Almost all CEOs and marketing executives feel that innovation is a critical component of corporate success. Yet, most senior managers have a pretty narrow view of innovation – they feel that it is all about new product development or traditional R&D. The danger of this myopic view of innovation is that it can, over time, […]
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Talk to any marketer (or political leader) in India today and he will talk of India’s youthful population and what a massive opportunity this demographic segment represents. So everyone keeps looking at the 18-34 age group and how to cater to this huge segment. Most advertising campaigns also concentrate on the young. No harm in […]
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I don’t think that I need to tell people about the advantages of strong brands – the benefits are immense. Yet, due to various factors, many of them associated with long term mismanagement, some brands do become stale and weak. Yet, unless the markets in which they operate have lost its relevance, brands can be […]
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I don’t know how many of you have used Uber cabs to transport you. I have started using Uber cabs regularly; for prices slightly higher than that of normal taxis, I have been driven to my destination in an Audi A6, a Jag and a BMW! Uber has really changed the way people around the […]
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Good ads convince us to buy the product or brand they are advertising. Really great ads change the way we think and behave. The attached article features 14 such ads – sure, they are more relevant to the US but most marketing and advertising folks would be familiar with some of them. And the impact […]
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There is no doubt that a number of new product launches end in failure. In fact, many people, some very eminent, have asserted that 80-90% of new launches fail. While this is not borne out by empirical evidence, there is no denying the fact that 30-50% of products fail in the marketplace. In two studies […]
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About ten years ago, I had gone to Hong Kong to attend the IHT Luxury Conference. In one of the sessions, the head of one of the famous luxury houses (I forget which) narrated an interesting story: He had gone to China and the local chief executive of his company showed him identical samples of […]
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Most companies feel that they should not boast about the achievements of their organisation or brand. “It is so wrong to show-off, to talk big,” goes the refrain. Dead wrong! If you have a reason to boast, do it shamelessly – it could just make a huge, huge difference to your long term success. So […]
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India has one of the youngest demographics in the world; almost 30% of the population is in the 0-12 age group. If one were to divide this group into two – 0 to 7 and 8 to 12 – the tweens (8-12) is a group that marketers really should not be ignoring. There are some […]
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The long tail was popularized by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article in which he mentioned Amazon.com, Apple and Yahoo! as examples of businesses applying this strategy. Anderson elaborated the concept in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Anderson argued that products that […]
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