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. 

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.