How important are Associations for a Brand

Its very important for a Brand to have the right brand association or the right people to be associated with the brand as these people's image and credibility affects the brand personality and even the ambassador endorsing the brand.

Kiran bedi is a strong personality in India with characteristics like sincerity,honesty and sophistication a women who has done few commercials on social causes and issues relating to women and polio.It was quite unusual for me to see Kiran Bedi in an advertisement for a fairness/anti-marks cream Nomarks. The commercial starts with kiran Bedi walking and explaining about the product and pitching the product as a True/honest cream.Kiran bedi is known for her boldness and fearless attitude..Nomarks as a brand doesnt have any of the characteristics that kiran bedi has, if kiran bedi was a small town girl who had made big in the beauty/glamour industry then it would have made more sense for the brand to associate with such kind of a personality.

The idea or thought process behind using kiran bedi as a brand ambassador could be to transfer or associate Nomarks with characteristics of Kiran bedi, but the product as such is a low-involvement product with little or less brand image, and a consumer would never feel proud/special that she is using a NOMARKS cream. If No-marks was a product which would add or enhance the user image then yes kiran Bedi could be a right choice.
Its very important for a personality like kiran bedi to have the right association as the credibility which she has gained for years could be affected due to the wrong choice made.

Aping the West

The best part about being home is access to T.v and Great food..while i was watching T.V, I came across Himesh Reshammiya after a long time and this time without his unusual cap and long hair, he was looking decent in his new hairstyle,but the image which he has built over years is so strong that we just can't break the association of Himesh as a wierd and unusual guy. The song has some unusual lyrics in English "man ka radio" the song tries to copy 50 cents and other pop bands..the video starts with Himesh walking with a negro women completely oiled, i just cannot understand what made the director to choose that girl in that song when the song is supposed to be a sad song...it makes the video more sick.. I think the director wanted to create an image in the minds of the viewers of a modern day song which is shot abroad hence tries to provide cues like negro girls around men,and girls wearing bikinis to show westernized approach and to go in sync with the song which is partly in English and hindi. the lyrics are really funny, I think Himesh is actually a good actor as he manages to put up a sad face all through the song even when the lyrics are so funny.. hats off himesh,,,

But the truth is he still makes money and popular among all sec b and sec c cities..

All Marketers Are Liars

The title of the book is what made me read this book,anxious to know how godin calls marketers as liars i read this book, As i was reading the book i felt that it was more of the concepts which we learn in our marketing classes, packaged in a way that could be understood by the ordinary man or the consumers. the book revolves around the concepts of

World view : That is nothing but the receivers field of experience.

people notice only the new : That is the concept of relative threshold

consistency : standardization.

Splitting the community : positioning differently and not in lines of the market leader

the book is a must for all the marketers and gives a proud feeling and a sense of responsibility that we marketers have towards the society as this modern world is completely driven by marketers.

India Shinning

Happy Independence day FRIENDS... Its the 62nd year and today the world looks India as one of the superpower, high on intellectual capital.I Attended the flag hoisting ceremony at my college this morning which was followed by the cultural events..

There was an opening Vande Mataram song which reminded me of my school days and to be honest i still dont know it.. after few dance numbers and speeches we had another group of people singing the Vande Mataram track of A.R.Rehman and to my surprise everyone was singing it(even me). followed after it was the recent track..."Jai Ho" and even this was liked by the crowd.what do you call this the Recency effect or the magic of A.R.Rehman ? ? ? ?

The Best Assignment

Print ads made by Group 6(Pavan, Sumanta,Nupur,Praneeta,Lokesh and of course me)










Assignments in B schools are generally given to evaluate the performance of students and help them to gain subject knowledge even i have been doing assignments since one year and trust me i have found many new sites where you can easily download previous work(scribd, soople,slideshare).trust me guys you get all management stuff here,in case you need more sites you can always contact me.

In management terms, I used to do review of literature but in the process of review of literature i got used to the two supreme commands ctrl + C and ctrl + V thanks to bill gates who made my jobs more simple.

There are two reasons why a student doesnt find it interesting to do assignments

1) The topics are damn boring
2) Every one gets the same marks, we all lie in the same normal distribution curve

I still remember the comment on my assignment made by the faculty finance which said

RELEVANCE IS LIMITED TO IMAGE(image was the logo) ONLY

Initially i used to write my own stuff (atleast for marketing) but its ridiculous that your friend who copies from you and copies some stuff from the internet gets more marks than you.. the result is you also start using the Internet.

I Could relate it and explain it with some H.R Concepts in it.. if your efforts are not recognized you no more feel motivated to do the same

Consumer behavior is the new course which is taken by the genius...Hmm i would say him the CHAMP (Ray Titus). He gave an assignment to all the groups to make print ads for 6 products, out of which we had to choose any 3 products. The products were

1) Kia Motors
2) Mc Donalds
3) Listerine Tooth Paste
4) Anti Smoking
5) Promoting exercise
6) Pepsi one

we had to makes two ads one emotional and other rational for the same product. It was the coolest assignment which i got,it was a group assignment and we had to make 6 ads.. it was superb working with such a lovely team. This blog is dedicated to them( Pavan,Sumanta,Nupur,Praneeta,Lokesh )

How does this place sell ??

In a restaurant business service is the main component which sells, people prefer better service than food when they are dining at a restaurant and it is much more than just filling your stomach it's all about an experience.services constitute about 60 % in a restaurant business.
Generally what do people expect from a good restaurant ???..of course great food, great ambiance, hygienic food and above all great service/ and what if you get only good food ?? and the other three requirements are missing would you go there ?... most of your answers would be hell NO..Including mine, till few days back when i came to know about this place called Bobby da dhaba...form my friends..so one fine day we headed towards it..this place is located near Gurudwara at ulsoor lake(bangalore).It was very tough for us to locate this place which is a small hut..and the interiors are creepy...with only one bulb lighting the whole place..and a capacity to accommodate only 30 members at a time...you are supposed to wait for 1/2 hr minimum before you can sit inside..and where do you wait for the rest of the time...plush Sofa's...with magazines,,,don't even think of it...you are made too stand on the road and if you are lucky u have a rock at the entrance which can accommodate two of you...so look for the rock..as you wait.. while you enter the dining area a waiter would come and give you a slip to write your order on that slip and give it to sardar ji inside who is the owner of this place(i guess) i never dared to ask any thing as he is so fierce and shouts even if you are standing near by him...the food is awesome they have a limited menu..and that's their core competency i guess which made them stick to those items only..the food is amazing,,,,after your long wait on the roadside..u need not feel shy as you wait on the road side as you'll find many like u...as you wait on the road you'll find a punjabi restaurant adjacent to bobby da dahaba ..(I forgot the name..)which is empty and much hygienic than our booby da dhaba..people who get scared of the line at booby da dhaba end up landing there... hmm nice strategy...to pull few customers...

As as a marketing student i always try to find out what is so unique about this place..it's not just the product which always sells.. as you have many more places in the city which sell great punjabi food.. Is it the whole unique setting which pulls the crowd...the owner has not changed the setting even he can afford to do the same..or is it the word of mouth publicity which people have created that makes people visit this place..or is it the price(100 rs /person) which is dominating factor,,i always feel like speaking to the owner of this place,,, but can't until he stops shouting,,,,

Google it out and you'll find reviews about this place on Burp and you can even spot them on Google maps..

How marketers exploit FaceBook

Lately i have been watching that more and more users are switching from orkut to facebook and discussion about those quizzes and applications are common among the youth today Face book is growing at an incredible speed all over the world with more and more people adding facebook to their daily life.Facebook was started in early 2004 by a Harvard graduate Mark Zuckerberg and it had 700000 unique visitor at that point of time soon mark made into the forbes billionaires list at a very young age when most still strive to get a job, well thats the power and result of innovative thinking which only few in the world are blessed with.

In India Facebook has become popular only after 2006 registering a growth of 230 % in the year 2007,but it's way behind it's competitor Orkut led by the Giant Google which is three times as big as Facebook and has been much popular for its controversies it faced as a platform for pornography and facing assualt from many communities and news channels.
Facebook has been riding safe and is eating away orkut's share.The USP of facebook is that it came at a time when the market of orkut was saturated and people were were bored of orkut, after its much popularity in the west and we Indians have this psychology of rating things which people do in the west as cool and follow it. Face book has unique content,awesome application and these all application can be shared by all your friends played simultaneously and also the User interface is much better than Orkut.these all factors led to the tremendous growth of Facebook.any networking site is successful and can sustain growth only if it can monetize from the website and encashes the huge network of registered users with marketers.
Indian companies are no less in exploiting these huge advertisement platform. companies like SBI,Chings secrets,NDTV, Starplus and many more have started placing ads based on the user demographics. the best thing about Facebook advertisement is that it is more targeted according to the user demographics and in between the application and also it places the advertisement according to the topic you are discussing for example your talking about a new movie,the system will generate an advertisement of PVR cinemas. and also it becomes easier for the company which is advertising to measure the traffic on the website through the advertisement. companies even have their profile's on facebook companies/brands try to interact with their followers and post the latest updates on their profile.MTV in India has done this successfully.Globally its Microsoft which handles the advertisement business of Facebook even in India it is handled by Microsoft.
The user demographics show that there are near about 40 % users who are female compared to orkut which has only 30 % and even in U.S there are 54 % female users one more interesting fact is that there are 45 % percent users who are more than 26 years old. This is a great platform for the marketers to advertise their brands.Still facebook has a long way to go as orkut users from India constitute of 30 % users globally where as this number is very less in the case of facebook which has only 1% users from Indian.

Bing- getting ready for the assualt

Microsoft successfully launched bing this year with much fanfare, positioning it as a decision maker rather than just being a search engine. Initially Bing challenged the giants google and yahoo for their market share and to that many laughed. Now after six weeks bing has gained it's self respect, the search engine has been positively rated by many blogger's,techie's and favourable write-ups from influential writers for the quality of results,also the design and it's features.Reports from more than half a dozen companies that measure search and search advertising all point to upticks in Microsoft’s business since the release of Bing. Microsoft said on Monday that its internal numbers showed its search traffic growing 8 percent in June. (ComScore, whose reports are closely watched, is expected to release figures for June on Tuesday.)
Still, Bing remains a distant third in the search engine race. It has to triple its audience to catch Yahoo — and grow eightfold to match Google, which accounts for 65 percent of searches in the United States.Analysts say that Bing’s solid start gives Microsoft a chance to finally sharpen its assault on the search business although it has a long time to go. this great start of bing can actually lead to the partnership of yahoo and bing a.If this happens then google would have a serious competitor to think of..as of now Bing has to fight alone it's been less than a month after Bing’s release, Microsoft beat Google and Yahoo to a hot new area in search: It became the first major search engine to index new postings from popular Twitter users almost immediately. The move has helped amplify the buzz around Bing. well lets see if bing can actually bang bang google :) (i know that's a bad one)...

Few quotes that speak about leadership

Few quotes defining leadership
“It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” (Douglas Adams)

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.“ (John Quincy Adams)

“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” (Andrew Carnegie)

“Management works in the system. Leadership works on the system.” (Stephen R. Covey)

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him….But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, “We did it ourselves.” (Lao Tzu)

“I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.“ (Talleyrand)

“A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.” (Russell H. Ewing)

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.” (Warren Bennis)

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” (John Fitzgerald Kennedy)

‘The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” (Theodore Roosevelt)

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” (Peter F. Drucker)

“Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.” (Thomas Watson)

‘Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women.“ (Groucho Marx)

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that’s assault, not leadership.” (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

The story behind Google chrome

Internet in India

Is there any thing called " BRAND LOYALTY"

I have been a regular customer of the neighborhood pharmaceutical store and have known the owner since the past 8 years and one fine day i see a new store coming up where there was a banner offering the customers a Discount of 10 % on the purchases and i started buying from this discount store (medplus) and as days passed on the traffic in this new store increased effecting the sales of the old pharmaceutical store. now the big question is when there was a trust and a good relationship with the old store why did i stop going there...?? I think the most obvious reason is the fact that the store was offering discounts and with its pricing strategy it was getting in more customers a consumer will always look for rational benefits and how is he benefiting from it..
many U.S stores were closed due to the same story where in Walmart used to come up with a store with deep discounts and sweep the market as a result many neighborhood stores were closed down not able to compete with Walmart , in few small cities people formed groups and protested against walmart and were successful at it.. Walmart is known for its ruthless competition.. this story would follow in India also as most of the retail sector is Unorganized and Walmart would compete fiercely with Indian retail giants..for sure there would be a battle among the retailers to gain share of the pie...It's the consumer who would be gaining from all this but what about those businesses that constitute 94 % unorganized retail sector...????

Whats BING ????

Many say that BING stands for BING Is Not Google...others say it stands for But Its Not Google.

Bing is the new search engine from Microsoft replacing MSN, Microsoft has positioned BING as a decision maker rather than a search engine, Google is the market leader and has been a clear winner of search engine all over world, Google has replaced the word search. people often say that i had GOGGLED on this.This is the kind of positioning which Google has earned over years and Google stands to what it has positioned itself.. But most of the times a user is overloaded with information while he is searching and with the advertisement and unnecessary sites (which have registered with Google ad sense) these sites come on the first page as they are paid sites. Microsoft wants to en cash on this and wants to provide more relevant search unlike Google.. for me Bing can never be google...lets see if Bing can do IT or just lose it to Google again..

check it out at www.bing.com

Power of Internet

Internet has been a boon for all the start ups and many businesses to market themselves today the cost of marketing on the internet is 80 % lesser than other traditional mediums of advertising. the benefits of Internet marketing is that they can be more personalized, made more interactive and yes they are cheaper. Video marketing is most recognized and useful as it is cost effective ( it cost nothing to post a video on youtube) and it spreads faster than any other channel.that's the power of internet.There are many benefits for the companies to engage in Video marketing. they can explain about their new product and its features. Google always does that when ever it launches a new application it has a small video embedded on the web page explaining features in a very simple way,i was going through this website of commoncraft They make video's explaining about the companies new features or products and its made very simple. Start up companies which cannot afford high expenses of promotion are choosing youtube as a medium for promotion they have the link of the video on their site also and quite often a user choose the video instead of going through the site for getting a knowledge about the company.

Life After MBA

After struggling at the competitive exams(CAT.XAT.MAT) an MBA aspirant joins a B-School paying high fees so that for the rest of his life he is financially stable,but is he really financially sound?? right after completing his job his lifelong relationship with EMI'S will kick start as the graduate would be getting a job and paying his first EMI's for the bank loan which he has taken for his education until and unless he is the son of an affluent businessman he need not pay the EMI's but then if he was a son of an affluent businessmen he wouldn't have done his MBA in India nor he would have struggled for a MBA seat,
Back to the common Man,,,,The bank loans would always lure him to go for Extra money to increase his standard of living,tempted to this, again the new set of EMI's would start for buying the first car, then his own house, followed by his child education,marriage etc etc...do you still think that doing an MBA you would end up in a better financial position, most of the people would have a life time contract with the EMI's but a few people would stand out taking different paths, taking risky decisions leaving their stable salary for an Unknown path which is unstable,risky but would give them immense pleasure ,sense of satisfaction and above all huge returns.... this path is the Entrepreneurship.....and the choice is yours