This is one of those moments in life which you've been waiting for since a long long time. After being a hard-core fan of Linkin Park for about 5 years, I finally got to see them… Live! I wouldn't attempt to write about how I felt and what was I feeling. But all I can say is after waiting in the line for about 4 hours, when they came on stage, sang 21 songs back to back, they blew my wits out for those 1.5 hours. You guys are awesome.!
Information is a word that really has been a major driver towards creating history as we know it. Because of precise information, people have won wars, events, scaled ahead in life. Basically if you look at it your entire life revolves around information. You need to know things. Think back for a moment and you'll realize that there must have been a gazillion times that you might have told yourself, "I wish I knew this"! And it's true for everyone. People who possess real information have the power to rule the world. Take a very brash example at this statement. The US government is currently offering US$ 25 million for information leading directly to the conviction of Osama Bin Laden. People have been killed and people would kill for information that is sensitive.
And in this world where information can fetch such a high price, there's an entire movement that doesn't charge a penny for the information it provides, which yes might not be as sensitive as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden, but surely enough to give competition to the regular books and magazines. I'm talking about the contributors to the wealth of collaborative knowledge.
Wikis, Blogs, Stumblers, Diggs are the new 'information service providers' at virtually no cost at all…!
Wikis – Perhaps the ultimate example of collaborative knowledge. Wikis are places where users can easily create, edit and link web-pages. These web pages are constantly fed information from various users that have the rights to edit the information available on the wiki sites. Wikipedia is the most popular wiki on earth. Just imagine, this website provides a person information which is updated, which is far more exhaustive than a Britannica Encyclopedia and is provided for free while a single set of an encyclopedia costs around $3,000…! A 300 year old brand, revered throughout the globe for its exhaustive information, ransacked and screwed royally by a start-up which is less than 10 years old. This is the power of collaborative knowledge.
And if someone thought that Wikipedia is the only wiki on the net, you're so mistaken! Private companies are now using the wiki platform for knowledge sharing within the organization!
Blogs – Another source of collaborative knowledge. This might not be on a single source site. People usually blog and post information on their own sites. But the fun starts when you start 'tagging' other blogs and add information, or comment on blogs written by others. When you 'tag' others, when you comment on other's blogs, when other blogs add a link to your blog saying that 'I read these blogs' what is happening is that you're creating virtual communities, or better still there are online columnists that are being created which debate, reason upon issues and topics. There's tremendous amount of knowledge that's being shared online which everyone can access for free! The 'editor's page' of Times of India has now a new enemy… Blogs!
Stumblers – There are like a gazillion websites on the internet, some which are full of information useful to us, and some which are just plain fun to visit. And sadly we don't know a lot of the ones that may really matter to us. Again, collaborative knowledge comes to the rescue. When half a million people come together to give you the best of the web content on the internet, you're bound to get some exotic web pages that you might have never heard of, and that's what StumbleUpon really does. It gives the user the right to tag websites under various headers (like philosophy, art, business etc.) and creates a repository of the same. Now all you have to do is install a small toolbar in your browser and you start getting the best of the websites tagged by users like you. This is something even Google can't beat. Again, power of collaborative knowledge.
There are innumerable examples like these that only prove, that two heads are better than one!
This is perhaps one of the lousiest cases in branding that I've come across. There was this aged prof who came to talk about marketing plans. The fellow seems to have worked with a lot of Pharma companies and consumer durables of which one is Videocon. Interestingly he seemed to brag about this example while I found it a complete nut-case. In fact its an eye opener to the fact that using brand ambassadors is perhaps the easiest route to supposedly 'enhancing' a brand's image, but does that really work well is a matter of question.
Anyways, the case was about the why's and how's of Videocon roping in Shah Rukh Khan as a brand ambassador for itself. According to the professor, Videocon was perceived to be as a 'middle-class' brand and was looking at upgrading its image to an 'upper middle-class' brand. And the best way to deal with this situation was to rope in Shah Rukh Khan!
There weren't many drastic changes in the product line, there wasn't a change much in the pricing patterns either. Just plug in a celebrity and you're done! How sick can you get?!
Also a brand ambassador works on the rationale that there's some connect between the brand and the endorser. Here there's none! Also the rationale for taking SRK is a funny one. Videocon wanted to project itself as a 'truly multinational' brand or something. Bottom-line it wanted to project itself as a multinational, and to prove that it took SRK. Why SRK? That has an interesting answer.
Now according to the professor, SRK is very popular amongst Indians outside India (repeat… 'Indians' outside India). Thus, if the company wanted to project itself as a multinational SRK was the best choice.
Hmmm. One question… no… make that two… Do 'Indians', or for that matter anyone outside India buy Videocon? Nope.
And do Indians in India really care about the fact that SRK is famous globally as well? Nope.
Then where's the connect? Indians in India don't care a damn about what SRK means to the foreign world and the foreign people don't care a damn about what Videocon is selling to the Indians.
Then why SRK? Or an even more fundamental question, why project to be a multinational?
The answer is simple. This is the easier way out.
P.S. In reality Videocon is much larger than what its image really is. It is the world's 3rd largest picture tube manufacturer, and has a huge stake in Oil and Gas exploration with one of the lowest operating costs in the Oil and Gas exploration field. And SRK just doesn't do the job really well.
A few posts back I had written about how value is eroded at all levels in the agriculture industry for the simple reason that nobody's aware how much crop production's gonna happen in the country in any given season. The value chain of ITC e-choupal occurs after the crop is harvested and sold in the market. But the point still remains who will tell how much production has actually happened in the country? Be it for a particular crop or for all the crops taken together, no one has the faintest idea about this. An interesting thing that CII does is that it holds national level conferences and calls all big traders in the agricultural business and asks their expert opinion about the crop production. Though it might seem cocky but it works to an extent.
HLL however, goes through a completely different channel. It does its own crop forecasting. Basically, HLL's many FMCG products especially soap are also dependent upon agriculture. For the simple reason that soap manufacturing requires oil, and oil comes from oil seeds. About 40% of the revenue of soaps is spent in buying oil and oil seeds. So when HLL spends 40% of its revenue on a single line of agricultural produce, one can imagine that it's no small deal. Also, crop forecasting gives HLL better insights into what should be its purchasing pattern, when should it buy, when would the stock arrive, how much would it be necessary to stock, will there be a shortage or excess supply of oil seeds etc etc.
So during harvest time, a team of HLL's investigators go around the country in a car, talking to the farmers who's got farms along the roadside, and take first hand info about the crops in that vicinity. They stop by every 5-10 miles and ask the farmer which crop is he growing and what his expected output per hectare is.
In fact the entire crop forecasting by HLL happens in 3 phases. Phase one occurs in July, during the start of the sowing season. The main objective is to gain an idea about the type of crops being grown in the region. Phase two happens in September during the middle of the crop season to ascertain how the crop is growing and also to know about the adequacy of rainfall and the effects of insects/pests if any. And finally when the harvesting has just started, the Phase three of investigation happens and that's when HLL can forecast with enough clarity the total crop production in the country.
The entire process takes about 65 man days to complete one round of investigation, and usually 4-5 investigators are given a route to survey which makes it possible to complete one entire round within a fortnight.
This is how India's largest FMCG manufacturer is ahead of the game, from the very start!
This is one story that I heard, and which perhaps summarizes how one is supposed to build a brand. It's not just about the product, but everything around it as well. Alright, here's the story…
Once upon a time, there was this primary school teacher, who used to teach a batch of students. Out of those students there was one kid, whose irreverence was quite rampant. The fellow never listened to what the teacher said in class. He was intelligent, didn't make a ruckus in class, but he never wanted to listen to the teacher as well. She never beat him for the reason that the kid wasn't a commotion maker. He was just indifferent. One day, it so happened that the teacher had to leave the town for good since her husband got a transfer. So, as a farewell, she organized a small party at her place, and invited all the students at her party. All but that kid turned up at the party. She was pretty sad on not seeing that kid for the last time. Sure, he wasn't one of the better ones in the class, but she didn't want to leave the relationship on such a sad note.
Just when she was thinking about this, she saw a faint image of a bicycle, and a small boy peddling like crazy approaching towards her. It was that kid. The fellow jumped from the cycle, ran towards her, and while he was still panting, he took out something from his pocket and gave it to the teacher. It was a sea-shell.
The teacher knew that such kind of sea-shells were only available at a sea-shore which was pretty far away from where they lived. She was touched after knowing the trouble the kid had gone through to get her the gift. A little overwhelmed by the kid's gesture she asked, "you got this for me?"
The kid snapped back… "trip also part of gift…"
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