Marketing for a Start-ups

A situation of a Start-up company is like that of "a little bird that wishes to fly but is too young to do so". 

The best form of marketing is the marketing that spreads. For a start-up, what can easily spread is the Word of Mouth by the product experience itself.

Ensure that your product is praise-worthy and let it slowly reach your target audience. This will soon echo back into the business in different shapes and kind.

Consumer Neuroscience-based Advertising

Advertising, from the mouth of an Art Director, has always been classified as an Art that further influences Consumer's psychology - meaning, art influencing science.

However, for researchers at Neilson, it goes the other way - Science can influence Art!

Consumer Neuroscience can now help Creative Art Directors to measure the impact of their Ads real-time by sampling on viewers. Before a 30sec TV commercial is cut down to 15sec, this science can help you measure the brand impact pre-hand before you start losing out the value of video asset and its impact.  

Read-up the article:
http://ow.ly/nyNgd

Observations: Living the Brand

Walk into RBS Gurgaon office and the first thing you realize is an air tight security. They have a huge HI-SCAN 6040aTiX airport luggage scanner outside for the handbags. The next thing you encounter head on is a  huge LCD screen playing CNBC Business and bright lights that make the office more lively. Once inside the premise you are not allowed to use your personal computer in the lobby. Internet data access on your phone is jammed. The only thing they don't have probably is human x-ray machine. All what it represents is more than just air tight security. For there customers it represents  trust, authenticity, and dependability. If this is the sort of positioning RBS wants to create and have its customers believe in a story that represent trust, the job is half done.


Experience  at Cold Stone Creamery is fun and exciting, only because its staff make it joyous and exciting with smiles, samples and songs. Visit to an Apple Store in New York City and you feel as if both innovation and "Cool Stuff" lies here. They have classroom sessions to teach you how to compose your own music using the cool apps in Apple Store. 

Marc Jacobs

Visit an Abercrombie store and you sense the sex imbibed in teen fashion. The waft of wood perfume in the air, the 15 years old wearing a denim shorts, and semi doors outside try rooms insist you feel so. Hollister infuses sex and beach brand culture by live telecast of beaches in California, Gilly Hicks parties and pictures with young models (that Hollister calls hot life guards). 

Walk into Marc Jacobs store and experience the fashion parade on a big screen with extreme fashion photos of Marc Jacobs promoting openness in fashion. A Victoria's Secret store that has an aroma full of sex, fashion and love which goes well with their consumer's Story "wearing a Victoria's Secret lingerie makes me feel sexy inside"


After all, a brand culture is about living the brand. When you (your company) adopt a brand position, you promise to adopt a culture. It's when you break that promise, people stop trusting your brand and your business then is just another business.

Why Dunkin doesn't have a Donut in its logo?

Dunkin knows its specialty. And we all know it too. The wonder breakfast Donuts. The sweet donuts is not just their specialty, but a strong differentiator as well. And if donuts is the story behind Dunkin Donuts then where are the the Donuts in its logo? Why are they hiding? 

The story dates back in 2000, when the company discovered that more than 63% of their revenue was coming from beverages and not the donuts. Also that Dunkin Donuts where ranked high in Customer Loyality than its competitors - Starbucks and McDonalds. Dunkin wanted a strategy to not only retain their specialty but also pursue their opportunity in beverages market space. And then came the beverage cup in Dunkin's logo. 

Now take a moment to think, does a shift from Speciality to Mainstream in order to capture more business, a right move for any company such as Dunkin Donuts? This is what GM did with Cadilac which stood for luxury by making it cheaper and introducing new mediocre models that delivered a cheap luxury which eventually failed Cadillac and GM. A mixed brand confuses its customers. Psychology says Luxury is not Cheap.

Jack Trout in his book "Big Brands, Big Trouble", shares a variety of examples where companies have failed in making such shifts and have never been able to bounce back. Jack advises to stick with established specialty, avoid being mediocre in the mainstream. Though, it has not been the case with Dunkin Donuts for Dunkin retained "Donuts" in its name to deliver specialty and its 

I'm not sure if the Cup in the logo must have helped Dunkin Donuts to sell more beverages, but I'm sure it has the potential to confuses its audience.

A Recession Proof Marketing Campaign

This article was originally posted in Jan 2009

 

Recession has been disruptive. Make sure your campaigns are prepared to take the pressure of market dynamics. It’s often difficult selecting right campaigns as part of your marketing strategies. The article will help you identify the right campaigns viz-a-viz the economic downturn.

1. Supply will not create it's own demand: The principal will not apply in recession. Make sure that what you market is what is the “ask” of your target audience as well as adequate for consumption. The idea should be well verified and validated with industry analysts, advisors, primary research, sales team and most importantly past experience other than the gut feeling before the launch. Market what is critical for the organization given the downturn. 

2. Strong Differentiator: The value proposition should be very well supported with a unique differentiator which will help your offering stand out of the crowd with a quick and top of the mind brand recall. Think of what differentiates a Google Chrome from a Fire Fox from a Microsoft Internet Explorer when all are simply internet explorers and what differentiates a Blackberry to an iPhone when they are primarily a phone before anything else. The base offering remains the same however the proposition is tweaked to a degree which becomes a strong differentiator in the overall proposition thus changing the whole definition of the product giving you a competitive advantage. 

3. Compare an apple with another apple: Marketing is more about Carpet Bombing your target audience- Marketing Proposition A with opportunity worth $ 5 M normally takes similar time and effort as marketing Proposition B with opportunity worth $ 50 M. At the same time, the market for Proposition A is 10 times more than Proposition B. Crux is - you should be able to compare one apple to another apple before you set your mind to run a particular campaign for given proposition. A win-win situation could be launching both the propositions if you have your pockets full of budget. 

4. Explore the areas of advantage due to recession: Every downfall comes-up with losses for many and gains for few. There are companies that have been able to draw out lot money due to recession- e.g. Warehouse Retailers or Mass Retailers like BJs Wholesale and Primark (bulk seller of cheap cloths) other grocery retailers. The message is that companies have used recession as a tool to create new market. Can your proposition also be tweaked to change downturn into a massive opportunity? Of course it’s hard to find it but if you can do this- all the points I have mentioned will be taken care of. 

5. Avoid Niche: Going to market with niche propositions when it comes to marketing in recession could be risky. Niche areas could be potential opportunities from a business perspective however niche can better be handled and offered by sales than through a marketing campaign given the current economic downturn. 

6. Tuning the right Channels: Channel selection is the most important aspect of any successful campaign as every channel will have a different touch point with customer. Ensure that the channel selection is in line with the target audience. For Example: To target Niche opportunity an effective channel could be cold calling rather than advertising online and vice versa. This also depends upon the geography you are targeting – Channel that is effective in US may not be as much effective in Europe.  Not to be ignored the sales cycle- look for channels that has smaller selling cycle e.g. Webinar usually takes 1.5 months, Podcasts and event participation gives quick leads. 

7. Less is more: The lesson is to stay focused as you launch the campaigns. What I’ve personally learnt so far is stick to as fewer campaigns with full throttle effort to achieve results from those campaigns. Launching numerous campaigns to achieve significant results leads nowhere. 

8. In line with Sales and Delivery:  It’s important that your marketing effort is in line with what sales would be interested to sell. It’s advisable to convince your sales team before a campaign launch. Situations where proposition idea is launched without sales consent, the effort eventually ends-up hitting the wall Or Shit hitting the fan. Launch only when sales is ready to sell and leverage upon your marketing effort. Also ensure the delivery is adequate to support the marketing effort. Often marketing ends up generating opportunities and eventually discover that there are no capabilities or there are shortcomings in solution. 

9. Nail the pain: Identify areas where your solution can bring immediate advantage to your customer – increasing the top line and simultaneously bringing the bottom line down by reducing cost of operations. A CXO state of mind today is to invest only in front ending areas of immediate returns with least or no cost to company rather than investing in solution that will benefit in long term.

10. No more Skin in the Game: Avoid campaigns with “Skin in the Game” unless you are 100% sure about winning the bet. The time is hard and it’s expected to become even more challenging. Avoid pitching “Freebies” to gain attractiveness through marketing campaign – this could be harmful in big engagements given the worst market situations when anything can change in fraction on time. Both customers and Outsourcing companies are at the helm of market risks where all freebies may turn into liabilities.

Why Twitter changed its Logo?

Before -> After

Bird's Dissection

Now, details of the logo aside, think for a brief moment 

- Will a changed logo really invite more subscribers and ads for Twitter?

Change in logo is a marketing gimmick for announcing "Change" and "Transformation" and thus crafting an noticeable story, which is above and beyond the details of changed logo. 

:-)

What product or service sells itself?

My answer base-lines the principle of consumer buying behaviour and then categorizes the specific product categories. Anyone can fit the products on to below matrix to decide upon which products sell itself, require push from company or can be pulled by consumer himself.

Philip Kotler demarcates the Needs, the Wants and the Demands of a consumer to illustrate the fundamental and the answer to your question also lies within it.

Needs can be categorized as the basic needs of consumer that are not influenced by marketing - needs pre-exist. This includes the physical needs of consumer based upon Maslow's hierarchy, and hence commodity items do not require any selling - e.g. Gas, Electricity and other Utilities. This is driven by price and not by marketing.

Wants are influenced from Needs and requires selling and marketing. Consumer wanting to buy an AUDI is a want but not a need. Needs grow up as Wants and require companies to sell. Amount on salesmenship however depends upon Demand.

Demand is the point where Wants of a consumer meets his Buying Capacity. Hence, a product high in Demand i.e. high want and high buying capacity of consumer, would require low Salesmenship. On the other hand, a product low in Demand i.e. low want and low buying capacity of consumer would require high Salesmenship.

Examples:

High Salesmenship: Cars, Fashion Brands, Electronics, Consulting Services, Financial Services
Low Salesmenship: Consumer Brands: Kraft Foods, Tyson Chicken, Campbell Soup etc.
No Salesmenship: Commodities: Fruits and Vegetables, Electricity, Gas

A "duck" transformed Aflac

Marketing Capsuls - Aflac

How a "duck" transformed Aflac's brad recognition and improved Market Share?

Background
The American Family Life Assurance Company (later Aflac), founded in 1955, became the first company in the world to offer insurance against cancer, it best selling product till year 2000. It expanded its offerings significantly in 1980 and by the late 1990 it sold a verity of policies from Dental Care to short term disability and adopted an acronym "AFLAC" as its official name. The company excelled at providing policies that helped pay out-of-pocket expenses not covered by someone's primary insurer which was also known as supplemental insurance. Aflac was well respected in the industry and also got listed in Fortune's 100 best companies to work for in the US in 1999. By year 2000, the company was insuring 40 million people. Regardless of multiple insurance plans under its portfolio, the company's revenues were majorly dependent upon the sale of Cancer Insurance since the company was challenged by its competitors that offered other similar insurance.

Challenge
Though profitable, Aflac suffered from poor brand recognition, majorly because of its name: Aflac. There were a number of companies that offered all services comparable to Aflac's and making Aflac's brand recognition a serious liability. Survey resulted that the company had barely 12% brand recognition. A primary reason behind low brand recognition was it current corporate customer base. Aflac issued 98% of its coverage on a payroll deduction basis and was focused on targeting its sales and marketing efforts on selling to corporate. The company had hard time drawing sales lead outside of the corporate world.

Marketing Strategy
Aflac was concerned and believed that it needed to change its image with consumers to survive in a tough industry. The company was eager to connect with the age group between 35 to 55. Trying to develop an idea for Aflac, KTG, a New York based ad agency, personnel noticed that they had trouble remembering the name of the company "Aflac". While repeating the name in an effort to memorize the name, it sounded to them like a little duck quacking "Aflac". KTG decided to attack this challenge by adopting "duck" as a character in their campaign.

The "Duck campaign" involved Gilbert Gottfried, a nasal voiced comedian, who was known for his work in films to perform duck voice. The company decided to message "Out-of-pocket" expense supplemental insurance as their key differentiator as part of the campaign. One of the ads featured two men in a steam room, with one man praising about his insurance that covered out of pocket expenses following a serious accident. Every time he forgot company's name, the Aflac duck popped-up reminded him the company name by quacking "Aflac". As the conversation continued, the Aflac Duck grew so impatient with the man eventually shouting at him. A series of such funny ads were aired through NBC,ABC and CBS with an overall campaign budget of $35M during year 2000.

Outcome
No one would have dreamt of the success the duck would have and critics were unable to connect a duck with insurance. The "Duck" campaign turned out to be a renowned success for Aflac. According to the analysts, the duck campaign scored more than double the industry average in brand recall. The brand recognition jumped to 71 % (from 12% before the campaign)and thereafter to 90% as the campaign continued. Overall sales for Aflac jumped by 28% in the second quarter and the company $168 M. For the first time, accident/disability insurance replaced cancer-expense insurance as the company's number-one product. Aflac's reputation in the industry thrived. In 2004, the Duck was named country's favorite figure besting such characters as Ronald McDonalds. Duck remained the focus of advertising for several years and would continue in days to come.

Ads Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r245vidjoh0

Learning for Marketers
1) Advertising isn't necessarily to be creative, unless it accomplish basic objective of the customer
2) Believe that your weaknesses could be turned into strength and can be capitalized upon

Accenture' "I'm your idea" Branding Campaign

Marketing Capsules - Accenture

How Accenture's "I'm your idea" marketing campaign heightened its brand image among executives?

Background Anderson Consulting, a consulting arm of Aurthor Anderson (an accounting company),was forced to change its market identity after splitting from its parent company in year 2000 which lead to its new name "Accenture". Year 2002 and 2003 experienced a thrust in marketing effort by consulting companies. Year 2002 marked its foundation with IBM's acquisition of Pricewaterhouse Cooper's consulting arm, later called IBM Global Services, which doubled its consulting size and dramatically extended its range of business expertise. EDS, following a bad year and loss of business in 2003, embarked upon marketing campaign to repair its brand image. For consulting business is largely dependent upon the health of other corporations, the first few years experienced slower growth and hence for growth, Accenture and its competitors had to steal each-others market share for sustained growth.

Challenge The re-branded company started publicizing its new name in 2001 through a high-profile global marketing campaign "Now it gets interesting", with a budget of $175 M. The spots ran during 2000 Super Bowl (an American football yearly World Cup). However, the spots advertised didn't do much to Accenture’s brand recognition and failed to achieve its objectives. Analysts categorized the spots as "least recalled" during the event. Increasing competition and lack of new business due to struggling economy didn't bring good results in favor of Accenture. Some of the ads, however, did connect with the high-profile executive audience of Accenture but it failed to bring an impact.

Marketing Strategy With economy gaining pace in 2002, Accenture re-launched a marketing campaign, this time to create an impact and resonate its ideas with executive class audience, mainly the CXO. "I'm your idea" campaign was launched with the message that Accenture had the capabilities to turn ideas into effective business practices. The goal was to make Accenture one of the companies that these executives naturally thought of when considering embarking upon a major projects requiring outside consultants. Accenture experienced a basic behavior of companies when they needed a consultant to work along with i.e. everything starts with an idea, hence the campaign "I'm your idea". The spots displayed ideas triggering in the mind of a middle aged executive and urging him to action on it. For instance, an executive was shown walking with his briefcase in a deserted area while his idea said "Listen, it's me. I'm your idea. I'm what keeps you up at night, I make you restless and maybe even restless". Streetlights and storefront mysteriously lit-up, as though the idea was employing supernatural force to win the executive's attention. The idea continued "After all, it not how many ideas you have, It's how many you make it happen." Business Magazines and business news-papers world-wide were the best way to reach high-level corporate executives. The print advertisements were posted at the airports across United States.


Outcome The campaign was appreciated in the industry and Accenture's brand recall grew from 29 percent to 34 percent. The company concluded that the number of target executives who might consider Accenture as their future partner had tripled. Accenture generated $16 B of booking revenue during the campaign, which was well above their target of $12 M. Accenture's campaign also won 2004 Euro EFFIE award in the corporate category. Looking at the success, the campaign continued till Aug 2003 and a new campaign was unveiled featuring professional-golf start Tiger Woods which lifted Accenture's brand recognition even further.

Learning for Marketers

1) Marketing campaigns must trigger a desired action in the minds of your audience
2) Brand positioning is a continuous effort. Once unsuccessful, doesn't mean you have failed. Once successful, doesn't mean you will never fail

Why do so many clothing brands have animals in their logos?

An animal illustrates characteristics a brand can relate. Interestingly, besides animal's characteristics, all these companies have a history and culture behind their brand. History of some of these brands is dissected below:

Abercrombie & Fitch: The company is about 120 yrs old and focused on a very different market segment for a very long time. The brand was famous amongst audience that liked adventures, trekking and specially hunting till late 1990s. It sold more than just apparels - Guns, holsters, fishing and excursion equipments, hence the moose as logo. It went bankrupt in 70s and was sold to a sporting company and then to "The Limited". In 1996, it completely changed its target audience and design orientation to attract teens and older teens.

Puma: In 1948, after its spun-off from Adidas, the German based company wanted to paint a picture of its strong and bold image which gave birth to Puma. It represented "Strength" as Adidas stood for sports rigor and endurance.

Polo Ralph Lauren: The company wanted to associate itself with a Sport and there Polo was associated with their brand during its inception to represent the theme. As the company wanted to broaden its market beyond their positioning and association with Sport, it just remained Ralph Lauren. The focus was on sport and never the horse.

American Eagle: The brothers (Jerry and Mark Silverman), when they founded the company in 1977 in Pittsburgh, wanted a prominent and patriotic symbol of America to be their brand name. American Eagle, as the native national bird of America became a perfect inspiration and fit for the brand name and the silhouette of eagle became their logo.

Banana Republic: The company started small as a creative fashion and travel adventure clothing company and themed on jungle and safaris. Lacking funds for store decoration, they painted walls in Zebra strips and adopted jungle theme that also gave birth to the elephant logo. Business grew quickly and Banana Republic was acquired by The GAP. The image of the company was transformed later as a luxury clothing brand. 

That said, animals and birds have unique associated and assorted characteristic as celebrities that can be aligned to support brand image.

What Lifebuoy did to become the official toilet soap of India

The idea was heavily influenced by consumers and the red hard soap product itself.

The brand was launched a 100 years back in India by Unilever during epidemics as a powerful germicidal and a disinfectant. Since it's launch, Lifebuoy maintained its positioning as a germ killer. It was the typical Indian consumer behavior, I suppose, that lead to a change Lifebuoy's strategy in marketing their product.  Lifebuoy, like all other brands in India, faced a challenge to establish a reach in rural India, where soap wasn't heavily used product. Establishing the connect reflected in product's low price and company invested in awareness campaigns. 

The red-hard soap was a success for many reasons against the competitive products that later arrived. The rugged looking affordable soap was hard and didn't dilute much in water and therefore lasted longer - which became a major plus. Old people said "Nothing gets wasted in India". People started using the skinny piece of soap, after it was being decently used for bath, as the toilet soap and was kept separately. Liquid soaps arrived late in India and no soap specialized as a hand wash soap. 

With the advent of competitive brands over years, that focused on fragrance and smoothness, the cheap hard soap was left outside the bathroom for toilet use and hand wash. This eventually became an opportunity for Lifebuoy to re-establish itself as a Hand Wash soap and leverage upon its pre-set positioning. Company has heavily advertised and invested in both liquid and solid forms - introduced fragrances and make it more creamy. 

Matrix to structure and design a greenfield (yet to be launched) product portfolio

For green field product assessment, I recommend using an improvised GE matrix to assess a portfolio of products. Rather than comparing Competitiveness against Market Attractiveness, compare Competency against Market Attractiveness of the product portfolio.

The factors that influence Market Attractiveness and Competency can be customized to your product or application environment with most of the factors for Market Attractiveness remain unchanged.

Market Attractiveness factors shall include:
1) Expected Growth Rate
2) Industry Margins (Profitability)
3) Inflation Impact
4) Global Opportunities
5) Required Investment*
6) Competition*
7) Industrial Rivalries
8) Revenue Sustainability/Repetitiveness*
9) Opportunity Size

Competency (or Preparedness) shall include:
1) Investments
2) Experience
3) Staff
4) Skills
5) Culture
6) Sharing
7) Partnerships
8) Differentiator
9) Current Revenues

With the size of circles representing the market size, allocate a weightage based on criticality of each factor to determine the next action. 

Using below matrix you may measure portfolio of both greenfield and existing products and opportunities.

What makes a good Advertisement?

There are many views about a successful advertisement that co-exist and the definitions change based on who answers this question i.e. Brand Manager, Product Manager, Art Director, Ad Campaign Executor or Account Planner.

Some say
"a Good Advertisement is the one that sells"
While others say
"a Good Advertisement is much less about convincing people to do things than it is about providing valuable information to a willing to listen audience"

Some say
"the hero in a good advertisement should always be 'Product', 
While Others say 
"in a good advertisement the product makes the 'Consumer' a hero." 

To sum it all, there is no concrete and complete definition behind what makes an advertisement successful. Another important fact about Advertising is that No one knows before hand, if the campaign will be success or failure until it is launched in the marketplace.

WHY? Because Advertising is not an outright science formula where a specified input will always give you similar output. Neither it is pure art with baseless success. It is rather a mix of both Science and Art, Human Psyche and Emotions, and Principles and Abstracts. Science establishes and art inspires. 

This mix is like the Vitruvian Man which represents both Science and Art.

At the core of a good advertisement are the principles (part of science) which are critical pillars of success. Outside are the elements that ignite emotions and lead to top of mind recall (finally sales, retention or loyalty). Where principles trigger the thought, emotions fule association and finally, sales.

Core Elements of Advertisement:
1) Authenticity: Adoption of your product is at the mercy of your consumer. And all Marketers tell a lie (a story). A consumer buys, because he believes. Is the Story you are telling about you or your product is believable? If your consumers believe in your story(lie), then your story is authentic. If your story is not believable, it doesn't matter how strong your product is.  All Marketers tell a story (lie), but the consumer decides which story he wants to believe.

Think about this - Would you believe or buy if Hummer produces a luxury car? But, you would believe or buy, if the same exact car is produced by Mercedes. Volvo stands for Safety. Mercedes stands for Luxury, Cadillac stands for affordable luxury, Jeep stands for power, Rolls Royce stands for prestige, BMW stands for sports luxury, and Honda stands for engine life and value for money.

Go Beyond: Land Rover

2) Target Audience: The advertisement should clearly illustrate the audience it wants to talk to. The clearer the audience, the deeper the impact. Advertisements with clear vision for its audience encourages engagement and relationship with consumer. If an ad doesn't have a clear focus on its audience, it is destined to fail.

Think about this - Advertising a women driving a car (in a car ad), when a male holds the spending power, may fail to deliver its message to the audience.

Pepsi commercial with focused target audience

3) Point of Difference - A great product has a unique selling point also called the point of difference. So should an Advertisement. An Advertisement must communicate and deliver that point of difference.

Outer Elements
These elements form experience and association which is an art. These elements are important for top-of-mind recall.

1) Engagement: A good advertisement tries to engage its audience and associate itself with the life of that audience (while delivering the core elements of that message).

2) Worldview: Every consumer has build his own worldview - the way of experiencing things and determining something as good or bad. A good advertisement doesn't try to change that worldview. A smart marketer tries to explore a commonly accepted worldview and fits into it. 

In this ad, its a worldview that a feet among all the organs is not so much acknowledged for success. Marketer converts it into his advantage. 

3) Memorable: They say, "great brands appeal to all 5 senses and create a memorable experience". That memorable experience is delivered through advertisement. Many ads continue to play the same magical background tune (in the ad) for years and years for recall. Others continue to use the same actors or stick to a mascot, like Ronald McDonald, Aflac Duck or Vodafone Zoo Zoos to titillate your visual senses while crafting a memorable experience and brand recall.

4) Creative: A creative ad adopts an easier way to deliver an impact-full message and stands out.

A Successful Direct Marketing

At the top, Direct Marketing as a function may sound not so Strategic (for it being direct), but for the nature of it being "Direct" in nature, it has a lot of frills and tacts in it. And it is these frills and tacts that determine a successful Direct Marketing campaign. Here is the list of such attributes that determine the success:

1) Motivated Team: Your proposition, research or demand is nothing without a highly motivated team. Willingness is key to achievements, and motivation is a culture. A motivated team has the power to generate significant number of leads out of a dull campaigns and a team without motivation can fail you regardless of  an excellent market proposition.

2) Pre-defined Audience: Often, the target audience with potential to buy or influence is discovered post the launch of campaign. Before that, it either runs on assumptions, or covers a wider audience base. Not having a defined or right audience is shooting in the dark, eventually leading to no key leads, waste of crucial time and demotivated team. Keeping a sharp focus on your audience yields a better response rate and real leads. Your audience is your real treasure, leads is secondary.

3) Proposition Differentiation: A weak proposition drags marketing to its feet. A proposition with no differentiator is not worth a campaign. A strong proposition tells a story - a story that is exciting, a story that is different, and a story that matches the worldview of its audience. A proposition without a differentiator doesn't build a moving story.

4) Sharp Message: Be it a voice call, email or collateral, a bad message turns off your audience and doesn't get you attention. Your proposition depends upon the message. It should illustrate the differentiator, communicate an authentic story, and most importantly, spread. 

5) Influencer: An influencer bridges the chasm between your proposition and your audience. An influencer brings in an aura of authenticity, confidence, and power of content to a campaign. A campaign for a technology company backed by Gartner reflects Gartner's attributes over the campaign - research, authentic and non-biased. Similarly a technology device launched by Steve Jobs, and a donation campaign backed by Bill Gates.

6) Database Quality: A lot of times when every other thing is in place, it all depends upon the availability of right database for carpet bombing the marketplace. If you wish to run a campaign on E-Commerce for mid-market retail companies, you don't want to target MD of the organization. You need the audience database of all the Ecommerce and Online Managers from retail companies with revenue within $500M - $1B.

7) Channel Strategy: One size doesn't fit all. Channel strategy depends upon the target audience type. If your audience is the CXO of a billion dollar company a Webinar will not break the ice. If your audience is the Supply Chain dept of a manufacturing company based in India, a Webinar again will fail. A Workshop works better with small group of audience based out of the same location. An event or a cold call works better to target C Level audience than a Webinar. Webinar is a great channel for Mid Level audience, because they don't have any gatekeepers (Secretary et al) in between.  

CIO Agenda for 2011: 6 Key points that will form the IT Strategy this year

World has changed post recession, so has the IT strategy. Change in consumer taste and preferences, competitor’s strategy and market expectations has impacted business strategies across the board in the organization. Closely aligned to these business strategies is the technology matrix. CIOs have finalized IT strategy and agenda for the year 2011. Based on my reading of the market, below are the 6 noteworthy points that will form CIO’s strategy this year.

1) Execution – Budget has finally stated following and many companies embarked on a roadmap for improvement was defined last year. Projects halted due to cost pressure regained funds. Three to five year strategies were defined and laid out and careful investment plans were rolled out. This year is the year of execution where the organization needs to make sure that project delivery happen in time. IT companies will observe demand for Project Management and governance roles this year.

2) Strategic Partnership – With strategic plan comes the need for a long term strategic partner. Leading companies do have prime partners to support, however maturing companies are still seeking out for partners. IT partner will bring focus, experience, best practices, methodology, excellence and capacity to accomplish and execute long as well as short term plans.

3) Breaking down investments – During tough times, CIOs faced a massive challenge breaking down fixed investments done most importantly on Hardware side. There will be a move to make fixed investments elastic to enable demand based payment and utilization. SaaS (Software as a Service), Cloud computing and such pay as you use models will gain investments. Gartner expects this year to be a unique time for IT as CIO strategies focus on new architectures and the potential of these lighter-weight technologies.

4) Lean Processes - Drive to make lean processes will continue. Recession realized CIOs that there has been a lot of room to squeeze out capital by optimizing processes. IT will be excessively leveraged to drive lean processes. BPM (Business Process Management) tools will help CIOs better align IT with business processes and subsequently consolidate IT systems.

5) Competitive Advantage – Over the next five years, CIOs expect dramatic changes in IT as they adopt new technologies and raise their contribution to competitive advantage. Solutions with that will provide competitive advantage and high on impact will gain priority over ongoing transactional development. Use of mobility solutions to improve sales or delivery productivity can be termed as an example under competitive advantage solution. Due to the vary nature of it, such solutions will get immediate sign-off from business and finance units. It becomes important to keep a tab on Gartner’s hype cycle to differentiate the noise from productive solutions.

6) Skill Change – Leaders will implement new infrastructure technologies to achieve both increased efficiency and to redirect IT resources to create greater business impact. Significant role change in IT organizations is expected as analysts foresee big change in technology and architecture in coming years. This would make CIOs think about existing IT skill base and change management within the organization in anticipation of the changes that might take place in next few years.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120109154834AAhccxY

Different Day

Monday, November the 29th. I'm off to home from office realizing that today is a very different day and thinking whats making it different. Am I excited?; not sure. Am I anxious; not really. Is my boss happy with me?; not today at least. Is it the rain that's falling on my shoulders?, that's normal. Because it's a Monday?; may be.

Often, I start playing this game with my other self and reach home without noticing what's happening around. Not sure who guided me the way to home, it wasn't the GPS of my brain at least.

While stepping over the threshold, another question popped-up

Liberty?; Yeah! I forgot my lunch-box in the office.

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Celebrations are short

November the 28th, it's mom-dad's marriage anniversary, special ants birthday, her secretly adopted daughter's birthday, and........ I'm still thinking who's left. One forgetfulness and adding to that the time difference between two latitudes of this earth (India and US) has made it complex for me to realize the importance of the occasions. Every event back home (in India) gives me a small window of 4 hours of day time in Chicago to celebrate when the day overlaps. Celebrating every event the day after event, is not normal at least to me . I wish to be close.

Memory is short and such is the celebration now.

Human or God?

Here it is - My nose is flowing again - like the Des Plaines river and along with the river. November the 24th, 32 F (0 C), wind is blowing South East, and I'm on my way to office riding on Bus No. 11 crossing the River Road. The misty wind is freezing my ears and reminding me that it's going to snow tomorrow. Less traffic on road this morning as we approach the Thanks Giving holidays.

Nature is taking it's toll on trees outside sparing only the dark brown wood but the flower shop lady is still selling all colors - fresh, bright and watered. Sometimes make me think, if it is human who has overpowered God will or is that something God wanted anyways. It is going to rain today, has human made an arrangement for Chicago?

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Time Machine within "Myself"
I'm sitting on a dirty couch watching "New Jersey Drive". The movie has taken a young black boy, who just landed in prison, to a flashback to about 7 months.
SEVEN MONTHS....?
Isn't that exactly when I got on to the air plane? I look back and see family, relatives, friends and 300 people were there to bid me good-bye on Terminal No. 3 at IG Airport, New Delhi. Not sure if they all came for me on that night.

Parting songs in back of my head, mixed feeling in my heart and night was adding it's own emotion to feeling. We had driven 113kms from Rohtak to New Delhi, IG Airport that night. We had a XYLO packed with relatives, luggage and limited oxygen in it. I was sitting right on top of the gear shift.

Few relatives were told to stay back after observing distress on our driver's face. After all, it was a new Xylo. Luggage was weighted 23 times to check space for more Haldiram's readymade food packs Didi bought for me. Each item put in bag was scrutinized 4 times by a team of 7 people, lead by my father, from different dimensions including usability, availability and ofcourse weight. I wanted to make sure my RayBans, Casio watch and hard drive is taken care. Probably, these were the only 3-4 items, I could recall, I bought for myself since 4.5 years of sweat and rust. Not that I was going on a war, my mum pacified herself that I'll be back. Dad took me to his workplace that morning. After 2 Years, I was going to see the workplace neighborhood and familiar faces growing old. Satyawan, the famous welder in our market and our closest neighbourer walked-up to give his wishes. I couldn't have imagined that within 2 years, his face wrinkles would get deep and his head will not have a sift of black hair on it. I turned my neck to my dad, my heart filled and my face turned red. I got anxious imagining mum and dad in next 2 years.

Is going to Chicago really worth it? When will I come back? My mind took a swinging like a pendulum every second. 50 things crossed my mind in half a minute - John Denver's leaving on a Jet plane, Bob Dylan's Rolling Stone and Jamaican Farewell from Harry Belafonte.

"15 minutes can save you 15% or more" GIECO's advertisement brought me back to date. I've missed the first part of the movie already. Still oscillating between my present and past, haven’t I built-up a "Time Matchine" within myself?


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