The Tipping Point

I was on my way back from Kolkata to Hyderabad . I am one of the loyal customers of Air Deccan (thanks to its Rs. 500 ticket!).

On board I was just flipping through the latest Deccan magazine & the lady sat besides me was engrossed in reading a book. I did have a look at the name of the book, it was 'The Tipping Point. I never heard of that book.

I did google about that book later but yet to read it. It's a sociological book written by Malcolm Gladwell. But the ideas/concepts discussed in that book has great relevance for the marketing professionals. Kotler, during his recent visit to India in one conversation did mention about 'The Tipping point'.

It talks about social epidemics. The concept has been applied to any process in which beyond a certain point, the rate at which the process (chemical, sociological, etc.) proceeds increases dramatically. This can be extended to word of mouth advertising & lot many marketing areas.

He has also written another good book 'Blink: The power of thinking without thinking'.

He discusses concepts like 'thin slicing' : our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as - or even better than - carefully planned and considered ones.Let me get hold of these two & read at one go!

Two Fastest Growing Brands

I was just browsing through the Business Week top 100 global brands list for 2006. The fastest growing brand is Google (46%). The next is StarBucks (20%). A classic example of building brand through customer experience innovation than through advertising.
Share your experience if you been in US or any other country & visited StarBucks!!!

Commodity to Brands

It's often said to a great marketer there is nothing called a commodity. Anything & everything can be branded. we see that happening in commodities market like sugar, salt etc.
Economic defn of a commodity suggests that when consumers takes buying decision based on price & price alone, it can be said that a product or service is a commodity.
When we have something tangible in terms of products, Branding is comparatively easier where Marketers/advertisers create a brand personality through advertisements & other marketing initiatives.
Services branding is a real challenge beacuase of the fact that mostly brand experience doesn't happen at a single point. Brand experience happen at all customer touch points.
For IT services is it finally only the billing rate what matters??

Kotler's recent visit to India

For all of us in marketing, our marketing thoughts were shaped by none other than father of Marketing, Phil Kotler. Recently he visited India to address Cognizant's top management on 'Customer Intimacy'. My first post is a tribute to him.
Here is a brief transcript of his responses to different questions raised on marketing:
Q1: One of the biggest challenges that Microsoft is facing is changing the perceptions of the company over the quality of the product. How do you change a brand perception using a quality product? A: My experience with Microsoft is that some years ago they would develop new software without much input or participation by marketing. Some of the software was overly complex and failed to win a following. In the last three years, my colleagues at the Kellogg School--Dipak Jain and Mohan Sawhney--have been teaching Microsoft how to upgrade its marketing skill and include marketers in developing new products. To my knowledge, the success rate is now higher because of the marketing participation in new product development.
Q2:Does the brand have any value in today's world where we see the life cycle of a brand and inovation is of such a short duration , which lead to ask me a question how much must we concentrate on brand building verses INNOVATION, i guess which was one of your theory in wealth of nationA: Product life cycles are truly getting shorter because of an increased number of competitors from here and abroad and their readiness to copy anything that seems to be taking off. This was the problem faced by Steve Jobs with his iPod where he knew that all the electronic firms would rapidly come in with their iPod versions. But he is a marketing genius and instead of defending in his innovation with expensive advertising, he defended it with more innovation. He upgraded the iPod to carry photos as well while his competitors where only carrying music. Then he moved on to video. He obviously has mapped out a marketing trajectory for his product development which keeps the competitors always lagging. This is a less for all of us. The same marketing magic is being worked by Howard Schultz of Starbucks who continues to add new innovations to the coffe service business.
Q3: Are Indian corporates good enough to compete at the international level or do they have a long way to go?A: I am impressed with a number of Indian corporations and their management. Look at what Mittal is accomplishing to rationalize the world steel industry. Look at how Infosys, Wipro and others have set up huge and impressive campuses for training and attracting new business clients who tangibly see highly professional companies to serve their interests. In the last 6 months, Indian companies acquired 85 foreign companies, while foreign companies only acquired 35 Indian companies. India is on a roll.