All-Women Car

Whenever i see products like a All Women Car, An exclusive shampoo for men..., it makes me think are we pushing things a little too far, though some of my reader have disagreed with me when I had written earlier on men's shampoo issue, but the proposed launch of All Women Car has again raked-up the issue in my mind....

A excerpt from the article "The car, with electronic parking aids and a jack making it easier to change a wheel, will be painted in soft "feminine" colours and include interior design features aimed specifically at women,"

To read more on the All-Women car, link

The company - Iran Khodro

Gujarat and Nano: Sucessful marketing of state

West Bengal's loss has been Gujarat's gain. This success of Gujarat in bagging the nano project can be seen as a case of successful marketing , marketing of a state as a attractive investment destination.

Personally for me who was in Gujarat for five years it is very apparent why they should be able to do that. The reason quoted in the press is the speed with which the state machinery could work. I can relate this to my personal experience of having dealt with the official machinery in Gujarat. I came from my home state with a learning license and wanted a permanent license. From my past experience with RTO offices I knew the job would not be an easy one. But I was in for a pleasant surprise. I walked into the RTO office in Anand a small town in Gujarat and met with a PRO officer ( I have not seen him in my state, infact it is difficult to meet any one there!!!!)who expedited the process and by the end of the day I had my driving test and the photo-driving license issued. Now this was without the help of any agents or giving any extra money. If this could happen to a normal citizen , I can imagine the response of the official machinery to the Tata project.

Though people like Narendra Modi would like corner all the credit, but I feel due credit should also go to the earlier Chief Ministers and people of the state. Even a person like Dr Kurien who has spent more than 60 years in Gujarat says the people of the state have accepted him more than maybe even his own state people would have (he is basically from Kerala). But what Narendra Modi has succeeded in doing is giving that state the image of being aggressive in attracting investors as was done by people like Chandrababu Naidu and S M Krishna for Andhra and Karnataka some years back.....

Hopefully with all this we should be able to see nano on the streets soon....

Presentations and Marketing

My today's post is something which one cannot claim to be directly linked to marketing, but in reality is a skill which every successful marketer has picked up ( could be trial and error or design)..the skill of making presentations and connecting...

Marketing and communicating are intrinsically linked and a significant part of a marketer job is communication and  presentation which would mean ppts for most of us, become a significant mode of communication . Seth Godin's writing on making effective presentations have been a source of inspiration for me and , one of his older posts which actually made me to think seriously about the issues was 'Really Bad Powerpoint'which I would still recommend to any one who wants to rethink the way he or she makes a presentation. His latest post on the issue of presentation talks about '9 steps to powerpoint magic' again reinforces the message ....

My interest in presentation has taken me to many blogs, websites and books which talk about the skill of presentations, will try and share a few of them...

Presentation Zen , book as well as blog, highly recommended

Made to Stick, not exactly of presentation skills but throws up many ideas which could be used by a presenter

Slideology, a new resource which i have recently come across...

Indian Marketing Sucess Stories Series- Intro

When we talk about success stories or cases studies, we have always been fed with examples of what happened in the developed market context. But one feels that the success stories at home have not been appreciated and documented well enough. As an attempt in this direction I thought an attempt could be made to try and trace out marketing success stories of companies and brands in India, without limiting myself to Indian companies only.
On various success stories which can possibly be traced out . am making a tentative list which hopefully would keep growing
1. Nirma
2. Marketing of Kerala as a Tourism Destination
3. Nokia
4. HUL and various brands- Lifebouy, Fair&Lovely
5. Tata- Indica

6. Peter England
7. Marico - Parachute & Safola
8. Britannia Tiger
9. Thumps Up
10. Cavin Kare
11. Haldirams
12. MTR
13. Waghbakri Tea
14. Mahindra and Mahindra Scorpio
15.........................
Looking forward to suggestions from readers to this list

More on Festival Season

To add more on the upcoming festive season I visited a few websites of companies which have a lot of business linked to festival season and saw Haldiram's site to be done very well. Infact at the bottom of the page there is a dial which has all the months and festivals linked, one click on a particular month would show all the festivals in the month and their gift packs...

Festive Season Starts.....

The month from September onwards marks the start of festival season in most of the states across the country, starting with Onam and Ganesha Festival running up to Christmas in December. This is one part of year which many companies look forward to with a lot of interest, TV, Automobile, Real Estate.....Actually not just interest for many of these companies their overall sales growth is dependant of their performance in these crucial months..

Last year the outlook was less complicated, with a very positive growth forecast for the economy and the stock market not yo-yoing as it is doing this year( though even with the lowered growth expectations this year, we would be among the fastest growing economies in the world).

On the positive side we have all the major festivals falling in the same month of October, Dusherra, Diwali, Id..... and then with the pay commission arrears being given government employees would mean increased disposable income. Many companies like Maruti Suzuki have developed specific promotions to attract these 5.5 million government employees,link. But this all is happening at the back drop of US financial market crisis and the fear of a global slowdown and consumer durable companies facing raising input costs and pressure on margins......

From a observer's perspective it becomes a good time to watch and look for the promotional strategies that various companies come up with to woo the consumers. Though really good innovative promotions have been missing and all one sees is companies beating the 'old dead horse' of scratch card in one form or the other,

hopefully this festival season we might see some change ....

Checking the net on festivals in India I came across a site which has made a list of festivals in India http://www.festivalsofindia.in/

The site has made a month wise list and three months have 16 festivals a month, more than one every alternate day.. obviously the site mentions only the major festivals , because if one were to make an attempt to list out all festivals in India, I don't know how long the list would go.