Stuart H. Britt, US advertising consultant

The students of IIM Calcutta were in for a jam-packed weekend with the 7^th edition of the “˜Strategic Marketing’ Workshop being organized in association with the Chennai Chapter of the IIMC Alumni Association and the Marketing Faculty on 19-20 Sep, 2009. 12 hours of hard-core, real-life marketing experiences among alums with more than 350 years of expertise among them, were up for grabs, as the students made best of this opportunity by interacting with them and participating in the case-study competition, as a part of this event

This workshop was conducted with the assistance of the Marketing Cell-”Marcell” of IIM Calcutta. Through the medium of cases, it aimed to introduce a few to the concept of Strategic Marketing and help implement their “˜text-book’ knowledge to solving these real life cases for the others.

The opening keynote address was given by Prof. Prashant Mishra, PGP Chairman, IIM Calcutta.  He spoke about this workshop “being a unique opportunity for the students to take advantage of the collective experience of the wide resources from the Alumni network“.  In the words of Prof. Sudhas Roy, a workshop like this was needed to “bring the real world into the classroom.” He also lauded the hard work put in by the Chennai Chapter and praised them for being able to sustain and continue the same effort for 7 editions.

The overview of the workshop were given by Mr. J.Krishnan (12^th batch), MD, Netlink Technologies Ltd. (ex-CEO of the Deccan Chargers) and Mr. Ashok Jayaraman (8^th batch), MD, CFI Ltd. Both of the speakers recognized the importance of conducting such workshops as a medium for students to understand how the real world works and to stimulate an environment so as to get a reality check on where they stood.

A case study in the Education Sector

The first case of the day “Marketing in Education” was anchored by Mr. Anand Sudarshan (19^th batch), CEO and MD, Manipal Education. He discussed how the Third Quotient, GQ or the “˜Glamour Quotient’ was missing in the field of education and how the poor “˜Gross Enrolment Ratio’ of India vis-a-vis  other developing countries would hurt its future prospects. He also divulged how quality Vocational education institutes would be needed as an immediate measure. Teams of 5 students each, presented their views and suggestions on the case. Innovative solutions encompassing PPP models and popular organizational structures like the hub-and-spoke models were examined for their efficacy and economic benefits. Mr. Sudarshan eventually explained what was really happening in real life and outlined the need for a Joint-Venture with an established brand in the area of education.

Appreciating Funds-Its Mutual

The next case was conducted by Mr. V Sankar (18^th batch), MD, CAMS. He engaged the audience with the concept of “˜Marketing of Mutual Funds’ and how it would be beneficial to set up a Sales and Distribution framework in India. He also cleared up many misconceptions about Mutual funds in general and how understanding them better would lead to appreciating their true advantage in today’s world.

Roadmap to remove roadblocks

The next session dealt with the tricky issue of a “˜Removing roadblocks from PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships)’. It involved analysing the need for having a PPP in a particular situation, the roles adopted by the partners, funding of the projects and ensuring viability. Mr. D Prakash (11^th batch) Director, UTI Technology Services, played the role of the anchor in this discussion and gave his vital inputs in investigating the parameters involved in evaluating the success of such a partnership.

The day ended with the much awaited interactive session between the alumni and the students of IIM Calcutta. Students fired their doubts and queries at the alums who gladly answered them.

A Stitch in Time

Day 2 was kick-started with the discussion on a case study in the apparel retail sector. This case dealt with the intricate concepts of deciding the distribution strategy of a fictitious company, its cost structure and deciding on the change of management that would accompany an acquisition. Mr. Vineesh Chadha (30^th batch), Director, MXV Consulting, anchored the discussion and evaluated the groups on the basis of innovative solutions with practical feasibility and outlining the significance of understanding the customer needs. He also stressed on the common mistakes made by companies in the Post Merger Integration stage of the acquisition.

Results for the Case Study Competition

The final session of the event saw the results for the highly-contested Case Study Competition. This competition was judged by eminent alums like Mohan Eddy (8^th batch), Director, India Satcom, R. Ramaraj (8^th batch), Senior Advisor, Sequoia Capital, Ajay Jain (18^th batch), Director, Tecpro Infrastructure, K. “˜Mali’ Mahalingam (22^nd batch), Partner, TS Mahalingam & Sons, Ravi Santhanam (15^th batch), MD, Hindustan Motors and PVR Murthy (13^th batch), CEO, Executive Search Recruitment Consultants.

The honours of the 1^st place in the competition were taken away by the PGP-2 team comprising of G. Sriram (Yay Jokatimes!), Anand Goyal,  Kushal Kumar Manupati, Swayam Khialani and Sarang Shahane.

With this, a fruitful and an enlightening experience came to an end leaving the students with a taste of real-life strategic marketing and hungry for more such interactive sessions.

For JokaTimes,

Purnoor Singh Sodhi

The article by PPO holder Sriram (aka Global Sriram), surely must have given you a feel of how passionate a marketer can be about his field and his products. The ZooZoo article is a lesson to firms that advertising might not be always about roping in a Madhavan or a Vidya Balan or spending millions of rupees, one can connect with his customer equally well with a dog and a kid too or maybe with a bunch of cute looking bubble heads jumping animatedly on your TV screen. The interviews with IIMCians most knowledgeable in the field of marketing including our ER Secy, Paul and Pradeep Pokhariyal hopefully would have answered a few questions for facchas.

Also, some personal admirations and poetic skills were well expressed in the Desi Joka Brands section. Special mention of Tejveer Singh and the poem dedicated to him by Skandha liked by one and all; he out of a will to preserve his brand value or maybe just out of habit, again missed the last Marvel copy inspite of rushing at what he claims was “breakneck speed” (yea sure!). The extensive research on Brand Bollywood by Aayush and the write up on Sports Marketing by the footer crazy Abhishek Singh were extremely insightful too for film lovers and sports fanatics! If you haven’t tested your Marketing prowess yet then go ahead and do it with Prerak’s Quiz!

Also take the witch on the last page seriously, because Marcell after its magazine is now going to take you by storm with BrandWitch. Keep your eyes glued to the Blueboard and make this year remembered as the year of marketers!

For the Kotlers of the incoming batch; all those who are enthusiastic about marketing or for those who struck a chord somewhere after going through Marvel, Marcell would be looking to recruit enthusiastic “˜fucchas’ who can contribute in significant way to the making of the next editions of the magazine. Also, Marcell would be willing to accept contributions in the form of articles, interviews, or anything interesting that students can come up with. For more queries, feel free to send emails to marketing.cell@gmail.com.

Mayank Jain (Magazine Head & Editor)

Varun Narayanan (Chief Editor)

New Coke

The failure of New Coke is perhaps the most prominent failure of a super established brand. After more than a century of its existence, in 1985, Coke decided to introduce a sweeter version called the “˜New Coke’. Simultaneously, it decided to stop production of the older version. This change was carried out to take the sweeter Pepsi head on, which had steadily been eating into the market share of Coke. What is more, the blind tests carried out with the new version of coke revealed that the consumers preferred the sweeter taste. All in place for a perfect launch?

Not quite so. Just two and a half months after its launch, the New Coke production was stopped completely, and the traditional Coke was reintroduced.

So, what exactly went wrong? Indeed quite a lot. The proponents of Coke probably forgot that people who had Coke, associated it with a classic hard taste, and even though the sweeter taste might have been better, the classic taste is what made people come back to Coke again and again. Undoubtedly a case of flawed market research!

RJ Reynolds’ Smokeless Cigarettes

Already the proud owners of some famous brands like Camel and Winston, RJ Reynolds’ invested close to $325 million in developing a smokeless cigarette brand which it named “˜Premier’. This was done at the height of the anti-smoking campaign in 1988. The timing seemed to be just perfect. But then the product simply bombed. After 4 months of its launch, RJ Reynolds’ Premier was withdrawn from the markets. The reasons for its bombing were primarily attributed to a very obnoxious smell and odor.

By the mid-1990′s passive smoking concerns again began to crop up. RJ Reynolds’ spent another $125 million in researching an enhanced version of the smokeless cigarettes. A new product called Eclipse was launched in 1996. It claimed to have far lesser health risks. But again, history repeated itself, and the product never really took off. They blamed it on the health hazards related to the new cigarette which were uncovered after some time, but finer probing posed a very pertinent question. The smokeless cigarette appealed to the non-smokers, who don’t smoke anyways, and the people who actually smoke love the smoke from the cigarette, so where exactly did the market for this product exist?

Harley Davidson Perfume

Harley Davidson had a tremendous fan following. In fact so much so, that true Harley fans could go to the extent of getting Harley Davidson’s logo tattooed on their bodies! So, obviously Harley wanted to extend its brand and make full use of this fan following. Consequently, in the 1990′s it started foraying into other products like soaps, T- shirts, socks and even perfumes!

The outcome wasn’t very difficult to guess, the actual Harley fans were really agitated, while those who weren’t with Harley anyways would never buy a Harley Davidson Perfume, because there were so many better brands available. Harley had failed to realize that it was a masculine and rugged brand, and the idea of a perfume would obviously never fit into that image. Today, Harley Davidson is much more selective in its approach towards brand extension.

Modiluft Airlines

After deregulation in Indian markets, the scope for new entrants in a lot of sectors opened up. Thus was born Modiluft in 1994 as a collaboration between Indian industrial group Modi (who would operate the airline), and the German carrier Lufthansa (who would lease Boeing aircrafts). The combination was good and the timing was perfect, but still the airlines had to be grounded in 1996. This time the problem wasn’t from the customer side, rather there was a rift between the partners, one Indian and one German. Apparently their styles of business didn’t quite match. There were accusations of failure to honor the lease contract, put forth by Air UK Leasing Ltd (the aircraft leasing company), legal issues cropped up leading to strained relations between the original partners, the coordination completely broke down resulting in the inevitable. In 2005, Modiluft was reincarnated on a low cost model and operates successfully today as the second largest low cost carrier (in terms of market share) in India.

For Jokatimes

Guhan M

Mayank Jain

References

- Brand Failures ““ Matt Haig
- http://www.expressindia.com/

The Beginning

It started out as a crazy idea. Tired of the usual case contests and simulations that anybody and everybody could do, the members of MarCell wanted to have an event that would blow away the participant’s mind. The brainstorming sessions went on into the early mornings, and only the craziest ideas were accorded some merit. After two months of cussing, swearing, frustrations and much tearing out of hair and slashing of wrists, MarGod was born.

MarGod

The idea was just beautiful in its simplicity. Take a normal day in the life of a brand manager. Then, add a whole lotta crazy. Repeat as necessary.

MarGod is not a contest. It is a blood-sport. When the gladiators rumbled in ancient Rome, at the end of the day, only one of them walked (or limped, or hobbled, or was carried, as the case may be) away. MarGod is just such an extravaganza. Set over three days of mayhem, madness and blood, sweat and tears, MarGod will test the contestants to the limits of their endurance. How else would you separate the boys from the men, or rather, the God from the mortals.

MarGod begins on the 12^th of January, 2009. If you think you have it in you to be crowned the Marketing God of the campus, be there…

(we would like to ask you to take this moment and imagine how it would look on your CV: “Crowned the Marketing God of the Campus”. Not that a CV point should ever be a reason to participate in a contest, but still, you have to admit, it does look kinda nice…)

What do I need, in order to participate?

Just like the Miss World contest, MarGod is all about you. That does not mean that we have a swim-wear round (cancelled at last minute by holding a gun to the event head’s head), in fact, MarGod requires you to be fully clothed at all times. All you need to participate is to be there when MarGod begins. Then, take a deep breath, and let the ride begin. Just be prepared for anything and everything… If we were crazy enough to hang those scarecrows around the campus, just imagine how crazy the actual event would be…

Video

MarCell is the one stop shop for quality marketing based content on campus. As a club, we have undergone a lot of changes within the past two years, not just in the members and structure, but also in the club philosophy and the kind of events we do.

We are currently undergoing a renaissance of sorts, shifting from traditional marketing events, talks and workshops, to off-beat, innovative events (see MarGod), while still retaining our core strengths in those areas. We also hold the distinction of being one of the most active clubs on campus, with regular events, and ever increasing participation.

The Brandwitch Series:-

The Brandwitch series, established in 2007, is our annual event with which we welcome the freshers. It begins as a traditional marketing quiz, with emphasis on thinking and analytical abilities more than facts, which then leads into a wacky ad design contest. The series began with “The Brandwitch Project” and “The Curse of Brandwitch”, and has continued this year with “The Brandwitch Returns”.

The Brandwitch:

The Brandwitch has grown to become something of a mascot of the club. Variously depicted as an evil, enticing witch who holds sway over brands and consumers, she has quickly established herself as one of our flagship features.

The Strategic Marketing Workshops (or The Chennai Alumni Workshop)

The workshop has come a long way since its inception, six years ago. From its humble beginnings as a simple case contest, the workshop has become more and more interactive and expansive over the years, and in its latest incarnation, is a two day extravaganza, consisting of two case contests, two sectoral presentations by alumni distinguished in their fields, and an informal interactive session, where the alumni talked of their own experiences and answered any and all queries the students had. The Chennai Alumni chapter has been our constant companion in this endeavour, and without them, this event wouldn’t have come as far as it has.

The MarGod

Our most ambitious venture to date, its a quest to find the Marketing God of the campus, and we don’t mind putting the contestants through three days of hell and brimstone in order to do it…

More info on this later….

Marvel

The in-house marketing magazine of IIM Calcutta, Marvel offers an outlet for the faculty and students to pen down their thoughts on the current, relevant issues, and also features interviews of our alumni and future trends.

Apart from these, we also have irregular events in collaboration with various firms like Nokia, ITC, Reebok and Eveready etc. We work as the campus partners to these firms and help them make their events a grand success.

As we said earlier, MarCell is going through a significant phase of its existence, and for more updates on how it all turns out, watch this space…

FOR JOKATIMES

MUDIT SHARMA with

ABHIRAM SRIVASTAVA