Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Spicing up the entertainme nt dreams!


Now IIPM's World-Class Education... for everybody!!

B. K. Modi, Global Chairman, Spice Corp. is all game for the entertainment business. In an exclusive interview with Pallavi Srivastava he reveals his $1 billion plans...

He is sporting a new look these days. And in his new creative attire (with that hard to miss big hat!) you may easily mistake him as a director or producer of tinsel town. Though he laughingly offers, “this new look hides my age and makes me look younger,” but there is much more to it... His new look matches perfectly with his ultra zeal for the entertainment business. And his entertainment dreams start right from the 70mm screen; spans across the smaller screen of television, mobile and Internet; and tunes in to the music industry. So let’s hear about the mega entertainment plans, the reason for exiting Spice Telecom, rumours about selling Spice Mobile and much more straight from the man himself...

What is the reason behind selling off the telecom business to Idea Cellular?
We wanted to get out of our businesses on the infrastructure side, as infrastructure has become stagnant over the years. So it’s time we move forward and look for new pastures. Currently, we are focusing on the softer side of the business: the content business.

What are the new business areas that you are targetting?
I am strongly interested in the entertainment business. We have plans to put up $1 billion in this business across segments like music, games, movies, et al. Also making these content available on various new platforms, like mobile and Internet, along with traditional platforms like television. And we are not restricting ourselves to India only; we are looking at the region around India and also in the US.

What is the strategy behind getting into the entertainment arena?
It’s simple. The entertainment industry is on an upswing. And I strongly feel that India could be the world leader in the entertainment business. Moreover, it derives synergies from our mobile and Internet business.

Are you looking at acquisitions to expand yourself in this sphere?
As I told you that we are looking at an investment of $1 billion in the entertainment business, this money will be used for expanding ourselves both through acquisitions and through new ventures. We are considering a lot of options on the acquisition front in television, gaming, etc. Actually, we are a cash rich company and this industry is going through change, it requires consolidation and new players.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Programme :- SUPERIOR COURSE CONTENTS
IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA
IIPM - Admission Procedure
IIPM, GURGAON
IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
IIPM’s 36th Glorious Year of Academic Excellence
4Ps Power Brand Awards 2007
When IIPM comes to education, never compromise
Why Study Abroad When IIPM Gives You 3 global Advantages!
IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Five point someone?!


Now IIPM's World-Class Education... for everybody!!

Comparisons are odious but forewarned is forearmed...4Ps B&M’s Savreen Gadhoke analyses the backward journey of Indian retailers


Even before the then 44-year-old Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962, he had already put in place his supply chain and marketing vision. The fact that he already had more than a dozen years of experience running a variety of retail stores (Walton’s 5X10), spread across Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas, gave him requisite depth about consumer needs and a strategy for meeting their ‘lowest prices everyday’ expectations.

Cut to India’s Sam Walton wannabes a.k.a. Kishore Biyani, Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal, among others (we’re sure you get the picture...) and you realise that they are holding the wrong end of the stick. If globally, supply chain management came first; in India, the story is remarkably different. Forget Walton, across Europe and US, new entrants in the retail business first ensure that their back-end is strong and robust and then concentration is shifted to front-end. But it is just antipodal in India. “In European and American markets,” says Andrew Levermore, CEO, Hypercity, “the supply chain is much more organised compared to India and this has enabled them to create very many successful retail brands.”

Retailers bemoan the multiple tax layers imposed by the Government as one of the biggest hurdles in developing efficient logistics and warehousing facilities. Vivek Wikhe, Senior Consultant, Technopak, avers, “Overall investment in back-end has not picked up in India so far and the main focus of retailers is on expansion. Most of the retailers still rely on the traditional set-ups of godown to store their goods.” No wonder, the Government has now begun giving incentives to those who are investing in building strong back-end support and players like Reliance, Bharti (Wal-Mart) and Vishal Mega Mart have begun earmarking hefty investments for establishing their back-end and logistics facilities.

Adds Arvind Singhal, Chairman, Technopak: “Indian retail industry compared to developed nations is very unorganised and unconsolidated.” Of course, there are those who say that one does not really need to compare. After all, organised retail is still a nascent industry in the country. But comparisons are inevitable, if one were to simply take into account that all the rosy predictions about the potential of Indian retail have somehow not kept pace. In fact, the picture today is nowhere as rosy as the one painted three years ago, when the Indian retail juggernaut was just about gathering steam. Then, pundits predicted that organised retail in India would grow at 38% annually and that the industry would touch the grandiose $60 billion mark by 2011. Contrary to the hype, even today, Indian organised retail is only growing at about 28-30% per annum, and the industry stands at only $14 billion odd today.

Clearly, something is not going as per plan. And hey, we are not even referring to the dismal ambience of Indian retail stores vis-à-vis their global peers. Out-of-stock notices, lack of air conditioning, slow billing process, are just among a few downsides of the Indian retail experience, but all that is easily rectifiable given that the industry is still nascent. But this nascence is perhaps the single biggest reason why one needs comparisons with global counterparts at this stage. Forewarned, is after all, forearmed!

Apart from supply chain issues, there is also the additional pressure of huge infrastructure bottlenecks faced by retailers in India, crucial among them being transportation. Seconds Soumitra Ghatak, CEO, My Dollarstore, who says, “As compared to other markets, Indian retail industry is still very new and its growth is being disturbed by lack of adequate infrastructure and property.” India is geographically vast and 40% of the traffic passes through national highways for going from one state to another. But national highways are few and far between, leading to congestion on road and timely delivery, which has a direct effect on the quality of products especially fruits and vegetables. They say that apart from a few states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu that have good highways, the rest of the nation (particularly north India) suffers from pathetic infrastructure. Interestingly, organised retail has had a successful run in South India largely because of the very developed Nilgiri belt. Major retailers like Subhiksha and Spencers have flourished out of Chennai only because of the good infrastructure facilities.

Further, unlike western countries, India is a vast, heterogeneous nation, with varied geographical and cultural tastes. So single-format retail has as little chances of success in India as peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan! Little wonder that retailer after retailer is expanding his retail format net (small & big stores, large & smaller inventory stores, hypermarts, departmental stores, food & grocery retail outlets, electronics stores, apparel stores, et al) to catch more consumers. But herein is the catch! In India, the retail growth is mainly in food & grocery retail, a chunk which comprises of 55-60% of total organised retail, much higher than the global consumption pattern. And hence, while in Europe and US, the shift has been from hypermarkets to convenience stores, so far, the exact opposite has been the case in India. Baqar Naqvi, Associate Vice President, Retail and Consumer Goods, Technopak avers, “Given that large-scale growth has been projected for Indian organised retail, then retailers will clearly have to shift their focus on larger formats like hypermarkets and supermarkets.”

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Programme :- SUPERIOR COURSE CONTENTS
IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA
IIPM - Admission Procedure
IIPM, GURGAON
IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
IIPM’s 36th Glorious Year of Academic Excellence
4Ps Power Brand Awards 2007
When IIPM comes to education, never compromise
Why Study Abroad When IIPM Gives You 3 global Advantages!
IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...


Friday, January 09, 2009

Vampire endorsements and celeb abusement have become all to common words in ad-land’s lingo. neha saraiya gets to the bottom of the matter


Now IIPM's World-Class Education... for everybody!!

They can’t seem to talk about much else in ad-land these days. The talk almost always hovers around how to plug in a film star, a cricketer, a Sania Mirza, a TV saas-bahu soap star (in that order) into campaigns to get in the oomph factor. Worse, they are also talking about how, more often than not, celebrities are unable to deliver the bang for their bucks for the brand. Contradictory discussions, but these are the facts staring all marketers in their face. The choice it seems is between celeb endorsement and celeb abusement!

In December 2005, telecom giant Motorola was looking desperately for a celebrity who could kickstart its market share of, then just a measly 4% and set it off against competitors. The solution was Abhishek Bachchan! Around that time, Aby baby was also endorsing LG and its range of consumer durables (that also had mobile handsets in their kitty). Consumers were confused. More pertinently, Motorola’s ads were more eye-catching and LG felt completely overshadowed. Abhishek had failed to deliver for brand LG, a classic case of celeb abusement. LG did not renew its contract with Abhishek.

More importantly though, even consumers are sick of the celeb abusement in ad-world, with every ad looking an exact replica of the next. As per an IMRB International survey, more than half the respondents concur that celebs are just the icing and even they would not be using the products they endorse. Moreover, many feel that there is a grotesque disconnect between the product and the brand in most endorsement instances, where the celebrity eats away the brand. Often termed as Vampire endorsements these ones have a long list to go. From Tina Munim’s endorsement of ‘Ria’ soap in late 80s to the latest Tata Sky commercial featuring Aamir Khan, the question mark is not so much on the brand, but on the honchos who conceived the brand connect and storyboard. Says Titus Upputuru, Senior Creative Director, O&M, “How you use celebrities is how you get the final output. Celebs provide a brand recall, likeability of the product, along with equity. That’s how it works.”

So while very obvious brand-celeb connects (like Akshay Kumar and Thums Up) gets a definite ‘yes’, fact is that marketers need to look closely at the moolah they are churning out to rope in such big names to be a part of their campaign. Just think! Instead of Abhishek Bachchan in the Idea Cellular campaigns, couldn’t it be anyone else or even the usual good-looks model? No doubt, the campaign has got rave reviews. However, that’s not because of celeb power, but the credit goes to the powerful idea & storyboard that the creative guys came up with.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Programme :- SUPERIOR COURSE CONTENTS
IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA
IIPM - Admission Procedure
IIPM, GURGAON
IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
IIPM’s 36th Glorious Year of Academic Excellence
4Ps Power Brand Awards 2007
When IIPM comes to education, never compromise
Why Study Abroad When IIPM Gives You 3 global Advantages!
IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Who’ll win the finals?


Now IIPM's World-Class Education... for everybody!!

Given the stakes, honchos at Nokia immediately pre-poned the launch of their N96 here – and are confident that at least in terms of features (where Nokia has an edge – see table) their smart phone will give Apple tough competition. Even the pricing of N96 is expected to be in the same range (maybe even a tad higher) as of iPhone. The strategy is clear. Both players want to first capture the innovative consumers and then opt for the late-movers and laggards, finally tapping the entire potential of the Indian mobile-scape.

As Anshul Gupta, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner India states, “The pricing is strategically high to get the cream first and then you will see major price cuts in both these handsets.” Speaking on the same lines, Sougat Chatterjee, Chief Marketing Officer, Fly Mobile India avers, “The market potential of phones like iPhone and N96 will never be more than 2-2.5% as they are targeted at niche audiences.”

To let the brand remain connected to its now-famous international success legacy, all iPhone marketing communications are based on their global campaign – typically basic and minimal. Agrees Sanjay Kapoor, President-Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel: “We have kept iPhone more or less the same device as in the other countries other than offering free download packs.” In other words, there is no tearing hysteria to ‘tease’ the consumer and get him out to sample the product, at least just yet. On the other hand, Nokia is expected to go the whole hog with its marketing blitz for the N96. The Finnish giant has already hired special buses (painted black with N96 splashed boldly in white) for its teaser messages.

What could still clinch the finals for Apple in India is the fact that the iPhone has exclusive tie-ups with both Airtel and Vodafone (India’s biggest GSM players – giving Apple a huge distribution strength), while Nokia has had to settle for a similar (though not exclusive) arrangement with Idea. When it comes to choosing between the two, going by features alone Nokia’s N96 holds the edge, although iPhone’s Operating System is reputed to be the most reliable in the industry. But Jobs’ marketing prowess can spring a surprise anytime. After all, if he has been able to crack markets world over, what’s to say that he will hate to lose in the most lucrative telecom market of them all? Yes bro, India!

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Programme :- SUPERIOR COURSE CONTENTS
IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA
IIPM - Admission Procedure
IIPM, GURGAON
IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
IIPM’s 36th Glorious Year of Academic Excellence
4Ps Power Brand Awards 2007
When IIPM comes to education, never compromise
Why Study Abroad When IIPM Gives You 3 global Advantages!
IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...