JWT, Ford Figo, Bobby Pawar and the silence of CII

Well, we all know the fiasco. So let me get to the point. What has happened in JWT ( Bobby Pawar exiting along with its creative team), is not something new. It keeps happening all the time in other industries albeit never getting into the 1st page of Economic Times.

The Management culture has become so fragile that it simply cannot stand the test of values and corporate governance. I am all the more surprised that corporate bigwigs who raise an eyebrow at the slightest slip of the Govt, are today silent, perhaps sending a message that all are in the same boat.

It is impossible to believe that Ford did not know anything about the ad (it seems they were not even supposed to see it !!). $2 billion is the annual advertising budget of Ford and without doubt the entire Management team at both JWT and Ford would be involved in the creative process.CII is quiet, as is ASCI. The people who took the real hit were the team of Bobby Pawar for believing in the creative process which the advertising industry so beautifully flaunts.  

The Pope Francis Tweets. A leaf for Indian Babas?

I say why not? The transition to Twitter appears so natural. After all it is so well stated in Hindu scriptures..."Kaalaya Tasmainnamaha..". Go according to the times. Tools like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest only add arsenals to the communication channel for these traditional institutions. However, no institution can afford to stay aloof or they run the risk of getting irrelevant. Youth is not just a sweet target market for the big corporations but also for these Pontiffs, Mullahs, Swamies, Babas and Gurus. 

But social media is a two-way channel. As much as it can be used to communicate your thoughts, it has the ability to shape your own thought in the process and prove to be a pain for those intending it to use it like a newspaper. Many of the Indian Babas ( recently Asaram Bapu and Baba Ramdev) have already experienced this without even their own conscious knowledge. Their comments have been appreciated as well as dissected for sharp criticism. 

At a totally different level, the social media is a channel that has the potential to transform these traditional institutions from being closed systems to interactive systems, ready to assimilate new things and embrace opportunities for change. The Vatican has taken the first step towards it. Can our Babas afford to stay behind?

Marketing the NGO: How to add the Trust factor to organized philanthropy

A few months back, I ended up giving a small donation to an NGO, which went into the critical care of a child admitted in a local hospital in Bangalore. The NGO had brought detailed documents about the child and credentials from the hospital to establish a sense of confidence and trust when I donated the money. 

Of late, however, I have seen far too many NGOs not taking this critical initiative to establish that trust factor with the customer. They will call from some obscure number from Delhi or some other place. They will have a shoddy looking website with messages that aim more at emotionalizing you than establishing trust or confidence. Above all, there is no mechanism for a donor to cross verify the credentials of the organization from a trust worthy third party.

Governments can play a major role in this. Every NGO which is working towards raising funds for such causes should have a unique number verifiable from a website owned by the Government. Every quarter the financial statements of such organizations should be made available at this website for donors and public to see and verify. 

No brand can survive without Trust and it holds true of even Non Government Organizations as much as corporate brands. Organized philanthropy is still in its nascent stage. A timely Government intervention will pave a way for a great philanthropic nation.    

 

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Testimonial Marketing: B2C borrows a leaf from B2B Marketing

In the world of Marketing, B2C is like the King of all. Always preaching everyone about all the tricks up its sleeves. Even recruitment of marketing professionals is heavily influenced by FMCG and other B2C segments.

But of late, even the B2C has begun to take a leaf or two from the B2B marketing book. The latest advertisements of Cars where real owners endorse the car are a testimonial to this. But testimonials have been a long relied-upon tool of marketing in the B2B space. Here only the truth sells and fantasy has almost no place. The biggest of such exercises was seen by Maggi Noodles which got its brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan to spend time with real customers and even got their photos printed on their packs.  

Frugal marketing is very popular in B2B and testimonial marketing in B2C is a pointer to the type of marketing practices now being followed by giants. Celebrities are costly and they may not add value if you go wrong with the matching of your brand personality and that of the brand ambassador. But in the case of testimonials, you cannot go wrong with the match, since they are the real customers. Of course, as usual, the story telling and other fundamentals of ad making still hold good.

Google Cloud Marketing: Tackling a Psychological barrier to Cloud Computing Adoption

All the barriers to cloud computing are not merely technology related. Google's video here takes you to a bit of human history and addresses CIOs and CTOs on how human evolution is based on giving up control to get greater control. Watch this video to see how Google does this beautifully using human history and right analogies to drive home the point. Also a great stuff for education institutions on how they can start collaborating from within. I hope the Indian universities are taking note of this.

Review sites and Online Reputation Management: The new SEO Marriage?

No matter what Google does to discourage bad use of Internet, the SEO professionals find a way to circumvent it. After Google Panda and Penguin updates, one was assuming a cleaner and healthier use of the Net. However, the changed algorithm somehow now gives such a heavy weightage to consumer review sites that, many companies are using it as a bait to improve their online reputation.

Sites like mouthshut.com, consumercomplaints.in, complaintsboard.com are now being misused by SEO spammers to improve the online reputation of their clients. Many companies have been able to successfully push the negative remarks about their brands to the 2nd and 3rd pages of Google. They pose like a real customer of the brand and start posting positive comments about the brand, some time in such length and detail that it becomes apparent that it is too good to be true.

This raises a bigger question: have the consumer and product review sites fallen prey to the over enthusiastic SEO professionals? If so, how will they continue to maintain their position in the market as a neutral platform to raise genuine consumer enquiries?

Marketing India to INDIANS: Why FDI is over rated?

Much has been said about bringing FDI to India. Every other rating agency, the economists and advocates of reform keep talking about it. It is as if FDI is synonymous with Reform. There are pitches ( sales pitches!) done to foreign investors and Govt. spends big money organizing investors meet to get FDI flowing in the country. 

However, I hardly hear the same buzz about getting Indians to invest in India. Alright, you may say, where else would the Indians invest, right? Unlike foreign investors, very few Indians have options to invest abroad. Except the top operators like Tatas, Reliance, others hardly invest abroad. But that's not the point. What about millions of Indians who are eager to invest but do not know the way to evaluate opportunities or are afraid of red tapism and the investment climate in general. If we tap into this part of the population, we can easily deal with investment and jobs problem at once.     

That brings us to the idea of "marketing India to Indians". I am not against FDI. However, what we promote ( like the http://www.investindia.gov.in/ ) to foreign investors about investing in India and creates confidence, why can't we do it for Indians as well? There is an urgent need for the Government to create that confidence among the many sleeping tigers of India who have the money and willingness but are neither aware of the opportunities or are afraid of the complexities of getting started.

The Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and his junior counterpart Jyotiraditya Scindia should travel and hold conferences across India making a sales pitch to new investors showing them new opportunities and giving them the means and ways of accomplishing their dreams. This should be complemented with efforts from the States. That would surely take care of the black money also to a certain extent. If we are confident enough to invest in India, then surely the foreigners would be so. Then all the so-called reformists can stop talking about FDI as a single point panacea for investments.