Linking Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy to Business – Mr. R Mukundan, Managing Director,Tata Chemicals

Mr. R Mukundan, Managing Director,Tata Chemicals

Marketing is an art as well as science and to make it successful you should have a soft side to understand the emotions of customers. Mahatma Gandhi was a great man who literally made people to understand the concept of freedom. That’s a far more difficult thing to do. That’s the brilliance of him and we can learn many lessons from him. We operate in 3 businesses and we call ourselves life. We have a good team and we have constantly increased our market share in key categories over the time. When I joined Tata Salt we had the market share of around 19%, today it stands at around 60 -65%. The number 1 & number 2 brands are with us. Because we could not grow the first brand fully, we launched the second brand to attack it & we have two brands from the same family in one product category and we are thinking to launch another brand.

We also sell water purifiers and we have just started to sell pulses, which is a growing business area that is compounded every year at 16000+. When we create a brand the amount of power we have in market place is tremendous. The second piece of our business is industrial chemicals. This is truly a global business; we are present in 4 continents: Europe, Asia, Africa & United States. We are the 2nd largest glass making company. When you drink a glass of water or when you wash clothes there a bit of TATA in it. We are the key supplier to Procter & Gamble & Unilever for same. Our 3rd piece of business is focused on farm essentials. We have the largest foot-print in rural India. Tata rural retail has been profitable from past 20 years. We have 700 stores spread over UP, Haryana, Punjab & in West Bengal. Through our company Ralus we are running one of the finest & profitable rural businesses. When you look at top 10 farm brands, top 7 belong to us. We are about a 15000 crore company and we have an innovation centre too, one of our product Swacch came out of that innovation centre. You cannot address bottom of pyramid without focusing on innovation. Continue reading →

Role of Analytics in CRM – Clifford Patrao Director/Partner, Global Business Services IBM India Pvt Ltd

Clifford Patrao Director/Partner, Global Business Services IBM India Pvt Ltd

CRM & Analytics have been across different type of industries for long time. Analytics has always been meant for enriching customer experience and to maintain good customer relationship. In 2012 we did a global CEO study, where we interacted with close to 70 CEOs from 64 countries. We asked them which is the best information which can give you the most correct insight about business, most of them answered that would like to know about information related to customers to get business insights.

What has really changed in analytics and CRM recently is the emerging empowered customers. Consumers are now dictating the relationship that they have with the business. Business is no longer focusing on the push marketing where push the message across the customers. Now, it’s the other way around and customers are telling us what they want and what promises and kept and not kept in a particular product/service provided. Continue reading →

Tips to be followed in Digital Marketing

Koichiro Shima – Co-Chief Executive Officer, Creative Director, Editor Hakuhodo Kettle, Japan & Yasuharu Sasaki – Executive Creative Director – Dentsu New York

In this new era Japanese agencies have created many successful digital advertising campaigns along with some campaigns which should not have been launched as they followed the policy of copy & paste from the successful campaigns. These unsuccessful campaigns were myopic and only focused on results and damaged the digital advertising field. So, here are some of our tips for a successful digital marketing campaign.

Digital is not a medium to express but it is the tool that we should use to integrate the diverse marketing media of business.

Here are two examples:

We launched a successful digital campaign on internet where we asked people to join this campaign on internet and we shot a TVC for same featuring actual people.
Just after tsunami in Japan we launched a campaign in collaboration with Honda where we provided information about road condition of areas affected by tsunami to people free of charge to make rescue and reconstruction much quicker. Continue reading →

Myopic principles which marketers still follow – Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

Principally while defining your business you have to take into consideration the needs of your business. That’s the fundamental point of Marketing Myopia. I believe marketing has changed fundamentally.

Here are some changes:

It is not the era of product brands anymore; it is the era of experience. Consumers now want a certain aura of experience now.
The concept of place has changed, place today is any site which a consumer can access to know about your product, it could be internet or a physical store.
We have moved significantly from price to value. It is not about just promotion, we have classically run brand on the basis of promotion in our country. Advertising affect attitude to change the consumer behavior.
When you are doing promotion like 20% off & 30% free, you are changing behavior. By offering this promotion we are changing the consumer behavior and we are hoping that their attitude will change. We are planning to educate the consumer today rather than just promoting our product.

Advertising has changed dramatically, In 1980s for adverstising we had just two programmes in our mind: Hindi feature films & Chitrahar, with these two we could cover 80% of our target consumers in any category. Today it is a difficult task. The fragmentation of media now is dramatic. Continue reading →

Brand Mnemonics – Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

Brands have different types of mnemonics. Some have audio or sound mnemonics, some have color mnemonics, some have logos and some have a combination of audio, color, and logo.

An example of a mnemonic is the Amul Girl, is the Mercedes and BMW symbols, and is the red color of Coca cola and the blue shade of IBM.

Mnemonics have been around for years and were useful in differentiating and adding an experience layer to brands. The origin of branding was in marking a product/commodity and then adding a symbol or picture to it. The symbol or picture was very important in the early days of branding because the vast population was illiterate and there was little media except posters. So the ability to put up a symbol on a poster led to the early mnemonics. Continue reading →

Internet principles to build a brand online – Neeraj Gupta, Director, Sales and Operations, Google India

Mr. Neeraj Gupta – Director, Sales and Operations, Google India

Here are some internet principles that one should keep in mind when one think of business, product & market. When the internet started a few years ago, we could not imagine that there would be around 150 million internet subscribers in India. That does not mean that the other mediums of marketing are losing their grip. India is one of the few countries where print media still plays an important role unlikely in other countries like US.

The first principle of Internet is: Use the unprecedented scale of internet. Facebook has over a billion users, Youtube has over 800 million users. The reach through this scale is amazing. This medium allows SMEs to reach out to people of different backgrounds. Lady Gaga was a brand that was built on internet in a small period of time. One of the rare and interesting example is Psy & his gangnam style which has hit over a billion views in less than a few months of launch and made his style of dance, which was only available & popular in Korea reach across the world in just few months engaging more that million people and creating a revenue source for the artist & the publisher in very quick period of time. Continue reading →

Indian economy is growing in all spheres – Shri Pranab Mukherjee, President of India

Shri Pranab Mukherjee, President of India

At the very outset, I would like to take the opportunity of congratulating all the award winners. I am happy to join you on this happy occasion – Managing India Awards 2013. These are prestigious corporate awards that recognize outstanding contribution of individuals and organizations to Indian business management. Our country today has corporate leaders who can manage the development of Indian business into models of excellence. Indian managers are recognized all over the world for their managerial capacity. Many global business giants are headed by Indian managers and technocrats today.

Philip Kotler, the acclaimed expert on Marketing had once observed and I quote: “Today you have to run faster to stay in place” (unquote). We have set upon us a challenge to make India count amongst the top few nations in the world. To mark India’s growing stature, management principles should find application not only in our business and industry, but also in other important processes such as social change and governance. How change is managed will determine our progress. This is a need that the Managing India Awards denote, and is also a reality epitomized by this year’s award winners. Continue reading →

Merging NGO world with the corporate world – Kiran Bedi, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee

Kiran Bedi, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee

I had set up Navjyoti India Foundation in 1986. This foundation was first of its kind as it wasset up by a serving police officer at that time. The foundation just happened by coincidence. Slums in area of Yamuna Bank were a hub of crime, drug pedaling, prostitution, garbage picking, and children in burglar groups. It was the area in my beat for crime prevention. Policing for me stands for prevention than for detection. That is why when the December 2012 Delhi gang rape happened, I kept on shouting at the top of my voice that this was a preventable crime. According to me prevention can be so intensive that a lot can be achieved through it. I have always questioned myself for why should I not work on prevention before detection of crime?

From the belief in this power of prevention my foundation Navjyoti was born. I set up drug addiction treatment centers in Delhi Police Stations. We called it Navjyoti as it was new hope for people who actually needed help. We started off with 8 drug abuse treatment centers in Delhi Police Stations. We set up vocational schools for women in drug pedaling, we set up primary schools for children to prevent them from begging. The foundation started in 1986 and it moved on with me. 16 other serving police officers became the founders of Navjyoti as we all believed in the power of prevention. I believe that we all are in a position to give out some time for community service and we all can volunteer for a cause that has an impact on the growth of our country. Continue reading →

Author Archives: Team AIMA

Linking Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy to Business – Mr. R Mukundan, Managing Director,Tata Chemicals

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Role of Analytics in CRM – Clifford Patrao Director/Partner, Global Business Services IBM India Pvt Ltd

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Tips to be followed in Digital Marketing

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Myopic principles which marketers still follow – Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

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Brand Mnemonics – Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

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Internet principles to build a brand online – Neeraj Gupta, Director, Sales and Operations, Google India

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Indian economy is growing in all spheres – Shri Pranab Mukherjee, President of India

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Merging NGO world with the corporate world – Kiran Bedi, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee

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