Better Brand Mapping Strategy

About a year ago, I read a great book by Niraj Dawar, Professor at the Ivey Business School, Canada and a renowned marketing strategy expert. The book was Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers. In Tilt, Professor Dawar argued that, over time, sustainable competitive advantages would be found not in the technical superiority […]

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The Amazing Future of OOH

I just read an article in Adweek entitled ‘How This Interactive Subway Ad Got Everybody Yawning, and Wanting Coffee.’ The article outlines an interactive outdoor campaign by Lew’Lara\TBWA for Café Pelé at São Paulo’s busy Fradique Coutinho subway station at morning rush hour. A digital panel, equipped with a motion sensor, was set up at […]

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India Scores in APAC Effie Awards 2015

The winners for the APAC Effie Awards 2015 were announced on 10 April 2015 in Singapore, honouring Asia Pacific’s most effective marketing campaigns. A total of 61 Awards – 1 Grand Effie, 17 Golds, 19 Silvers and 24 Bronzes were presented at the function. The Grand Effie was awarded to Havas Worldwide and Child Survival […]

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6 Solid Marketing Ideas

In 1988, Paul B. Brown published a book entitled ‘Marketing Masters: Lessons in the Art of Marketing from the Companies Who Do It Best.’ Sadly, the book is out of print. Brown is a best-selling author who has written, co-written and “ghosted” numerous best-sellers including Customers for Life (with Carl Sewell) which continues to sell […]

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Imitation and Success!

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Herman Melville. Years ago, I used to work for a successful and cash rich company in which a large multinational company had a major stake.  The President of the company was a shrewd Marwari. Whenever any one of us would go to him […]

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Category First, Brand Second

This is a short video in which Al Ries talks about the importance of categories. He argues that people buy into categories, not brands. Brands that own particular categories win. He uses the example of automobile brands to make his crucial point. As a marketer, get your brand to own a word that will help […]

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The Four Horsemen

The attached talk by Scott Galloway at DLD15 is a short 900-second, 90-slide presentation on which amongst the four dominant digital brands – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google – will lose and win in the next few years. Scott Galloway is a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern and the founder of L2, a business […]

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What’s Wrong With Big Companies?

I have often wondered why established companies (with all the resources, monetary, manpower etc., at their disposal) are unable to come out with breakthrough products/brands in the digital space. I mean, look at all of the HUGE internet brands – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, to name some – and they were started by young […]

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Unearth the Right Insight!

Finding the right insight can change the growth trajectory of your brand. I am not sure if you guys still remember the great Charlie Chaplin campaign for Cherry Blossom that ran in the 1980s. The campaign didn’t talk about the product, its benefit to shoes (keeping the leather protected) or the social and workplace importance […]

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We Are All Sellers!

  Daniel Pink is the successful author of five books on business including Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future. His last book, published in 2012, was To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. In the book, Pink argues […]

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