Gandhigiri or PR gimmick?

Few days’ back Mr. Vijay Malaya brought belongings of our Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi back for a whopping sum of $1.8 million. Government failed to prevent the items from going under the hammer, in its everlasting fire fighting mode claimed that Mr. Malaya was the joker of their pack and they made him do the trick. On the contrary Mr. Malaya claimed that he has acted in the most sovereign way and has brought everything back on his own to the country, as it brought him peace…”THE PEACE”
Was it Gandhigiri or a PR gimmick? Let’s look at this potential soap opera from a cynical Marketing viewpoint.
Kingfisher Airlines is bleeding and desperately trying to maintain cash flows to meet its working capital needs. On the other hand UBG with 40% share in Indian Beer market seems to be doing fine with around 20% growth in its bottom line in 2008.
Having said that, let’s agree that by buying Gandhi’s belonging Mr. Malaya will not be able to induce people to fly or drink more beer. He knows other ways to achieve the same (Kingfisher calendar) ;). So there must be something else which could have propelled him in this grand philanthropy.
Hey do you know that Mr. P Chidambaram has assured full security for the coming IPL season, despite the fact that a week back he was advocating change of schedule of IPL as it was (is) clashing with Lok Sabha polls?
Few facts…IPL means big moolah!!! Mr. Malaya owns Royal Challengers Bangalore, one of the IPL team which did badly the last IPL season.
IPL franchisee Team earns from title sponsorship, selling merchandise and selling tickets apart from the share in TV advertisement.
“Revenue stream from Merchandise can be a big money spinner if the franchisee is able to build a huge fan following and city loyalty. From a small income of $1 million in the first year, it is estimated that this can go up to $ 15 million in the tenth year.”
-Times of India
Here comes the crunch point. These three revenue streams depend heavily on the popularity of the team and its owners. What is better than almost free PR for the Brand Malaya and hence Brand Royal Challenger?
Vijay Malaya is India’s Richard branson, expert in hitting the headlines because of everything else but business. All these activities help in garner the power of PR (drumming of unbiased message through third person- Kotler).
Timing of these innocuous events may be sheer serendipity and Mr. Vijay Malaya act might truly be philanthropic as he has done a similar deed in the past by bringing back Tipu Sultans sword to India.
Bottom line remains that “it’s all about bottom lines”

Marketing Perspectives

The primary purpose to start this blog is to share the perspectives on various aspects of Marketing. Influence wielded by our mentors on our thinking process would be difficult to subdue, though utter care would be taken to avoid plagiarism.

Let’s start with the core questions. What is marketing?

I would like to quote one of our Prof who perhaps has provided with the oversimplified yet unassailable definition. It goes like this

Marketing is:

Reason to Try

Strong reason to Buy

Compelling reason to Stay

I will not do the anatomy of these legendary lines but would rather like to add that Marketing is about what you think is right and should be done to sustain and grow your business. It is about having perspectives, ideas and believing in them. It is about making yourself comfortable with uncertainties, conflicting idea, areas of grey. But at the same time it is just not about options it is about compulsions. I must add that one can have more than one compulsion to pursue at the same time.

Lots of work has been done in the field of Marketing. Every second there is a new survey on every possible topic and claims what not. It is good to learn from the existing knowledge base but one should not be obsessive about them. No doubt, adding a Mackinsey survey in your report adds substance to it but one should rely more on his observation rather than anything else.

Without iota of doubt one can make out that I have done lots of preaching in the last paragraph. But I told you… it’s about perspectives ;)…