Full Circle

Caught the new Tide detergent ad on television the other day and was reminded of 'Lalitaji' trying to do the same story for Surf many years ago. That time it was Unilever doing it to Nirma. However the tables seem to have turned this time against Unilever.

Why are we such sloppy service providers?

I was expecting delivery of my credit card through a reputed courier company. The Bank had sent me a text message with the consignment number and so I decided to call the company to enquire the status. I located the Delhi office details from the company website and I was ready to go.

I called first on the number mentioned on their website (Delhi) 30936666 on May 4^th in the morning. Five tries no reply. On the second number 39444444, a lady received the call and mentioned that due to late arrival of the consignment, delivery will be made only on May 6^th between 10.00 am and 6.00 pm. I explained to her, since this is my home address, I had to stay back specially for the consignment. She noted my number and address and confirmed that someone will call me before delivering the consignment.

May 6^th, 2.11 p.m. no call from anyone from. Called back their office – same result, no response. After about twenty tries got a response from another lady that she does not have a tracking system (30936666) and that I should call Customer Service at 45351515. Customer service says this a credit card and they do not deal with it and I should call 9310502361. This number is constantly busy and automatically disconnects.

After umpteen number of tries, a lady answered and said she can get me the details in half an hour after checking with her branch. Two hours later no call. So again I called back and without even a hint of an apology she blatantly said it will be done sometime today. On asking to be connected to her supervisor she put me on hold for ten minutes and came back to say her boss has stepped out of his cabin and will be back after ten minutes and call me back. When I asked for his mobile number, I am told the number I have been calling in fact is her boss’s number.

Meanwhile I shot off an email venting my frustration to both the Delhi office email id as well as the corporate office. Both the ids were taken from the company website. To add insult to injury, both the emails bounced back! Dud ids on a corporate website!!!

The parcel was delivered to me at 4.20 p.m. As I write, it is 8.30 p.m. and the manager’s ten minutes is not over. I hope the company – First Flight Couriers – has more time on their hand to survive in this competitive environment.

Green is the new gold! The ongoing (and rightly so) concern over environmental degradation provides a new opportunity for innovation in product development as well as marketing. It offers a unique opportunity to position your products and not only win market shares, but also to distinguish the brand as some 'who cares' for you and thge world at large.

Earlier reserach in similar areas indicate consumer's preferance fro organizations and brands that exhibit and aggressively persue larger interests. So the time to do something is NOW! For your brand, for your organization and for the world environment.

Shine on you Michael Jackson

I can never truly claim that I liked Michael Jackson’s music. But as an entertainer, there are a few who could match him.

But there is another dimension of MJ that I admire – that of a marketer and brand builder. Having started his singing career at an early age of four, he used all the media opportunities that he got (including the Ed Sullivan Show), to the hilt in building brand MJ. When the ‘Jackson Brother’ tag started to limit his musical style and repertoire, he went solo. His own extraordinary success and the less than average performance of the other siblings just go to prove how right he was to break the association.

The reported £ 7 million he charged Pepsi in 1984 for a series of commercials endorsing Pepsi, and the freak fire accident during the shoot, did much more to boost Pepsi’s sales than any other brand endorser could possibly achieve.

I personally feel he was a much better dancer than a singer (apologies to the fans of MJ’s music) and he used this to further brand MJ. He kept up with the times and his style of entertainment found a ready audience amongst the new MTV generation. The emergence of new media was a huge opportunity that Michael Jackson did not miss.

High visibility, global audience, unique characteristics (the ‘moon walk’ his wardrobe, unique hair style), awe (Neverland) are all classic brand building strategies that marketers world wide adopt and often struggle to implement. Michael Jackson seems to have mastered the art real early and what apparently looked to us, with absolute ease.

Brand MJ has had its share of bumps on the road. But the brand never got derailed. It came out almost unscathed all the time. The power of brand MJ was so strong that the industry believed that the concert in London, would not only wipe of Michael’s debt of $500 million, but it would kick start his career once again (beginning another S-curve?).

The person is dead. But brand MJ lives on. Already books are surfacing on the internet chronicling his life and incidents that led to his ultimate end. Be sure that brand MJ is not dead and will be around for a long long time in the future.

A New Begining

When I decided to go on a sabbatical three years back, I was little prepared for the changes that were in store for me both in the personal and professional fronts.

Personally, I have spent more quality time in the three years with my wife and child than I have done in the nineteen years of married life prior to 2006. Health wise, my doctors are more satisfied that they have ever been before.

Professionally, I was invited to consult for one of the largest FMCG companies in the world. The project duration stretched to eighteen months from the initial ninety days. And work kept coming courtesy all my good friends who pitched to make my transition from a corporate employee to an entrepreneur a successful one. I also got involved in business education. My rationale : 1) it was time to give back to society who had contribute so much in my life and 2) to learn how the young and future customers think and understand their behavior from a marketing perspective.

In the last three years I have probably learnt more than I have taught. My young friends have taught me that they have a much shorter attention span today since they have more to choose from and so much is on offer. So as I marketer, I need to constantly be relevant to them in order to get and hold their attention.

I have also been taught by them that they are not ‘wasting their time’ when they spend time at Facebook and Orkut. It is their ‘hangout space’ and that is how they communicate with their community. So I have my own Facebook account now. And in the last three months or so I have had more communications from my young friends than I have had in the last three years put together.

And once again, it is because of their suggestion that I have started writing this blog. I intend to learn more from them as I provide them this platform to share their experiences as they start making meaningful differences in the organizations that they work for.