Evolution of IITs in India and its Changing Paradigm

The Perplexed Consumer - The Enlightened Marketer

My thoughts go for a roller coaster ride when I see people stretching themselves to great extent on to their outer appearance in terms of what they are wearing, what they are riding and so on. This actually has a Psychological aspect behind it. The real person (Actual Self) is a different patch than what one want himself to be seen like in public (Ideal Self). Ironically, in most of the cases we are made to have differences between above two aspects. To make people accept you the way you want is a complex thread of wandering thoughts not finding place for desired destination. That's where Brands come to rescue. There is always solution for everything. And we all have these thought trains. We all will use the Brands to project ourselves. Why not, it’s simple in execution and results into fulfillment of something what Maslow called as Self esteem need. No wonder Brands have become preferred way of communicating status. Otherwise, why one would buy a Mercedes or BMW when the same distance can be traveled/covered in Nano or Maruti 800. It’s this psychological bizarreness of social animals (Humans) that make an intangible five alphabets word "YAHOO" written in certain font’s style as a brand more valuable than all the tangible assets of YAHOO taken together all over the globe. I am not arguing, I am okay with that. But the point here is, these brand building stories are the perfect example of "Little drop makes the ocean". It’s we people who make brands and not companies who own them. Irony is we do not know this. Every single person liking and acceptance of brands contributes in its building and hence every person counts.
The story has other turns also. That also roots back to the self esteem and aspiration level of people. People who are not financially sound or even struggling for smooth execution of life would buy a brand not within his reach to match himself up with the people who he would like to be. Here comes the punch, most of the time people don't realize that they are doing this. Marketer wants to keep this greediness alive because that's how you make a market. Close down the chapters of social responsibility. The days of Mahabharata and Ramayana are gone. Peculiar, but that seems sensible because the days when we use to have Ram and Laxman (Who never run in the race of materialistic approach of projecting what they are not) are also gone!

On Air or On Ground - The Marketers Puzzle

Video Advertising obviously have higher reach but should one be very much positive about that return on investment on Video advertising is highest, perhaps no, there are very common reasons to this:

• It’s difficult to evaluate any video campaign accurately as compare to other form of advertisement.
• Money Involve in Video advertising is in no where comparison to other form of advertising. And often the money spent in Video advertising surpasses and result expected.
• When we talk of word of mouth, I am slightly of the opinion that word of mouth for BTL is more effective as user experience in person can not be matched with any other form of advertisement.
• Having known the money involved in Video advertising, the majors have already shifted the base to more BTL, and contrary to previous times when BTL was considered trash, now handsome part of communication budget is allotted to it.
• As the technology is evolving every day, and more and more technology based products are coming in market, so a potential customer would more prefer user experience rather than a video display which is shot miles away from him.
• In my opinion, Video Advertising is to enhance the recall value of brand, where as the brands are made only by what the stuff you are offering as product.
• Seeing the improving importance of BTL, the concept of Media Mix has come up like anything.
• The skying cost of video advertising and shrinking FCT will bring in the era where BTL will be next big thing.

With all this I am not undermining the importance of video advertising, but the proportion of forms of advertising in corporates will see some gradual shift in coming time.

TATA ready to rover the land with Jaguar Image

With NANO at one end and JAGUAR & LAND ROVER at other end, TATA is surely in the business. Realizing the promise of bringing car in range of one lakh and connecting JAGUAR & LAND ROVER to India somewhere addresses the potential of India to this world. Question to be asked is – Are TATA’s capable enough to manage such high profile brands. Specially knowing that they are not experienced enough in dealing such high profile brands, they only have one good going SUV – Safari back home. One more challenge for TATA’s will be to go on with such vast portfolio of brands. It should never be forgotten that to keep Land Rover and Jaguar at the same place where they are will be next big thing TATA’s have to think about. One important thing which somewhere is lost in this extravaganza is that both these brands were not doing so good when they were taken by TATA’s. But TATA’s potential can never be questioned if we were to believe their rapo. With all the three players in the race of going after two brands, staff of Jaguar and Land Rover choose TATA over others. Keeping their beliefs Ratan Tata has announced not to shift manufacturing facility to India. Surely, Ratan Tata has all good guns in the beginning. Both his recent projects are fetching public to brand TATA like never before. If roads leading to Pragati Maidan in Delhi during trade fare were jam packed coz of NANO than other business news fight hard to find space when Land Rover and Jaguar story filled all business editions of newspapers. With this hype at both extreme ends, TATA must have multiply its visibility. Among all this hype at roads, thinkers inside TATA must be working out the projections and combinations they need to frame to get return on investment. The real game is yet to begin as non of the projects are open to public for voting by showing as NANO is yet to come on roads and Jaguar & Land Rover story still need time to justify $2.3 billion. Whatever is done by now is easy part of the full work, the rest is still to come. All the best to TATA for their first part of game - when NANO will come on roads…

Brand Fight- After cola war...

It all started by Jet Airways....



Continued by Kingfisher...



Ended by Go Airways....

These hoardings are placed at a busy road in Mumbai...
Cola Ad are coming in mind...new joining in the process...

Click for source

Indian Brands Missing Globaly

In the last topic in “Power Brands”, I wrote that no Indian brand is in the list of top brands listed by Interbrand. It takes years in building a brand and in spite of some strong Indian brands in home why could not they make it to that level…we have wipro, Tata, TCS, Infosys but they are only in India. At times it amaze me that despite of being such a strong free market and growing market we still have to go a long way.

Why? Most of the Indian global brands are either B2B or the companies follow the export route through appointed dealers. So it leave the companies with very less to go in other countries and go for a formidable branding campaign. Or they might not be having that resources to build brand.. Moreover if one compare the top brands reveled by Interbrand and the Indian brands than Indian brands are in very nascent stage. So it’s a long way to go before anyone starting comparing Indian brands with those top one’s.

Still there is a brighter side which one should feel good about. Slowly and steadily we are growing in some areas like Tourism, Medical, Education industries in India and producing some good brands. “Incredible India” has drawn global attention. Apollo, Escorts, IIT’s and IIM’s are also heard making news globally. India is not alone in this race and joining India is China, which also have not produced global brands and no brand of china has appeared in list of Interbrand. So have we found another topic of debate between India and China-Both formidable economies of Asia struggling to produce global brands. If one talk of Asia there are two countries-Japan and Korea who have found place for their brands in list of formidable global brands. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, LG, Hyundai, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung are some brands coming out of these two countries. In another aspects also the debate is on-“Are we approaching towards a unipolar world”, see this in the light of the fact the out of the 100 Top brands by Interbrand 62 are of US and among top 10 , eight are from US. But strictly it doesn’t mean that others will loose their grip to the American’s favorite coffee or cola, and India is not an exception. Am I getting more optimistic?, let time answer this.

A Journey: From Hutch to Vodafone

In one of the major transitions in Indian market, Vodafone has replaced Hutch.. In short time from now, you will see Vodafone everywhere at hutch’s place. Just get your eyes ready to see deep red speech mark logo instead of three deep pink stars. Vodafone has acquired Hutch for an enterprise value of $18.8 billion by agreeing to pay$11.1billion for Huthison
Telecommunication Pvt Ltd.

Hutch was a formidable brand in India as of now but now Vodafone will replace it. Just to give you an idea what it takes to build a brand

—Vodafone has booked virtually all the space on star TV on 20th September and it cost them about INR 130 million in all its ads for that day including Sony Tv. Star sells 10 minutes of commercial time per hour. Hutchison-Essar itself has gone through a major brand transition few years ago from its popular orange brand to Hutch which was supported by its popular advertising blitz.

A huge wave of advertising will roll in coming time as a result of this transition on Newspaper, Outdoor media, Internet and Television.

--Vodafone has set budget for this ad campaign to INR 4 Billion and for that Vodafone has booked huge ad space on channels like Zee, Star, Sony on 20th September.

--Vodafone will change Hutch’s “Wherever you go our network follows” catch with a new one “Make the most of now”.

-- The cost for the campaign is slightly more than which require to retain a brand campaign.

-- Most of the cost will go to change the appearance of dealers to suit the changed brand. It will be 50% of total cost.

Already we have seen beautiful ads shown on the first day - 20th September.
This is just starting, all the best to Vodafone.

Thinking of building a brand?? It takes lot more, so Interbrand is far for Indian brands but not inaccessible.