KNOWLEDGE ABOUT CULTURAL NUANCES AND ETIQUETTES GOES A LONG WAY IN ENSURING THE SUCCESS OF YOUR BUSINESS ON FOREIGN SHORES AND IN AVOIDING SURE-SHOT FAILURE.Women don’t wear pants in Japan! Now before your imagination runs riot, let me tell you this is one of the guidelines prescribed to many female business travellers to Japan. As per Google, “Japanese business etiquette” is one of the most searched for Japan business related keywords. According to these guidelines, Japanese men do not relate easily to women with authority in business and that can cause problems while doing business. The Japanese culture encourages women to wear long skirt suits to work. Most Japanese companies prefer that their female employees not wear high-heeled shoes as Japanese men are not very tall, and towering over them might offend some. While “Going Dutch” is a culture common to Netherlands and accepted in many other cultures, the Turks don’t believe in “Going Dutch” at all, and a suggestion to that effect may not be appreciated much. The head is considered a sacred place and nobody in Singapore appreciates it if you fondly pat a child on his head. In India, it’s a way of showing affection – not there. Each country comes with its unique cultural nuances, and as a business traveller, it’s of utmost importance that one remains sensitive to these seemingly small irrelevant details. They will help you strengthen your bonds with your foreign partner and help you do business better. Though it might not in any way affect your balance sheets but it helps to understand your counterpart better when you know that sitting cross-legged in Singapore may be considered offensive, or that Germans consider a weak handshake as a signal that you are insecure and not convinced of your abilities, or that in Israel (due to years of fighting) men prefer to sit with their legs slightly apart and upper body leaning forward (akin to a position where they are ready to get up at a moment’s notice), or that in Switzerland, before starting a conversation, it’s important to shake hands with everyone – including children. While Arabs consider it a show of trust and solidarity when they put their arms around you and hold your hand with both their hands, doing the same in Germany could be one of the biggest etiquette blunders one could make. Germans avoid physical contact and placing your hand on someone’s’ shoulder could make you appear too authoritative and not appreciated. Knowledge about the etiquettes of other cultures is becoming very vital as it could as well be a deciding factor in whether you succeed in that country or not. ACROSS THE SEASYes, gone are the days when simply understanding your own country’s business environment well was enough to succeed. Today, if you really want to make it big, you need to stretch out, go beyond the boundaries and learn to do business in strange, foreign cultures. Ratan Tata, during his 18-year tenure as Chairman of the Tata Group, ensured that his company expanded internationally – a strategy that India’s other business houses copied and are still trying. Today, the Tatas have annual revenue of about $70 billion – that’s great, but what’s of significance is that 65% of the group’s sales are derived from outside India. If you really want to grow big, you not only need to expand but also need to have a global mind-set too. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FINDING THE RIGHT SUCCESSOR TO PASS-ON THE CEO’S BATON IS ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL STRATEGIC DECISIONS THAT A COMPANY SHOULD TAKE... MUCH BEFORE THE CEO IS ACTUALLY READY TO ‘PASS IT ON’.He’s finally back in business (thank God for that!). Fortune magazine has named him ‘CEO of the Decade’ this month. He is the perfect choice and there can be no one better, for this man has single handedly redefined mobile communication (with the iPhone), made the geeky PC hip-n-happening (with the Mac- Book) and brought back Apple from the brink. Steve Jobs is a man whose products inspire a religious devotion in users – and he is worshipped by many around the world. But this is where the problem lies. Early this year when Steve Jobs took a leave of absence from his company to get a liver transplant, Apple’s stock slid to an all time low. It’s said that when Jobs sneezes, Apple catches a cold. If a company is all about a great personality and a not a great product there’s going to be a big problem of survival Till recently, Apple was synonymous with Jobs. Not so much now and thankfully so. Without Jobs at the helm, Apple surprised Wall Street with its Q2 profits which showed the world that – yes Steve had shown the way, but the company was in safe hands without him too (under Tim Cook). Steve was back in September and got a standing ovation from the audience, not so much for the new iTunes software and new line of iPod Nano music player with video cameras, but for being the greatest icon of corporate world. Yes, the wizard is positively back but has ensured that Apple is definitely not just about its founder’s charisma, but about computers and others things – in which they are the best. Tim Cook seems to be the right choice for successor and Apple is apparently in safe hands. When the man at the helm of affairs is a living legend and one of the richest persons in the world, finding the right successor gets a bit difficult. However, when you are a smart investor like Warren Buffett, you don’t just have one but four potential successors to choose from. For more than four decades, the man has been nurturing his firm Berkshire Hathaway, making it America’s sixth-largest company by market value. Choosing the next Buffett is as important for Berkshire as it is for America. Buffett at 77 is aware that the one question hanging on everyone’s mind is – who’s next? He knows and understands the sentiments and jokes that he has built Berkshire so that it could be run by a cardboard cutout or the bust of Benjamin Franklin. When a company is performing well, who its successor is going to be, becomes all the more important. And with Warren’s good planning, everyone’s optimistic that whoever the successor – Ajit Jain, David Skoll, Joseph Brandon or Tony Nicely – America’s most famous investor, the so-called Oracle of Omaha, will find the right guy as his successor. GREAT IS NOT ENOUGHWhen Jack Welch became General Electric’s CEO in 1981, the company was worth $14 billion and when he retired 20 year later, GE’s value had touched $500 billion. This was fabulous, but true success lies in the ultimate test: once the leader is gone, does the company continue to flourish? The most important job a CEO does is not just keep the balance sheets looking good, but finding the next man who can take the company forward. Jack Welch says, the most important business decision he took was selecting his successor. At GE, CEOs have the ‘airplane’ question that help them identify the next man. Imagine you are flying in one of the company planes and the plane crashes. Who would be the next chairman of GE? This simple question helped GE identify Jeff Immelt as successor for its top job. As Jim Collins discovered while writing his book ‘Good to Great’ – it’s getting the right people in the right job which is more important than strategy. Getting the right person for the most important post in the organization (that of the CEO) seems to be a leader’s most important task. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ONE WHO CAN PUT HIS FOOT OUT OF THE DOOR, IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED. EVEN IN TODAY’S WIRED WORLD, DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE PERSONAL TOUCH. SO GO ON, AN. NOUNCE YOUR PRESENCE...This is the story of a simple woman, a story of an Indian girl, born into a conservative family in Chennai, who went to the US to pursue higher studies and who while studying also worked as a receptionist from midnight to sunrise to earn money. Finally, after a lot of hardships she passed out from Yale University and got her first call for a job interview. She struggled hard and somehow managed to scrape together $50 to buy herself a western suit. Not having much idea about western wear, she landed up for the interview wearing a trouser that barely reached her ankles. She was rejected. Dejected and disheartened she turned to her professor at Yale for help, support and advice, and she got the simplest, yet best possible advice – “Be Yourself”. She wore a sari for her next interview and got the job. Today, Fortune ranks her as the most powerful woman in US business. Yes, you guessed it – she is Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo. And the Indiaborn Nooyi has been named as the most powerful woman in the US business for four straight years now. This Queen of the business world, and my personal favourite, has shown the world how if you need to survive you need to change; you need to adapt and reinvent yourself. Today, if she continues to sit pretty at the top spot, it is because she has consistently changed and reinvented herself, in tune with the times. Her secret – “being visible”. According to her, people need to know that their CEO cares about them and has a realistic vision. She feels the need to see and be seen. After becoming CEO, Nooyi’s goal was to visit 80 countries in her first five years as CEO so that she could see and also be seen. This strategy seems to be working for her. It was during her visit to China that she saw the resurgent trend of people eating according to traditional Chinese medicine. She immediately knew she had to find ways to incorporate Chinese medicine into Pepsi- Co’s products. China is such a huge market after all and one could not ignore it at any cost. Clearly, just ‘being there’ can work wonders for you and your organisation and help you choose the right path. GET OUT, GET NOTICEDIt is a highly wired world that we are living in today. Technology is doing all it can to help you stay connected. Be it SMS or e-mails, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or the latest craze – Twitter – all these have made ‘staying-in-touch’ easier. Yet, while searching for excellence decades ago, Tom Peters and Bob Waterman discovered a very simple and effective trick that great leaders and companies put into use extensively to manage people and work. They called it MBWA – Management by Wandering Around. The strength of an organisation lies in its informal communications. One needs to know who they work with, what drives them, what their passions are, what are their fears, their dreams – everything. You need to stay “intimately in touch,” says Tom Peters, “if you want to manage well.” E-mails, Twitter and others of their ilk fail here. In 2004, Peters was asked to give a talk to retailers. He talked to experts, searched the web and prepared a beautiful speech. But it took merely two hours of wandering in and out of shops, for Peters to scrap this speech and write a better one. Those two hours helped him understand the retail environment better. His advice – get out of your cubical. The ability to go out and talk and understand is the most important skill. If you are just relying on e-mail, it’s time you stopped and pondered on the importance of human-touch. Excellent companies are a vast network of informal, open communication, which is only possible when there is an environment of trust. Walk around to build that environment. When people see you, they will know you better and trust you more. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘One’ is not just the lowest single digit numerical value; neither is it just a show of miniscule strength. Instead, the digit has the wherewithal to change national destinies, unflinchingly challenge mighty emperors and irrevocably alter your life condition!It is just another day, yet today, this one date has begun to signify something of great importance to all of us. Its impact has been felt all over the world. Yes, 9/11 or September 11 today symbolises terrorism. One incident on this day shook up the entire world. Overnight Kabul and Kandahar became the most talked and written about places. The world became more knowledgeable about bombs and forget about our way of thinking, even our manner of speaking changed. ‘Ground Zero’, the original meaning of which was the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, now meant something else entirely. ‘Terrorism’ was no more an activity that happened in far away places for Americans, but something that took lives in their own home. One event and look at the profound impact it has had on all of us. In fact, one way to judge the impact of any event is to see how much it affects the language we speak. In that sense at least, 9/11 has added words like jihad, holy-war, Taliban and Twin-Towers to our collective vocabularies. Another event had similarly enriched the English language – World War II. Words like jeep, blitz, java, flak, sonar, radar, bazooka and atom bomb didn’t exist prior to World War II. Clearly, one event can change a generation’s outlook. ‘One’ may be the smallest of numbers, but ‘one’ is all it takes to have a profound impact. It’s interesting to see how ‘one’ has influenced us in more ways than one. To start, take the date 9/11 and flip it once. This one change brings us to a date dramatically different from the previous one. If one stood for terror, and destruction and ruin, the other symbolised unification, hope and brotherhood. The 9th day of November or 11/9 was the day the Berlin Wall fell. If 9/11 divided the world, 11/9 was an attempt to unify a city that had been divided for over 30 years. The 28 mile barrier dividing Germany’s capital was built in 1961 to prevent East Berliners fleeing to the West. ‘One’ of anything (even the flip of a date) can do wonders. ONE WORD, ONE ACT – CHANGE...One word and its wrong interpretation caused irreparable damage. The Americans issued an ultimatum demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan. Nearing breaking point, the Japanese wanted to negotiate for peace, but not surrender unconditionally. They issued a statement using a Japanese word ‘mokusatsu’, which technically meant ‘refrain from comment’, but had another interpretation i.e. ‘ignore.’ And that is how the Americans decoded it. Keeping the Japanese ‘refusal’ in mind, Americans continued to fight and eventually dropped two atom bombs – an event that changed Japan forever. One wrong translation caused so much destruction. In contrast, one statement shot this actress to fame and resurrected her failing career. Yes, one racial slur shot Shipla Shetty to fame and made her a fortune. So much so that now everybody seems to want one! But, it was bravery of a different kind that changed the world. A simple seamstress from Alabama refused to relinquish her seat on a city bus to a white man. It was her one act of courage that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and brought the Civil Rights Movement to national attention. Jack Kemp ‘once’ said, “the power of one man or one woman doing the right thing, for the right reason and at the right time, is the greatest influence in our society.” Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A critical part of communication is not what we had thought it to be all along. If history had commanded corporations to ensure that they ‘speak out’ their advertisement campaigns and product features in as forceful a manner as possible, contemporary times are destroying that strategic belief to forward a line of thought that perhaps quite the opposite is true now, if one wishes to succeed fantastically!I teach a course in communication. After I have taught students the importance of making a good first impression, of the power of words and how to use them effectively, of the factors to keep in mind so that one is understood properly, of how to use one’s voice to make a speech most interesting, I tell them, “Now you know everything about speaking in public, but you still are not a master communicator.” And that is because there is still something more to communication than speaking. Speaking is just 33% of communicating. Then what’s the rest? Well, let’s try to figure out that. LINCOLN NEEDED IT TOO!This was decades ago when America was torn with the Civil War and Lincoln was fighting hard to abolish slavery. He wrote to an old friend of his and asked him to come to Washington to discuss some problems. When his friend came, Lincoln talked to him for hours. Lincoln went over all the arguments, letters, newspapers, articles, which had arguments both for and against abolishing slavery. After talking for the whole night almost, Lincoln finally bid goodbye to his friend without even asking him his opinion. His friend later commented that that night, Lincoln did not want advice, he wanted a friend. A man once met Stephen Covey and put forward his problem, “I can’t understand my kid. He just won’t listen to me at all.” A visibly surprised Covey commented, “You don’t understand your kid because he won’t listen to you? But I thought to understand another person, you need to listen to him!” The father looked even more surprised. To put it simplistically, what is it that Lincoln’s friend did, which the father in the second case did not do? Yes, listening! That night, Lincoln wanted a sympathetic listener to whom he could unburden himself. And perhaps the father in the second case did not realise that most children want absolutely nothing from their parents but an empathic listening. Children are waiting to open up if only they were listened to without being ridiculed or judged. HOME OR WORK, IT’S THE SAMEToyota was designing its Tundra Truck, but considerable inputs come not from designers, but from farmers. A team from Toyota spent days visiting different regions of US – horse farms, factories, construction sites and more – to meet with truck owners. They did not just ask them about their preferences for towing capacity and power (in a truck) but even silently observed them at work. Through this, the team learnt the ideal placement of the gear shifter; they also learnt that the door handle and radio knobs needed to be extra large because pickup owners often wore gloves all day. Clearly, no amount of discussions or brainstorming sessions could have possibly revealed these nuanced preferences. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WAY TO ADVERTISEEarly this month a very interesting book was released which caught my attention and really got me thinking. Named “Nobody’s Perfect: Bill Bernbach and the golden age of advertising” this book is written by Doris Willens, a former journalist who looked after the PR division of Bill Bernbach’s advertising agency DDB (Doyle Dale Bernbach) from 1966 to 1984. Twenty seven years after the death of Bernbach, here came a book which painted Bernbach as a blemished, insecure, person who leaned on others work. A man who I hold in very high esteem, a man who features at the number 1 position when it comes to drawing up a list of “Top 100 people of the century in the field of advertising” for he changed the course of advertising history- how could he be painted in such a bad light? Here was a man, who according to the author Doris Willens, was a devoted family man, unlike the many womanizing and boozing admen of those days (and even today!), was creative and disciplined. However, what interested her more were anecdotes of little or no relevance to the world of advertising- things like he recycled speeches, put one of his sons on the payroll unbeknownst to management and was frustrated over not being able to publish his own book. Ridiculous! The man has contributed so much to the business of advertising that these allegations seemed so petty. But they did have one positive influence on me- they made me go back to my old notes, my books to read and understand this genius and many more like him and rediscover the important lessons that their work has taught. IT’S NOT A QUESTION OF “EITHER”, “OR”When advertising started there used to be someone who would write lines and then hand it over to someone else who put a picture or an illustration that matched those lines. Bernbach was the first to take a bold step and change this business of making ads. According to him “Advertising is the art of persuasion” and he cited an interesting study by “AAAA” which claimed that 85 percent of all advertisements were ignored by consumers. What was the use of businesses spending so much money when all it caused was boredom? One needed to persuade and persuade hard. This could be done only when every aspect of the advertisement spoke the same language. So he changed the process of making the advertisement. Everyone knew the rules of advertising but they lost it all by working independently. He made sure at every level of ad making the artist and the writer worked together. Now the artist could suggest a headline, the writer a visual and for the first time “art and copy” were integrated as one. Everyone was in sync with each other’s thoughts and the ads worked brilliantly. Now 1+1 equaled 3. DDB’s unique approach gave birth to many masterpieces in the 1950’s. A bargain department store in New York named Ohrbach’s had a small media budget but Bernbach and his agency created a masterpiece for them. His ad without once mentioning prices made an advertisement which gave a clear positioning to the store. The advertisement showed a man carrying a woman under his arm with a caption that read “Liberal Trade-In: bring in your wife and just a few dollars….. We will give you a new woman.” Another in the series showed a well tailored woman flanked by a man shattered into pieces with a caption that explained “clothes that make the woman without breaking the man”. It was a beautiful and relevant combination of “art” and “copy”. It is not surprising then that it’s in the list of the Top 10 advertising campaigns of the century and number 1 and number 10 have ads created by DDB. No one else could get 2 of their ads into the top 10. At number 1, you have the Volkswagen ad with the headline “Think small”, at number 10 is the very very famous advertisement of Avis which had the most iconic headline ‘We are no.2. We try harder”. It was these few words that altered the fortunes of both the companies forever. Bernbach not only made sure his agency did good work, but he ensured that no “good idea” got lost. A lot of people think up wonderful ideas but its rare to find an ad man who can recognize a great idea created by others. His creative philosophy was simple “…indulging in graphic acrobatics and verbal gymnastics is not being creative” you need to create something where every word, line, shadow, makes the ad more persuasive. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN BIG MEANT ECONOMIES OF SCALE; BIG PLANES WERE BETTER AND BIG COMPUTERS WERE WOW. BUT ALL THAT HAS CHANGED. SMALL IS THE NEW BIG; ESPECIALLY IF THE GUY BEHIND THE SMALL IS THINKING BIG!!“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way,” said Napoleon Hill. This got me thinking about the significance of “small.” It’s the “small things” that have been changing and influencing our lives. Back in the 1960’s everyone was making big long cars. Doyle Dane Bernbach was hired by this company to create a campaign to promote an ugly looking car. It took a small headline to shake up the whole automobile market and changed all the existing rules of advertising forever. The headline read “Think Small”. Bernbach’s “Think Small” advertisement for the Beetle car was actually an exercise in thinking big. This ad catapulted the Beetle into fame and sales of the car (which no one gave much chance to succeed) actually broke all records and expectations. Not surprising then that in the list of the top 100 advertising campaigns, Volkswagen stands tall at the very top with its “Think Small” campaign that Bernbach created in 1959. In fact, it was the “big” that drove Detroit into a ditch. GM, Ford and Chrysler had been America’s symbol of economic might and prosperity. They totally ignored the small and concentrated on big cars only. But it was the small and fuel efficient cars of Japan that helped them capture the US car market. In August 2008, the American car industry saw a drop in sales by 11%. Japanese carmaker Honda, on the other hand, out performed the sliding US auto industry with its US sales up by 1.2%. In 2007, Americans bought 55 light trucks for every 45 passenger cars. In July 2008, the ratio inverted and so did the fortunes of car companies. It’s the ones who focused on “small” that survived. Toyota was another company that grew in an unprecedented manner and dominated the global car-market. Its hybrid car model, Prius became a best seller. But today, all is not well at Toyota City in Japan. The company has been hit badly by the slowdown. All eyes are focused on Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota’s founder Sakichi Toyoda. In his first press conference ever, he said that the company had over extended itself in an effort to make big cars for the American market, forgetting completely that it was “small” which was responsible for its success. It’s time the company went back-to-basics and revamped its strategy, he said. Toyota City wanted to become like the Detroit of America – with car sales plummeting and unemployment increasing, the city is scarily coming close to fulfilling its dream. It’s time to turn to “small” to survive. For that’s the way Ford has been able to survive. It’s the only US automaker that has not filed for bankruptcy because among other things, the first thing it did was sell off its big nonprofit table cars Jaguar and Land Rover to Ratan Tata. Alan R. Mulally, Ford’s CEO knew that the future was “small” and with this sale, Ford secured its future. In July, its sales rose 2.3% from last year, thanks to the increase in demand for small, fuel-efficient cars! The news made Ford the first among the major American carmakers to report a sales increase in the US this year. Small creates big impact – remember the atom bomb and how it altered Japanese and world history forever. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entertainer, brand endorser, producer, businessman, cricket club owner or the ever-friendly neighbourhood guy Rahul... brand SRK ROCKS!“ Come to IIPM, I’ll see you there,” says Shah Rukh Khan with that famous smile of his. And even as the big day nears, the excitement at the Indian Institute of Planning & Management (IIPM) is fast turning into a frenzy. The man, who is famous for his unlimited energy, seems to have infused some of it into the staff and students too, for no one seems to be going home (or sleeping) for days now! It’s work, work, work everywhere – every detail being looked into, everything being checked twice, just to be sure there are no goof-ups on D-day when the business quiz would be held and of course, no one is complaining! SRK is someone who features regularly in Bollywood discussions, and also boardroom discussions, for a simple reason – the man is not just an actor, but an intelligent actor. He is not just a brand ambassador, but an intelligent business man (probably the economics background helps!). Every word, every statement, every comment is well thought, well reasoned and most of all, well worded. He is one of those rare celebrities who can never be outwitted! Not surprising then, that he features regularly in my write-ups and lectures in advertising. What is it that makes SRK such an interesting case study for MBAs! Let’s explore SRK, the brand. ART OF WARThere is a world famous book by the same name written by Sun Zi in the 6th century B.C. A book so old, yet imparting wisdom as relevant and useful even today that helps leaders and managers workout their business tactics. A famous quote from the book goes like this, “Know your enemy, and know yourself and victory will always be yours.” SRK seems to have understood this pretty well and has fought all his wars successfully. Of course, we are not taking about the Amitabh-SRK spat or the Salman- SRK imbroglio or even the Vidhu Vinod Chopra-SRK duel. We are not even referring to the Aamir-SRK face-off or the war between producers – distributors and multiplex owners that Shah Rukh helped put an end to. We are talking about the brand wars that he fights regularly and wins almost every time. In 2005, ITC Foods announced that Shah Rukh Khan would be the brand ambassador for its flagship brand Sunfeast, endorsing the entire range of snacks under the brand umbrella. In 2003, when Sunfeast was launched, no one in the industry thought that the brand could make any major dent in the market share of its competitors’ – the old and mighty Parle and Britannia, who had dominated the country’s biscuit business for years. But ITC played its cards carefully. First, it brought in the world’s most revered cricketer Sachin Tendulkar to endorse their biscuit. “Sachin’s fit-kit” was an amazing idea and a surefi re hit. Next, the company roped in the evergreen charmer Shah Rukh Khan. Biscuits mean children, but SRK’s presence meant not just influencing children, but people across age groups. ITC Food’s strategy worked. According to A. C. Nielson’s retail sales audit of March 2006, both Britannia and Parle started losing volumes significantly. A worried Parle hastily roped in Hrithik Roshan to endorse its “Hide & Seek” brand. The move did not work. SRK won the hearts of consumers and the sun began truly shining for Sunfeast. Take the laptop market. HP roped in Shah Rukh to endorse its range of brands from Compaq to sundry printers, with the famous tagline, “The computer is personal again.” This caused a flurry of high profile branding in the PC segment. Lenovo roped in Saif Ali Khan as its ambassador. Acer got Hrithik. Yet, SRK ruled this market. Interestingly, when it comes to being a pioneer and offering consumers the latest technology, it has always been Acer that has come up tops and with the most unique offerings. Think of it, Acer was the first to launch a Ferrari laptop range, a gemstone range designed by BMW designers and many such innovations. However, with SRK endorsing Compaq, Acer did not stand a chance. People perceived Compaq to be a better brand and HP held on to its market leadership. When the Badshah enters, you stand no chance. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conventional wisdom says ‘entry barriers’ should prevent new players and brands from upstaging their older and more established rivals. Yet, the marketplace is littered with example after example of new brands that have successfully climbed Mount Everest. How do they do it?Nothing is permanent-in life, relationships and business! This eternal truth is brilliantly demonstrated by the rise, fall and rise of brands in the marketplace. Leaders of yesterday have become laggards today; and might become leaders again tomorrow or even disappear altogether. Students of economics and management are taught that every market has ‘entry barriers’ that make it very difficult, if not impossible for new players and brands to compete with and outperform older and well established rivals. But, what fascinates more than the so called entry barriers is the frequency and intensity with which new brands conquer more established rivals across the world. There are literally hundreds of such examples across sectors, geographies and segments. What makes the new entrants overcome formidable entry barriers and beat market leaders at their own game? In contemporary times, technology and innovation play a key role in transforming late entrants into global power houses. Back in the early 1990s, when I was a management student, Microsoft was the unchallenged global leader. The advent of the Internet saw Yahoo first challenge the supremacy of Microsoft. Back then, nobody had heard about a word called Google. And yet, it is Google that is the undisputed and virtually unchallenged global brand in the business today. Bill Gates and his team at Microsoft have poured billions of dollars to create a search engine that can beat Google. No luck so far. And of course, it does appear as if the once powerhouse Yahoo is gently fading into history. And who knows, the rate at which new technology is evolving, the next generation might see a brand bigger than even Google! Technology has played a key role in one of the biggest brand wars of the last decade or so. Going back to my days as a student, Motorola used to be familiar and awe inspiring brand name. Telecom was then – it still is – the market with the biggest promise and potential. But, we had only vaguely heard of mobile phones and Nokia was of course a name that probably only a few hardy souls in Finland were familiar with. The company was originally involved in manufacturing paper, pulp and rubber! But now, Nokia is the undisputed mobile phone and telecom global brand leader while Motorola is struggling of stave off bankruptcy. Quite clearly, brand Nokia has been more successful in harnessing mobile handset technology than Motorola, despite the huge head start Technology and successful marketing of the consumer benefits delivered by the new technology can also explain why a relative newcomer dislodged an iconic brand in India as the unquestioned market leader. Back in the 1980s, Bajaj Auto ruled the Indian two-wheeler market. The Indian market was then overwhelmingly dominated by scooters with motorcycles coming a distant second. But that was the time Japanese two-wheeler brands like Suzuki, Yamaha and Honda made an entry in India. The Hero group tied up with Honda and launched the Hero Honda motorcycle. It was arguably the first ‘fourstroke’ bike in India and delivered superb fuel efficiency. The early Hero Honda ads brilliantly sold this value proposition to Indian consumers with the now legendary tagline – ‘Fill it, Shut it, Forget it’. Last year, Hero Honda sold more motorcycles than Bajaj and TVS together and is perhaps the largest motorcycle company in the world now. Sometimes, established brand leaders are demolished in the marketplace by new rivals because of sheer complacency and inability to move with the times. I will give one global and one Indian example to show how pervasive this tilt towards complacency is. Once upon a time, General Motors (GM) – along with Ford – virtually ruled the world of automobiles. Brands like Chevrolet and Pontiac had become gold standards when it came to customer loyalty and brand equity. By the time Toyota started selling its cars in the United States, the giant GM did not even deign to acknowledge the potential new rival. After the oil shock of the seventies, Toyota focused increasingly on fuel efficiency and smaller sizes while GM continued with gas guzzlers. The result: GM had to eventually fi le for bankruptcy in 2009 while Toyota is the gold standard today when it comes to quality and customer satisfaction in the automobile industry. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During his 1993 Super Bowl Performance of Heal The World, Michael Jackson elevated the mood of an entire stadium with just a single song. That’s the power of live music. To excel, artists today and tomorrow will have to carefully cultivate the same art of carrying the audience along for the musical joyride...11 tickets per second! That was the selling rate of tickets for the ‘This is it’ tour at the O2 arena in London of the legend called Michael Jackson. All shows were sold out in a matter of minutes. According to its organisers ‘This is it’ became the fastest selling tour in history with people as far away as Japan, Belgium and Dubai, queuing up to purchase tickets, some even willing to pay up to $700 for tickets bought from secondary markets. This, inspite of knowing that the tickets are non-refundable even if the shows got cancelled. Michael Jackson’s planned 50- show run at the O2 Arena in London would have been the highest-grossing single concert ever. More than $85 million worth of tickets had been sold for the shows, which were to begin July 13. If staged as per schedule, they would have been Jackson’s first solo shows in twelve years. MUSIC WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAINYes! For many of us, who have been crazy fans of Michael Jackson since his “Thriller” days, the world of music has altered forever. But it is true that the music world has also changed in more ways than one. Music used to be heard on gramophone records, then on cassettes, which gave way to CD’s. Now, of course, is the era of digital music with the iPod and the internet playing a big role in the way music is distributed and heard world over. Digitisation got with it a new evil – the rise of “pirated” music. Piracy is so rampant and pirates are so good that there is hardly any difference between the original and pirated versions of music scores. In fact, pirating is so prevalent in China that legitimate stores too sell pirated CDs. Chinese artists today hardly make any money from CD sales. Not just in China, but world over, artists are not making money from CD sales, although CD sales in themselves are increasing. The moment an original CD is made, pirates are already out on the streets with their cheaper and equally good quality version. So much so that musicians today consider CDs as just another way to promote themselves and their music. If their music is liked, then they have a chance of making money via other means. Their popularity could get them product endorsement deals and a chance to appear in commercials. More importantly, artists, musicians and rock stars these days are relying more on live shows to earn money. Think about it. Back in the 1940’s musicians had protested that recorded music would ruin the live concert business, then the largest source of revenue for the music industry. Today, once again, live concerts are proving to be their biggest revenue earners. The business model of the music industry is changing fast. Internet downloads and pirated CDs have brought down the perceived value of music. Eventually recorded music will make no money. Live concerts, on the other hand, seem to be back with a bang and are here to stay. Live music, and the experience it guarantees is difficult to replace. The feeling of the beats on your chest, the screaming fans, the crazy hysteria, all of these are things you cannot pack in a CD. It was this ‘hysteria’ that fans wanted to be a part of when they heard that Michael Jackson would be performing for the world – one last time. This was truly the last opportunity for many to experience the thrill of listening to the century’s greatest rock star – live! ALL ABOUT MUSIC VENUES AND MUSICThe most exciting thing in life for a music fan is seeing his or her favourite band live. It’s this excitement and thrill that many companies are using to earn moolah for themselves. With live concerts becoming the lifeline, many artists are now moulding their careers differently. Instead of signing record labels, they are signing up with concert promoters like ‘Live Nation’, which today has become a major rival of music companies like EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music Group, et al. Famous artists like Madonna, U2, Shakira, choose to sign deals with ‘Live Nation’ rather than music companies, making the former a powerful force to reckon with. In February this year, ‘Live Nation’ merged with another giant Ticket Master to create ‘Live Nation Entertainment’. The two biggest names in live entertainment have not just created history, but a monolithical empire that would monopolise the business of live entertainment. Of course, a lot of eyebrows are being raised, but it just goes on to prove how important concerts have become today. According to Nigel Parker, author of the book Music Business, many consumers now seem more inclined to regard live performance as the defining experience of modern music. According to Parker, “The importance of live performance is underlined by the fact that the biggest-grossing live performers of recent years include veteran seventies performers such as Eagles, Rolling Stones & Pink Floyd, whose record sales no longer match their capacity to draw huge live audiences.” Before the business of recording sound started it was live music, today ‘live’ is back in business. Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands
Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips
Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
IIPM: Management Education India
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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