Who’s Driving the Luxury Market?

Since 2005, I have met a number of designers and executives from luxury brand companies. A few years ago, they were all very gung ho about India; however, since then, I have noticed a discernible cooling down of their enthusiasm. And the reasons: The Indian custom duty on imported luxury goods is very high at […]

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Heinz and Kraft Merge

HJ Heinz, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is to merge with Kraft Foods Group. This will create a giant in the food industry with estimated revenues of $28 billion. Heinz-Kraft will become the world’s fifth largest food company. Heinz will buy 51% of Kraft in a deal brokered by Berkshire and the Brazilian-based private […]

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Are Brand Managers in Danger of Losing Control of Their Brands?

This morning, a post was forwarded by a friend to my Facebook page; it was from a Vijeth Shetty who has created a page entitled ‘Agarwal Non-Movers.’ On this page, he has launched a scathing attack on Agarwal Movers & Packers for screwing up the transfer of his household goods and for not responding to […]

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Apple Executives Praise New Jobs Biography

A new unauthorised biography of Steve Jobs – ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ –  due for release today has been praised by Apple executives as a more authentic portrayal of the man.  Additionally, the executives, including CEO Tim Cook, have criticised an earlier biography – ‘Steve Jobs’ – that was written by Walter Isaacson and published shortly […]

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Factoid

“Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, but we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars particularly are finished.” Executive Dick Rowe of Decca Records, rejecting the Beatles. One of the biggest blunders in business.

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Factoid

Claude C. Hopkins, one of the pioneers of advertising, wrote Scientific Advertising in 1923. It is a must-read for marketers and advertisers, even today. David Ogilvy wrote that “Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times. It changed the course of my life.”

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Factoid

Positioning as a concept was first introduced by Jack Trout in an article in Industrial Marketing in 1969. It was then expanded by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their book “Positioning – The Battle for Your Mind”, published in 1981.

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Factoid

Business strategists in the 1980s, inspired by military strategy books like The Art of War by Sun Tzu, On War by von Clausewitz and The Little Red Book by Mao Zedong, started introducing warfare concepts and terms to business and marketing.

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Factoid

Marketing myopia is a term used by Theodore Levitt in his 1960 article to explain that the vision of many organisations was constricted due to a narrow understanding of what business they were in. The harbinger of modern marketing, the article suggested that companies should concentrate on meeting consumer needs rather than selling products.

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Factoid

The concept of unique selling proposition (USP), the one reason that the product needed to be bought or was better than its competitors, was popularised by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates. Reeves is believed to be the role model for Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), the protagonist in the drama series – Mad Men.

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