Intuitive Data or something like it...

Market Research has always been condemned for being a field of Marketing that has dissuaded the marketing managers from making a proper decision. Even while in my MBA the fellow who came to teach us Marketing Research spent a larger part of his time trying to convince the students that ‘proper’ Market Research does give ‘proper’ results.

However, experience shows that in most cases people either don’t know to ask the ‘proper’ questions or they just aren’t able to interpret the same properly. There are more examples of Market Research proving a failure than an astounding success. And perhaps the most popular of the Market Research blunders being the ‘Coca Cola’ research fallout where they decided to change the formulation and all, and then realized that it was utter stupidity and stuff like that.

And today, when Market Research is already been taken as something like a black sheep in the family, the entire field of study is losing out of options. Data through internet surveys was the next in-thing that people thought would probably enable the researchers to get more accurate data; but it still didn’t just deliver as much as it was expected.

However today what’s happening is that people themselves are giving out data on Facebook, Orkut and other sites… Researchers are now plundering data out of these places to get material for their research objectives.

And while whiling away my time in the office I came up with something even more astounding which could probably blow away the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ music listing. The Billboard Hot 100 Music listing generates the top 100 albums based on album sales and airplay (on radio stations). But isn’t it a matter of fact that people are now largely listening to MP3 on their computers and not buying albums? Also the Hot 100 artist listings are generally based on sales in the US and UK. What about the international audience?

Then how come Billboard Hot 100 still remains a benchmark to assess an artist’s success? Also, the BB Hot 100’s longevity is based on weekly sales, and not beyond that. Somehow people just seem to override or rather overlook these shortcomings of the BB Hot 100 Listings.

This is where Google Music Trends come into the picture. Google Talk has the functionality to capture the information related to the music the computer user is playing at that point of time and then upload it to the Google database. This sort of data collection happens on an international level since it captures information about all the users using Google Talk, it happens over a period of more than a year, thus assessing an artist’s longevity too as far as the album’s popularity is concerned, and gives a data that is amazingly different from what the BB Hot 100 has to say…

Check the links of the BB Hot 100 and Google Music Trends and compare the data… there’s a sea change of difference!

Now which one to believe is your choice.

There and back again

Back to Malludom. The land of the brown and the crazy, where people drive Bajaj Pulsars as pizza delivery vehicles and where the roads can change directions overnight… Dubai!

To be honest it’s quite fascinating to see how things have been evolving in this city. I came here 6 months back, and still a lotta things look new to me. But even more than that has been the changes in my living, my lifestyle.

6 months back, I had all the facilities given to me. Food, shelter and transport. But now, all these things are to be managed on my own. But most importantly the matter of fact is I’ve never felt so lonely in my life till now. I thought it would be easier to settle in since I know the place around. But frankly it doesn’t seem to be happening here. There are a lot of things which need to be done, and I seriously wish I had someone around me.

It’s not really a time of distress or dire straits. But perhaps it is now that I’m living the experience of ‘really’ living away from home and abroad. Maybe while I was in the MBA, everything was kinda given. People around me were Indian, the food, the shelter… all these things were given to me. I really didn’t have to worry about things. Here, that’s not the case. Right from finding a decent and affordable place to live in, to getting the bank accounts in order, and perhaps the most daunting task of all… to find a good and ‘sustainable’ mode of transportation which is ‘economical’ too.

I’ve been asked to eat properly and stuff like that. But seriously, you don’t even feel like eating here when you are alone. I think it’s a matter of time before things might settle in, and I really wish that is the case.

Until that time, I’ll be smelling perfumes and applying glitzy powder on my arm and stuff like that… ;-)

Linkin Park Live in Singapore

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.!

Power of Collaborative Knowledge

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!

Videocon ≠ Shah Rukh Khan

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 3^rd 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.

Crop Forecasting - 2

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!