The New Rules of Winning View RSS

Authenticity is the standout consumer value in 2017. What does 2017 have in store for us as marketers? According to the research reports released by Euromonitor International the one factor that is going to create the maximum impact is ‘authenticity’. If marketers really want to connect with the millennial consumers then they need to work on their authenticity.

What is also important to note is that the Edelman’s Annual Trust Barometer showed a global decline in trust with less than 50% people trusting brands? The bigger the brand the lesser the trust. One of the main reasons for this has been the Internet .It has made consumers very informed and brands need to work hard to establish their authenticity. They need to take specific steps to show consumers that they truly care for them.

The search for authenticity has seen a rise since 2010. According to psychologists some of the key factors why consumers are getting drawn to products that claim ‘authenticity’ were trends like globalization, economic crisis, and technology.

Globalization is making the world uniform with everybody drinking Coca- Cola, eating McDonald’s and wearing Nike. This is making lots of people crave for home made, traditional, authentic stuff. The economic crisis has made people trust less the big and fancy brands and reach out for simple, small-scale things. Technology has now changed the face of everything including our vegetables and fruits. We have genetically modified fruits and veggies today. All this has made people want the same simple stuff once more, which they can trust.

So all marketing campaigns have latched on to the new buzzword and started touting their brand as the most ‘authentic’. Go to a supermarket and you will be flooded with products each one claiming to be the real thing, the most authentic, the genuine one, the number 1, the best, the oldest etc. So much have these words been used and abused that they have lost their appeal and their meaning.

THE RISE OF THE NORMCORE The new generation does not care how loud you as a brand shout out from the rooftop how authentic you are. For them authenticity stands for something totally different. It does not anymore stand for heritage, the originals, and the first ones. Instead they define authentic as brands, which have a mission, brands, which are changing lives, brands that are ethical and honest. It stands for brands, which are innovative.

This has given rise to a new trend labeled by many as ‘normcore marketing’. It is a mash up of ‘normal’ and ‘hardcore’. Gone are the days of glitzy ads showing the glamorous lifestyle. Now what works is a down-to-earth, normal, brand positioning showcasing the ‘normal lifestyle’. It could be considered as retaliation to mass production, technology, airbrushed images, and a craving for handcrafted, homemade, authentic stuff. GAP was one of the first to adapt this trend and came out with its ‘Dress Normal’ campaign. In fashion terminology that would mean embracing ‘sameness’. The attitude of the new consumers is to strive to merge rather than standout, to be similar instead of different. For brands it means ‘mundane’ is what is attracting the new kids on the block. Anti-trends is the new trend. Big brands, glitzy expensive fashion is not appealing anymore, rather it’s all about small, authentic, real, normal stuff. As marketers we need to remodel our goods and market them differently.

THE RISE OF TRANSPARENCY
 Consumers normally rank a brand on the basis of three attributes Reliable, Respectful, and Real. A brand is considered reliable if it delivers on the promise and is of high quality. It is considered respectful if it treats its consumers with respect and protects their privacy and data. If the brand communicates honestly, and acts with integrity it is considered Real.

So in the recent battle of the FBI vs. Apple, the brand did not budge from its stand and refused to share personal information of the customer with the FBI. Today not just the technology companies but so many others too own so much personal data of the consumers and if they want to be considered as authentic they should not share the data or misuse it.

According to the rankings of Cohn & Wolfe the world’s most authentic brand is Disney, followed by BMW, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple. The other 5 brands that made it to the top 10 were Intel, Audi, Samsung, Adidas, and Lego. In spite of the exploding Galaxy Note 7 the brand seems to have retained its authenticity tag. This is because it has been honest about its mistakes, recalled faulty products and fought hard to win back the trust of the audience.

McDonald’s may not yet have made it to the top 10 most authentic brands but it is working hard towards it. McDonald’s Canada’s ‘Our Food your questions’ campaign has been the most talked about transparency campaigns. It tells the customers to openly ask anything about its products and gives McDonald’s a chance to dispel rumors and stand by its products. The campaign has received more than 40,000 questions and more than 3 million visitors since its launch in 2014. The brand went ahead and even uploaded a video of its beef processing plant to prove that the patties were made from real cows! McDonald’s has been targeted the most with lots of unflattering rumors surrounding it and the company is putting all efforts to build back the trust.

Southwest Airlines in the US has built its brand on the premise of being a low-fare airline. That is the heart of its business model. In order to make the consumers believe that there are no hidden costs or fees the company started a campaign called “Trans-fare-ncy”, where it showed its dedication towards low fares. The people loved it and the campaign garnered not just 5 million likes on its Facebook page but a whole lot of trust from the people.

Food is the least trusted of categories so Panera Bread promised its customers that it would stop using artificial ingredients. It launched a campaign “Food as it should be” where it displayed its menu that listed all the details of the ingredients used, the nutritional information and also an animal welfare report. All this just to show that its food was healthy and safe.

The clothing company Patagonia started a campaign called “How is your clothing made” The aim was to make customers aware of free trade certified factories where workers were paid higher wages. The consumers loved it and liked it not just on Facebook but also with their hearts.

That is how important authenticity has become in today’s world of very aware and informed consumers.

The re-birth of the CMO  The Chief Marketing Officer of the future is no more one whose sole job is to look into the branding and marketing aspects of the brand. Today he is expected to know about all the tools and techniques needed to measure the customer’s voice and understand his buying behavior. If the brand has to do well it is critical that every member in the organization learns to think from the point of view of the customer. It is the CMO’s job to drive that customer –centric mindset within the organization.

The CMO today has to look beyond the traditional methods of marketing and brand building. Today a brand’s reputation and its ability to differentiate itself from competition is the key to survival. In todays dynamic and volatile market points of differentiation get blurred very quickly and if one is not swift and quick to spot the trends one could be wiped out of business in no time. The market is highly disruptive and CMO’s needed to ensure that the brand is always innovating and delighting the customers.

Unilevers has merged the CMO and CSR (corporate social responsibility) roles into one. In many organisations the CMO is spending more on IT than the CIO. Marketing today has become a lot about data and the chief of marketing has to transform accordingly.

In conclusion, if we as marketers want to make our brands great we need to come across as authentic. We need to be transparent in our communications with the consumers. We need to listen closely to them and respond, reform, transform accordingly.

The times are changing and so is the customer. The culprits are technology and the Internet. Thanks to them, things are changing at breakneck speed for marketers as the Internet and the technological revolution has made the consumer want more and more and there seems to be no stopping. In the early days, it was all about identifying the needs and wants of the consumer and trying to satisfy those needs with the right product. That product was then wrapped around an alluring message highlighting the benefits of the product and how it would change the life of the buyer. That’s all changed now. Today, it’s no more just about the product, its benefits and the branding message; it’s about the ability of the brand to connect with the consumer, to build a lasting relationship with the consumer. And that has become a difficult task for the consumer of today is insatiable and ‘maange more’ before he trusts you with his loyalty. Consumer maange more value Marketing was all about building a brand and giving people value for money. That’s not enough today. The consumer of today wants more than just ‘value for money’. He also wants to know what values you as a brand stand for. More than 80% of consumers believe that a good brand is one which places equal emphasis on both business profits and societal issues. Your brand should stand for a purpose beyond profits. It should have a purpose driven brand story. Responsible consumption is the buzz word today. With our world being plagued with problems like global warming, water scarcity, obesity etc., the consumers are becoming aware of the role companies and brands can play to make the world a better place. By supporting brands with a strong purpose, they feel they are doing their bit too to make the world happier, healthier, greener and cleaner.

Take the case of Kissan. It decided to source sustainably produced tomatoes, which not just differentiated the brand but soon made it the number one ketchup brand in India. The Lifebuoy brand of soap ran a campaign called “Help a Child Reach Five”, which focused on teaching children how to wash their hands correctly as India has the highest number of child deaths due to diarrhea and pneumonia. The brand developed a hand wash which could change its color from white to green in 10 seconds – just the time required to kill most of the germs. Children wait to see the color change, which is not just fun but life saving too! The brand showed its commitment to a purpose, a cause, and was loved for it. Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign went beyond celebrity athletes and urged people to find greatness in everyday people. It struck a chord with the viewers and inspired them. Brands are moving on beyond just showing the benefits of their product. Rin is a good old brand which for decades has promised ‘Chamakti Safedi’. That’s not enough to stay above competition. Rin has gone a step ahead. While clean clothes give you confidence, Rin has gone on and started a Rin Career Academy, training people in key skills which give them confidence. Skills like speaking good English, dressing appropriately for a job, handling an interview. Rin has shown that it is totally committed to building confidence. That’s a purpose which goes beyond profits. Patagonia is a brand that makes money by selling clothes, yet when it launched its ad campaign, it was all about encouraging people to repair their old outdoor garments. The ad provided a lot of tips and tools to help the users fix their own gear. It even offered to buy back gently used garments. Marketers at Patagonia are very clear that it’s the era of unconventional marketing. A brand that can market itself as one supporting a cause, supporting sustainable development would be noticed and liked much more than a brand that made fabulous, yet ‘harmful to the planet and its people’ products. To show how committed it is to its purpose, Patagonia established a $20 million venture fund to invest in socially and environmentally responsible startups. Whole Foods is another brand that has shown that it stands for sustainable development and sensible consumption. It has a concept called “Community Giving Days” where 5% of that day’s net sales are given to local non-profits. All through, consumers have been let down by their governments, their leaders, their NGOs who have failed to bring about a positive change in their lives. These consumers are now looking up at brands who have the power, the money, the creativity to help change this world for the good. These are the B Corps – ‘Benefit Corporations’ – who are going to rule in the future and its their marketing campaigns that the consumers will like, and share and believe in. A purpose-driven brand also has the most positive and motivated employees who are proud to say that they work for a brand that believes in something beyond profits. LRXD is a full service agency but it calls itself the ‘health and happiness advertising agency’ for it took a policy decision to primarily work for brands that helped make life better. Made Movement, an agency founded in 2012, decided it would work for brands that provided jobs to people in the US. Their purpose made them reject work from a lot of big brands, but they say life has never been better for they have a reason to wake up every morning and come to work. According to a 10-year-long study conducted by Millward Brown and Jim Stengel, brands which focused on a higher purpose did not just build the deepest relationships with customers, but also achieved the greatest financial growth in the 10 year period of the study. It’s no more about what you sell; rather, it’s more about what you as a brand and an organization stand for. So give the customer not just a great product but a great product that also does great things and he will be your greatest fan and friend! Customer maange more speed The consumer wants everything now and if you want his loyalty, you need to cope up with his demands. Take for example the purchase behavior of customers. Gone are the days when he would wait for the shop to open and buy. Today, he wants to buy whenever he pleases (thanks to e-commerce) and add to that the fact that he wants his shopping delivered at the soonest. While shopping online, a delivery period of two to three days was acceptable some time back. Now, he wants same-day-delivery. Soon, he would want everything delivered at his doorstep as fast as a pizza. The consumer of today not just shops any time of the day, but is texting and messaging his friends at all hours. Soon, he would want to text and receive texts from companies. A recent survey by Corvisa (a cloud communications provider) found that 77% of consumers were okay with getting text 

messages from companies and in fact liked it if the companies texted them about things like fraud alerts, payment reminders, sales, discounts, promos etc. If you as a marketer can use this tool to engage with your customer, there is no better way to build a long lasting relationship. He texts you like he would a friend and you text him back – that is the speed of communication you should be prepared for. Gone is the concept of ‘contact during office hours only’. If you want to retain your market share, you need to behave just like your customer wants you to or else some other young brand will replace you. Speedy deliveries, speedy text responses will see your profits speeding up! Customer maange more connection Marketing is no more a ‘one-to-many’ style of communication; rather, it’s now all about one-to-one. From being a monologue – where the marketers spoke and the consumers listened – now, it’s a dialogue. The consumer speaks and the marketer is expected to listen and respond if he wants to build a long lasting relationship. Not just that, the customer also likes to be spoken to about things he enjoys. Hence the rise of ‘programmatic advertising’. One ad, however brilliant, will not work any more. Soon, marketers would be expected to customize and make multiple advertisements to suit the tastes of different types of customers, and technology is making it possible to do this. Programmatic buying identifies users and groups them according to the sites they browse and then offers them advertisements and promotional materials of products and services that match their habits and tastes. There is growing evidence that consumers are getting bored and irritated with advertisements that don’t interest them. With the help of technology, now marketers can identify the choices of the target consumers and place their ads in front of only those who are interested in that particular product or service. Brands like Nike, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Kia Automobiles are using programmatic buying to micro-target their audience and send them ads customized to suit their tastes and build better connections with them. The Future As a consequence, the whole environment is changing. A marketer needs to look beyond his marketing campaigns and promotions and focus more on the very tech-savvy consumer and his overall experience vis-à-vis the brand. Be it the online visit experience, the in-store shopping experience, the purchase experience and even the post-purchase experience, he needs to understand the big data, its analysis, interpret the results wisely and make the required changes to help improve these experiences. As marketers, you need to find out who are the social influencers, and try to make them your ‘digital brand ambassadors’. As a vigilant marketer, you also have to keep track of conversations happening on the social media. Thanks to the developments in technology, today’s marketers have a huge amount of data detailing the digital lives of their customers, giving them extraordinary power. They can now run sharply focused campaigns, reach their target audience much more accurately, respond to disgruntled customers with greater speed, get deep and accurate insights into the purchase patterns of their customers. Everybody wants to do good, but then, not everybody can. If you combine your business profits with purpose, you don’t just win a lot of goodwill from your customers, but you also help them satisfy that latent need within them of giving back something to the society, which is very fulfilling and satisfying. Soon, no one would care about the S&P 500 list or the Fortune 500 list; but they would demand a Helping the Unfortunate 500 list, for the latter would be a list of companies who would be making a difference to the planet and not just their balance sheets. So go ahead, use technology to understand your market better, add a purpose to your marketing campaign, unleash your creativity and delight your audience like never before, and give him more than the conventional dose of marketing. Give him a dream and a hope of a better world!

Of the nouveau billionaires on the block, the ones causing maximum disruption are those running technology firms; by RAJITA CHAUDHURI

Anybody can be a Billionaire
The annual list of the world’s billionaires is out. There are 1,810 billionaires in the world today (down from 1,826 last year). However, what’s interesting is that approximately 65% of these are self-made billionaires. Billionaires of today are not necessarily those born with a silver spoon; rather, today, like never before, the world is seeing the birth of billionaires who have started from ground zero and made it to the top. Out of the whole list of billionaires, 198 are new to the list; and of these newcomers, a large portion has come from the fields of manufacturing, real estate and technology. Out of these three fields, the one that’s causing the largest disruption is the field of technology. Take a look at the newcomers on this list and you will see that most of them are heading companies that are rich in technology and not physical assets. The newcomers are Pinterest cofounders Evan Sharp and Ben Silberman, Flipkart cofounders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, WeWork cofounders Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey etc. In fact, look at the guys at the top: Bill Gates has been at the top for 17 years out of 22 years, Jeff Bezos has moved up from the 15th to the 5th spot, Mark Zuckerberg has moved up to the 6th spot. This just goes on to prove that technology will be the game-changer of the future. Technology has a lot to contribute towards making the world really flat. While America used to be the hub of a large number of billionaires with New York boasting of the largest number of billionaires in the world, things are changing. While at 79, New York still has the largest number of billionaires, Hong Kong is fast closing in with 68 billionaires. Interestingly, out of the top 10 cities with the largest number of billionaires, 6 cities were from Asia this year and New York was the only American city in the top 10. Most of the billionaires of the world are today from the Asia-Pacific region and not from the United States. Add to this the fact that out of the newcomers to this list, the maximum were from China. So while earlier it was oil, minerals, real estate, which were responsible for creating billionaires, today technology is making billionaires faster than ever before. Huge developments in technology are also key reasons that more and more of the young guys are challenging the biggies in the business and disrupting things like never before. The Internet has opened the doors and given access to knowledge, finance, people etc to an extent like never before. Look at the new and hippest brands of today – Airbnb, Snapchat, Uber, Flipkart, Dropbox, Snapdeal, Ola Cabs, InMobi, Zomato – they all have young guys at the helm of affairs taking on the world armed with just a powerful idea. All these companies mentioned above are “unicorns”. This means that though they are private companies, yet they are valued at $1 billion or more. For example, Uber is valued at $62 billion, Airbnb $25 billion, Ola $5 billion etc. This is something that was considered unthinkable before the Internet revolution. That a company like that could really exist, was considered a myth –hence Unicorn!

The billionaire mindset: Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid to dream big. Don’t be afraid to fail big either. Don’t be afraid of criticism. The whole world will tell you how it cannot be done, so relax. All you need to be sure of is that you want it to happen and you have to want it real bad. In fact, the easiest way to know that you have a great idea is when everybody says it won’t work. Be sure you have hit the jackpot. All great ideas were called stupid at the start, but the people behind the idea never lost faith in themselves or their ideas and made it happen. Don’t be disheartened if you don’t know how to make your idea happen. If you need to learn a particular skill – it’s right there on Google. If you need to know how Harvard and MIT are handling a particular course – it’s right there on edX for free. If you have acquired all knowledge and now need to make an app, a website etc, again you can access numerous resources on the Internet for free and make one at almost zero cost. Your prototype is ready, but now you need the funding. No worries. Just as the social media has changed the way we connect with friends, it has also changed the way we raise money for a business idea. The concept of ‘crowd-funding’ is growing in popularity and more and more entrepreneurs are reaching out to people on the social media platform to fund their ideas. Sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGO, ProFounder, Buzzbnk, 33needs, AppBackr, CauseVox and numerous more have helped so many ideas come to life. You don’t have to be a technology giant to compete with Apple watches. The company Pebble proved that twice. Once in 2012, when they had an idea for a watch and went to the site Kickstarter with their idea. 85,000 people loved the idea and pledged money to help Pebble realize its dream. The company raised more than $10 million (10,000 percent of the goal). Then again in 2015, when they wanted to improve the features of the watch, they went to Kickstarter again looking for a funding of $50,000. In less than an hour, they could raise $1 million, and by the end of the campaign, they had got more than $20 million funding from numerous people across the net. Hiral Sanghavi, a frequent flier, had the habit of forgetting his neck pillow on flights. So one day he and his wife Yoganshi Shah decided to develop a travel jacket that would have a neck pillow, an eye mask, gloves, blanket… everything. They went to Kickstarter looking for $20,000. They landed up with more than $9 million. From smart watches, to wireless headphones, to 3D printers… all kinds of ideas have found people who were interested in them and supported them. As I said earlier, you don’t need to be born with a silver spoon to make your big dreams come alive.

What you don’t need today You don’t need piles of cash, you don’t need a rich uncle either. You don’t have to go to Harvard or get a degree from a famous place. You don’t need any infrastructure to house your company. You don’t need staff as you can find numerous virtual assistants at a fraction of the cost and without any hassle.

What you definitely need You need to believe in you and your idea. You need to be able to articulate your idea well. As the saying goes: “You only get one chance to make a first impression”. Be it a meeting with an angel investor, or a venture capitalist, or a presentation on Kickstarter, you have to be very sure that your idea sounds interesting and investment worthy. If you are not articulate enough, you can lose out even though your idea had a huge potential. You need to have a great network. You need to know how to significantly make your presence felt online. You need to know the way to get the attention of your niche audience in this very crowded space. Once you have mastered these things, it’s just a matter of time before your name appears on the next Forbes list of global billionaires. Great passion, a clear vision, a concrete plan, a mind blowing pitch and you are ready to count your millions!… Or billions, if you may!!!

This generation is going to impact the world in a way no other generation has impacted; and it’s going to influence other people of other generations too.

So it’s imperative that we as marketers understand them well and keep a close eye on them as our survival depends a lot on them.

GEN Z WANTS TO LIVE A LIFE WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED

It wants to do a lot and does not like to be tied down with useless commitments and useless baggage – like EMIs, like annual maintenance contracts etc. Basically, they want to live with no strings attached.

This is a generation that has grown up in an era of huge economic turmoil; they have seen their parents struggle with jobs, money, recession… they are thus very cost-sensitive. Add to this the fact that they are very aware of what is happening around them, as they are constantly connected with each other. They are also huge consumers of media, so they are a very smart generation to deal with. Gen Z is not just very aware, it’s socially conscious too; it’s environmentally conscious too; and it’s going to change the way the world works!

Let’s take a look at how things will change in the future.

 

THE FOURTH ‘R’

We all know the three ‘R’s’ – reuse, recycle, and reduce (if you are from the old school, the 3Rs used to be reading, writing, arithmetic).Well, this is so last generation. The new ‘R’ is Rent! Gen Z takes less pride in ownership, especially when there are better options. Ownership is not just expensive, but can slow you down. So, while the Millennials (generation Y) loved the concept of renting designer-wear, which made startups like ‘Rent the Runway’, ‘Bag, Borrow, Steal’ etc gain huge popularity, the new Gen Z has taken renting to a different level. They want to rent and rent-out everything and anything you can think of.

Why buy a music album when you can stream it instantly? So they prefer to spend on a pro-membership of the site Spotify than buy music!

Why buy a car when you can hire the latest one from Uber?

Why buy a house and spend all your savings when at $200, you can log on to Airbnb and hire a castle somewhere in France!

SnapGoods shows you how to make money by giving your stuff on rent. It allows you to rent high-end items like cameras, musical instruments and the likes. If you have some expensive items, then you can put them on hire too.

Why hire a kennel when you can hire a home to take care of your dog when you are out on a vacation? DogVacay is a site that lets you do just that – it connects you to a home that’s ready to take care of your pet.

Sitting free and want to rent out your free time? TaskRabbit lets you do just that. You could bid to do tasks, ranging from delivery to office-help, and people looking for such services can send you a request and hire you.

Saw a swanky car in your neighbourhood and want to take it for a spin?

Getaround helps you do just that. If you have a great car and will not be using it for some time – maybe you are going on a holiday, or are unwell, or whatever – you could put it up for hire on Getaround and earn some cool bucks. Considering that Getaround had an insurance cover of $1 million from Berkshire Hathaway could help you in putting those gorgeous wheels on hire with a little more peace of mind.

Got spare cash? Put it to good use with the Lending Club, a peer-to-peer network where one can borrow hard cash. It gives you better interest rates than your traditional savings accounts. So why let your money waste in a bank when it can make more money for you at the Lending Club.

Sharing is the way to go. According to The Wall Street Journal, digital music sales on iTunes have declined, and so have the sales of books on Amazon. What it means is that ownership of any form – digital or physical – is on the decline, and new business models need to be put in place quickly. So Apple’s Tunes Radio now streams music. It’s got Beats too into its fold to make streaming even better. Amazon now gives books on rent.

Warby Parker, the iconic online sunglasses and reading glasses’ retailer, has a leasing program where you could change your sunglasses every season. If renting is the new success mantra, then Warby has shown how to do it. Why buy an outlet when you can rent one, or even create one? Buying a shop or retail space is very expensive. So Warby Parker started selling glasses online and – thanks to all the saving – it could sell them at a very low cost. If there were some fussy customers who still wanted to try on their glasses before buying them, Warby Parker found an interesting way to reach them – through ‘pop-up stores’. They hired a school bus and changed the interiors and called it the Warby Parker class-trip. The bus went to the customer when he refused to come to them.

Just one day before the NY Fashion Week, Warby Parker went to the New York public library (the library had no idea what was going to happen) and at a designated time, 30 models – each one carrying bright blue books – entered the library, sat down, opened their books, and started reading – of course, wearing the latest collection of glasses from Warby Parker. Forty editors, who were supposed to cover the New York Fashion Week the next day, had been invited earlier. They went crazy when they saw this and could not stop clicking pictures. Security at the library too went crazy but could not do much as everybody was just sitting and reading.

The new generation has its own rules and you need to bend your rules to suit them, for this new generation of digital nomads will have it no other way. They love their digital gadgets and it’s through these that you can reach them, however you need to connect with them in the way they like – and not many of them like to buy, they like to rent!

They are totally prepared, totally aware, totally connected – much more than any other generation, they want to make a difference; they know that they can make a difference and they are quickly changing the world – and rewriting the rules.

Narendra Modi is the new star of the political world, whose charisma refuses to fade. He has given hope to not just his nation but the world too. His success run just doesn’t seem to end. However, if you look closely you realize he is not a one-man army. There is another person always next to him, his close confidante who is equally responsible for the thundering success of BJP and Modi. The man is Amit Shah. Together, the duo is creating magic. They are the best partners and their partnership is the secret of their success.

POWERFUL PARTNERSHIPS.

Modi and Shah are the new age Jai and Veeru of Sholay! The iconic film and its unforgettable story of two friends is the best example of what a great partnership can do.  

PARTNERS

History is full of examples of great partners. Be it Narendra Modi and Amit Shah or Sherlock Holmes and Watson. It’s the pairs that together have done wonders and achieved great results. Man is a social animal and the smallest possible social unit is a group of two. However, the dynamics of this group has rarely been studied in depth. Numerous success stories have had a pair at the center. Look at the rock band The Beatles. At the heart of this were two extremely talented people John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They were both extremely talented individuals and when they paired up, they helped ignite the hidden fire within each other. As a result, together they produced music, which was a class apart. 

When two people who share a great chemistry come together, they create magic. Look at Hollywood. Some of the best films ever made had a great team of two behind them. The super successful Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones series had the dynamic duo George Lucas and Harrison Ford behind it. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman both iconic actors created great films like Million Dollar Baby and Invictus. Who can forget the most iconoclastic director Martin Scorsese who has created a place for himself in history by directing films like The Wolf of Wall Street, Aviator, The Departed and many more. His lead actor and constant partner Leonardo DiCaprio being equally responsible for the super duper success of these films. Both of them together ignited the screen with celluloid drama that is rarely seen. That’s the magic of a great pair. The same chemistry can be found in Bollywood too. When Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan came together, they created wonders; so did Rakesh Roshan and Hrithik and also Salman Khan and Sooraj Barjatia, making films that created history at the box office. The pairs worked so well that whenever they were put together they brought out the best in each other, which was visible on screen.

A pair that works well together wins more. 

PARTNERSHIPS

In the corporate world too, successful partnerships are aplenty and one of the key factors is the ‘right chemistry’ between the two parties. Some of the biggest brands of today had at their heart two people who were driven by the same passion and shared the most productive partnership. They complimented each other and their combined skill sets made them one of the strongest business units in the industry. Bill Gates and his school friend Paul Allen loved hacking and loved computers and together created Microsoft. If these other two childhood friends loved computers, then these two childhood friends loved food and even did a correspondence course in ice-cream making together; and as expected, Ben and Jerry together started the very successful ice-cream brand ‘Ben&Jerry’.

These two people became friends while on a summer job and their friendship was the foundation of one of the greatest brands in corporate history. Steve Wozniack was a master in analytics and the late Steve Jobs was a master marketer; together, the two Steves created Apple.

A two-week camping trip brought Bill and Dave together and they became best friends who later discovered how similar they were. And together, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started HP (Hewlett-Packard).

Think of almost any big brand of today and at the helm of each, you will find two friends, two people who share a great camaraderie and a common passion. 

Think eBay – Jeffery Skoll and Pierre Omidyar.

Think Twitter – Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

Think Whatsapp – Brian Acton and Jan Koum.

Think P&G – William Procter and James Gamble.

The list goes on. 

PARTNERS IN CRIME

Not all partnerships are for a noble cause however!

You saw the movie Bunty aur Babli and the terrific partnership of the duo. History is full of such examples of partners who used their compatibility and understanding to execute the most dangerous of crimes! In fact, ‘partners in crime’ has been the plot of many successful blockbusters both in Bollywood and Hollywood. Sholay still remains one of the most memorable films of two friends whose partnership is so beautiful that it makes you cry every time you watch it. In Hollywood too, movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid showed the life of the criminal duo Butch Cassidy and his accomplice Harry Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid.

In fact, criminal duos make for an interesting study too. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid who together robbed trains, lockers, and people and made a lot of money, there have been many famous partners who were always on the other side of the law. Bonnie and Clyde – the most well known American outlaws – carried out the biggest crimes in US history during the 1930s. Together, they always managed to outsmart the police until one fine day in 1934, when they were ambushed and killed. The James brothers too had a dark history of robbing and killing people. The Lonely Hearts killers were again a couple that used to woo lonely single women, rob them and eventually kill them. Yes, agreed, what they did was illegal but because there were two of them, they could outwit the police, the authorities and were almost untouchable.

PARTNERS OR RIVALS

There are some unique partnerships, which bring out the best in you. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were partners but also serious rivals and as a result, they brought out the best in each other. Each wanted to outdo the other and this healthy competition gave the music industry some of the best music ever. If you can find a partner who fires you up and challenges you and pushes you beyond your limits, never let that person go. He will help you reach your highest potential. 

It’s something similar to Batman and Joker or Spiderman and Green Goblin. The Joker brings out the best in Batman. He is a genius and finds limitless ways of tricking Batman keeping Batman always on his feet. Batman has to be at the best of his best, if he has to stay ahead of Joker. It’s not really your traditional partnership but the rivalry brings out the best in both of them. Similarly, the Green Goblin, in his quest to destroy his rival Spiderman, pushes Spiderman over the edge and makes him perform at his best to stop the villain from winning.  Sometimes, a smart rival can also be responsible for your success. In your fight for supremacy and to put down the rival, you actually achieve the highest levels of excellence. It may not be the most pleasant of partnerships, but it keeps you on your toes and prevents you from becoming complacent. 

TOO MANY COOKS

You have heard the saying ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’. That’s the problem with teams that are too large. Our brain is not designed to handle too many people. As a result, small teams are always more efficient than large teams. How to know when a team has become too large? According to Jeff Bezos, the ‘two pizza rule’ is the best way to decide that. According to him, if a team can be fed on two pizzas, it’s the right size. Any team where more than two pizzas need to be ordered is too large. When there are too many people working on one thing, the group may suffer from something known as ‘groupthink’. The group stops thinking independently and soon everybody starts agreeing with every one else. That’s a waste of resources to say the least. 

Apart from this, a small team ensures that everybody and their contribution get noticed. For groups to function well, they need to have a common objective that unites them. In the ancient times, when hunting was the prime activity for survival, men went out in small groups. If successful, they all feasted; and if they failed, they all went hungry. Thus, the size of the hunting group never exceeded ten. They were united and worked better and more cohesively as rewards and punishments were the same for all. The world today is not very different. If each team member is rewarded, praised equally and reprimanded equally too, there will be more cohesion and unity and hence higher levels of efficiency. The human brain works best when the team size is small. Look at most sports teams – the size of almost all teams are around ten or less. A jury consists of 12 people. Every successful army – be it the British army, the US army, even the ancient Roman army or even the army of Genghis Khan – had a ten member team around which larger formations were built. To sum it up, if there are too many people, it’s always going to spell trouble. The smaller a team, the more efficient it is. The smallest team size is two, and in many cases this probably is the size that works most efficiently. Finding the right partner is the key to achieving great heights. 

In life too, if you really want to live it to the fullest, go ahead and find the right partner or even the right rival. That could be the turning point in your life, career or business.

More than forty years ago, Peter Drucker had said, "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him or her and sells itself."

The key words here are ‘know and understand the customer’. Never in the history of marketing has this point been more important than now and never has it been easier to know and understand a customer than now! The relation is simple – the better you know them, the better you can serve them and the lesser you need to market to them. Personalization is nothing new to business. A lot of companies have been following this business strategy for a very long time.

Take the case of Dell. It’s been personalizing its computers for decades. Nike and Adidas allow customers to design their own shoes; the BMW Mini has a facility where customers can design the roof of their car online and it will be made accordingly. Even banks are giving customers the option to design their cheque books and credit cards. Ikea lets you customize your furniture.

Extreme Personalization
Personalization is not something new. Marketers have been practicing it for long. However, mere personalization will not suffice this time for now is the era of ‘extreme personalization’. Sephora is one such beauty brand that has found how personalization reflects directly on the balance sheets. It has a loyalty program named ‘Beauty Insider’ which can define your skin tone and show you a list of products that match it. Once the customer becomes a part of this program, her profile can be accessed through the mobile or desktop or even the iPad at the store. This makes the job of the salesperson much easier as she knows which products would suit the customer best. The customer goes back satisfied and sure that she has got the best match.

Pizza Hut asks customers to speak to it. The company asks them to fill up a form with their preferences and delivery instructions. Pizza Hut now knows which pizzas are in demand and can plan special deals and offers for its customers. They can also ‘reorder’ their last order or pre-order up to 7 days. So if Saturday is your ‘junk food’ day, you can plan it way ahead and Pizza Hut would know exactly which pizza you would want. A 38% increase in customer retention rates, a 9% increase in purchase frequency and a 6% extra sale generated every month, is the advantage of going personal for Pizza hut. All this has been possible because Pizza Hut runs more than seventeen thousand campaigns online. Each one designed to target a specific and very niche set of consumers. 

Swisscom is another company that takes things personally!! Every communication with the customer is recorded, analysed using analytics and software models; numerous personalized campaigns are developed for these customers, making the user more involved and more loyal to the brand. Not surprising, it is the largest telecom company in Switzerland.

Successful restaurants are finding how a little bit of personalization can reap rich dividends. Danny Meyer is an entrepreneur who has launched more than 10 successful restaurants and he says that when he adds a dash of personalization, he wins the loyalty of his customers. He says that if his data shows that the customer usually orders a $100 bottle of pinot noir, then he instructs his staff to keep one bottle ready when the customer visits his restaurant, and more than that to make sure that when they suggest wines to him, they should never suggest the $1000 bottle of Chardonnay. It’s these little things that will bring back the customer to you every time.

Brands like Sephora, Swisscom etc have a crystal clear image of who their customer is and what he wants. These brands have a higher engagement level with their consumers so their attrition rates are lower and consequently their customers are more satisfied than others. This has been possible because of the vast data that we all have access to nowadays. The surprising part is not many brands are paying attention to this data. The few who are, are reaping rich dividends.

EGOnomics

It’s all about ego. Most relationship experts will tell you that getting a job well done consists largely of managing the egos of the team members intelligently. The new rule of success in business will be the ability to satisfy the egos of your people –consumers, employees and other partners and stakeholders of your business. Business has to be done on their (read consumers’) terms.

The first concept, EGOnomics, was coined by Faith Popcorn, who said: "To offset a depersonalized society, consumers crave recognition of their individuality." Thus they would always be attracted to a brand a company that offered them something more than the standard and which made them feel more involved. They would be loyal to the brand that listens to them and talks to them.

The brand which makes interaction between the customers and itself the easiest and most satisfying is the one that will land up with the largest market share. The key differentiator will be the ease with which they are ale to interact with your brand.

A pharmacy will not just be responsible for keeping medicines but also keeping records of the prescriptions of its customers and keep track of the time when they need a refill. Don’t expect the customer to come back; rather, remind him it’s time to buy the prescribed dose. The customer will never ever dream of going anywhere else.

Pamper him spoil him and he will repay you with his loyalty. Know him so well that you already have something ready for him even before he asks you.

We live in a world where instant gratification is the way of life and technology has made it all the more easy. You can forget queues and deposit cheques online, shop online, date online, make friends online… And the list goes on. Brands that help us with this ‘instant gratification’ process are the ones who are the biggest brands now days or will soon be.

The newest and perhaps the biggest P of marketing is ‘Personalization’. In fact, it’s this ‘P’ that will soon make the 4Ps of marketing (given by Kotler in 1960s) redundant. The new rules of marketing will be

1) Identify: You need to know who is your customer.

2) Individualization: Understand each customer’s specific needs.

3) Interact: Once you know his needs, you start interacting with him and getting to know him better.

4) Integrity: As you get to know him better, he too starts learning about you and starts trusting you. Once he   does that, you have found a customer for life.

Look at Airbnb. It’s a new brand and yet it’s giving almost all hotel chains tough competition. The business model of Airbnb is very simple. It has built a network of people who are interested in renting out their homes to strangers. The agreement works only when both the parties trust each other. In today’s hyper connected world, everybody has an online identity and a reputation; so it was relatively easy to build trust. Moreover, to use the services of Airbnb, you have to fill a detailed profile of yours, complete with passport details, Facebook, Linkedin profiles etc. What Airbnb did which most others did not was to get to know its users and match the service specifically to each one’s requirements. Soon, Airbnb will not just be providing rented homes for tourists to stay but also be giving them information about the local cuisine, which it thinks they would be interested in, local theaters , local shopping destinations which would match the profile of the user. Who would want to stay in an impersonalized 5 star when this can be so much fun!

Not surprising that on the night of the Brazil vs. Germany World Cup Football semifinal match, more than 150 Germans stayed with Brazilians in their homes –courtesy Airbnb.

This is the new world.

Tag and be tagged

We all love personalization, and today, technology has made it possible to achieve very high degrees of customization. With 3D printers becoming popular by the day, the whole buying process and experience is going to change forever. There are companies that are already enjoying the fruits of this innovation. Protos Eyewear now makes customized 3D printed eyeglasses.

Another big leap in customer buying experience will be because of Big Data analytics. Thanks to the wide spread popularity of smart phones which are constantly processing huge amounts of data, the soon to be popular wearable devices (the most stylish and promising one being the Apple watch) would have so much data about so many people and so many things that it’s unimaginable. The brand Monsoon has found an innovative way to share data with you. It sends its customers messages informing them of the status of its inventory, so you know which design is running out and will be soon out of stock and accordingly plan your shopping trip.

Not just this; the future will be the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) which in simple terms means every device will come embedded with a sensor, a chip that will send information to a server and keep you informed. IoT is a case where, in the future, everything will be tagged – people, animals, things (It’s estimated that by 2020, there will be 15 billion things connected to the internet and each other).

They will have the ability to send data over a network without requiring human or computer intervention. The data would also be processed and analyzed automatically with the help of software.

So the IoT will help a company manufacturing elevators to predict beforehand if the lift will breakdown, as the chips will keep sending information to a central server about the condition of the wires, the machinery inside. So the moment it spots critical wear and tear, which could lead to a breakdown, the chip will send a signal which will be picked up by the nearest service station; and soon, the repairman would be there to fix it – even before it broke. Similarly, a chip in your pacemaker would send a signal to your doctor if it senses something wrong, and he would call you for a checkup before you even felt the discomfort! Amazing!

This ‘Big data’ will guide all future marketing operations. It will help you find a whole lot of details about your customers and you would be expected to make a campaign customized specially for him. The more customized and personalized it is, the more effective will your communication be and the more loyalty you will earn.

Advertising and marketing will no longer be about mass-communication where one message, one advertisement, one promotion plan, one discount rate was planned for everybody. Now, with technology and access to the most detailed data ever possible about your customer, as a marketer it will be expected that you almost handcraft your product or service to suit the whims and fancies of your customer. The one who does it best will be the leader of the future. The market size of your product is now going to be ‘ONE’. Businesses will now have to serve individuals and one-to-one marketing will reinvent the whole business.

However, in this run for personalization, the best personal experience will still come from the human touch. We may want a lot of things but the strongest need will be the need to be loved, to be wanted, to make someone smile, to just have fun with friends, to have a loving family. No phone, however smart it is, can do that.

The world of business will soon be about you and will focus on you; but your world should always be about ‘them’ – your family, your friends your people.

So as the final word goes, to get rich both in the heart and the bank, get personal.

In June 2014, Google launched a new version of Android named AndroidOne that would help smartphone makers to make very cheap smartphones. This latest software platform will be launched in India first in collaboration with three smartphone manufacturers: Micromax, Spice and Karbonn. Google has partnered with these three manufacturers so that they can pool in resources and make high quality, low priced smartphones.

   

The mission?

Google and the head of its Android division Sundar Pichai want the next one billion smartphone users to be their customers.

How?

Google will do all the hard work. It is figuring out all the material costs and giving support to all the low-end smartphone manufacturers. And not just the software support, but also the hardware support. This is being done to decrease the total cost of the phone to try and keep it under $100. Add to this the fact that Google will also invest Rs.100 crores with its partners on advertising and marketing of the $100 smartphone!

Why is it doing this?

It’s putting in this hard work on the hardware and software fronts so that eventually, these smartphone users start accessing Google’s services like Google Play, Google Store etcetera, and this would in the long run increase Google’s profits. More importantly, it would help it fight competitors like Nokia (Windows platform from Microsoft). Not just this, but having more users means more data and more advertisements... and consequently more money for Google.

This gets us thinking. 

It means that in today’s world, it’s not just innovation which matters. What really matters is how many people are using that innovation, and companies are going all out to get as many people to use their innovations as possible, even if it means giving it away for free.

The world is a totally new place today because of the Internet. Our lives have changed comprehensively. Hence, business strategies should change too.

Share and connect with friends

Look at the way we communicate today. Thanks to the numerous social networking sites, the hundreds of apps at our disposal, we are not really interacting with each other face to face or physically; yet, we are probably communicating much more. Thanks to our phones, today we can share every moment with our friends and family. 

Today’s society is actually all about sharing as much information (be it in the form of videos, pictures, text... whatever). As marketers, this has important implications for us. We need to develop marketing messages which people enjoy sharing.  If they share today, there are high chances they may buy tomorrow. 

The key to success depends on our knack of understanding what people enjoy sharing.

So, if they like you and share your stuff, chances are that they will buy it. The flip side is also true – if you share your stuff, you sell more. Read on.

Share and sustain... and also sell!

Nike has shown that sharing trade secrets instead of hiding them will bring in more profits. The company has invented a special rubber which has 96% lesser toxins than other rubbers. Instead of hiding this invention under patents, the company decided to share it with other companies to help them make greener footwear and make the world a better place. On their own, they would have taken decades to spread the same technology. The success of this initiative made Nike partner with nine organizations – like Yahoo, Best Buy etcetera – for an association named GreenXchange, to help firms share their innovations with others. 

  

Tesla is a really innovative company which has invented the electric car. However, unlike earlier days, it is not sitting on its invention and protecting it from the rest of the world; rather, it is sharing it with everyone. CEO Elon Musk feels this would spur innovation, which would benefit the whole electric car market and the world too. 

‘Copyleft’ was a hippy movement of the 1970s; but even today, it holds more relevance than ever. 

Copyleft – in contrast to copyright – makes all creative work as freely available as possible, so that it can be used, modified and used again. Today, thanks to the Internet, a lot of stuff is available for free. This has resulted in a free exchange of not just ideas, but also services, innovations and the works. It’s liberated us from constraints of time and space and boundaries. In this free environment, ‘Copyleft’ is bound to thrive more than ever before as people start connecting more and more with not just friends but with brands too. The company that shares most freely will be the one that will be loved and liked and will survive, for the wise and connected consumer of tomorrow will appreciate that more.

New challenges are impacting the industry and one of them is the challenge for sustainable development. Things are changing at a very fast pace. The way we communicate is changing, the climate is changing , countries are changing. Low economic growth and high unemployment levels are forcing companies to look for newer ways of growing. A paradigm shift is required and many businesses are doing just that. No more are organizations looking at just the bottom line profit; they are also looking at creating value that would not just benefit their business but also the society and future generations.

Share and solve

GE shared its problems with the people and found a solution sooner than expected! It wanted to find the shortest and most efficient flight route. This would have increased the efficiency of the airlines industry and saved the industry $3 billion each year. The winning solution it was found would improve the efficiency by 12%. An intelligent combination of speed and altitude keeping in mind variables such as weather, wind and airspace helped achieve this outcome. They realized that if the airlines could adjust flight routes in real time and try to reduce the distance by even 10 miles, the fuel consumption could be reduced by 360 million gallons! That’s a lot of fuel, and a lot of savings for the planet.

    

GE, by sharing its problems, got the best brains in the business to work on their problems and helped not just itself but the whole industry. All it did was declare prizes worth $500,000 to motivate the best data scientists across the world to contribute.

You cannot hire all the best brains in the world, but you can attract the best brains by sharing your problems with them, throwing down a challenge and rewarding with a prize. It always works.

Share and connect with consumers

Sharing with consumers is the future. As C.K. Prahalad very rightly mentioned in his book “The Future of Competition” that firms which are able to involve the customer in their innovation processes will be most successful. 

Lego, one of the oldest toy companies in the world, feels that it has been able to survive and stand the test of time because it has learnt the art of listening to its consumers. Back in 2005, its CEO started interacting with a couple of fans and soon discovered their amazing potential. Today, Lego may have 120 in-house product developers, but its best ideas come from its huge community of fans who volunteer to design for Lego because they loved it as children and love to do something for it. Some of them have more knowledge of the product than the people working inside the company. No wonder, some of their most popular series – Minecraft, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters etcetera – were all developed on the basis of ideas given by fans. These fans of course got a share of the profits too!

        

If you really want to grow fast, let your most loyal customers take charge of your brand. Involve them as much as possible. After all, in the future, all the best ideas will come from them. Cooperation will help you fight the competition. 

Consider this: 95% of all new products fail.

Why?

Most companies do not or rather cannot look at products the way customers do. As a result, they can never answer the question “Which are the products that the consumers want to buy?” A fast-food restaurant wanted to improve the quality of its milkshakes. The marketing department quickly made a list of the characteristics the consumers wanted in their milkshakes. However, the sales did not improve. Finally, they decided to really understand why the consumers were buying the milkshakes and realized a few things. Most of the sales for milkshakes happened early in the morning. The reason being that most people bought the milkshakes to make their long commute to work more interesting and to keep their stomachs full till lunch. Sipping on a thick milkshake solved both the problems. Soon, the restaurant created a ‘morning milkshake’ which was thicker so that it took longer to sip and hence lasted longer and also kept them fuller for long. When you connect with the consumer, you really begin to look at things differently and that’s what gives you that edge.

So before you start working on your marketing plan, start work on finding your craziest fans. Connect with them and they will help you fight off the competition.

The future is all about sharing and winning together!

Michael Jackson returned to the stage last month in May to dance to the beats of the song “Slave to the rhythm” from the recently released ‘XSCAPE’ album. A ‘virtual’ Michael Jackson took on the stage and set it on fire. He made it to the headlines across the globe. The general public, the fans, the music lovers, the media itself could just not stop talking about it.

Back in India, in May, another superstar used the same technology to address dozens of rallies in the remote towns all over the country. From Andhra Pradesh to Bihar, from Allahabad to Nainital, he addressed more than 800 such gatherings leaving the voters awe struck and mesmerized. Yes, that was Modi, who too like Michael Jackson used the ‘hologram’ technology to reach out to the maximum number of people and convince them to vote for BJP. Going by the results, it seems to have worked out fantastically well for both Michael and Modi.

This technology is not new. Disney has been using it since 1969. Its most popular attractions at the Disneyland Park in New Orleans – Haunted Mansion – has been using this to spook visitors with the help of 999 ‘ghosts’ who make guests feel that they have entered a haunted ballroom. These projected images – be it of Modi or Michael or the ghosts – definitely take your breath away. They are sure-shot ways to awe and amaze your audience. The Dubai airport and many other airports have installed ‘virtual helpers’ which are nothing but holographic projections of staff members who help travellers and provide them information about how to handle security immigration etc. Not just are these avatars eye-catching, they are also the easiest staff to maintain – no lunch breaks, they work 24*7 and never ask for a salary!

If you want to attract attention, you need to do something dramatically different from others. It’s an open secret, and yet not many put in the desired efforts to do so. Holographic projection is one such new-kid-on-the-block that can get you guaranteed attention. As marketers, we need to look at this option carefully and use it to the hilt while it's still new. The world of entertainment seems to have understood the potential of this and those who have the funds are using it to create a buzz around their brand. The business world should also wake up and realize the enormous potential of this. Marketing is all about creating a buzz and standing apart from competition. Nothing works better and faster than a good image. If you are visually dramatic, the chance of getting attention is highest. Marketers today need to find ways to make their brand visually exciting.

VISUAL STORY TELLING
All great brands have a great story around them which makes them enchanting and gives consumers a reason to discuss about them. Be it the way Levi's started making its jeans, or how Google got its name, or how Infosys was started, or how Oprah braved poverty and abuse and made it big – the list goes on. A great story is one of the best ways to build a brand identity. However, as brand builders and marketers, we need to be aware that today the way stories are being told has changed. Years ago, we used to chat with friends around a table over coffee, or around the bonfire or in our living rooms, sharing stories and life experiences. ‘Sharing’ has a whole new meaning today. Thanks to technology, the coffee table, the bonfire, the living room have all been replaced by the smartphone. The camera and various apps now help us in ‘sharing’ our experiences instantly. Whether this is good or bad is worth debating, but the fact is this is the new world and as marketers, we need to change the way we share our brand stories with the consumers. Thanks to technology and sites like Pinterest, Vine, YouTube, the best way to reach the audience is through visual engagement. 

As marketers, we are not new to ‘visual engagement’. For years advertisements and logos have been the key factors in engaging audiences visually. However, marketing has moved way ahead of these traditional ways of advertising. Today, the new mantra is ‘sharing is marketing’. You need to make visually entertaining content which engages the consumers and encourages sharing on various platforms. Traditional media has been overtaken by digital players like Facebook, Google, YouTube etc and traditional advertising has been replaced with visual storytelling. Logos used to define a brand; today, unique themes and stories around that theme are defining brands. Look at GE! It posted a video on Vine with a heading “Do you know what happens when you combine milk, food coloring and dish soap?” The 6 second video clip ended up becoming GE’s most successful post.

Seeing the phenomenal response, GE started a full blown social-media campaign named ‘#6SecondScience’ asking users “How much science can you fit into six seconds?”. Users could upload their science experiments and also win gifts. 'Cells inside your hand’, 'Chemical properties of your daily cup of coffee’, and ‘lava lamp’ were some of the popular posts. With the help of the ‘6SecondScience’ series, GE has built a unique identity around itself. The videos are interesting and easily shareable, and just the right tool to help them accomplish their mission of getting young users interested in GE.

Ritz Carlton, on the other hand, used Instagram to tell its story through a giraffe who got lost on a family vacation. The Ritz is normally associated with ultra-luxury and this was a sharp deviation from that image. But the story was memorable and shareable and that’s what the brand wanted.

And of course, the ‘Selfie’, which is the biggest thing on the digital world today. From Obama to Amitabh Bachchan, everybody is posting a ‘selfie’. A little-known South African retailer, Urban Hilton Weiner, used this trend to get people to walk into its showroom. Every visitor to the store who tweeted a selfie of themselves trying on some clothes of the retailer using the hashtag #urbanselfie got a $10 discount coupon. If their tweet became the most popular, they could win merchandise worth $1000 from the retailer.

The best part about visual storytelling or visual campaigning is that it has no restrictions. All that is required is being able to identify what is the key buzzword, and quickly building a strategy around it. No one could have nailed it better than Oreo. During the Super Bowl last year (2013), there was a power outage and for 34 minutes there was no light. Oreo jumped at the opportunity and tweeted a picture of its cookie which read “Power Out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark”. Today, nobody is just watching one screen. Along with TV, there is almost always another screen (mobile, laptop etc.) While many brands paid almost $4 million to run a spot during the Super Bowl on TV, Oreo got the most publicity without spending a penny.         

Technology has changed the way we communicate, interact with each other, learn and understand things. Brands too need to realize this that the consumer of today interacts with a brand in a whole new way. The one who will be most successful will be the one who is most interesting, most dramatic and can think visually.

VISUAL LITERACY
The world is a new place today and new skills are required to survive it. One of them is being visually literate. However, we remain a visually illiterate society. In future, the three Rs (arithmetic, reading and writing) will not be enough to do well in life. That was old school thought. Visual literacy or the ability to read, write, think, and solve problems visually will be one of the most essential requirements. As George Lucas, the very famous filmmaker said, "If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?” He is absolutely correct. The world today is more visual than it has ever been. Cavemen used to communicate with drawings and pictures and we are almost doing the same. Most of our communication today is visual. Consider this:
✓Approximately 65 percent of the population are visual learners.
✓The brain processes visual information 60,000 faster than text.
✓90 percent of information that comes to the brain is visual.
✓40 percent of all nerve fibers connected to the brain are linked to the retina.
We are physically built to process visual information.

Now consider this:
✓ On Facebook’s brand pages, the top 10 brands get most traffic from photos and videos.
✓ Facebook reached 100 million users in 4 years but Instagram did it faster.
✓ Photos posted on Pinterest are referring more traffic than Twitter, Google+ etc.

Visuals are more convincing, more interesting and more effective. No wonder Barack Obama – the most well crafted brand of modern times – too joined Instagram in 2012. One of the best ways to build his brand and appeal.

VISUAL POWER

Visuals always make more impact than plain words.

In 1935, Dorothea Lange took a photograph of a migrant mother and her starving children in a farm in California during the Great Depression. The impact of the photograph was so enormous that the government was forced to rush food aid to the starving workers immediately. Visuals have power, and more so today. With everybody armed with a phone cum camera, visuals are the easiest way to communicate and share. So if you want your brand to be talked about, think visually, dramatize your brand’s presence, use technology, use great ideas and get people to share your thoughts. The future is definitely for the ones who can think and communicate visually.

The world is moving at a very fast pace and everybody is working hard to get ahead in as short a time as possible. As a result, people are cramming up their calendars with more and more. Their ‘to-do’ list just never seems to end. The ability to multitask seems to be the most essential requirement in the work environment. However, the fact is that no one has ever been able to achieve much this way.

To be successful in life – Focus on one thing!
Research has shown time and again that the human mind is not meant to multitask. Not just that, research now even proves how long-term multitasking is actually harmful for the brain. A study done in 2009 by Stanford proved that frequent multitaskers were not able to use their brain as efficiently as non-multitaskers. The scary part is that frequent multitaskers were less effective even when asked to focus on one activity. Trying to get too much done in one go is not a good idea. It will not get you quick success; rather, focusing on one thing at a time, nurturing it and developing it slowly is the key to success.

The bottom line is – multitasking is out. It’s a myth that people who can do multiple tasks simultaneously are more effective and efficient. Rather, the ones who keep their focus on one thing and give it their undivided attention are the ones who over time develop focused expertise and eventually take the lead. If one were to have a heart problem, one would prefer to go to a heart specialist rather than a general physician. Well, the same rule applies to business. Everyone likes to work with a specialist. So if you really want to achieve a lot, go one step at a time. Plan well and focus on one thing at a time. You will become a specialist in that one area. And very soon, your productivity too will skyrocket.

Multitasking is for losers. Brands that try to promise too many things or people who try to do too many things finally lose out to the more focused ones. Look around and you will find that all successful entrepreneurs have found the one thing they are best at and have really focused on doing just that. Be it entertainers, rockstars, film stars, or artists – the successful ones have focused on what they are best at. SRK has been best at playing the lover boy; Air Supply the best at singing love songs; the legendary M.F. Hussain was best at painting horses; and the list goes on. Each found a niche and mastered it.

You too should look at your to-do list carefully and find out the one thing that means the most to you and work on that, day in and day out, ignoring all the other tasks that steal your precious time and are a waste eventually. Watch how quickly you will be able to reach your goal as compared to others who are too busy doing too many things, which add up to nothing in the end.

To be successful in brand building – Focus on one message!

All great brands have one thing in common and that is that they live up to the promise they make and keep you as a customer satisfied. However, there is one more important factor and that is, all great brands make only ‘one’ promise. It has a dual advantage. Firstly, the brand does not need to work so hard to fulfill too many promises (and in the process do a mediocre job); secondly, the consumer is clear about exactly what to expect from the brand.

A new brand Chobani started business in 2005 and today owns nearly 20% of the market share for ‘Greek’ yoghurt in USA. It built its brand so fast by keeping the focus on one aspect and that is ‘real yoghurt’. For years, a few players who pumped out products that had high calorie content and preservatives had dominated the yoghurt market. Now with Chobani, people had the option of a Greek yoghurt, which is plain yoghurt with very high protein and very low sugar content.

However, the secret to success for this brand was also its focus on manufacturing. It had to carpet-bomb the aisles of all possible department stores with its products before the biggies woke up and gobbled up this small startup. So Mr. Chobani focused on increasing his production capacity really fast and changed the whole market dynamics. He was absolutely sure about his product, and now just needed to focus on the right business strategy of expanding fast and making his presence felt before the biggies started imitating him and using their mass production capacities to dominate the market. When he started off, the demand for Greek yoghurt was only 0.2%; today, it commands around 50% of the yoghurt market, all thanks to one startup and its focus. Chobani is today the number one yoghurt brand of USA.

Look at the recent success story of another brand called Lululemon. From just one store in 1998 to almost 200 stores now, it has been Canada’s fastest growing brand. The story becomes even more interesting when you look carefully and realize that the brand primarily sells yoga-wear. Add to this another interesting fact that the brand hardly believes in fancy advertising, or in paying celebrities to endorse its products. Its prime focus has been word-of-mouth. Every place that it opens a store in, it builds a strong relationship with the yoga instructors of that community by giving them Lululemon merchandise (worth $1000) to wear and give feedback, and also to recommend it to their students. It even promotes them by calling them for free workshops in its store where it puts up large posters of the trainers. This gives them free publicity and helps them get more students, and it helps Lululemon sell more.

The focus on ‘word-of-mouth’ does not change inside the store either, where staff is trained to eavesdrop on the conversations that the customers have to understand what they liked and did not like about the merchandise. It does so by placing the clothes-folding table on the sales floor near the fitting rooms so that the staff can hear the complaints and comments. This feedback is then used to rework and improve the designs. By just focusing on word-of-mouth, the company has achieved a market value of $10.4 billion. As one employee quoted recently to media, “We have the third highest productivity per square foot after Apple and Tiffany, which is pretty powerful considering they sell computers and diamonds and we sell yoga pants”. In spite of the fact that there are numerous other brands selling yoga pants for much cheaper, the brand has beaten all and managed to carve a niche for itself. Yoga may have started in India, but Canadian brand Lululemon took it to NYSE! Not bad, considering that one of the main teachings of yoga is to learn to ‘focus’ on your mind and body. Focus, as you see, benefits not just the mind and the body, but also the balance sheets.

On the other hand, take the case of Rediff, which is India’s first internet company to get listed in the US stock markets, but has failed to impress investors. The main problem is its lack of focus. It has been trying to do too many things and hence has not been able to impress many. It is into spaces like e-mail, search engine, travel, news portal, e-commerce and more. In none has it been able to become a leader. When you think of search, you think Google; when you think of e-commerce, you think of Flipkart or eBay. Where does Rediff fit in? To survive, it needs to work out its one focus area and develop it pretty soon.

A new drink named Paper Boat has been slowly but steadily dominating the beverage market in India. Its focus has been offering unique Indian flavours, which is helping it take on the big multinationals head-on. Flavours true to the Indian palate – like aam ras, jal jeera, jamun kala khatta, golgappe ka pani etcetera – along with its unique packaging, have made the brand stand out. It has now even managed to get funding from Infosys founder Narayana Murthy’s firm. The brand and its clear focus on traditional Indian tastes has won it many loyal customers.

Focus works everywhere. Look at the election campaigns in India. One man with only one focus (growth), with only one success story (Gujarat), with only one plan (good governance), is slated to be India’s new Prime Minister. Yes, you guessed it – Narendra Modi, the first Indian leader who will rule with a majority in Parliament. BJP changed its fortunes by putting all its focus on one man, Modi, who showed India what presidential-style campaigning is and what leadership is. In 2009, BJP had won only 160 seats, while Congress had got 260. Look at how focused efforts changed the whole equation in 2014.

The oft-repeated story of ‘Arjuna and the eye of the fish’ proves the point of importance of focus in success and in life. During one hunting training exercise of the Pandavas, on being asked by Dronacharya what they could see while attempting to focus on the intended target, all the four Pandavas and Karna said they could see the sky, the trees and much more... all except Arjuna, who said he could only see the eye of the fish. Modi could only see the PM’s seat and all his efforts were directed towards it. He wanted to be PM and he made no bones about it. No cheap tricks of AAP or accusations by Congress were able to shift his focus. Like any successful brand, he made sure the customer was sure about what they would get if they chose him. He made sure he stood for one thing, which is growth, and people loved him and trusted him and voted for him.

You too should learn to focus on one aspect of your brand or one aspect of work and build up your capacities just like Arjuna, who focused on becoming a master archer and never wavered off. It’s the best branding and success lesson that the Mahabharata has taught us.

Jeff Bezos has done it. Zappos has been doing it for a long time now, and soon, many more companies would follow suit. The new trend catching up is of companies paying their employees to quit!

Yes, it’s no more the era of receiving incentives just for living up to the target; today, one may even get an incentive for not living up to the target or expectations!

THE PROBLEM: You need to have the right skills and the right attitude
The secret to a successful organization is the spirit of the workplace. If there is positivity and enthusiasm, then everybody is motivated and works to the best of their potential. But there are just a handful of organizations that can boast of such a work environment. According to a study done by Gallup in 2013 (State of the American Workplace report), only 30% of the employees are committed to working sincerely. There are 20% people in most places who are actually counterproductive and bring about negativity and discontent among their coworkers. The rest 50% just put in their time, and their contributions are hardly significant. The group to worry about are the 20% counterproductive employees. They cost the company a lot. These unproductive employees, apart from negatively influencing fellow workers, also have high absenteeism rates. They invariably provide poor service, which drives away a lot of potential customers. All this in the long run culminates into a huge loss for an organization.

If we go by the Gallop survey, then these unproductive employees cost the US economy around half a trillion dollars every year, which is a huge waste. The same would be true in every other business environment. So it becomes extremely important to weed out from your organization these kind of employees as soon as possible. A creative way of doing it is to follow Zappos and Amazon.

THE SOLUTION: Fit in to stand out!

Each company has its own unique culture. To really do well, you need to blend with that culture. You should really want to be a part of the whole system. Most importantly, you need to really love what you are doing. However, this is not the case always and a new recruit may find he is stuck in the wrong job. What does he do? Zappos seems to have found a way.

Zappos is an online shoe and apparel vendor, which has mastered the art of customer service. As a result, productivity is at its highest here. All new recruits go through an intensive four weeks of training, where they are introduced to not just the company’s various processes but also its culture and its commitments. After these four weeks are over, the company sends an offer to all the new recruits, which goes like this: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked so far plus a $3,000 bonus. Cash on hand. No questions asked.”

Why would they do that?

So that they are absolutely sure that the people they are going to invest in, in the future are really committed. And on their part, the new recruits are sure that this is what they want to do. This actually saves huge costs in the long run. A wrong person in the wrong job can make both the company and the employee miserable.

Not many companies can do the same and offer such lucrative cash rewards, but a lesson to be learnt here is that recruitment is a very difficult process and the company should be very, very sure of the kind of people that are getting on to its bus, for the wrong people can derail your plans irrevocably. A resume, an interview, are not enough to judge the potential of a new hire. A few weeks into the job gives one a better idea about the candidate. Weed out the wrong hires and keep the best ones only. Zappos and Amazon do this by offering cash incentives, which makes the process more amicable.

Not just does Amazon ensure that the wrong new recruits are off the bus and hit the road within four weeks of being hired, but it also has a lovely plan for its employees who have put in three years or more into the company. The initiative, named ‘Career Choice’ (started in 2012), gives $2,000 per annum in reimbursement to any employee who wants to do a vocational course to improve his skills. They could choose courses as varied as dental hygiene and nursing, aircraft mechanics, computer aided design etcetera. Although the course chosen by an employee may have nothing to do with the work he is doing at Amazon, the company feels it would give them a chance to learn a new skill, and if required, find an alternative career and move on. All this might be a PR gimmick to cover up stories of Amazon’s workers suffering heat related injuries in its warehouses, but the fact is that you need to keep weeding off from the workplace demotivated, negative and counterproductive employees continuously to keep the productivity of the organization high. These initiatives help companies do it efficiently.

As mentioned earlier, the final aim is that both the company and the employees need to be absolutely sure they are on the right bus; otherwise it’s a waste of time, effort, and resources for both and a sure-shot recipe for failure.

THE SUCCESS SECRET: All it takes is a good leader

If 20% of the employees are generally unproductive, then part of the blame goes to poor leadership. Research has shown that most of the leaders spend 20% to even 40% of their time doing unproductive activities.

As a case in point, in one organization, leaders at the top were busy managing day-to-day problems instead of focusing on and working on a long term vision. The middle level leaders were most of the time busy pleasing the leaders at the top, instead of putting in efforts to really get to know their juniors and help them channelize their energies into more productive ventures. The bottom or front level people were busy making reports or waiting for approvals from their seniors, instead of spending all their energies into serving the customers. So in effect, everyone was busy and drained out, but it all added up to zilch.

The writers of the book ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ applied the same concept to leadership and showed how restructuring the day of leaders and making it more productive by weeding out counterproductive actions could give your company the winning edge.

A company is only as great as its employees. Most organizations think of people as only costs; and when in trouble, the first thing they do is fire people to reduce costs. Others think of people as easily replaceable assets. People are not interchangeable or so easily replaceable like outdated computers or machines. They are the ones who define the company. So they cannot be treated as ‘cost centers’ or ‘easily replaceable assets’; instead, they are the family whom you need to bond with and take care of in a warm and loving environment.

If you can create that winning environment that helps nurture not just great employees but also great leaders, you would have succeeded in creating that ‘blue ocean’ where no competitor would be able to enter. You would have the most dedicated and devoted set of people; and hopefully, none would be asked to pay to quit!

Amazon is today the one of the largest retailers of the world. Most of us have bought or at least browsed through the zillion things the site sells. Most of us have also patiently read the numerous customer reviews before proceeding to check out and finally buying the stuff. Now, here is an interesting fact. Most of the reviews are written by people whose job is to review products sent to them by Amazon. So they are not normal customers like you and me for they did not pay for the stuff they are reviewing. The important thing to note here is the fact that ‘customer review’ is an important factor today in building market share. It’s proved that products which get a feedback, that is are reviewed, are sold more than products which get no reviews. So Amazon has developed a program called ‘Vine’ where some trusted reviewers are invited to be a part of it. Through these reviewers, it populates its site with reviews which can help customers.

In the virtual world, to be successful, you need to be reviewed, to be noticed. It’s similar to the real world where ‘word of mouth’ is responsible for most sales. Today, we all depend on feedback and reviews before deciding on anything. Even before deciding which movie to watch, we check reviews. Before deciding where to dine, we look for what other customers have to say about the place. No wonder, sites like Zomato, Yelp are such big hits. The key word here is feedback. If you want to be successful, you need to get feedback from the market. In marketing terms, this used to be called ‘buzz’.

ASK FOR FEEDBACK TO SUCEED
“Feedback is the breakfast of champions”. Ken Blanchard said this years ago and it’s so true right now. A great leader is one who gives great feedback and a true achiever is one who is constantly asking for such feedback. The same rule applies for all successful companies also. They are those who have learnt the art of talking to their customers and seeking their feedback constantly. In today’s digital world, it’s become all the more easy to connect with your customers and find out what they actually need.

Not just companies, all successful people too attribute good feedback as one of the factors responsible for their success. As Ken Blanchard says, in an organization, the sales guys always are the ones who constantly get feedback so they know exactly how they are doing, while most of the other divisions are not so lucky. A great leader is one who ensures he gives feedback to all his people, especially those whose work cannot be quantified. It’s critical to reach out to these people and thank them for the work they put in and make them feel good about themselves. People who are happy about themselves, are more positive and productive at the workplace too. So the bottom line is, be it a company or an individual, true winners are those who actively seek feedback as this keeps them on their toes and they keep modifying their strategies to keep up to the mark.

GIVE FEEDBACK TO SUCCEED

If you want your people to work most efficiently, you need to give feedback constantly. It may sound easy, but it takes time to master the art of giving effective feedback. The key word here is ‘effective’. Not many can give a feedback that creates an impact. It is an art that is very important for any good leader to master.

Your feedback should be such that it is understood in the right spirit by the other person and results in positive action, especially when you are giving a negative feedback. If it provokes defensiveness and demotivates the person, you need to work harder on this skill. After all, it’s not easy to hear about our shortcomings from others.

Great communicators understand this. They always try and give ‘constructive feedback’. This helps the other person understand clearly what he did wrong and exactly what is expected of him. Plain criticism can have devastating consequences and break down relationships, even people and their will power.

A great leader uses feedback as a tool to motivate his team and get them to trust him, like him and consequently work harder.

RECEIVE FEEDBACK TO SUCCEED

‘United broke my guitar’ is a very interesting case study on feedback. United Airlines broke the guitar of Dave Carroll the lead singer of a Canadian band. He tried contacting the airlines and pursued them for over a year but no one was ready to listen. So he and his band wrote a song titled very appropriately ‘United breaks guitars’ and uploaded it on YouTube. The video got more than 2.5million views within days of it being posted on the net. He showed how some creativity and $150 can turn an entire industry upside down. The video made all airlines sit up and take notice .It finally got companies thinking seriously about the consequences of ignoring feedback from customers. It also showed the new level of relationship that companies and customers have today and how fragile it is and how today, more than ever before, it has to be handled with utmost care.

One company, which is always ready to receive feedback, is Vanguard Investments. The company has a culture where everybody is encouraged to receive feedback. Its chief executive Bill McNabb recalls the days when the telephone was the main medium of doing business. If the telephone was ringing and the staff was not enough, then everybody in the company including the CEO dropped what they were doing and answered phone calls. He called it the ‘Swiss Army’ culture. Every citizen of Switzerland considers himself to be a part of the army; similarly, every employee at Vanguard considers himself to be responsible for listening to customers and solving their problems. Things can go wrong and normally do, and one of the best ways to solve that is to just listen attentively to the person on the other side. Great companies not only listen, but also actively seek feedback from their customers to help plan better strategies for the future.

In a survey done on leadership effectiveness, it was found that the ones who were ranked at the top were also the ones who frequently asked their employees for feedback. The person who asks for feedback is the one who displays a unique behavior trait, which is the ability to take in criticism about oneself. Such people are also great listeners. If you really want to understand, then you really need to listen well, without getting offended, without interrupting the other person and making him trust you and giving him the confidence to speak the truth without fear. A leader wields great power and influence making it all the more difficult for people to speak up in front of him.

As the legendary Dr. Peter Drucker said, “The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis.” Great leaders are great learners and one of the best ways to learn is from feedback. Remember the story of ‘The Emperor’s new clothes’. It’s a classic case of a leader who was unable to build an environment around him where his followers could give him honest feedback and tell him that he was naked and had no clothes on.

To be a great leader, be a great learner and a great listener. What you should be listening to most attentively is the feedback, which could come to you verbally or non verbally. Air travel is today one of the safest modes of transport, but then planes do crash. The surprising fact is that most of the aviation disasters are caused by human error, and one of the reasons for human error is giving or receiving incorrect feedback. In January 1982, Air Florida fight was scheduled to travel from Washington to Florida. It had been snowing and the aircraft had not been de-iced properly; as a result, the instruments were frozen and were not giving the proper reading. The First Officer noticed the problem and tried telling this to the Captain, who just brushed the First Officer aside and ordered him to prepare for take-off. The run up before the take-off took longer than it should have taken; and the plane sadly crashed into a street a few hundred meters after the runway, killing 78 people, including four motorists. The sad part is that the reports showed that even after take-off, if the Captain had listened to the First Officer (who repeatedly kept telling the readings were wrong) there was enough space to halt the plane and avoid the disaster. If only the Captain had taken the feedback from his junior seriously!

One of the critical aspects of success is your ability to accept feedback with the right attitude, specially negative feedback.

FAILURE: THE FEEDBACK FOR SUCCESS

Nick Woodman was a very average student in college. However, he had very above average ambitions. When the crazed dotcom bubble started in 2000, he too created a company named empowerall.com which sold very cheap electronics to young people. The company made huge losses and soon shut down. He then started another company Fugbug. This online company gave users a chance to win cash prizes by participating in sweepstakes. It was a good idea and he even managed to raise funding of $3.9 million. But he could not run it well and this too went bust. This time he lost $4 million, not a small amount and not an easy thing to handle, especially when it was the money of people who trusted him and invested in his business. Not to give up, he stared a third company named GoPro, which sold his new invention, a camera that could be used by athletes. Today, GoPro is one of the fastest growing camera companies in the USA. The important thing about this story is that Nick never let failure scare him to stop trying again. He took it as a feedback. It was a lesson from which he learnt what would work and what would not work. In fact, he says that the fear of failure made him work his ass off!!! He was so scared of failing that he was determined to succeed. This outlook made him one of the youngest billionaires in the world.

Take failure as a feedback and not as an end and chances are, you too would be able to join the billionaires’ club soon. According to a survey, out of the top 100 billionaires, 73 are self made. The reason they are on that list is because they went ahead and tried. At every stage, they reviewed their progress with a positive attitude and kept moving on. So can you.

Get ready to write your success story as you prepare to face the world and all the feedback it gives you. That’s the secret to success!

It’s the month of love! Couples all over the world are celebrating Valentine’s Day and professing their undying love for each other. However, only a few relationships can stand the test of time. A close look reveals that only those based on mutual trust and understanding last long. You need to be great friends, good partners first to eventually become good lovers. Everybody can do with a good companion. After all, life can get tough and a trustworthy companion makes the journey easier. If you can choose the right companion, half the battle is won. A love affair will last long only when you choose your partner with care. A hasty decision in this respect will only end in a broken relationship.

Business too, is also all about relationships and affairs. Having an ‘affair’ is actually good business. Ask any Bollywood (even Hollywood) actor and (s)he will tell you how a rumour of an affair between the lead couple just before the release of their film is bound to get the audience more interested in the film and contribute to increase in ticket sales. It’s a time-tested trick and always grabs the maximum attention and media coverage. However the ‘affair’ we are talking about is a ‘corporate affair’. And in that regard too, it is a time-tested trick to grab the attention of the consumer.

In today’s fast moving and competitive world, one of the fastest ways to spread your presence in the market and get noticed and talked about is to find the right business partner. Look at Coca-Cola. Its success story is based on partnerships and alliances. Be it the bottler (in 1899 it started its first bottling agreement and today has 300 bottling partners around the world), the supplier, etc., all are partners of the brand and its success depends on the efficiency of these partners. However the biggest partner of Coke has been McDonald’s. Coca-Cola products are sold in over 31,000 outlets of McDonalds spread across 100 countries. Coke entered the Russian market with the help of McDonald’s. In US alone, 5% of Coke’s market share comes from McDonald’s. It’s all thanks to Ray Kroc – the man who made McDonald’s such a successful QSR chain. Back in 1950, Ray Kroc persuaded a young Coke employee to supply him Coca-Cola. Since then, the relationship has grown from strength to strength. The point to note here is that not a single McDonald’s restaurant serves Pepsi, even though there is no document that prohibits them from serving Pepsi. It’s a partnership that has benefitted both brands. If you look carefully, you will find that every dollar that Coke earns comes from some partner or the other – be it a bottling partner or a distribution partner.

Coke has a partnership alliance with Disney too and is the sole provider of soft drinks at Disney theme parks. The Coke-Disney-McDonald’s partnerships are made in heaven relationships. All of them target the same audience – families. So the deals make sense and the common goals have made the alliances last for so many years.

On similar lines Pepsi has an ongoing affair with Pizza Hut that has proved a win-win for both parties.

Partnerships make good business sense.

A partnership between two brands actually makes for a good deal. It’s better and cheaper than takeovers. A partnership deal can almost immediately add to a company’s revenue base and reduce costs without almost any capital investments. So when Starbucks wanted to increase its presence, it partnered with the book shop Barnes & Nobel and set up its stores inside the stores. Pepsi wanted to enter the iced-tea business, so it partnered with Unilever’s Lipton. Quaker Oats on the other hand spent $ 1.7 billion in buying the brand Snapple. Pepsi’s deal was more cost effective!

Look at all the big brands and you will find a series of partnership deals responsible (to a great extent) for their success.

Look at Nike. It’s the largest shoe brand in the world, yet it does not manufacture a single shoe. Every thing is done by its partners. Boeing is one of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world. However the truth is – apart from cockpits and some other parts, it manufactures nothing else! The logic is simple. If you cannot do it better and cheaper alone, then go ahead and find a partner who can do it more efficiently for you.

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly realised the importance of partnerships decades ago. It has been forming alliances for nearly a century now. It is sitting on at least 100 partnerships across the world, making it a formidable competitor to defeat. 

Yahoo! has been in trouble for a long time. However its very fashionable CEO Marissa Mayer has decided to enter into relationships with the right brands to help improve Yahoo!’s efficiency. A few days back Yahoo! announced a data partnership with Yelp, one of the most popular restaurant reviews site. The partnership would imply that all the listings and reviews of Yelp will be incorporated into the search results of Yahoo!, thus benefitting both brands. Yelp’s reviews are what customers have grown to trust. Yahoo! with no investment may be able to attract more customers to its search engine.

Partnerships are a cheap alternative to mergers and acquisitions. Growth is faster and cheaper here. However like every relationship, it needs to be nurtured. If the partnerships are not based on a common mission, a common goal, they are bound to fail. A classic example of this is the American airline industry in the 1990s. All the big airline companies started focusing on partnerships with one another in America. That’s when a small carrier stepped in and started providing customers with cheaper and better services than other airlines and their numerous partners. Virgin Atlantic, another new player at that time, did just the same and it easily snatched away a large chunk of market share from the biggies. AT&T at that time had formed more than 400 alliances. Almost none of them worked out.

Choosing the right partner is serious business and should be done with a lot of care, for a broken relationship brings along with it more pain and misery than a no relationship status.

Co-branding is the way to go

Let us look at some of the successful partnerships and learn from them, for this is going to be a winning strategy of the future. As Peter Drucker once said, “The greatest change in corporate culture and the way business is being conducted may be the accelerating growth of relationships based not on ownership but on partnership”.

Life can get a little lonely and scary without a good companion. In business too, brands may find it a little overwhelming to capture all markets all alone. It’s the era of globalisation and to be successful, you need to have access to global markets. A safer way to venture into untested waters is through partnerships.

In marketing terms, partnerships are also referred to as co-branding. The more intelligent, interesting and innovative your co-branding partner, the more successful you will be. In Thailand, in 2011, Coke was behind Pepsi in terms of market share. Nothing seemed to work to change things for Coke. Then floods hit the country. Immediately, Coke changed its branding strategy and partnered with The Red Cross and started promoting donations to The Red Cross instead of promoting its cola. In three months, the brand was more visible and more liked than ever before. Its new tagline, “A million reasons to believe in Thailand”, got it millions of good wishes and new customers and it soon became the market leader. This is not the first time such ‘brand charity partnerships’ have been successful. Pampers partnered with UNICEF and improved its brand image. It is something the brands would not have been able to do alone.

As the saying goes, ‘A man is known by the company he keeps’, brands too need to be careful about whom they partner with, for it has a direct impact on their image. So yes, go ahead and co-brand. But remember to be very cautious. No wonder just anybody cannot partner with James Bond, but whoever manages to woe him always benefits for its image suddenly becomes more hip, more modern and more interesting. The clothing giant H&M partnered with Madonna, Top Shop partnered with Kate Moss, Apple partnered with Nike to create a sports kit that allowed your shoes to talk to your iPod, Nike partnered with Michael Jordan to create Air Jordans which became one of its best-selling shoes, Southwest Airlines partnered with Sea World. It was a strange but interesting partnership as the passengers were sometimes visited by penguins making the airline more interesting and also making the passengers aware about the various attractions of Sea World. One of the most rewarding partnerships has been those that The Global Fund, also known as (RED), has got into. Over the years, (RED) has joined hands with Apple, American Express, Armani, Starbucks, Bank of America, etc. The deal is – if you buy any (RED)-tagged product, a part of the proceeds goes to (RED)-funded The Global Fund. The Fund has raised more than $130 million till date!

Look around you and you will find all great brands partnering with other great brands and together reaping benefits of the alliance. TGIF partnered with Jack Daniels and devoted an entire section of the TGIF menu towards items that were flavored with Jack Daniels. Yes, you guessed it right – it became the most popular section among diners at TGIF!

Many brands have also found trusted partners in the world of movies. Horlicks partnered with Narnia and Kung Fu Panda and featured the characters on its pack, making it a sure shot hit with the kids. Yummiez partnered with Disney’s Toy Story 3. Del Monte partnered with Krrish 3. And the list goes on...

As you celebrate love and relationships this month, take a close look at your business affairs. It’s time to find the right brand to start a love affair with.

As the new year begins, let’s resolve to truly create happiness even when none exists. Meditate upon what actually makes us happy. Surprisingly, these very factors [of joy] that we discover are closely connected to our businesses too. These are the very things that make our customers happy.

We don’t need much soul-searching to conclude that things that truly make us happy, actually come for…free! A smile from a loved one, a hug from your child, an unexpected call from an old friend…and the list goes on. In business too, ‘FREE’ is the word that can trigger a cascade of smiles and happy reactions amongst the customer community – or “maximum” sales as you call it – and is arguably the best deal that you can give to the consumer.

‘Free’ is Actually a Good Marketing Strategy

The one man who has shown the power of a tempting freebie is none other than the new CM of Delhi – Arvind Kejriwal. Free water and free electricity have made him the darling of the masses, giving him a definitive lead over strong political rivals – BJP and Congress.
Last year, Apple too used freebies to beat its competitor Microsoft. It announced a free upgrade of its software OS X. Users of OS X (versions Snow Leopard and higher) were allowed to upgrade to their latest OS X (Mavericks) at absolutely zero price. It was also announced that in future too, all OS upgrades would be free. The Cupertino giant also announced the free inclusion of an alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite in all Apple laptops in future! Anybody’s guess this – Tim Cook has found a way inside Microsoft’s head. It’s got the software giant guessing beyond just who would replace Steve Ballmer in time – what should it price Windows 9 at?


Brands that offer unexpected free services can very easily win loyalty of their customers and eventually defeat competitors. Take the case of Mail Online. For a very long time, The New York Times (NYT) was the most visited newspaper website in the world. But as Bob Dylan would have imagined matters for NYT a decade back (remember his ‘Things have changed’ song: “…People are crazy and times are strange; I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range; I used to care, but things have changed…), in 2012, Mail Online beat NYT by clocking 45.35 million unique visitors as compared to 44.80 million of NYT. Mail Online also became profitable in the same year. Apart from giving readers the content they wanted by carefully researching what the reader was looking for and providing them just that (in most cases readers wanted to see bikini clad pictures of celebrities), Mail Online has kept its content free. Some comparison with NYT, which keeps most of its content hidden behind pay walls! 

The past year saw the rupee plummeting and general consumer demand dropping. This made brands run helter-skelter to beat the downward swing. Some smart ones realised that reducing prices was not feasible so they bundled freebies to get rid of their surplus inventories and make their offers appear lucrative to buyers. HUL offered lots of freebies like free conditioner with shampoo, etc.

FMCG companies have for long been known to dole out freebies to boost their toplines. Now it seems the companies selling durables have found this to be a good strategy. Last year, Volkswagen launched a new scheme where a new Vento was offered in exchange for an old car. In Gujarat, there was a Skoda car dealer who came up with the most mind-boggling offer. He offered a free Fabia model on the purchase of a Skoda Rapid! Just one small condition - the Fabia would be given after five years. If reports are to be believed in two weeks the dealer had sold about 600 cars. It’s definitely for a reason when people say no one can do business like a Gujarati!!! Buy a car and get another free – shocking, surprising…yet one of the most stunning offers possible! [What next in Gujarat? A car for a car stereo?]

Advertise on Google or Facebook and get free analytics to know who exactly viewed your advertisement. You would never go to an ad agency after this. 

Look around and you will see smart marketers offering ‘free’ stuff to win your attention. Free home delivery, free test drives, free installation, free samples, free shipping, free newsletters, free upgrades, free registration, buy-one-get-one free, happy hours, free trials…and the list goes on. Secret? ‘Free’ wins attention. ‘Free’ attracts! After all, free implies no risk, no downside – making it totally irresistible. This is the emotion companies exploit and try to make a killing. A good marketing strategy is one that includes some or the other ‘free’ offering to the consumer.

Free Never Hurt Anyone

If it’s free, its harmless and in some cases, even beneficial. If there is one thing that can get cash registers ringing, it is ‘free publicity’. Apple has mastered this deft touch, for it knows all the tricks of the trade and generates maximum amount of free publicity. If people are talking about you, chances are very high that they are buying your brand too. Take the case of Apple. According to a study released by Brand channel in 2012, Apple-branded products were seen in 42.5% of the top 40 films of Hollywood (in 2011). That means free advertising of its products to an audience that does not even have the remote to fast forward your ads! Apple has got the highest visibility in Hollywood in the past decade – more than the combined product placement time of McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Sony Vaio. Incredible. The second technique that Apple uses to generate free publicity for itself is through speculation. The company is so secretive about its new products that ‘leaked information’ from its labs automatically becomes everybody’s business! ‘Rumours’ are its most potent weapon, for they make the world so curious that when the company finally launches its new product(s), it manages to attract long queues of customers outside its retail stores, dying to get the first glimpse of its ‘much awaited’ creations. In fact so popular are the rumors about what Apple is about to bring out next that Huffington Post has a recurring feature called “The Week in Apple rumors’!

Gizmodo got hold of a ‘misplaced’ iPhone4 and wrote about it making the customers go crazy with anticipation, just a few days before Steve Jobs launched it. Whoever said business had to be boring, look at Apple and learn some bit of fun. Tomorrow, you can actually have customers eating out of your hands.

Free publicity – good or bad – always helps. Recall the scene from the film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ where a scathing article on Jordan Belfort calling him a ‘twisted Robin Hood’ in Forbes (magazine) is shown and how that gets him very upset. And how his wife then explains that no publicity is bad. Wasn’t she proved right the very next day when his office was swarmed with new recruits anxious to work for him? 

The most popular show on Indian television today, ‘Comedy Nights with Kapil’, has stars lined up in every episode trying to get as much free publicity for their upcoming films. It’s not paid ads but the free publicity that causes the sale.

Free anything works. Even free advice. Look how Amazon suggests things you would be interested it. Look how most apparel retailers give you free advice on the latest trends and how to look good.

So go ahead and find out how to get the maximum free coverage, for free works like no other. However let’s pause and thing “Is it really free?”

There is No Such thing As a Free Lunch

Finally as consumers we must remember that there is no such thing as free. ‘Everything’ has a price! TNSTAAFL (There is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) is a term that originated in old New York many decades ago. Back then, restaurants used to offer free lunches to customers, with one simple clause – they had to buy a bottle of beer along with it. As it goes without saying, the beer was grossly overpriced and the food was salty, making the customers buy more than one beer bottle and making the whole venture tremendously successful for the owner. What it boils down to is for everything offered for free, there is a hidden [disguised] price. It’s all about how you present it to the consumer and convince him.

Finally, while we say there is no such thing as a free lunch, there are certain things which are free and should remain free or become free if they are not. Yes love is free, air is free, but so should be education and basic health facilities for all – that’s if we really want to live in a humane society. While we as business people plan a lot of free stuff for our consumers, let’s also remain committed to this cause. A society that’s well taken care of, will also take care of you and your brands.

Free Things Motivate

While everybody wants to take home a hefty paycheck, the most motivated and loyal employees are also not those who get paid the highest but those who get a timely pat on the back from their bosses. The happiest kids are not those who get lots of gifts but who get lots of time from their parents. It’s not a three carat diamond ring but the three words ‘I love you’ that bind two hearts together. So make space for all this free stuff to really make a difference.

As the new year begins, let’s remember to include ‘free’ in our marketing strategies while not forgetting that the best things in life come ‘free’.

AAP – Aam Aadmi Party, the one name that is on everybody’s mind, has done things no one could have dreamed was possible. A spanking new party and it has already shaken up the whole political system and all the politicians too. It is an interesting case study for both politicians and corporates. When one looks at the political campaigning of AAP one finds close similarities with the Obama campaign of 2008. The scenario was similar. Back then no one gave Obama a second thought. It was Hillary Clinton who was the more popular  candidate. In India too no one gave Arvind Kejriwal a chance. Yes, he might win 2 or 3 seats was the popular opinion, but like Obama the man proved everyone wrong by not just winning more seats than Congress but defeating Sheila Dikshit, the almost invincible Chief Minister of Delhi. Kejriwal admits that he studied the Obama campaign very thoroughly and tried to use the same strategies to reach out to voters. Like Obama, who used the power of the youth to help him win, Arvind Kejriwal too used the young first-time voters to campaign for him. Like Obama he too used the power of the social media to create a large volunteer base and reach out to many people. Like Obama he too had the whole campaign planned out in the minutest of details (his were on excel sheets, while Obama spent millions on a software to track voters). Each polling booth was tracked and mapped and campaigned for with the ultimate goal being of getting 100% of the supporters of the party to the polling booth. In short, one can say Kejriwal did an Obama in India.

Obama showed the world how you could market a President like a box of breakfast cereal. Kejriwal too meticulously planned out a marketing campaign and built a new brand that the consumers would love. His USP (unique selling proposition) was not unique as Obama had used the same sentiments but was unique for Indians. No politician had ever spoken like this to its voters as him. He had a message that people loved ‘Aap (you) against the corrupt biggies’. He inspired people to vote for change – just like Obama. He positioned himself as the ‘common man’ which appealed to the electorate and his logo (jhaadoo i.e. broom), his packaging (Gandhi cap), his slogans (power to the common man) all were totally in sync with the positioning and made him stand out distinctly from other brands (read: Congress and BJP).

Yes, it’s easy to say that he copied Obama, but the fact is not everyone can copy. You need to be really creative to copy and succeed. Mitt Romney too tried to copy every move of Obama but failed. He too used the Internet, he too used the slogans, but in spite of the US economy being in such a bad shape Romney could not swing the voters to his side. The fact is you may copy an idea but you cannot copy a vision. That is exactly what true innovators have. More than being plain creative they are visionary

Copycats are actually smart cats!

Agreed that creativity is not everybody’s cup of tea. Not everyone can really invent something extraordinary which can change the world, as it requires a different kind of intellect. However, there are some people who may not be creators but have the unique ability to spot a good creation, a good idea and use it to their advantage. When you think of the light bulb you think of Thomas Edison. However, the fact is he never invented the light bulb. It was Joseph Swan, a British inventor, who obtained the first patent for it. Edison was however the first to see the potential of the idea and worked hard to improve it and make it practical. The light bulbs of the past were very expensive and they did not last long, only 150 hours. Edison worked very hard to solve these problems. His bulb lasted for 1,200 hours and was cheaper. In fact, most of the inventions that Thomas Edison claimed were his like the movie camera, the telegraph machine etc were actually just ‘improvements’. Someone else invented them. He had the ability to spot an invention and quickly understand its marketing potential.

When you think of the concept of ‘touch screen’ you immediately think of the iPhone. Apple did not invent the touch screen. It had been there for donkey years. Steve Jobs just found a novel way of using the technology to his benefit. Invented in 1960s by E. A. Johnson, it was used by IBM when it released the first smartphone named Simon. Jobs saw the potential of this technology and rocked the world with his smartphone, which he called iPhone.

When you think of social networking you think of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. However, Zuckerberg stole the concept from the Winklevoss twins who came up with the idea of connecting all Harvard students online.

Be it Edison or Jobs or Zuckerberg all of them had one thing in common – they were smart enough to spot an invention, copy it and modify it to make it consumer friendly and profitable. You have to agree that Edison’s bulb was way better than Swan’s, it took a lot of hard work to convert the concept of connecting Harvard students online into a Facebook, and the iPhone was a landmark in the history of smartphones. You may call it stealing but as Picasso said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal”. In a 1996 documentary titled ‘Triumph of the Nerds” Jobs too quoted Picasso and said “We have been shameless about stealing great ideas” (No wonder the new iOS 7 has stolen ideas from various operating systems like Android, BlackBerry, WebOS, MeeGo etc).

So if you can spot a good idea go ahead and shamelessly steal it.!

It requires a lot of creativity to copy

It requires a lot of knowledge and intelligence to identify a good idea. You need to be really smart. You need to know what to copy and more importantly where and how to use it. Thomas Edison was one such person. He was a shrewd businessman and knew which idea was worth working on. As he very famously once quoted “Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you’re working on”. Exactly similar to Steve Jobs who did not invent the first computer, or the first smartphone, or the first tablet. He just knew how to use these inventions and make them market friendly and also make him a lot of money. He could spot a good idea immediately and could quickly figure out how to use it innovatively. That is the quality, which is very rare. There are many people with many great ideas, but very few who have the capability to execute it perfectly.

A great idea without great execution is a dead idea

The hottest social networking site today is snapchat.com, which is based on a brilliant idea. It allows users to send photographs to each other but the photos disappear within a few seconds. Reggie Brown, a Stanford student, came up with the idea. He shared it with his friends Spiegel and Murphy, but the two friends ran away with the idea shutting out Brown from the company, and Brown too is fighting for compensation (like the twins of Facebook). The other two friends are arguing that besides the idea he did nothing much, they did all the hard work. Let’s see what happens to Brown, but the fact remains that an idea in itself is nothing.

It’s interesting to note that a lot of success stories are based on simple ideas. They could be ideas that maybe you had thought of too, but the person running happily to the bank is the one who had the conviction to go ahead and do it.

Many would have wished for a site where they could share photos with their friends, Flickr went ahead and created a site like that. Many like me must have wished for a phone with a USB drive so that a lot more could be done with it – and maybe somebody will go ahead and make one too.

An idea on its own is not such a great deal however brilliant it is. Behind each successful idea is a drive, a passion, and a crazy desire to succeed. If you have that you need not worry about people copying your ideas. People have and will always do so. You, your ideas, your brand, your business will always have to face competition.

What you need to always remember is that your one great idea will only take you a certain distance so the thing you need to focus is on the ability to come up constantly with new ideas, keep looking out for new trends and developments and keep thinking how to innovatively use them and passionately back those ideas with hard work and make them super successful. What you should not worry about is who is copying your idea, for you cannot stop that.

If you want to be successful, if you want to be different do not hesitate to be a creative copycat!

Last month Wal-mart kicked off a reality television series for the web named ‘Get on the Shelf ‘. This series featured 20 finalists of Wal-mart’s contest by the same name. It’s aim being to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship and help some lucky ones get a break. The public was given 3 days to vote for their favorite entrepreneur .The winner of each episode , that is the one with the highest votes would then be allowed to sell his goods on Walmart.com.  Out of these winners the ‘grand winner’ would be the one who would get the maximum pre-orders on walmart.com. This grand winner would then get the opportunity to sell his product inside the  Wal-Mart stores . It’s a dream for any brand, any businessman, to see their product on Wal-Mart store shelves, and this television series (for the web) will help someone’s this dream come true!

The key point here is – the winner will be the one who can ‘sell’ the most. In entrepreurship this is the key element. It is also an element that in spite of being so important is ignored by many. The fact remains that it does not matter how good your product is, rather what matters is how well you could ‘sell’ it. 

“Being an entrepreneur means being a salesman” – this was the key mantra for success that was given by Niklas Zennsrom more popularly known as the co-founder of Skype. He says the one who can sell is the one who will succeed in the game of entrepreneurship. In fact in spite of ‘salesmanship’ being such an important aspect of business not many b-schools till recently focused on this. It was the reverse . This was one aspect that was looked down upon. Not any more. A recent survey showed that people were keener to know how to start their own business and be their own boss. Students today are keener to do a ‘Masters in Entrepreneurship’ than a regular MBA (Forbes magazine). After all the success stories of this generation are companies like Twitter, Groupon, Facebook, Yelp, Instagram, Tumblr …. And the list goes on. What they all have in common is a young guy who knew how to ‘sell’ his dreams to others. It does not matter whether you have lots of money or no money –what matters here is whether you have a great idea –and more importantly the skill to sell that idea.

The true mantra for success lies in the ability of an entrepreneur to sell his brand. The one who can do it best is the one who scores the highest.

Captain Nair wanted to open a resort in Goa and was ecstatic when he could finally buy a property there. However there was a slight problem , his property was located at the southern most end of Goa, and took more than an hour to reach . Most tourists preferred the old established properties near the airport and in the north of Goa. So even though The Leela had 7 star facilities yet it failed to attract tourists. Not to give up so easily, he thought of an innovative idea. All it required was one advertisement in the newspaper with a headline that invited tourists to rediscover the land where Vasco da Gama had first stepped on. This was enough to raise the curiosity of the tourists and there was a steep increase in the reservations. The Leela was soon packed with visitors! A successful entrepreneur is one who never gives up , who never says never !

Selling is not about selling !

Confused? That is the real secret of becoming a master salesman and hence a master entrepreneur. A true salesman is one who does not take ‘No’ for an answer. An ordinary salesman is one who allows you to say a ‘No’ and then moves on to the next prospect. So how do I get people to say ‘Yes’ all the time, or most of the time?

Let me  illustrate. When recession hit America in 2008, it was observed , among other things, that the sales of Swiss watches which for years had witnessed double-digit sales growth saw a drastic decline in sales. The only way to salvage the situation was to re-learn the art of salesmanship. More than 60% of the customers were going to a luxury watch showroom to not buy new watches rather to get their old watches serviced. So IWC, a luxury watch manufacturer brought in a trainer to train its staff. The first lesson he taught them was to never ever discuss the ‘price’ of the watch, rather to point out its ‘value’. Sales after all is about selling an emotion and the last thing that helped one make a sale was price. Before coming to the price you had to convince the consumer that what he was buying was of ‘value’ to him. For that you needed to understand what the customer was looking for and what according to him was the definition of value. Once you can find that there will be no need to discuss price or haggle about it.

After all sales is also about understanding the customer and offering him what he actually wants. The better you understood people the better your chances of selling. He taught the staff various tricks but the most interesting was one that he learnt from casinos. In the casinos the trick is to flatter the men and more importantly to distract their wives. The longer the wife stays the higher the chances of the men to splurge. He used the same technique of teaching his staff to keep the wife engaged and entertained. If she was bored she would immediately say ‘lets go’ and that would be the end of a sale! Take care of the wife the husband will take care of you! 

In fact if you genuinely care about people, then you eventually make a sale. If you only care about the ‘sale’ you most often fail to make the sale. Be it inside a posh luxury watch showroom or inside the shops on the street markets of Morocco the most successful entrepreneur is the man who understands people. As Philip Broughton says in his book ‘Life’s a Pitch’ it’s the ability to win the trust of people that makes you a great salesman. He quotes Steve Wynn the billionaire hotel and casino owner on the most profound business lesson he ever learnt. Wynn says employees should relate to people not as customer and employee but as two human beings. Once you do this you can close a sale faster and better. Chances of hearing a ‘No’ will be reduced.

When the internet marketing was in its nascent stages, a company called Zappos.com found a new way to gain customer confidence. It knew that the biggest drawback of online purchase of a shoe was – what if it was of a wrong size? It used this weakness to build on its most successful selling strategy – that of free easy returns. Now all those who were unsure of buying a shoe without trying were relaxed and as a result the company could sell millions of dollars worth of shoes. Today almost everyone is using this same strategy. 

So to be successful you need to first and foremost master the ability to sell and sell in such a manner that the other guy doesn’t get an opportunity to say a ‘No’.

The way we communicate has changed today. Branding is a dif ferent game altogether. The strat egy that was considered the right way to build a brand just a few years back is all wrong today. We, as market ers, were doing a great job all these years and then came Tim Berners-Lee and changed it all. He is the man who invent ed the ‘World Wide Web’. With more than 2 billion users the growth in the number of people using the Internet in 2013, as compared to 2000, has been 566%. Whoa! That’s humongous. It’s this Inter net which has created a unique genera tion of consumers called the ‘Millennial’. People in the age group of 18-34 fall in this category. Why are they so important? Let’s look at a few quick facts. 75 million is the population of the Millennials in US alone. In countries like India and Bangla desh most of the population is around this age. What it translates into is a few simple facts. By 2022 at least 30% of all retail sales will be to this generation, and by 2025 about 75% of the total car sales will be to this generation, making this age group the most important consumers. They are the consumers of the future and as brand builders it’s critical for us to make them believe in our brands. How ever, this generation is very different from its parents. They live differently, decide differently, and hate being marketed to, making things very difficult for marketers. Gone are the days when you picked up a Lonely Planet or any other travel guide book to know about a new destination you wanted to travel to. Today, you just ‘google it’ and can know more about the place, and even see real time videos of the place. You read books on the Internet and buy them through Amazon. If you want to change your job you don’t go to a placement agency but to LinkedIn. If you want an education many prefer to go on line than to a campus. In fact, even if you want to protest for a cause you do not need to go out on the streets rather you go to the Facebook page and ‘like’ it and voila you are a protester!

Reading, writing, travelling, protesting – you name it and it’s happening on the Internet. So, logically your brand building too should happen on the Internet.

 FORGET, TO LEARN MORE

 If you want to reach the new guys then there are certain things you need to forget.
(a)Forget physical media. Instead think digital.

(b)Forget traditional TV. Think of the second screen. Mobiles will be big in fu ture and most brand building activities will happen here.

(c) Forget mass, think personalization. Mass mediums like TV and print have lost a lot of their sheen. It’s mediums which can send customized messages to con sumers that will work.
You need to think like Amazon. Once you buy from it, the second time that you go there it knows you, and suggests things to buy that you may like depend ing on your past purchases. This is the personalization, the customization that the consumer of today wants. One size fits all no longer works. One campaign for TV, print, outdoor, radio, et al will not work any more. They say it’s the end of ‘lazy marketing’ and marketers & brand builders have to wake up and shake up and think of new ways to engage the consumer. Thanks to Facebook and oth er such sites today you can break up your customer base into micro segments. Pizza Hut, for instance, discovered that it had 17,000 different types of customers and planned different online campaigns which worked for the various groups.

(d)Forget creatives, think content. When Cadbury wanted to launch its new chocolate bar named ‘Bubbly’ it de cided to launch it not on TV or on radio but on Google+. No expensive ads were shot using pretty models, rather just the photograph of the product and details of the product were posted. The advantage – the buzz was created and sales started even before the company spent a single paisa on advertising! Unlike traditional mediums here the feedback from the consumer was very fast which helped the company streamline its strategy without wasting time and money.

Creatives are also losing their impor tance as companies like Facebook and Foursquare are today teaching you how to make advertisements which will work on their platforms. Everybody can be come a creative guy, he does not need to hire an ad agency for that. You can even log on to buildmybrand.com and they will customize a logo for you in 5 minutes. Anyway just vanilla advertising will not work anymore. It’s ads with good content, which clearly show the consumer why he should buy a product, are the ones that work these days.

(e)Forget monologues, think dia logues. You need to talk to him, connect with him and then market to him.

(f)Forget media planning. In the digi tal space media is practically unlimited so the role of media planning is limited here. Rather this time the marketer wants to know how effective their plan is. Softwares like ‘Lotame’, which help

(g)you in audience data management and track every dollar that you spent, will be more effective than traditional media planners. Google, IBM, Microsoft today offer numerous tools (like Google analyt ics) to help you plan your media spend.

If you want your ROI(return on invest ment) to be high you have to ensure that your ROR(return on relationships) is very high. The more you will invest in building relations and knowing your customer intimately the more stronger will your brand be. Barack Obama had profiled each potential voter of America and knew him inside out. As a result he could micro target his potential voters and convince them to vote in his favour.

ADVERTISING IS ON THE VERGE OF A CREATIVE REVO LUTION

As we realize that traditional forms of brand building are dead we need to re alize that traditional advertising will not work. For over 100 years the world of advertising had remained stagnant, now its all changing. Thanks to digitization, thanks to the recession, budgets are shrinking, clients are becoming more demanding. As a result Harley Davidson ditched its agency of 30 years, which was instrumental in making it big and giving it an iconic status, and instead signed up with a very small agency Vic tor & Spoils, for they understood the digital space like no one else. So did General Mills, Virgin America and many more. Kraft Foods, one of the companies with the largest marketing budget of about $1.6 billion, decided to work with a small crowdsourcing company Genius Rocket to market its brand of hummus. The simple reason being the Millennials are all in the digital space and only those who can understand how to mar ket to them will survive. All big brands are bending backwards to please these Millennials. Be it Walmart which for all these years has built a reputation of a big box store where you can buy a pin and a gun all under one roof has now come up with small size stores to appeal to the new kids. It’s calling them ‘Wal mart on campus’ for if these kids do not step into these stores its finished. Bud weiser has also introduced a new bow-tie shaped can to attract the Millennials.

A final thought. Let’s look at the most powerful brands for the year 2013. At number 1 is Apple followed by brands like Coca Cola, Lady Gaga, Amazon etc. It’s just a coincidence that these very brands are also the ones who have the largest fans of Facebook? Is it a coinci dence that while Mitt Romney spent $26 million on social media, Obama spent $52 million – and we all know who won the race.

So, if you want to survive in today’s market place adopt the new rules of branding.

At the risk of sounding extremely materialistic yet I always tell budding entrepreneurs and future leaders that an education in management teaches one among other things to become an expert in marketing products. It teaches one to understand the needs of the consumers and position the brand in such a manner that the consumer feels he / she needs the brand and goes and buys it. Most of the students of management are quick to learn this and by the time they graduate they are ready to impress the corporate world with their newly learnt skill of ‘marketing’. As david ogilvy once said “a great marketer can even sell snow to an eskimo”. Many management graduates pride themselves upon the fact that they can ‘market almost anything to anyone’, and most of them are actually pretty good at it too. So then all these so-called expert marketers must also be greatly successful in their careers?

Surprisingly that is not true. This is because these marketers learnt to market everything and anything but forgot to learn to market the most important thing and that is ‘marketing themselves’!

FORGET THE RESUME FIND YOURSELF FIRST

The traditional way of marketing oneself was with the help of a good resume. Today you need to go a step further than that. You need to ‘brand yourself ’. Just listing your achievements in a resume will not take you far. You need to be able to ‘sell and market’ your achievements effectively. Here are some points to keep in mind.

Be Distinct: Now I see you

This is a fact that we all are being judged all the time, and whether we like it or not, whether we realize it or not, we are constantly selling ourselves. In the business world it’s all about branding. The most ‘well branded’ product rules the market share and the hearts of the consumers. To be really successful in the corporate world you need to ‘brand’ yourself. You need to ‘position’ yourself correctly so that people see you as you want them to see you. Do not wait for people to discover for themselves your real qualities, your true potential and your strengths. You need to show it to them yourself through correct branding. You need to find out that one thing you are best at and use all possible resources to build upon it.

Look at it this way, who was the ‘angry young man’ of Bollywood? Yes, it was Amitabh Bachchan. Even though he gave stellar performances in other roles, he ‘branded’ himself as the angry young man. Who is the most generous Bollywood star? Salman Khan. In fact, his charitable organisation ‘Being Human’ has helped him make his branding as the ‘most charitable star’ even stronger.

Social networking sites are an interesting platform for one to start their personal branding. In June Former Secretary of State (US) Hillary Clinton joined Twitter. However, the thing that got the maximum attention was her bio that she had posted more than her tweets. She branded herself as “wife, mom, lawyer, women and kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD…” Where TBD stood for ‘to be decided’, with many interpreting it as a sign that she might join the Presidential race in 2016. If she does join, then it’s her personal branding that will help her differentiate herself from the other candidates, just the way Obama did. He came out of nowhere, but his personal branding was so strong, so bang on target that he was noticed and remembered and voted for. He branded himself as the man who could do it. ‘Yes we can’, “Change you can believe in”, have become slogans that you associate with him only. No wonder when Narender Modi chanted ‘Yes we can...’ in Hyderabad as he flagged off the BJP’s election campaign he came under a lot of criticism with some even labeling him as ‘fake Obama’. That is the power of a strong branding – nobody can copy you. As in business – Coke is the ‘Real Thing’, and Pepsi can never be known as that or Nike is ‘Just do it’ and Adidas can only say ‘Impossible is Nothing’ but cannot ask its consumers to just do it! When you find a distinct way to brand yourself people start seeing you that way too. So don’t just be an expert in marketing for its too vague. Make it more specific. An expert in social marketing is probably a little more specific.

Apart from people and products today cities are branding themselves too. One of the most well branded cities is Las Vegas. It promotes itself as the place where you can do what you want and nobody will bother you, for its tagline says “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”! Yash Raj Films branded Switzerland as the country for lovers and Switzerland can never thank him enough for the countless couples who started going there after seeing Switzerland in Yash Chopra’s films.

The more focused your branding the more easy it is for people to remember you and identify you, for now they see you more clearly and distinctly.

Be Honest

A successful brand is one that is built on a unique concept but more importantly one that is built on the foundation of honesty. The reason Oprah is one of the most passionately loved celebrity (read brand) is because of her total honesty. She was brutally honest about her poverty-stricken past, her failures, her struggles with her weight and just about everything. So on her talk show when she motivated people and told them they could overcome their problems, they believed her. It made her a success and her show the biggest talk show in the history of television. The reason ‘Comedy Nights with Kapil’ today has the highest TRP is not only because of the clean honest humor its host Kapil brings to the show but also because his total demeanor has sincerity and honesty around it, for he does not pretend to be someone else, and the audience love him for that. In just the same way the people loved Steve Jobs. It was not just his marvelous products but his honesty about his weaknesses his failures along with his successes that endeared him to his customers making the brand ‘Steve Jobs’ iconic and him a legend whose tales will be told and retold many times over.

Be Relevant: Keep upgrading

We are all pretty much like softwares. Just as they need constant upgrades so do we. Once you have identified your unique and distinct branding strategy and started branding yourself most honestly you will see success but if you stop now you may be lost once again. You need to keep moving and keep modifying yourself to suit the needs of the changing times. If I go back to my old example of Amitabh Bachchan, then from the ‘angry young man’ to ‘the most stylish superstar’ the man has constantly changed and upgraded himself to remain relevant to the new generation too. Coca Cola is still the ‘Real Thing’ and it has managed to remain relevant by constantly finding new ways to brand itself.

Branding is all about standing out so that the target market chooses you over competition. If you want to be successful start by branding yourself first. Be as distinct as the McDonald arches, as iconic as Apple, as loved as Nike, as admired as Facebook, as desirable as a Rolls Royce. Look at any success story and behind that you will find a well planned branding strategy. It’s time you started thinking like a brand and crafting your own branding strategy. In today’s fast moving world only the distinct and the distinguished make it to the top. Remember the golden rule that success starts by first selling yourself and never forgetting that you too are a product!

Amitabh Bachchan made his debut in Hollywood with a small but well portrayed role in the film The Great Gatsby. If you have seen the film you too would have been mesmerized by the grandeur of it, but if you have seen it from a marketer’s point of view you would notice how intelligently the film has been made to include well-known brands. It’s actually overflowing with premium products. The top international designers Miu Miu and Prada for the movie designed more than 40 different cocktail gowns. Brooks Brothers designed the lead actor Leonardo Di- Caprio’s clothes. Moët & Chandon provided the champagne used in the film. The top-notch jewellery designer Tiffany & Co. created the jewellery.

However, this time it has been done differently. There may be no obvious close up shots that the brands need to depend on to be noticed in the film. This time the brands ‘invested’ in the movie too. Which implies that they have specially created products for the film and in their advertising and branding strategies would highlight this fact. Since these are all limited edition pieces the brands have a lot to benefit. Tiffany & Co., for example, has already got a list of clients who would want to buy these pieces as a ‘keepsakes’ since the designs are from an era long gone and a lot of people are there who would love to own something from that era.

Brooks Brothers have launched their own “The Gatsby Collection” which has suits inspired by the fashion of the 1920s. The brands in question will promote these new collections in their advertisements, which will benefit not just them but the movie too.

So in-film branding has now taken a different turn. Instead of a brand just putting its existing product in the movie now the trend is of brands customising their wares and even investing and creating products exclusively for the film. Brands are now co-investors in the films.

DOES IT WORK?

The latest James Bond film, Skyfall was produced at a cost of $200 million. Advertisers who wanted their brands to appear in the film along with Bond covered much of it. Traditionally Bond is supposed to drink a vodka martini ‘shaken not stirred’, but in Skyfall he drinks Heineken beer. $45 million is what it cost Heineken to replace the martini.

Bond is the ultimate brand ambassador. No wonder brands do not hesitate to spend millions to be a part of this exclusive club. Coke Zero, which features in the new Bond film, too, made an advertisement to drive home the fact that it was Bond’s favoured drink. The campaign was called “Unlock the 007 in you”. The campaign shows an interactive vending machine in a train station that challenges commuters to reach a particular spot in 70 seconds and win tickets for the Bond film. To make the task a little difficult and make the film a little more entertaining the customers who took up the challenge were stopped by carefully planted obstacles in the form of a beautiful woman in red calling out their name to a cart of oranges spilling in their path to falling suitcases etc. The campaign was a hit on YouTube and got more than 10 million views.

Back in Bollywood, product placement went a step further with the central character of the film being a brand. Yes you got it, the Yash Raj Films (YRF) produced Mere Dad Ki Maruti where Maruti Ertiga was the main character and the film revolved around it. Maruti in return bought 50,000 music CDs of the film to be given away to all its customers making the film’s music a platinum success! YRF in turn made 5 music videos featuring the car and ran it across 20 music channels. This just goes on to prove that in-film branding has taken a whole new form. Today, brands are almost equal stakeholders as the production house itself. It seems this arrangement seems to work for both and benefit both the parties.

DOES IT ALWAYS WORK?

In the film Delhi Belly Imran Khan is gifted a red car which looks like the Santro. One of his friends comments “When a donkey f***s a rickshaw this is what you get”. Even though the car had no branding yet the company Hyundai did not take it well and demanded that the derogatory reference be removed.

Reebok paid $1.5 million for product placement in the film Jerry Maguire. However, all through the film Rod Tidwell (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.) kept rebuking Reebok for ignoring him and not sponsoring him. The company was promised a totally different deal. They were told that in the end the player would get a sponsorship deal from Reebok, but it never happened.

In the movie Transformers, one of the characters transforms into a Mountain Dew vending machine, a rather evil one, which kills people by shooting out soda, cans. It could make a few people think twice before going too near one! Product placement is fine, but you need to be very careful that the brand is shown in the right situations doing the right stuff. Something that Budweiser did not find itself in, in the film Flight starring Denzel Washington. There is a scene in the film where the alcoholic Whip Whitaker (played by Denzel Washington) opens a can of Budweiser while sitting behind the wheel of a passenger jet as he attempts to land it safely. The company asked the Paramount Pictures to remove their logo and make it obscure. This is not what they would want people to associate their brand with.

In the film Hangover 2 one of the characters is seen sporting a fake Louis Vuitton bag and in one of the scenes he remarks “Careful that is a Louis Vuitton”. Even though he misprounces the name the company has not taken it very sportingly and has sued the makers Warner Bros on grounds of trademark dilution, unfair competition etc. A company called Diophy, which specializes in fakes, creates the fakes used in the film!

IT WORKS !

All this just goes on to prove that in-film branding works, or else brands would not invest so much in both making sure that they are seen in the right films as well as making sure they are not seen in the wrong films.

Nokia paid a staggering 30 million pounds to make Superman use its phone in the film Man of Steel. An astounding 94 product placement deals were made for the film raking in 100 million pounds for the producer Warner Bros.

It is so powerful that China is using this to change its country’s image. Last year a new agreement was signed between China and US concerning product placement. The agreement is between Dreamworks Animation Studio and China for setting up a joint venture in- Shanghai. This deal would give China access to films produced in America . The movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon premiered in Shanghai and became a huge hit. However, the more important part is that the movie featured some of the Chinese homegrown brands like Lenovo, Yili Milk, TCL etc. Add to this the fact that after the US the most profitable market for the film was China. It seems to be the perfect case of ‘winwin’ for both the players. China has long been known as the manufacturing hub of the world but it now wants more. It wants to be known as the nation of great brands, for this will give it the image it so desperately desires. China is turning to films to change the image of its brands and give them that ‘worldclass’ touch. In-film branding gives brands a unique aura. Add to that the thrills of having a captive audience for 2 to 3 hours (at a time when technology has reduced attention span of customers like crazy). All of these factors go on to make in-film product placements a huge opportunity for marketers. So even though cinema goers may not really take it well that Superman – the man of steel – uses Gilette to shave, drinks Budweiser, throws around only Chrysler cars, or wears spectacles by Warby Parker, the fact is you and I are talking about it and that is what the brands want!

So while some may criticize it but the fact remains that in-film branding works, always. Right from the time when the first brand Hershey’s chocolate was featured in the silent film Wings in1927 till date it does create an impact. Be it the Hyundai Santro in Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, or in Delhi Belly or Bournvita in Koi Mil Gaya, or Coke in Taal, or Thums Up in Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, or Switzerland in Silsila or South Africa in Cocktail, everybody has benefitted from the association. Be rest assured that this is one branding technique that will never fade. Brands and Bollywood, Hollywood and all other woods will always be best friends forever!

Michael Dell was in India recently. While addressing an audience he was asked, what is the secret of becoming a successful entrepreneur? His answer was something that surprised everyone. He said, “You need to be crazy!” If people call you crazy take it as a compliment for it means you are doing something that has never been done before! An entrepreneur is someone who dares to take risks, who dares to go off the beaten path. In fact, that is actually what success truly means. However, the irony is that it is success that prevents us from taking risks. Once we are successful we are too scared to change and do something different. Sticking to the same way of doing things seems to be the safest way to prevent failure. Take the case of a singer. Once his song becomes a hit he continues to make songs which are similar to the hit song, for fear that if he attempts something different it may not appeal to his fans. Same is the case with actors, painters, and even entrepreneurs! Once they find their ‘comfort zone’ seldom do they want to venture too far away from it?

However, a true business leader is one, who does not fear change, rather thrives on it! This is the only way to maintain your success, otherwise most often you may find yourself being left behind. Success comes not just when you do something different but when you continuously keep reinventing yourself. The ability to identify the changing needs with changing times is the key to long lasting and continuous success.

BE CRAZY, MAKE MONEY!

The people who can change with changing times are the ones who have a unique ability, and that is – to think different. The ability to think different keeps you ahead of others, beat competitors, and even tide over bad times. No wonder the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity took place in 2010 when the economy was in a slump (according to research done by Kaufman Foundation). Although logically starting a new business during times of recession sounds illogical, as it’s very risky to start something new and if times are bad the chances of failure become even higher, 2010 saw the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity and highest rate of innovation. It’s said when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Hence, the tough times saw the birth of the most ingenious of businesses. “Hangover Helpers” is one such business that two college boys named Regis and Kelly started. After partying all night, the next morning is the worst. You have a hangover, a messy house, and no energy to sort it out. This is where the ‘Hangover Helpers’ come in. They come with breakfast, energy drinks and cleaners who make you and your apartment sparkle once again! A simple idea, a little crazy too, but they were the first to think about it and have the courage to actually implement it, and they sure have hit the bulls eye, for these boys have been featured in Forbes magazine, on various talk shows on TV, and they have their hands full with so many hangovers to take care of!

Alex, a marine biology student, went to visit an aquarium. And while others were admiring the different species of fishes, a business idea struck him. He realised that the most popular exhibit was the jellyfish exhibit and decided to sell jellyfish tanks! His business has been doubling its profits quarterly, and he now supplies jellyfish tanks all over the world. You could order one too from www.jellyfishart.com!

Crazy they may sound but if you look closely all these business ideas were based on a deep understanding of human needs. When Josh Opperman saw his fiancée walk out on him just three months after the engagement he was devastated sure, but not blinded with grief. He saw an interesting opportunity here. He started a website called ‘I do now I don’t‘ just to get even with his fiancée. The site, which has been featured in The New York Times, on CNN and various other mainstream media, is now a big hit. You can sell your engagement ring to other buyers at a price better than the one offered by the jeweller from whom you bought the ring in the first place. Sounds like a crazy idea, but think about it, right from the name to the ‘value for money’ proposition, everything fits so well and connects so well with the consumer and his needs. It’s a well-packaged deal!

Finally, successful entrepreneurs are those who not just had an apparently crazy idea but knew how to market that idea well too. Consider the story of this young army officer Nair, who left the army and joined his father-in-law’s handloom business. His factory used to manufacture a fabric that was dyed using vegetable dyes. As a result the colour would bleed with every wash. When he exported the fabric to US the buyer was furious when he found consumers complaining that the colour was not fast. He threatened to sue Nair. But Nair was unperturbed. He told the American buyer “Why did you not put washing instructions on the garment stating clearly that the fabric bleeds with every wash?” The buyer was confused, and then Nair explained that this was the speciality of the cloth. It was meant to look different after every wash! An article in the popular fashion magazine named ‘Seventeen’ picked up this fascinating concept and soon the fabric became a craze in the West. Now everybody wanted the ‘Bleeding Madras’ fabric. That’s the power of packaging a concept correctly. This same Nair invested in a beach property in Goa. However, the problem was that this property was located in the south of Goa, while almost all tourists went to the north of Goa. As expected no one came to his hotel. Once again he put on his thinking cap and this time came up with an advertisement, which said that the last man to walk on this beach was Vasco da Gama. It intrigued a lot of people and he says in one day he got 1,000 queries. The resort sold out and since then there was no turning back. Yes, you guessed it right. The man in question is the Founder of The Leela Palaces Hotels and Resorts (named after his wife Leela) and his property The Leela Goa is today a very successful and happening resort. However, the more interesting part is that it was at the age of 65 that Nair decided to close down his textile business and think of venturing into the hotel business. Yes, it would have sounded like a totally crazy idea at that time to think of starting something at this age when most people are planning their retirement and that too a business that he had no formal training in. But he believed in himself and today, at 91, he is one of India’s biggest success stories!

BEING CRAZY COMES WITH NO AGE LIMITS!

Captain C. P. Krishnan Nair was not born rich but that did not stop him from dreaming big, even at the ripe age of 65 when he founded The Leela Group. The world is filled with similar such stories. This lady had a career in embroidery but later shifted to painting. She had no formal training but painted in her own style, drawing from memory and capturing American rural life. Initially her paintings sold for $5. In 2006 she sold one for $ 1.2 million! She was featured on the cover of Time magazine and Life magazine. Books were written on her and even a commemorative stamp was issued in her honour! What makes the story more remarkable is the fact that success came to her at the age of 80! She lived to be a 101 and in the last year of her life made 25 paintings!

He was a 52-year-old salesman of a milkshake mixer. Then one day he received an order for 8 mixers. He was intrigued for there was hardly any demand for the mixer, as it was a dying product. He went to visit the restaurant. What he found amazed him even more. The restaurant was simple with a small menu of hamburgers, fries, and beverages. He saw a potential and advised the two brothers who owned the restaurant to expand, and offered his services to become their agent and help them sell the franchisee. Six years later Ray Kroc had bought over the corporation and in a matter of time he had spread it across the world. By 2003, a McDonald’s restaurant could be found in 119 countries, making it one of the biggest restaurant companies in the world.

He started his career as a chef and then a salesman and finally had a stint in the Intelligence Service at the British Embassy in Washington. The job at the embassy was too stressful and he left it to buy a small farm and lead a calm life. However, at 37, without any formal training and any knowledge about the business, he opened an advertising agency, which we today know as Ogilvy & Mather. David Ogilvy had never written an advertisement before but he was confident of his ability of understanding people. He was the one who made Dove a huge success when he wrote a simple headline that read, “Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream”. Many more fantastic ads came out from his agency and soon O&M was a big empire.

Colonel Sanders was 65 when he thought of a chicken recipe that he could sell to restaurants and make money. After being rejected 1,009 times he finally found success and today we enjoy his fried chicken recipe at the KFC restaurants. The old man you see on every KFC outlet is Colonel Sanders. Let that image be a source of inspiration and let it keep reminding us that success comes to those who are crazy and crazy ambitions come with no age limit! You just need to really want it!

The big players of TV are a little worried and it’s all because of a small company named Aereo, an upstart which wants to change the way we view television. No wonder all the big firms from NBC, ABC, CBS to Fox have all sued it but its CEO Chet Kanojia (who incidentally is a native of Bhopal) is not worried at all for he is absolutely sure of what he is doing. Aereo TV, simply put is an ‘online TV service’. The modus operandi of the company is simple. Kanojia has made very small antennas. Each user is assigned one antenna which grabs the broadcast-TV signals from the air and with the help of a software those signals are aired to the user. Not just this, the signal can be aired to any device which the user opts for – his mobile, his PC, or even his TV set. What this translates for the user is: a) he does not need to pay the hefty cable fees, and b) he can now watch his favourite TV programme anywhere. He could be stuck in traffic and watch it on his mobile, or in office on his PC. Kanojia saw a loophole in the copyright act and made the most of it, which is why in spite of his company being sued twice he seems undeterred and has in fact won both times. Not just that, today he is sitting on a funding of $38 million with the help of which he would spread his network, which is currently available only in New York, to 20 more cities.

Kanojia saw a gap in the system and filled it up with his service. According to him, everything will soon migrate to the Internet including TV. The youth today is more loyal to a TV programme and not a TV channel. He wanted the freedom to watch it whenever and wherever he pleased. Add to that the fact that he did not want to pay for the channels he did not watch, but under the current system he had to pay for a package. Aereo, on the other hand, gave him just what he wanted.

Whether Aereo really makes it big and becomes the next best thing is debatable and only time will tell. However, it has an important lesson for all to learn and that is ‘never fear to challenge the big players or the best ideas’. You may turn out to be a game changer.

THE GAME CHANGERS

The way students learn is going to change in times to come. Some predict that with the advent of the Internet online classrooms, one-on-one interactive sessions may become the norm and shake up the classic lecture theatre model. Scientists from Stanford have already created a platform where universities can offer their courses and students have the freedom to choose different courses from different universities. 12 leading universities have already joined this portal, giving students greater access to the best courses across the globe.

Higher education in the future will see a dramatic change. One person who has been a pioneer in this is Gene Wade, the Founder of ‘UniversityNow’ which provides university courses online at a nominal fee. The students can pace out their courses at very nominal fees. Gene Wade’s vision is to make higher education ‘debt-free’ so that students do not carry the burden of heavy loans. He wants to provide high quality and affordable education to as many students as possible. He is a man a lot of people are sitting up and noticing as he had made university as cheap as your phone and cable bills and has already got 4,000 students! Not just universities but even banks are watching his moves carefully. He is going to change a few rules in education. Just the same way as Mark Shuttleworth changed the way people buy software. If Windows (Microsoft) charged a premium for its software then Shuttleworth decided to give it for free. He named it “Ubuntu”, an African word that means ‘humanity to others’, and dared to challenge the biggest player in the market. If Ubuntu can catch and retain the attention of the consumer then it has the potential to shake up this industry too.

THE GAME SPOILERS

The smart entrepreneur needs to constantly look out for changes in the business environment and change too or else be prepared to be left behind. When people asked Michael Dell last year whether it was the end of the PC era he rubbished the idea. Even when, in 2011, the sales of the PC (personal computer) declined by 1% no one thought much about it. However, the next year sales were down by 14% and then again 14%. What took Dell and Microsoft time to realize was the fact that the consumer had

moved on. He had moved on to the ‘tablet’ or the ‘smartphone’ as a replacement for his PC. What that meant was that in the past while 95% of all desktops and laptops were controlled by Microsoft now hardly 50% of the users were using that device and hence Windows. People today would prefer an interesting app like Box, or Huddle, or even a free platform like Ubuntu than pays for Windows. The company failed to move with the times. It had such a good grip over the market yet it lost out to the fast changing times.

However, one company has been keeping up with the changing times perfectly and that is Samsung. Apple used to be the one who changed the game for many businesses. Be it portable music players or notebooks or phones, its iPods, iPads, and iPhones changed the rules for all these categories. Samsung, on the other hand, did the same for the ‘lower-price category’ in all these segments. Today, it has launched so many products of such good quality and of such affordable price that it is giving Apple a tough time to cope with it. If Apple boasted of the world’s best designers in-house then Samsung went and hired the best designers from the best places and today its products are as beautiful. It has gone on a rampage by launching numerous new products, spending $38 billion in acquisitions and keeping its employees constantly on their toes to keep innovating and creating. Apple, the original game changer, might get replaced soon if it does not keep up with the changing times. Apple has it all. It is the original king, but it needs to get real aggressive to safeguard its kingdom, before it’s conquered by someone faster!

Even though its product had faced the maximum criticism in the world yet this company in 2012 ranked No.7 in the list of ‘Most Valuable Brands in the World’ . The brand is Marlboro and its brand value was $73.6 billion, just a little lesser than Coca-Cola, which at No.6 had a brand value of $74.3 billion. The reason being as times changed so did the company and its marketing strategies. Launched as a cigarette for women it quickly changed its theme to ‘The Marlboro Cowboy’ when it saw that just marketing to women did not work. It became the most ‘masculine’ cigarette. Then, when reports started coming in of how cigarettes cause lung cancer, it added a filter, and market share increased once again. To keep the interest in the brand alive it slowly shifted from the ‘cowboy’ theme to that of ‘Marlboro Country’. Then, when government and social regulations prohibited the company from advertising, it switched to a different strategy. Glossy advertisements were changed to in-store advertisements, mail coupon promotions etc. Marlboro packets were placed near check out counters for greater visibility. The company announced annual sweepstakes through mail. You could win a few dollars off on a carton of Marlboro or even a holiday to the ‘Marlboro Ranch’. Some lucky ones even won land in Montana! The company has been on its toes all the time, very agile, very swift, and is still such a valuable brand. Ethical or not, well, we don’t debate on that but as marketers this should serve as a lesson in innovation and the rewards of innovation and of changing strategies along with the changing times. This year American TV once again saw an advertisement of cigarettes. The last one was seen in 1971, on January 1, when Virginia Slims ran its final commercial one minute before the midnight deadline of the ban. This year the cigarette used was a little different. It’s an ‘e-cigarette’, a smokeless cigarette made by a company named NJOY King. They were invented in 2003 but are becoming popular with every passing day, with sales doubling every passing year. If the trend continues NJOY may just turn out to be the ‘game changer’ and steal all the market share from right under the nose of the big tobacco manufacturers. The victory will be well deserved for the last time someone innovated a cigarette was when the ‘filter’ was introduced in 1952 or the flip-box in 1954. NJOY might make traditional cigarettes history very soon.

Times are changing at breakneck speed and if you don’t think different you could be left behind. If you don’t question and challenge the big guys you may lose out. If you don’t believe in being a game changer you could become the biggest loser. So, stop doing what you have always been doing. Be a game changer, think different and dare to change the rules of the game. It’s the best strategy of survival.

What do you do if you are a pizza parlour and the neighborhood where you are supposed to deliver your pizzas has people from over 200 nationalities who speak equally varied number of languages? Dubai based Red Tomato found a way to solve this problem – with the help of a fridge magnet. This magnet is connected with the bluetooth of the user’s mobile phone. He just presses the button, selects his choice of pizza online and orders it. Now it no more mattered which language you spoke; you always got the pizza you wanted. Deliveries increased by about 500%!

In 2011 IPL used the mobile phone to spread awareness about the cricket series. It used the SMS2.0 service. All those who used this app to send text messages were shown a banner ad of the series. While their message was being sent the banner ad became full screen where the user could see options like check the score, read more, download ringtones etc. The company received more than 16 lakh impressions and more than 35,000 ringtone downloads!

Lego has found a way to be relevant to the young generation and has found a way to compete with video games for market share. All you required was the special edition box of the Lego blocks, and the mobile app ‘The Life of George’ downloaded on your smartphone. The mobile app beams images which you have to make with your blocks within a time period specified by the app. With every successful attempt you move up levels. There are no estimates available of the sales figures, but it generated 294 million page impressions!

In Stockholm McDonald’s created a digital billboard on which passers-by were invited to play table tennis using their phone’s touch screen. So it was you and your mobile versus the interactive billboard. If you lasted for 30 seconds you won yourself free goodies from the nearest McDonald’s outlet. An electronic coupon was delivered on your mobile phone which could be redeemed at the nearest McDonald’s outlet, directions to which were also sent along with the coupon. 460 people played in 5 hours and 400 of them actually went and cashed their coupons resulting in increased footfall.

Talking of free goodies, now you can send a free Coke to anybody in any part of the world along with a message. Coca-Cola has installed special vending machines which can be accessed through your mobile phone. At the touch of a button a Coke bottle is delivered to who ever you want to deliver – even a complete stranger – along with a personal message. Using your phone you can even see who got your Coke and what was his reaction!

The one thing common between all these examples is the use of mobile phones for increasing customer engagement. It is the gadget of the future, and is fast becoming the most effective way for brands to reach out to their customers.

LOOK WHO MADE MONEY LAST YEAR!

Google is a very happy company this year. Its stock prices have been increasing constantly. Over the past year its stock has increased by 30%. One of the main reasons was its ability to successfully monetize its mobile user base. The company’s mobile ad division is today its second largest division. Mobile revenues have doubled from 2011 to 2012. It is precisely because of this that Facebook’s IPO fizzled last year. Just before the highly anticipated initial public offering it revealed that it was not making any significant revenue from its mobile website, in spite of more than half its 900 million members using the service on their mobiles. This year Facebook’s revenues from ads on mobile devices touched $305 million. Today, the company claims to be a ‘mobile-first advertising company’, according to its Product Director of ads Gokul Rajaram.

In the beginning of last year e-commerce website eBay estimated that it would make $10 billion in mobile revenues. By the end of 2012 the company had touched $13 billion. This year it is sure to touch $20 billion. According to its Senior Director for mobile commerce Olivier Ropars, business is all about ‘connected commerce’. It is the ability to shop anytime, anywhere and a mobile is the perfect device for that. According to him, one third of all eBay transactions are ‘touched’ by the mobile. No wonder eBay invested in mobile apps and today its mobile apps have seen a download of 120 million.

GROWTH OF DIGITAL

A few days back the South African Tourism issued a tender to find a UK agency to manage its website and digital creative for the next three years. This is a new trend that is emerging as clients are slowly but surely venturing into the online space and experimenting with new ways of promoting their goods and services. This is a trend that is worth observing as billings of advertising agencies are dropping every year. According to “Campaign Magazine”, a survey done by Nielson revealed an overall decline in billings of the top 100 creative agencies and the top 50 media agencies in the year 2012. The largest media agency, WPP owned MediaCom too posted a billing of £1.1 billion this year which is huge. However, considering the fact that this figure is 9.2% lower than 2011 once again highlights the fact that traditional advertising is changing.

Interestingly, last year (2012) the elite Cannes Lions advertising festival introduced a new category for awards called “Best Mobile Advertisements”.

Late Steve Jobs too is responsible for the increase in mobile advertising. He made big screens fashionable, and today all smartphones have oversized screens. This gives advertisers space to place their advertisements with minimum annoyance to the user. Moreover, thanks to the advancement in ‘Analytics’ there are now softwares that give you exact details about the performance of your mobile advertisements. What in turn it means is that for the first time marketers have a clear idea of whether their advertisement is effective or not, if its reaching the right customers etc.

If Apple showed the world the benefits of a large mobile phone screen then Samsung has shown marketers how to make good use of it. The new Samsung Galaxy S4 launched a few days back has an interesting feature called the ‘smart pause’. Utilizing the phone’s facial recognition software, videos will pause whenever a viewer looks away. What it would mean to marketers is, it would give them an idea of how engaging their content is. If its relevant the most viewers would not look away, it’s as simple as that. Of course, the feature has yet to prove itself, but the point here is everybody is looking at the mobile for the next big leap. Mobile marketing, be it through mobile ads or mobile videos, is going to grow.

Mobile marketing is soon going to become the most practical way of marketing your goods or services. The possibilities are almost limitless. There are mobile apps, mobile web, digital advertising and a plethora of other channels available to marketers to help them create marketing campaigns. If you are a marketer you need to seriously start planning around this. The only thing stopping you will be your creativity.

The number of mobile phone owners is increasing exponentially, the number of people owning smartphones is increasing (according to a recent statistic, 1.038 billion smartphones are in use, which in simple words means that 1 in every 6.7 people on the planet use one), the availability of WiFi is increasing. The number of people using the mobile to browse the web is increasing very fast as compared to desktop browsing, which revealed an interesting phenomena that 67% of mobile web users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly website and an almost equal number said they would shift to a competitor’s website if it was mobile friendly (a survey by Moovweb showed that almost 52% of the retailers surveyed did not have a mobile friendly website). That just makes perfect business sense to think mobile. Every smart marketer is today thinking beyond traditional media and shifting to mobile and social. It’s time you did the same.

A simple arithmetic question for you: ‘A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?’ If you answered ‘10 cents’ you also probably are not aware of the ‘less obvious rules of success’. I will try to discuss a few here – the most obvious ones at least. Just as the obvious answer that 90% of the readers gave was actually the wrong answer (the right answer is 5 cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat), similarly the rules of success are the ones we most often tend to overlook. Success comes from strange quarters and with strange reasons too. Decades ago, an interesting book “What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School” became a best seller. The author had then tried to show how the most obvious things are not being taught, the things that actually impact our careers. Even today, most people are not aware of many similar things.

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SPEAK, RATHER WHAT YOU DON’T WHICH IS IMPORTANT!

A research by Classes and Careers revealed some interesting secrets about how to successfully crack interviews. While most of us will spend hours learning the important answers and pouring over the course and trying to mug up as much as possible, as many important points as possible, it’s the smart ones who do that little bit extra, which is the difference between success and failure. The biggest game changer in the interview process are the ‘non-verbal’ cues. It is not so much what you speak, rather what you don’t speak which creates the maximum impact. If you falter here it might cost you your job!

Failure to make eye contact is one of the biggest mistakes. A good eye contact shows a confident personality. When you look at people, they look back at you! When you do not look at people they do not take you seriously and they do not trust you either. It’s a simple rule – liars tend to avoid eye contact. Eye contact is in fact the most important rule for survival and yet it is one of the most overlooked aspects of communication. In the animal kingdom, the dominant male is the one who can outstare other animals in his pack. If the contest turns out to be a draw, a battle ensues. If you stare at an animal, there’s a good chance it will either attack you, or pee on the floor. We humans aren’t much different. Keep looking at the person with whom you are having a conversation; however, do not stare. This is the tricky part. The most frequently asked question is “How do I look and not stare?” Well, there is a formula to help you get it right and solve this problem of yours. The simplest way to get started is by putting the 5 & 7 guide into action. This means, when speaking maintain eye contact for 50% of the time, when listening maintain it for 70% of the time. When you use eye contact properly, you avoid staring but still display interest and confidence. Eye contact is a powerful tool, and should be used wisely. In the end remember never ever to look at your cell phone to check a text message or a call. This not just causes loss of eye contact but also your job. The non-verbal message you send is ‘this interview is not the most important thing right now’.

The second thing to keep in mind is the way you dress. This is probably more important than the way you answer questions. An interview is all about making the best impression and the right dress will help you do that. A good degree, knowledge etc will take you a certain distance, but the right clothes will take you all the way. Ignore the rule ‘dress to impress’ and you may lose your job. The best way to impress is to be yourself. No one knows this better than Indira Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo and today one of the most powerful women of the world. For her first interview she went dressed in an ill-fitting business suit and orange snow boots. Her appearance elicited a collective gasp of horror from the people there and as expected she did not get the job. For her next interview, she decided to follow the advice of her professor at Yale University and went in a sari. His advise to her was, she had to be herself and most importantly be proud of who she was. She went for the interview relaxed, more confident and smart, and Boston Consulting Group recruited her immediately. At the interview table, you are being sized up continuously and it’s these little things that count. Ask yourself, who do you remember after watching a talk show or a reality show? Not necessarily the person with the best points but the one with the best dressing sense. Many people tend to overlook this one point, but its importance cannot be denied. Years ago, Mark Twain said the same thing: “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” Even today, your clothes could decide your success or failure, especially so if the interviewer has to decide between two similar candidates! You could influence his choice and swing the vote towards you by just dressing right.

IT SOMETIMES DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU SPEAK!

The most non-obvious rule is, “Most of the times, people do not care about what you speak at all!”

Most speeches are forgotten faster than you can say ‘forget it’. Most of what we learn while attending a lecture is forgotten in the first one hour. In fact, education itself is defined not on the basis of what you remembered, but what you could not forget! “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school,” said Einstein. This is a fact. We very quickly forget most of the actual words, sentences, but what we don’t forget is how we felt.

While giving a speech, the focus should be on the way of speaking and not on the content. More often than not, it is the tone of the voice, the expressions on the face that matter, more than anything else. The most important thing is how you made the other person ‘feel’ with your words and actions. This is the one aspect, we do not think of at all in most of our communications and it is the most important. The most important rule to remember here is ‘if he feels cared for, then he will care for you too’. Be it the audience inside the auditorium, be it the stakeholders, the rule remains the same. A research has proved that it does not matter in business whether your project is on time, or if you do things within your budget, etcetera... Rather, the factor that decides whether the stakeholder will be happy with you and your company is if he ‘feels cared for’!

Many times, we underestimate the importance of non-verbal cues when meeting with stakeholders. In an experiment, it was shown that customers who were physically greeted when entering a place of business rated their experiences significantly higher than if they were met by someone behind a counter. Even within an organisation (remember employees are your first customers), it is better to walk down the corridor and speak to an employee than to call, e-mail or text. You make them feel special. Just like a mother who rushes to greet her child with open arms. She does not need to say it, but the child feels wanted and loved. We all thrive on non-verbal cues, yet most of the time we forget to use them or read them.

It is the ability of a person to read the non-verbal cues, which decides the success of a relationship, a business meeting, negotiations or even a game of poker! According to David Hayano, author of ‘Poker Faces’, if a player suddenly throws his chips forcefully on the table or suddenly behaves in a brash manner, it may be a non-verbal cue that his cards are weak. Similarly, while negotiating, if a talkative party suddenly becomes quiet, it could be an indication that he is hiding something. The author says that if someone starts over-talking and backslapping, it is an indication that he has very little to offer. It’s these non-verbal cues that determine the success of a negotiation. It is the many revealing body signals that may indicate a hidden agenda. When executives sit on a negotiating table, very few have the ability to read these cues. One simple rule to follow is never lose eye contact with the other person. Even if he tells you to read the papers, don’t make the mistake of looking down. Instead, ask him to give a gist of it as this will give you the chance to not lose eye contact and assess his non-verbal cues better. As decades ago Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son, “Learning is acquired by reading books but the much more necessary learning – the knowledge of the world – is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.” The one who can read people like a book is the best player, the best negotiator.

Before I end, one last teaser: “A clerk at a butcher shop stands five feet ten inches tall and wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh?” Answer is “He weighs ‘meat’”! Come on, he is a butcher after all!

The bottom line is, we as humans tend to overlook the obvious. Success comes to those who are most aware about these small, seemingly insignificant rules of success. So start looking.

The New Year will, as always, bring with it a change. For marketers too it will be a year of looking at business, at consumers, at strategies, at investments, even at job profiles in a different manner.

IBM is in the business of computers. Well, so you thought, for it does much more now. This year, it is also in the business of selling what is known as ‘trend detection’ to marketers. The hottest trend in fashion, music, etc this year is predicted to be ‘the Steampunk movement’. Who predicted it? Yes, IBM! It developed a model using proprietary software that studied various conversations happening in various networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc for years and also in the numerous blogs, and discovered that “Steampunk” was being mentioned more and more frequently and hence predicted that this was a trend to stay. It has been proved right as the popularity of this trend is increasing. Even the fashion label Prada launched its new fashion line with ‘Steampunk’ as the theme. What started as a literary subgenera in the 1980s is today a hot selling fashion trend. Now, IBM is offering its services to brands where it can help them predict and identify new trends with the help of its new software and be better prepared for the future. It is no more the traditional computer manufacturer.

Think about it, the job of a singer is to sing well; and if he is popular, he gets to endorse brands. Not anymore! Will.i.am, the lead singer of the band The Black Eyed Peas, just proved it wrong. Unlike other rock stars, his brand endorsements are different. When Coke wanted to sign him up as their brand ambassador, he convinced them instead to start a new division ‘Ekocycle’ (look carefully it’s actually Coke spelt backwards) and endorse that. He had deeply studied the company profile and found that this was an idea which would benefit both him and Coke, something no brand ambassador is expected to do. Rather, it’s the reverse as brands study the profile of the star to see if he fits well with the brand! This new division would promote ‘recycling’, with each product being labelled, stating clearly how many bottles were recycled while manufacturing the product. For example, a pair of headphones uses three bottles. The idea was a huge success, and today Coke and Will.i.am divide the profits equally from this division. Not just this, Coke probably for a very long time, will not change its brand ambassador either and many companies would be lining up at Will’s door to sign him up. Will has proved that it pays to not just be the traditional brand endorser, but to go a step beyond. Soon gone would be the days of many things traditional, one of them being shopping!

Definitions are changing, lines are blurring in the New Year. Let’s see how things will change even more everywhere.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRADITIONAL INDUSTRY BOUNDARIES WILL BLUR...

Mobiles are blurring the differences between traditional industrial boundaries. A few years ago, Amazon was known as an eretailer while eBay was an online auction site, and Apple made personal computers. Today eBay, Apple, Amazon, and many more are all e-retailers and all are investing in ‘mobile technology ‘ very heavily as for each of them, the future business depends on this. Just focusing on the traditional channels of distribution, promotion will not work anymore. You need to integrate as many channels as possible and blur boundaries.

Home Depot, a brick and mortar outlet, sells home improvement goods, but now it also invests heavily in virtual technology to help increase sales. It now offers a ‘mobile wallet’ so that the customer can pay via PayPal at the cash counter. This has increased its turnover and customer satisfaction. eBay invested $5 billion in mobile technology. The God of all integrations and innovations – Apple – now allows customers to walk into their retail store, scan the bar code with their phone cameras, pay through iTunes and walk out. It’s the best omni-channel retailer in business today. If you want to succeed in the future, you too need to focus towards becoming an ‘omnichannel retailer’, or multi-channel retailer.

Godiva today does not just concentrate on making the best chocolates in the world but spends considerable time studying its consumers’ online history too and customize its campaigns almost immediately on the basis of customer reactions. For example in one case, they tested three different price points for free shipping qualifications. A, B and C, with ‘A’ as the highest price and ‘C’ as the lowest price. Everyone knew that the offer with the lowest price (i.e. offer ‘C’) would be the most attractive to consumers to avail of the ‘free shipping’ facility. Surprisingly, data analysis proved that ‘B’ was the most popular deal with consumers and made the company change its strategy immediately. Similarly, according to its VP Mahender Nathan, when they put more photographs of the same product showing alternate views, sales increased. An invitation to enter their e-mail address and get special offers was a move the company thought would turn potential consumers away, but to its surprise it increased the e-mail capture by 1,076% – that’s huge! Godiva now invests heavily in technology to help understand consumers better and serve them across various channels, be they real or virtual. A good web display is as important as a good instore shelf display.

THE REAL & VIRTUAL WORLD WILL BLUR…

The New Year should also get you to think of new ways to do business. The new way is one where there are no distinctions between the real and virtual worlds. The more seamlessly a marketer is able to merge them, the better it is. Take the case of the multi-brand retailer Tesco. Its department ‘Tesco Groceries’ now has a fancy website from where consumers can order their groceries, decide the time they want the delivery, decide the place of delivery, which could be home or a nearby Tesco outlet. As they start ordering on-line, the site can even predict their ‘shopping list’. All they do is log on to ‘My Usuals’ and it would show them the items they have been ordering most regularly. So you could shop in-store or via the mobile. To add to this, in South Korea, Tesco has installed a wall-length billboard in one of the subways. The billboard looks like the shelves of the supermarket where each product has a QR code. Shoppers can scan the QR codes from their mobiles, order it from their mobiles and the groceries are delivered home within 24 hours! Tesco has found the move so fruitful and sales has increased so significantly that in the year 2012-13, it plans to spend $200 million to promote its ‘mobile shopping’ venture.

At Marks & Spencer, the customer has in-store giant screens and iPads where they can see the in-store products, watch videos of latest fashion trends, create their own combinations of outfits and purchase on-line, either from the screen or the iPad available in-store. The order can also be delivered home in case you don’t want to carry a big bag around!

The differences between the real and virtual will blur even more, as more and more retailers will enable consumers to interact with and socialize with their brands through sites like Pinterest, Instagram apart from Facebook and Twitter, not to forget the good old e-mail. As they come to know their customers better, they will have to personalize their marketing strategies according to individual customer preferences. L’Occitane, the high end

bebeauty retailer, has invested in a tool which helps it to personalize its offerings. It found out that inviting new customers to share their e-mail address in exchange for special offers helped increase its conversions by 37%. It also found that placing a ‘best seller’ badge on products resulted in a 3% increase in sales. Through the IP addresses of consumers, it could figure out the ones who were nearest to its brick and mortar stores and mail them information about new products or promotions specific to the store near them. It now runs 70 different marketing campaigns at the same time to be able to attract different consumers with different needs.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GADGETS WILL BLUR... (MULTI-TOUCH RETAILING)

The most successful brands are today selling their products via brick and mortar stores, via e-commerce websites, via mobiles and many other channels. The brand that can integrate all these channels the best will succeed in the long run. So it does not matter any more which gadget you have in mind while designing a website for your business. The key factor today is finding out if it will work as efficiently and as effectively on as many gadgets as possible. The consumer needs multiple touch points to access your products.

If 2012 was the year of understanding the consumer, collecting as much data/information as possible about him and interacting with him, the year 2013 will be a year of intelligently analyzing that data with the help of various technology solutions and providing more comfortable and better ways of serving the consumer.

A richer ‘shopping experience’ will be the key to success; and to achieve this, a seamless integration of various channels – real and virtual – will be the key to growth in the new era.

It is said that John F. Kennedy was America’s first television President. Barack Obama has shown that he is the nation’s first ‘Social Media’ President!

The term ‘bootstrapping’ is an interesting term. It has a lot of challenge, a lot of drama built into it.

The term is attributed to a story written by Rudolf Erich. The story titled The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen is based on a series of tales narrated by the Baron about his travels, with some impossible feats and daring escapes. One such tale is about him pulling himself out of a swamp with the help of his bootstraps as there was no one to help him and there was no other way he could have survived. Today, this 18th century tale has acquired a new meaning; especially for entrepreneurs. The idiom “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is the secret behind the success of many people today. When all else failed, they looked at the end of their own arm and found a helping hand! Just the way when the Baron fell in the swamp and nothing seemed to work and it looked like all was lost, he thought of picking himself up by his own bootstraps.

This little boy used to walk barefoot to school. He used to sit on the floor in the classroom, as he was not allowed to sit on the desk; neither could he enter the temple of his village, for he was considered ‘unclean’ because he belonged to a lower caste. Ashok Khade is today a multi-millionaire who has Arabs as his business partners. A poor cobbler’s son, he had no money. He could barely finish his college and in spite of being a good student, he had to drop out and take up a job as an apprentice draftsman at the Mazagon Dock. His dreams of becoming a doctor were shattered, but he continued to work hard and became the best draftsman in the company. One day, his boss sent him to Germany for work. There, he chanced to see the paychecks of the Germans and was shocked to find how much they made in a month. This motivated him to work harder.

When everyone refused to help him, he decided to pull himself up by his own bootstraps and do something different. He worked hard; and at the right time, he started his own small company… something that was unthinkable at that time, when no one thought of leaving a steady job and taking this huge risk. It paid off and he soon got his first contract and then his second; and today, he has his own business empire, and his own voice. He organizes seminars where businessmen of his community (Dalit) give advice to companies like Tata Motors. He even persuades the government to give contracting preferences to Dalits, and the private companies to create job opportunities for people of his community.

BOOTSTRAP OR GET THE BOOT

Success in entrepreneurship has a lot to do with strategic planning. The most important planning is the one related to finances. Smart financial management is one of the most important keys to success.

Bootstrap basically refers to growing a business organically with little initial investment. It is a challenging and interesting option as it forces you to think creatively and figure out a business model that works and actually generates revenues for you. Consider the story of this 17 year old boy who left Durgapur, just after his class 12 board exams, because his mother could feed him no more. Hunger drove him to Mumbai where he did any odd job he could find. He then got a job as a courier boy in a pharma company. When the drive to achieve something is high, a man can find opportunities anywhere. Sudip Dutta, the little boy, spent his evenings in the same company learning how to make the pouches that the pharma company used to pack its medicines in. It brought him Rs.15 extra. He had no money, so he worked day and night and slept in the factory itself. Two years later, the factory owner sunk under debt and decided to sell the factory. The ‘bootstrapping’ entrepreneur inside Dutta saw this as an opportunity of a lifetime and he went to negotiate with his owner. He had no money in the bank, but only his hard work to bank on. He came up with an intelligent option. He told the owners to sell the business to him and he would pay them back in installments. The deal was that he would give them all the profits he earned from the business after he had deducted the workers salaries and Rs.5,000 for himself. The owner saw it as a win-win option and agreed. Within 2 years, Sudip had made the company debt-free and today, it’s a whopping Rs.700 crore business. He named his company Ess Dee Aluminum, which are the initials of his name. Today, Dutta is the undisputed leader of the aluminum foil business. He still loves his ‘pantha bhat’ and never forgets where he came from – a quality that makes each of these ‘bootstrapping businessmen’ so successful. Not only do they retain their humility, not only do they find creative ways of doing things, but they also learn to never ever give up.

Lakshaman belonged to a family of farmers, where his father used to make money by sharing in the produce of the farmers. However, the old-fashioned farm implements made life very tough and profits very less. It used to take two months to separate the grain from the chaff using bullocks; and many a time, rain used to spoil the crops. He used to hear his father cry in the nights and it pained him. He wanted to change things, but there was no money to invest. There was no money for anything in fact. Lakshaman had weak eyesight, but could not afford to buy spectacles. That did not deter him from studying. He used to sit as close to the black board as possible. His teachers rebuked him, but nothing mattered as his will to succeed made him overcome all obstacles. One day, he and his friend chanced to see a Japanese rice-thresher machine and decided to develop a wheat thresher on the same lines. Young Lakshaman convinced his family to put in all their money into making the wheat-thresher, as it would help in quick threshing of the wheat.

 

The machine failed; The family was bankrupt. The machine found few takers. Not one to give up easily, he reworked on the machine and found that instead of ‘round cutters’ they had used ‘straight cutters’. The design was changed... and it worked. But all this also gave the young boy an idea to start a new business of ‘farm implements’. Within a few years, he was making tractors; and today, his company ‘Sonalika Group’ is worth $785 million. And this year, in 2012, Lakshaman Mittal was ranked as the 75th richest man in the Forbes’ Indian Billionaires list.

Bootstrap entrepreneurs learn to make the most of each penny, and get the returns

to the fullest. They care not for adversaries but they do have the uncanny knack of spotting an opportunity even in the most adverse of situations.

BOOTSTRAP AND CUT OUT THE CRAP

When you don’t have enough or rather when you have nothing at all, you learn to focus only on the essential and cut out the things that don’t matter. It was in 2005 that Sridhar Vembu decided to challenge software biggies like Google and Microsoft with the help of his ‘bootstrap ideas’.

In 1995, this IIT graduate went looking for venture capitalists who would fund his business plan of making a software for telecom networks. No one was interested, but he did not give up and bootstrapped his operations, and started a small company in Silicon Valley. He soon started ‘Zoho’, which is a series of web-based programs. His success point is his bootstrapping philosophy i.e. of keeping costs very low and hence being able to sell his software at very low costs. He does so by not spending much on marketing, using free technology wherever possible, and most importantly, by keeping his employee recruitment costs to a minimum. He was very clear that a software does not have to be expensive and one does not have to be an IIT or an MIT graduate to develop world class products. He decided to hire undergraduates

from local schools of his native town in Tamil Nadu. He looked beyond traditional methods of hiring and today, he does not have to waste time or money handling restless & overambitious engineers from top engineering colleges. Vembu founded the ‘Zoho University’. His students were fresh undergraduates from poor backgrounds who he handpicked after going from school to school.

Then he gave them a one year training , a laptop, free lunch and dinner, classes in English and Mathematics apart from software training, and even a stipend of Rs.6,000. He then absorbed them into Zoho and today gives them salaries comparable to the salaries of people who have joined him from IIT, et al. These brilliant students from poor backgrounds work in tandem with the IIT engineers at Zoho and create world class office and business applications; comparable to those offered by Google, Salesforce.com, Microsoft et al. He was cash strapped and that made him think differently and it is this that helped him find a way to create his own talent by starting Zoho University.

In today’s world, only those who think like these bootstrapped entrepreneurs have the highest chances of success. Think frugal, think innovative and continuously find new ways of doing business. A business based on this kind of thinking is generally a very stable business, for it can scale up or scale down whenever required. It has people at the top who know how to think differently, who know how to survive the tough times, and who never give up because they know that they can make it work, come what may. They have the ability to make the maximum use of the minimum that they have.

If you are planning to start a business, expand a business or even just planning to study business, train yourself to think the ‘bootstrap way’; for in the long run, the winners are those who have learnt to bootstrap their way to success.