It is time retailers and regional FMCG brands looked beyond TV spots!

Since the topic touches and will touch raw chords and nerves let me at the outset categorically state that the views are those of a seasoned communicator looking at the current scenario dispassionately.

Being a not so regular TV watcher and my mother tongue being Tamil end up watching commercial TV in Tamil mostly in the evening prime time slot. Over the past few years have consistently noticed that big retailers (guess there are tens of them out of Chennai and elsewhere) and most regional FMCG brands almost entirely depend on TV commercials for their sales or marketing or communication with customers. It also dawned on me that festive season after festive season, collection after collection, product after product, this formula remained largely untouched.

Social media needs to move from promise, talk to rigor and action soon

Social media is the in thing nowadays. There is not a single day that passes without a story on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or the stars of the social media space making it to the airwaves or the ink. The success of Obama and our very own Pink Chaddi campaign is fresh in our memories and already spoken to death in social media conferences and seminars. On the other side, every other day, witness a new venture or foray into the space. If one adds up all the hype, then social media should have already arrived from a brand communication and marketing perspective. Well, not really. Here is my take on what it will take to get social media which I agree is hot and presents profound new ways of touch, communication and engagement, can get there.

Do you know your DNA?

In my limited experience of being a branding and image consultant for a lot of IT, IT services and IT-enabled services companies, there was one constant challenge. With the exception of a few, the business model/content of communication of majority of companies in this space is absolutely indistinguishable. However, there was always a lingering question, which begged an answer and, answer to which I thought would be the basis of differentiation for a whole lot of players in these sectors.

The way to healthy business is to turn down some of your customers

Thought the headline was an editing mistake that someone allowed to slip through. Not really. As the economy grows and demand rises across sectors, there is inevitable growth that every organization irrespective of its size witnesses. With growth come new customers of all kinds, hues, sizes, expectations, requirements, work processes and quirks. The easiest thing and the most logical thing in this situation for any SME firm which is hungry for business and ambitious about its business to do is to accept all the customers with open hands.

Entrepreneurship as a career option comes into its own

While the financial success and leadership position of Narayana Murthy and many others of his ilk from the technology industry is widely talked about there is one more far-reaching impact they have had which is not that equally hyped. Pre-their success, entreprenuership in the business context was primarily a family bastion and the reserve of springs and offsprings of existing businessmen and traders. The professionals and professional managers were conditioned to believe that their wont is to do a job and do it well and being the ultimate master of their own destiny is not an option at all.

All entrepreneurship is truly global in some sense

Running a beach resort in the Caribbean – is your entrepreneurship local or global? Well, my premise and strong conviction is that at some level and in some sense all entrepreneurship however local is truly global. Sounds surprising, here is why I believe so strongly:

Empty pockets? No hassles as long as you have an idea in it!

There are many, many popular myths about money from a venture point of view, which have been overblown. While to some extent they are true, in an entrepreneurship context, they have become fairly irrelevant over the past decade or so. In the license and industrial era everything was about financial capital – capital to put up plants, to pay license fees etc. etc.

Business writing

The pen aka mouse is still mightier…

In the many things taught and communicated to entrepreneurs, there is one that figures at the bottom if at all it figures – the importance of business writing or communication. A common misconception is that with increasing automation and digitalization, the power of the written and presented word is becoming less and less. How untrue? The reality is that all these advances and technology have only made it more powerful and the process of editing, presenting and archiving the words a lot easier and efficient. Let me outline couple of primary reasons (not all) for this: