of even Non Government Organizations as much as corporate brands. Organized philanthropy is still in its nascent stage. A timely Government intervention will pave a way for a great philanthropic nation.    

 

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Testimonial Marketing: B2C borrows a leaf from B2B Marketing

In the world of Marketing, B2C is like the King of all. Always preaching everyone about all the tricks up its sleeves. Even recruitment of marketing professionals is heavily influenced by FMCG and other B2C segments.

But of late, even the B2C has begun to take a leaf or two from the B2B marketing book. The latest advertisements of Cars where real owners endorse the car are a testimonial to this. But testimonials have been a long relied-upon tool of marketing in the B2B space. Here only the truth sells and fantasy has almost no place. The biggest of such exercises was seen by Maggi Noodles which got its brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan to spend time with real customers and even got their photos printed on their packs.  

Frugal marketing is very popular in B2B and testimonial marketing in B2C is a pointer to the type of marketing practices now being followed by giants. Celebrities are costly and they may not add value if you go wrong with the matching of your brand personality and that of the brand ambassador. But in the case of testimonials, you cannot go wrong with the match, since they are the real customers. Of course, as usual, the story telling and other fundamentals of ad making still hold good.

Google Cloud Marketing: Tackling a Psychological barrier to Cloud Computing Adoption

All the barriers to cloud computing are not merely technology related. Google's video here takes you to a bit of human history and addresses CIOs and CTOs on how human evolution is based on giving up control to get greater control. Watch this video to see how Google does this beautifully using human history and right analogies to drive home the point. Also a great stuff for education institutions on how they can start collaborating from within. I hope the Indian universities are taking note of this.

Review sites and Online Reputation Management: The new SEO Marriage?

No matter what Google does to discourage bad use of Internet, the SEO professionals find a way to circumvent it. After Google Panda and Penguin updates, one was assuming a cleaner and healthier use of the Net. However, the changed algorithm somehow now gives such a heavy weightage to consumer review sites that, many companies are using it as a bait to improve their online reputation.

Sites like mouthshut.com, consumercomplaints.in, complaintsboard.com are now being misused by SEO spammers to improve the online reputation of their clients. Many companies have been able to successfully push the negative remarks about their brands to the 2nd and 3rd pages of Google. They pose like a real customer of the brand and start posting positive comments about the brand, some time in such length and detail that it becomes apparent that it is too good to be true.

This raises a bigger question: have the consumer and product review sites fallen prey to the over enthusiastic SEO professionals? If so, how will they continue to maintain their position in the market as a neutral platform to raise genuine consumer enquiries?

Marketing India to INDIANS: Why FDI is over rated?

Much has been said about bringing FDI to India. Every other rating agency, the economists and advocates of reform keep talking about it. It is as if FDI is synonymous with Reform. There are pitches ( sales pitches!) done to foreign investors and Govt. spends big money organizing investors meet to get FDI flowing in the country. 

However, I hardly hear the same buzz about getting Indians to invest in India. Alright, you may say, where else would the Indians invest, right? Unlike foreign investors, very few Indians have options to invest abroad. Except the top operators like Tatas, Reliance, others hardly invest abroad. But that's not the point. What about millions of Indians who are eager to invest but do not know the way to evaluate opportunities or are afraid of red tapism and the investment climate in general. If we tap into this part of the population, we can easily deal with investment and jobs problem at once.     

That brings us to the idea of "marketing India to Indians". I am not against FDI. However, what we promote ( like the http://www.investindia.gov.in/ ) to foreign investors about investing in India and creates confidence, why can't we do it for Indians as well? There is an urgent need for the Government to create that confidence among the many sleeping tigers of India who have the money and willingness but are neither aware of the opportunities or are afraid of the complexities of getting started.

The Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and his junior counterpart Jyotiraditya Scindia should travel and hold conferences across India making a sales pitch to new investors showing them new opportunities and giving them the means and ways of accomplishing their dreams. This should be complemented with efforts from the States. That would surely take care of the black money also to a certain extent. If we are confident enough to invest in India, then surely the foreigners would be so. Then all the so-called reformists can stop talking about FDI as a single point panacea for investments.   

Tata Nano Case Study - Missing the Invisible "P"

Tata Nano is now a case study across Business Institutes and Conferences. It's worth taking a look at what went wrong with a car that was threatening to clog the Indian roads.

In short, the marketers at Nano failed to understand their customers. That's a lot to say, given that the group has such hold on marketing and customer orientation. They thought Price ( one of the Ps of Marketing) is going to drive the product. However, what other "P" ( read PERCEPTION) this good old Price "P" is going to create is something that the marketers failed to gauge. Result: an over-hyped  product that fails to understand its TG and ends up delivering a non-desirable product.

Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid is often confused with low cost or low quality products. Contrary to that, people at the bottom of the pyramid have the maximum desire quotient. They are the ones who make the rags-to-riches story. A car is an item of luxury for them and they would not want to compromise with their dreams. Infact Ratan Tata was found saying that the Nano car had got the stigma of "car for the poor". Though personally I think he owes an apology to all the poor people because of this statement, from a marketing point of view, the strategy of making a car for the Aam Aadmi did not work out. The perception of buying less than the desirable created a strong barrier for adoption.

Tata Nano has implications for many a start ups who are now aiming at producing goods and services for the bottom of the pyramid. 

Why E-Commerce companies need Google Plus One? 4 easy steps to get started

Like it OR Hate it. Google Plus is here to stay. If you value SEO, then its a given that you should value Google Plus for its immediate impact on SERPs.

Instead of ranting on how it has not picked up waves among people, its better to focus on how a marketer in an e-commerce company can make use of it. 4 quick steps would help.

1. Create a Google Plus page & post regularly. 
2. Place Google Plus button on your site. It should be placed wherever there is an image and an opportunity for users to plus it. 
3. Communicate: This is slightly a hard part. As it has not picked up yet among the masses, it is essential to communicate the existence of Google Plus page to your employees ( most of them will have a Gmail ID) with a request to plus the page. 
4. Spread it everywhere: Place the link of the page on your Twitter account, Facebook page or any other social media community and also on your newsletter. 

Google Plus impacts SERPs in the customized search front. So if I have plused a product, my friend who is looking for a similar product online is likely to see the same on his SERPs. This benefits all e-commerce companies, as peer influence has the strongest influence on buying habits of people. So if you care about SEO, you better get started with Google Plus right away. This is also a boon for budget constrained marketers to get more relevant traffic to the site. The conversion can also be expected to be better as it works like a "recommendation" from a friend.

PS: Ensure the Google Plus page is updated regularly, as an un-updated page looks pretty ugly.

Google Plus gives tough competition to Twitter Brand Page on SERPs

It appears like the new algorithm of Google, the Google Panda, is pretty complex. Companies are experiencing a change in the order of results especially related to Twitter and Google Plus brand pages. Twitter has been around for ages now and Plus is still a kiddo trying hard to climb the ladder of social media acceptance.

But, the SERPs have a different story to tell. Some brands can now see their twitter brand page on the 2nd page of Google SERP whereas a Plus page started merely a few weeks ago ( and updated in-frequently) is suddenly on the 1st page.

This is going to seriously hurt the credibility of Google if it is not rectified. Looks like Google Panda has a long way to go. 

Why Entrepreneurs Procrastinate?

Watch Cher Jones explain why entrepreneurs procrastinate and what they can do about it.


Hey Procrastepreneur, Presentation by Cher Jones at Podcamp Toronto 2012 from Peter Mykusz on Vimeo.

Sex Education in India: A case of Marketing Revamp for a proper Re-Introduction

If you are still blaming those uncanny politicians for banning sex education in India, think again. The issue has moved beyond realms of biology and moved into the core area of Marketing.

For the uninitiated, let me say a few words about Marketing to set things in perspective. Marketing is the holy grail of Management (or even Governance as in State matters) that aims to meet the needs of the society at any point of time with relevant products, services and ideas.

You must be wondering why I am getting into defining Marketing. This was just to eliminate that ubiquitous feeling among people that marketing is about telling lies and selling more.

Now what has "Sex Education" got to do with Marketing? Lots, to say the least. First of all, Sex Education is a bundle of ideas (product) that has its own target audience living in India. Sex Education was conceived with an idea to educate and thereby protect the interest of children who would develop life skills eventually. Thus Sex Education becomes the product and the school, college & children become the TG ( Target Group).

The Children of Today

Now, comes the tricky part. The syllabus or the content of the Sex Education was totally modeled on the U.S. education system. U.S. as we all know has always nurtured a totally different (and drastic) approach and ethos abut sex. The societal values depict the same.

In U.S., sex education is imparted with an objective to "just" protect children from having an unhealthy sex and lead a sexually satisfactory life.

However, in India, the approach to sex ( though is changing) has always been towards abstinence from sex till marriage. Thus the need of the Indian society from sex education is to propagate this widely held belief that is being imparted from one to the next generation. Children today are already being exposed to a huge media pourings of explicit sexuality. Children today pick up things easy and fast from various sources. However they are not geared up to rightly interpret them. The burden falls on the parents and the teachers.

The Indian Value System: 

As already mentioned, knowing Indian value system and the cultural context plays an important role in devising suitable ways of imparting sex education in India. So Piya Sarcar, the founder and CEO of TeachAIDS, has developed an interactive software to educate children about HIV in a way that's sensitive to the country's cultural mores. ( Ref: Technology Review). She kept a tab on the cultural responses to each and everything that went into her design and measured it against the local cultural ethos to ensure acceptability. As a result, even States who banned sex education have approved and distributed her software. 

This is a perfect case of Marketing gone wrong and right ( by Sorcar) !! There is still a case for re-introducing sex education in India, if the team handling the project does a careful analysis of the needs of Indian society and then carefully positions it in a way that is acceptable to the society. So what can the Govt. do about it? Here is a pointer, 

• Consult parents, students, child psychiatrists and culture experts before finalizing on the syllabus and its intonation
• Test these across India for suitability with each and every language and cultural specific requirements

• Show it to select group of parents, teachers and students to get their feedback and fine tune the syllabus and methods of delivery so it fits into the cultural framework of India
• Assure all the stakeholders of the care that has been taken this time around and how it will benefit the children. 

In fact, as a first step, the schools and colleges should educate parents with sex education and how they can deal with their children on the subject. This will make parents sensitive to the challenges faced by educators.

Hopefully, we will soon see a re-introduction of the subject in schools with a clear objective delivered within the cultural framework.

Re-Draft SOPA: But Protect Freedom of Expression

At the outset, let me state that I am all in favour of Freedom of Expression whether it is Internet or Offline. However, I do have my reservations on a total opposition to an Act like SOPA ( Stop Online Piracy Act) or similar bills / laws of other countries. 

Even a rented house where a prostitution is going on is liable for penalty. The owner cannot close his eyes and say that he is innocent and cannot control what is happening in the house even if it is illegal. As a principal of the house, he is responsible for what goes on inside the house. Digital Space by contrast is very vast but in principle is pretty similar to a rented house. Each post on FB and Google is a rented space. They cannot keep benefiting from the content and then stay immune from the negative consequences of the content. Today, the bill may have been mooted because one section of the society is affected. The same can happen to any other section and they are bound to feel offended. Freedom of Expression should not be confused with Freedom to Malign. 

SOPA or other Acts aimed at regulating the net are a daring attempt to regulate an almost infinite digital space, by and large considered as almost impossible to regulate. The way citizens have responsibility to live a law abiding life, even netizens have the similar duty and are responsible in creating a congenial atmosphere for a healthy internet. 

Sooner or later, these Internet giants will have to devise smart technological ways of putting an end to illegal or vulgar content on the site. As more and more citizens including children hop on to the net, the policy maker's intention cannot be ignored in its spirit. SOPA should be re-drafted to create a congenial way of dealing with this ever increasing mis-use of the Internet platform. If it happens, I hope the Internet companies will be taken into confidence and the net result will be a consensual and inclusive Bill.

Lokpal Movement: Why Anna Hazare should be a case study in Management Schools

India is a land of many issues. We have issues of poverty, health, nutrition, sanitation and  what not. But one issue that lies at the core of every other issue is corruption. It renders every fight against every issue useless. That is when Anna Hazare stepped in. Though he has been fighting corruption for many years now, he found a national platform thanks to the national media and the kind of followership he amassed.Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter were also abuzz with support to this new Gandhi. 

How is that a guy as simple as Anna Hazare could influence the educated, the literate and the barely literate class to come together in such large numbers? It's almost as unique as what Mahatma Gandhi himself did decades ago - uniting the whole nation. There are nay-sayers all the time, but that has not deterred the supporters of this movement. 

What makes this movement worthy of study by every Management school is the dynamism of leadership. In an age where corporate bigwigs like Raju of Satyam went on lecturing in places like ISB and IIMs on corporate governance and ethics and fell from grace, Anna Hazare used his intrinsic strength of honesty and modesty to unite a fragmented society. He provided unity of objectives and a clear direction to lakhs of people. Though Anna himself is not a legal expert, he has stalwarts in this area to guide him in the right direction : another trait of a successful leader -to nurture the right talent. So charming is his simplicity that even those who did not participate on the street demonstration wished they could some how contribute to this movement. And all this against a behemoth ( competitor ? ) like Congress Govt.  

It's time we bring this quintessential and timeless qualities of leadership to the fore and make them a part of every Management study where the definition of a manager is one who "gets things done" by hook or crook!!

Global is the new Local: Relevance of cultural localization in the new age media

The often quoted mantra in the new globalised era is "Think Global Act Local". It is also advocated that marketers should incorporate the local cultures into consideration before planning their communication.

However, some of the recent trends and especially the marketing communication practices of large and new entrants have pointed to something else. Brands are not approaching each market with a localized offering. The explosion of television & online media seem to have made uniformity a new market reality. National television channels, international news and happenings, Youtube videos, Facebook comments and constant tweets make people realize that they are a part of a greater cause, a bigger geography and therefore a bigger identity. Thus an "emotional uniformity" seeps into their thinking.

We are now becoming global citizens. The pain and aspiration of an African kid is now as real to us as a guy in Delhi or Bangalore. Real time media has played its part in bringing people from across the continent closer. We can now relate to their emotions, pains, pleasures and even needs. This gives the companies an edge in communication, where they need not localize everything. Because what is global is also in effect local.

Healthy Mobile Services: The new gap in the mobile market

The recent studies by WHO(World Health Organisation) indicating that mobiles and even other devices emanate cancer causing radiation, has actually thrown open a new market!!

The mobile operators and manufacturers will do well to remember that their continued foray into the segment is now in danger. If more and more studies reveal serious risk to health, the entire industry may take a hit. It's time for these players to start research into bringing mobile phones, accessories and applications that are healthy for use by the public.

It is often argued that the ones "within the wave" are not the ones to "create the next wave". Refrigerators were not created by  ice factories and biotechnology is not created by manufacturers of refrigerators. If there is an opportunity for the mobile players, it is now. In fact, in the new scenario, it is the ailing Nokia and its big cousins who have a natural advantage. They have been bitten badly by the likes of Micromax and Karbonn through a series of launches that are rich in features and cool in prices at intervals that simply beat the R&D departments of big companies. But Nokia, Alcatel, Philips and the likes have big R&D centers which they can now re-orient towards building of devices that are healthy. And this itself will become the next big differentiator for the companies.