THE NEW ERA

< alt="THE NEW ERA" border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5t1PIvq0qNXyp6s3RaDUgTto7FRVVqi8tDdw9QcoulI9VMsiAfZzpmoCqg82qMRti2-wKarPzA0WzxwGLGUbW2Ejc3JaNRgiPPGRtJde_ZllTIGz8gTCGYFR1kFJC7xtMegpluxKwbdS1/s640/rc-blog_2-copy.gif" title="THE NEW ERA" width="640" />

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.

RESPOND QUICK... OR PERISH!

< alt="RESPOND QUICK... OR PERISH!" border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik9fMq-Cg5bYZR-Rwf7q0bFwvnOKgvSLoaibVPOjBMO6OCOXLU5bDusZjRNsiLPDF22qoYDXU29XAupua054gUtCS7j2bvfUcGZmkV5EOBGafjsPXygv4kPP2mncgBIGJHKFrxNwcjmt3K/s640/rc+blog+copy.jpg" title="RESPOND QUICK... OR PERISH!" width="640" />

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 super fast advancements in technology and the growth of the internet have changed the marketing landscape totally. Its impact was seen the most in the Presidential campaigns of Obama and Romney. This time, Obama’s campaign strategies were totally different from the ones he used in 2008. Yes, he once again used social media, but he used it more scientifically. This time, he had a huge team of ‘boffins’ (data analysts) headed by a new ‘Chief Scientist’ Rayid Ghani, whose job was to scientifically analyze all the data and use it to plan Obama’s various marketing strategies. For example, the team found out that in 2008, it had used the “Sign up now” button to gather followers on Facebook; but changing it to “Learn more” was far more effective in getting people to register in 2012. Each plan was tested, retested, analyzed and then implemented. A huge team of data analysts holed up in what was nicknamed ‘The Cave’ sat day in and day out crunching numbers and planning each move. That was the secret to Obama’s success.

The social media landscape is, after all, more cluttered and much different now than it was four years ago; so this time, it needed to be handled differently too. Obama showed us the most effective way of handling it.

RESPOND TO THE CONSUMER

The consumer talks to you in many different ways, and the most successful marketer is one who listens most intently. Today, most marketers do listen to their consumers, but the ones who can respond the fastest will win in the future. This is the new rule of the game. This is also called ‘adaptive marketing’, and both Obama and Romney showed the corporate world how to adapt real fast.

Every aspect of your marketing campaign has to learn to ‘adapt’. Nothing can be static, not even ad campaigns. If Romney got a reaction from the audience for a particular point during his speech, that point was turned into a small online video ad spot soon enough. If an online ad got a positive response from the viewers, it was soon made into a newspaper ad. Gone are the days when past experience, intuition and creativity decided your advertising strategies and media buying plans. With so much clutter in the market place, you need to have the ability to gather all possible data about your consumer, analyze it and use it to plan your move; and most importantly, change your move according to the changes in the preferences of your consumer. Obama’s team sitting in ‘The Cave’ used to process the data and run it through 66,000 computer simulations every night to figure out Obama’s chances of winning in the swing states. The next morning, the results were used to help him plan his next move, in fact his every move. Like for example, a study of old data collected for Obama’s campaign revealed that in the West Coast, George Clooney was the man who attracted the women in the age group of 40-49 the most. That was also the group that was rich and most able to donate. So a promotional event ‘Chance to dine in Hollywood with Clooney’ was created. In the East Coast, it was Sarah Jessica Parker who would work, so the next Dinner with Barack contest was born: a chance to eat at Parker’s West Village brownstone!

Media, too, was bought on the basis of data analysis. TV ads were planned according to the potential voters’ ‘browser history’. When you surf the internet, you leave a history and data miners are using this to know you better, figure out which TV programmes you are most likely to watch and put their ads there. So this time, Obama’s political ads were not only aired on news channels (as has been the case with political ads all these years); rather, you saw him on Discovery Channel on programmes like “The Walking Dead’, et al. Barack was there where his voters were (there were no Romney ads here incidentally!).

Campaigns of the future will be planned keeping in mind the likes of the consumers. Amazon does it. It knows the books that you have bought or browsed through and it sends you suggestions on what is new and of interest to you. KLM Airlines now offers a unique feature wherein travelers can decide who they want to sit next to by linking their Facebook profiles to your flight.

With technology advancing so much thanks to the mobiles, the tablets and the smart TVs, it’s become easy to know your customers. In fact, a recent study in UK revealed that 75% of consumers who had a relationship with the company were happy to share their personal information with it, for it made their lives easier. Everyday, he is daunted with zillions of options. If someone could pick out a few that suited him the best, the consumer would appreciate it.

Soon, we would be in an era of ‘IP-addressable TV sets’, and advertisers would be showing us ads of only those products that we are interested in (after analyzing our browser history!)! As our interests would change, so would the ads we see! Soon, campaign planners would know us better than us!!

So the brand, which can get the maximum data about its consumers and analyze it best, would be the most successful brand in the future. The brand, which responds the fastest to consumer opinions, is the one that is most likely to succeed.

Respond to consumers yet again

Apart from understanding your consumers’ likes and dislikes and responding to them by customizing your marketing strategies, brands have to also find more and more ways to engage with their customers and talk to them first hand. The growth of social networking sites has made this most imperative. When these sites started, they gave marketers an opportunity to connect to their consumers (through Twitter, Facebook et al). Today, many brands are connecting with their buyers through these sites, but very few are engaging them. Even fewer are listening to them and responding back. Walmart is one such company, which maintains a keen vigilance on the social networking websites. Once a consumer tweeted, “Sold Out@Target we want more @Boss_Starz Season1DVDs”. Walmart replied to the disgruntled customer, “Hi Nicole-@Boss_Starz fans can pick up Season One online here: bit.ly/MJ9F6c or at their local Walmart.” The consumer had a problem with the department store Target and Walmart saw this as an opportunity to win some brownie points and simultaneously get the competitor’s consumer to visit its store.

This year, Coca-Cola became the first retail brand to pass the 50 million mark in terms of Facebook fans. Coke has been working quietly towards increasing its presence on social networking sites; for it believes in the simple rule that its Senior Vice President, Integrated Marketing, stated, “Fans are twice as likely to consume and 10 times more likely to purchase than non-fans.” Coke considers these social networking sites as ‘social telephones’, and they seldom let them go unanswered, which is why their ‘customer service strategy’ has changed. Today, Coke has increased the number of employees in its ‘Twitter Response Team’ and reduced the team strength of its ‘tele-calling team’. Coke has recently launched a new white packaging for its product and it’s using this to engage its vast community on Facebook. It’s asking them to send in ideas on how to save the Arctic and polar bears. These companies have mastered the art of responding to consumers and interacting with potential consumers in a way so that their loyalty towards their brand increases.

A research done by Maritz Research Company revealed that a whole lot of companies are active on Twitter, giving information about their products, new launches and new services; but very few ‘respond’ to their customers. The research also brought out an interesting fact that 49% of those surveyed said that they expected the company to read their tweets and respond to them. The older the respondent was, the more they expected the company to respond to them. Out of those who did receive a response from the company, around 83% said they loved it. So if you are not responding, you might be losing out your customers to competitors.

Wars were fought in the battlefields decades ago, and then they were fought in retail outlets. However, in future, wars will be fought in the virtual world. The one who masters the art of interacting with his customers and of engaging his customers in a dialogue is the one who will win.

In a nutshell, marketing today is not just about the 4Ps – Price, Product, Place & Promotion – rather, it’s about the new 4Ps with the customer in focus.

Permission – to talk to you (customer)

Perception – understanding what you want.

Proximity – designing strategies and customizing them to suit you.

Participation – involving you in as many ways as possible.

You will now have to keep these 4Ps in mind while formulating your marketing strategies. The social media is changing us, our lives and our marketing theories too. Move with the times and the times demand that you connect well with your customer and most importantly, respond quickly… or else perish!

BOOTSTRAP YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS!

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

< alt="BOOTSTRAP YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS!" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXuetc5w_8MEiptreFCtallyeRXkwPQYnMzu74XkJNzYOfv5abS8gjEsWFysebg3CUKBHkiXzbY2gk4J4v9BWPYjfaMFUA07cxhEFLe0ApR8XoX65-wuLZifTwxqVMpMS62_zy7Cq-lae1/s1600/BOOTSTRAP-YOUR-WAY-TO-SUCCESS%2521.jpg" title="BOOTSTRAP YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS!" />

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.

< alt="Rajita Chaudhuri" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQtL6ZQQQL1iDVs9bKitPUSij6r1hX2cz9dR6NE3tnfWx-pNkprjYLPWOu2cI3rALRJx-84WRSQsRufrYjHa8bo7SFwe7ev0R9HPSfB-QfW2pX1AH_uB6k_TH3Ia43l5rNUh0uqn8hte7l/s400/Rajita-Chaudhuri.jpg" title="Rajita Chaudhuri" width="206" />

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.

 

< border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0fR7bLlG0sZRYNusDuNZZwcpqF_Jq3qqaIsE1v-ua4e_80wXvv2ntMl8g8o16o47UldMnUCwv29at8R1-YnyuzXtbfyBoAq77chLz1tLGnuFkVJ036fwS1L8YUAZhbilYVVllA069IpId/s400/Bootstrap.jpg" width="400" />

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.