a revolution

Pledge your support here and turn off your lights for one hour, Earth Hour, 8.30pm, Saturday 27th March 2010.
Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made structure, will also join tens of thousands of iconic buildings and landmarks from across the world.
To mark the occasion, the golden glow that cascades down the 828-metre tower will be turned off.
It’s Showtime! Show what can be done.

This event has successfully created a brand which is at par with many cult brands like green peace. Apart from creating awareness, i believe, it can do what the UN and the local governments couldnt do.

Rogues

Rogues

Rogues

Global automobile giants like Toyota and Honda created a furor among their customers by announcing massive car recalls. Toyota plans to recall more than eight million vehicles while Honda has to recall more than one million. Toyota says that the drivers of these vehicles have reported unintended acceleration of their vehicles which is caused by the improper design of the pedal and the floor mat. Honda vehicles are facing problems with airbags and a switch which could cause fire. To rectify these defects a massive reverse logistic exercise will cost them millions of Dollars.

Why did it happen?
In-spite of stringent safety and security checks on vehicles before going to customers, some defects crop up only after extensive use. However, in this case the issue should have been rectified during the initial testing. Organizations take a call in drawing a line beyond which they assume that the cost of improvement is much higher than the cost of failure. Is this the case? or it is the inefficiency of the automobile manufacturers to detect such visible problems? or do we require Sherlock Holmes?
Impact of such major recalls:
Historically, Cadillacs in 1960, Ford SUV in 2000 because of Firestone tires, Yo-Yo toys in 2003, Cadbury in 2006, Sony notebooks in 2006 and now Prius, are some of the major global recalls of the industrialized world. It is interesting to see that post recall there is a sense of excitement among the customers that the company really cares about them. The kind of massive media coverage they get increases their brand awareness tremendously. But if not managed well it may hurt the brand deeply. There are two possibilities, one that the brand succeeds in building the invaluable trust in their customers and second the trust can shift towards the competitors. In the case of Toyota, it somehow seems that the brand will strengthen because of the numerous apologies and actions taken post recall decision. If they implement the recall successful within the committed time frame, the loyalty towards them would increase. This will give a sense of confidence to the users that the company walks the talk.

Rogues

Gabbar

“Ye haath mujhe de de Thakur”, is one of the many famous dialogue of this movie. It is said that the film industry of India is categorized as pre Sholey and post Sholey. The book written by Anupama Chopra is crispy and covers even the finest details about the movie from concept to release. The author has penned down even the details like how the name of the characters ‘Gabbar’, ‘viru’ & ‘Jai’ evolved. It also covered the problems faced by the movie because of the censor board. It revealed that the story had a different ending, in which Gabbar was to be killed brutally by Thakur. Alas! it was changed on the request of the censor boards just two months before the release date of the evangelical brand Sholey.
This movie was the first Indian movie to be released in a 70mm format instead of the traditional 35mm. It was the biggest budget movie during the 70s with a budget of 1 crore rupees (which went upto 3 crores). This movie was the first to use its character ‘Gabbar’ to promote products like Britannia biscuits. The movie was the first Indian movie to give real credit to the script writers like Salim-Javed. However, such revolutionary initiatives attracted lot of discomfort in the entire film industry but this did not stop the Sippys from hiring the best talent for their dream project.
This movie also experimented with some marketing innovations by releasing the movie in both the 35mm and the 70mm format. It was the first movie to sell the music rights and also the first to release the only dialogue version in large scale. In the first week of the release the movie was not received well by the audience. The entire team went into depression but instead of losing hope went around to find the root cause of the problem. During this post release analysis they found that the viewers actually were lost in the movie and they did not even went out during the intervals. This review from a theater owner changed the way the movie was perceived. As a result this movie bounced back as one of the biggest hits of the time. A Super Duper hit, what we call in India.

Rogues

Wrigley traveled from Philadelphia to Chicago in the spring of 1891. He was 29 years old, had $32 in his pocket and possessed endless enthusiasm.

His started his career trying to sell Wrigley’s Scouring Soap, which was produced in his father’s factory. Wrigley offered free gifts to merchants to increase sales, knowing that such freebies would induce his customers to promote Wrigley’s soap. One of these freebies was baking powder. When baking powder proved to be more popular than soap, Wrigley switched over to the baking powder business.

One day in 1892 Wrigley got the idea of offering two packages of chewing gum with each can of baking powder. The decision proved fateful, with the gum eventually overtaking the baking powder in popularity. Wrigley responded by reorienting the company to manufacture chewing gum.

Wrigley took his products to the Chicago Expo and soon people around the world had his gum in the palm of their hand. The company currently sells its products in over 180 countries and operates more than 10 factories all over the world.

This is how worlds most popular Chewing Gum brand was created. It is also true that every famous brand has a story behind it. Be it Coca Cola, Pepsi, Tata, IBM or Apple.

Rogues

Mega plans fueled with high growth and investments gave birth to high levels of kickbacks, commissions and arbitrage in the 90s. The average per capita income in China increased more than 11 times in a period of 30 years.

Every small rule by the party was followed by a plethora of unrest among the peasants, thanks to the Kleptocracy of the party members at all levels. In the late 90s the Chinese banks had around 35% non performing assets, which jeopardized the entire financial system.

Studies say that the Chinese economy was under severe recession despite the reports published by Chinese officials that it is attempting a soft landing. The recession peaked in 1999 where 80% of the provinces were under debt and the entire fleet of TVEs and cooperatives were suffering huge losses. It so happened that post 2000 the Chinese economy started growing again, like an uncontrolled rocket. During this time a certain group of leaders in Shanghai pledged to make Shanghai the picture of extreme imagination and flamboyance in one decade. Which other major cities of the world took centuries. This lead to one of the biggest construction project in East Coast of China the world has ever seen after the making of the Great Barrier Reef. This project increased the divide between the poor and the rich manifolds. In 1990s annual investment in the real estate in Shanghai was less than $120 million, in 2001 it reached $ 7.6 billion. While there were only three buildings in the city that exceeded 20 stories in height in 1980 and 152 in 1990, there were 1500 in 2000. This helped in the development of one of the biggest property bubbles in the history of China. The property market was catering to the nouveaux riches of the world. Widespread dissent acquired political tone because, in the eyes of the public it was at the cost of other parts of the country. The economy of the Coast was overflowing with public and private funds while the west and the north were not even getting their basic fundings. Many said that Shanghai was the ‘head of the dragon’. But the leaders of Shanghai were adamant enough to reopen the construction of the worlds tallest building, Shanghai Global Financial Center. Mayor Han Zhen was proud of this development and continued with all the big projects and even announced that Songjiang, Jiading and Qingpu will be developed as Shanghais suburb. It was also Jiang Zemin faction’s power base. So Hu Jintao, to control the investments in this area in the lines with macro-economic control. The center calcelled projects worth $48 billion including the 40 Km undersea tunnel, theme parks and horse racing tracks. The party leader in Shanghai were unappy with this move. Party secratary Chen Liangyu raised his voice and a conflict started which made the center even more determined to restrict the investments as per the national policy. chen is reprted to have said that ‘I have a dream’ against the lines of Martin Luther King (equality). He wanted Shanghai to achieve the levels by 2010 before the Shanghai world Expo. ‘Hai’ means beach and to make it, they imported 128000 tonne of sand to build a 10 Km long beach in the suburbs. He also commissioned a $290 million world class tennis complex and $300 million formula one race track. He crossed the limits when he announced the extension of the 30Km magnetic levitation train at a cost of $1.3 billion. This train was ranked in 2004 as the biggest white elephant ever made with payback period more than 160 years.

This lead to the widespread discontent against the Shanghai Gang and a major shuffle happened in the local government to restrict the gas filled property growth. This was the end of ‘The Shanghai Gang’. This is one of the few instances in the post independence that shows China cares for people and its the People’s Republic.

Rogues

Let us conceptualize it:
1.      Make your product identifiable if you believe in your product
2.      Promote the identification mark to inform your customers
3.      Reap the benefits of increasing revenues!

The evolution of traditional branding:
Branding evolved steadily along with the evolution of industries. Tobacco manufacturers used different bags in 1800s with differentiable labels. This was because the flavor of tobacco varied significantly with the change of climate in which it is cultivated. To ensure that the customers got their favorite flavor, the companies branded the products based on the country produced in. Branding got a boost when countries initiated changes in trademark laws in favor of manufacturers. The modern branding started with the introduction of a star on candles produced by Procter & Gamble. Customers almost always asked for this star mark before buying candles. This forced the company to put this mark consistently on all their candles produced. Thus, a brand was born. Further, National biscuits, Heinz and Coca-Cola lead the branding game to astronomical levels. Today Coca-Cola’s brand value is more than $64 billion!

Which products can be branded?
The answer lies in the fact that any thing can be branded and is being branded and will be branded. Chinese silk, Indian Spices, German technology, Arabian horses and other regional products are associated with the country of origin. The bottled water industry is a classical example of branding. Bottles are branded based on the source of water like spring water, mountain water, glacier water, with each relating to different level of perceived purity of water. The air you breathe can also be differentiated like air of Beijing and air of Amazon. By the name people can evaluate the quality of air. Even the services provided by companies like Infosys, Taj Hotels and HSBC bank are used to distinguish certain products. Guess why do companies use brand ambassadors for branding?

Rogues