What do you think makes great brands so powerful, long lasting and unique even when they’re not selling products and services that are radically different from one another? Have they really got their fundamentals strong or are they simply relying on smart advertising? Let’s check out what great brands really do and how they make that bang-on impression in customers’ psyche.

A great brand makes a long lasting emotional connect

Many experts say that customers purchase emotionally, which is largely true, especially in India, where advertising and branding is so emotionally driven. Do you remember the "Kuch Meetha Ho Jaaye" campaign by Cadbury, the Vodafone campaign with the pug or the Zoozoos and the Surf Excel campaign with "Dho Daala"? Why do these brands use an emotional pitch? Because they know that two washing powders or bars of chocolate can’t be much different from each other after a certain point. In the Indian context, substituting "meetha" with chocolate and "thanda" with Coca-Cola means going straight into the heart of the average local consumer.

A great brand is backed by great products and services

Great Indian brands like Raymonds, Asian Paints, ICIC Bank, Bajaj, Tata, Dabur, Naukri.com, Infosys etc. didn’t become great overnight. There are thousands of product and service providers who come into the market every single day but are unable to float their brand. That’s because great brands need time, patience and constant re-invention. The biggest mistake that most brands make is to be purely aspirational and cool, without maintaining substance, innovation and quality in their products and services.

A great brand elevates just about anything

If you thought that just because you manufacture bolts sold only to industries, you don’t need to have a great brand, then you are completely wrong. Whether you produce shoes, tea, pliers or travel services, you must give priority to branding opportunities and strategies, no matter how small your business is. Great branding can make just about any product or service so powerful that customers may recommend it without even realizing that they are actually doing so.

A great brand always has a story to tell

Every brand works on an association and a story. For instance, people associate innovation with Apple, Reliance with growth, Pantaloons with family shopping, Hindustan Unilever with quality, ICICI Bank with reliability and more recently speed with Flipkart.com etc. Over a few years, great brands build up stories around their existence to increase their connect with customers. This mythological build up can exponentially increase the recall value of a brand in the customer’s mind.

Great Brands are consistent

Apart from maintaining consistency in providing good products and service, great brands also try to keep the same color palette, design rules and visual appeal wherever they go. It’s orange for Barista coffee chains, red for Vodafone, the distinctly recognizable ‘Oooh la la la’ jingle for Kingfisher and the Amul butter girl as Amul’s mascot form decades. Whatever the visual representation may be, a great brand can be recognized without uttering a single word about it.

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I visited Yahoo Mail probably after a few months as my amazon account is attached to it and mails come to that email ID. However, I was taken by surprise when the page loaded – I was a bit confused for couple of seconds wondering if I landed on “Yahoo typo” homepage. But that was not true….

Here is the Yahoo Mail Homepage which was presented to me!

Yahoo Mail had a full homepage advertisement of Indian brand - Fastrack . The ad diverted me to their Facebook page. I am assuming that this ad will be shown only to users from Indian sub-continent and even then Fastrack is guaranteed of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Facebook Fans.

Fastrack being a youth brand, seems to be on a big ad-spending spree just before the Valentines day and this Yahoo homepage mail campaign is a great way of capturing huge number of fans.

However, I am surprised that Yahoo is accepting full homepage ads on probably one of its most popular pages in India – Yahoo Mail.

For me it comes across as a serious sign of desperation – what do you think?

[Note: As I mentioned earlier, I visit Yahoo mail homepage very rarely and I am not sure if it is a regular thing for Yahoo. For me it was a first and hence decided to write on it]

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3. India Buzzing News : World Cup, Census 2011, Yahoo search engine, Fastrack & Indian kids!

Although the Scandinavian giant IKEA has been trying to come to India since 2000, it hasn’t been able to set itself up yet. And this was mainly because of the tight FDI rules in India until recently. But with the Indian government having finally shifted from a 51 percent foreign ownership cap to 100 percent foreign ownership of Indian single brand retail ventures, IKEA can finally start making its plans to revisit the thriving Indian subcontinent.

No formal announcements have been made as of now, but IKEA is expected to be one of the first large global brands to take advantage of 100% FDI in single brand retail! Let’s take a look at a few reasons why IKEA may be successful in India.

IKEA offers all types of readymade household items in one store

From its trademark foldable, pre fabricated, light furniture, to household items to stationery, to an IKEA food store to the linen section to home accessories to kitchenware to decorative items, IKEA has it all. Worldwide, IKEA is known by its motto ‘Everything under one roof’.

Just like Reliance Fresh, Big Bazaar, Spencer’s and the likes are gradually taking over the kirana stores of India, IKEA too has the ability to easily take over smaller independent shops of furniture that have been reigning over the Indian furniture marketplace from the past many years. The typical Indian trait of getting furniture custom made by hiring a carpenter on contract too could heavily take a beating.

IKEA offers quick and maximum customization

Indians are used to consuming customized items – whether is their Banarasi meetha pan, a kurti stitched by the gali ka darji or a piece of furniture made by the local Rajasthani carpenter. With IKEA, customization will take a whole new meaning for Indians. Choose a lampshade with a handpicked lamp base, choose a Futon with a shade of your choice, chose an arm chair with a different back cover and so on. Whether you are colour coordinating your own home or simply want to get DIY (do-it-yourself) furniture, IKEA serves every need.

Arm yourself with an IKEA notepad, item list and pencil from the store entrance and start ticking off codes of the items you’d like to take away from their warehouse facility in the basement. This experience is likely to strike a chord with the needs of customization loving Indians instantly!

IKEA’s pre fabricated furniture and goods represent modern Indian lifestyles

More and more working Indians living in suburban metros want shopping hubs that offer quick service, a reliable brand name, wide options under one roof and quick delivery. Also, with cost of living in metros ever rising and rented pads becoming smaller and more expensive, people are only going to opt for home items that take up less space in the house, store more and are easy to move.

As far as the pricing is concerned, only time will tell how IKEA suits its Indian customers, because the general reputation of IKEA products even overseas is that it is fairly cheap!

IKEA is a familiar brand name amongst urban Indians

Most well travelled Indians from semi urban and urban cities know the brand name of IKEA fairly well. IKEA along with Starbucks and Walmart, has been made familiar to Indians because they keep appearing in the media due to their constantly changing plans of entering the Indian marketplace.

Additionally, IKEA being a classic international business case study of streamlining costs and developing an efficient supply chain, many B-school students are all too familiar with the brand name.

IKEA’s CSR operations in India

Current IKEA CEO Mikael Olsson has his eyes well set on India as the next big opportunity. His 2010 visit exclusively focused on assuring Indian people and the Indian government that IKEA is not one of those companies whose Indian suppliers engage child laborers, unlike many MNCs that were accused of doing so in the 1990s, BBC News reported.

IKEA has been sourcing many materials from India from a long time and to re-affirm its goodwill in the country, IKEA supports UNICEF’s water and sanitation program and funds initiatives in the carpet and cotton regions in the country, reported ET. In the coming years too, IKEA plans to spend in areas of women empowerment, education, health awareness and industry-based programs that aims to benefit about a 100 million women and children.

One thing for sure, If and when IKEA enters India, they have potential to change household furniture Industry in India!

Would love to hear your thoughts on this…

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Studying medicine in India has always been in the news for some reason or the other – whether it is about increasing seats, common entrance tests being introduced, government packages being announced for medical colleges or what not. This time around, the debate is regarding the duration of the currently 5½ year long MBBS course which is being increased to 6½ years due to a mandatory rural service component being introduced.

As reported by TOI, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and the Medical Council of India (MCI) recently discussed the amendment of the MCI Act, which in simple terms means that all MBBS students will mandatorily have to undergo a year-long rural posting before they officially graduate to become doctors.

Why does the government want to implement this change?

This proposal was first introduced by former health minister A Ramadoss in 2007, but failed to take off. The reason why this proposal is suddenly being revisited is because India is facing a shortage of human resources in health, especially in rural and tribal areas, where the population remains vulnerable due to lack of medical resources and medical professionals.

Here are some shocking statistics for you…

2006

26% of Indian doctors live in rural areas providing services to 72% of the population. In contrast of this, the urban density of doctors ranged 4 four times to that in rural areas, and that of nurses ranged approximately 3 times higher.

2010

More than 34% of male health workers, 38% of radiographers, 16% of laboratory technicians, 31% of specialists, 20% of pharmacists and 17% of ANMs and 10% of doctors’ posts were lying vacant. This happened due to undue delay of recruitment of medical professionals.

2012

As per a Planning Commission study that TOI reported, there is a current shortage of 6 lakh doctors, 10 lakh nurses and 2 lakh dental surgeons.

[Source]

What incentives has the government given to Indian MBBS doctors for rural service before?

As per the report by TOI, the health ministry has been continuously giving incentives for MBBS students to be an active part of providing their services in rural areas. According to these incentives, MBBS students who did one full year of rural service would be offered 10 marks as additional weightage.

Those who completed 3 years in the backward and tribal areas would get 30 marks. 50% seats in PG diploma medical courses would be reserved for medical officers in government service who had served for at least 3 years in remote, tribal and difficult areas. MCI chairman Dr K K Talwar told TOI that unfortunately none of these benefits have paid off until now. This could be a major reason why rural service is being made mandatory.

Does this mean good or bad news for MBBS students in India?

It’s a clear division that this if this amendment is implemented successfully, it is going to spell good news for the Indian medical field with more and more medical services penetrating to the poorest of Indian regions. As Dr. Talwar noted, services of 40,000 MBBS students will be utilized for 1 year in the National Rural Health Mission if this proposal is cleared. For MBBS students though, this is a clear flood of bad news for very obvious reasons.

Let’s take a quick snapshot.

The good side of having a rural stint compulsory

• In the whole year of rural posting, students will earn exposure to rural and tribal lifestyles and therefore be exposed to unique medical case studies.
• More students entering rural areas will mean more facilities being generated by the government for accommodation, clinic set ups, medical equipment, services, drugs and so on. This will in effect bring more development in those areas.
• Students will not be paid as interns but as doctors during that extra year of rural posting.
• Currently, in order to fill in the compulsory short term requirement of the rural services component, MBBS students are generally known to create fake papers, bribe rural representatives who fill in false attendance for students and so on. Fake entries, bureaucracy and bribery in this area will decrease if rural services are made compulsory.
• India will be at par with the norms of many other countries overseas such as Australia, where a compulsory component of rural service is to be completed before the student can graduate as a doctor.

The good side of having a rural stint compulsory

• The most obvious flipside for any MBBS student is going to be the herculean increase in the duration of the program. The Asian Age reported the sentiments of a few doctors on this issue. The current MBBS course is 5.5 years for MBBS, add 3 years of PG and then 3 more years for super specialization. This way, the total duration of study for becoming a doctor would come to almost 11.5 years.
• If the amenities and facilities for MBBS students to work and stay in rural and tribal areas are not set up reasonably well or if the environment for them to dispatch their services is not congenial due to whatever reason, there may an outrage in student community for adding a wasteful year in the already long and arduous coursework.

Let’s see what 2012 brings for all MBBS students in India. What do you think?

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Naukri has finally launched dedicated mobile apps for its Job search engine. Being the biggest Job site in India, they should have come up with these apps earlier – However, its better late than never :). From the looks of the apps they have released, they have done a good job of it.

TimesJob was one of the first Indian job search engines to introduce their apps for iPhone and Android based smartphones, however, they have not been too popular. Even after close to 6 months of launch Timesjob Android app has not crossed 50k downloads, whereas iPhone has witnessed even lesser. Even the user ratings and reviews have not been that good.

We downloaded Naukri.com Android app on our phone and found it to be quite good. Even other users who downloaded the app have given excellent ratings. In less than 2 weeks since its launch, Naukri Android app has witnessed between 10k to 50k downloads and users have rated it 4.8 on 5!

As far as the features go, Naukri apps have all the standard features expected – The app allows job-seekers to filter job openings by location, keywords, functional area, experience bracket, and minimum expected salary.

App also allows users to create up to five custom job alerts based on defined search criteria. The alerts are directly sent to the users’ inbox three times a week. Users can also track the number of times a resume has been viewed by an employer, and the companies they have applied to earlier.

Apart from these smartphone apps, Naukri also has launched its own HTML 5 site, which allows users to search jobs from a mobile friendly interface, when using Naukri site from a mobile browser.

All in all, Naukri has launched decent apps and they surely should be popular with Indian job seekers. If you are looking for a job switch, download this app and let us know what you feel!

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Social media learning, which is a significant component of the e-learning industry, is gradually being adopted in the Indian academia and corporate in a big way. 2012 will only see more inclusion of social media in e-learning systems across India. As Mint reports, about a quarter of business proposals approved by one of the largest organized angel networks in India, have been e-learning projects.

Here are the 5 big trends of social learning or e-learning in India in 2012.

Cost cutting in the education and training market

Cost cutting is always in vogue and 2012 is going to be no different. Gone are the days when Indian SMEs and corporate will invest in hiring expensive trainers and experts for conducting repeated training sessions for the company. By adding the element of social learning in its training packages, corporate are going to reap the benefits of cost cutting through e-learning. As Business Review India reports, the advantage of doing this is that social learning training modules can be paced according to the needs of the trainee according to his / her speed and capability and the form and method of e-learning content can be selected according to the degree of interactivity and multimedia that the trainee wants.

Social Learning for Innovation

Indian companies and academia will exploit and leverage the power of social learning for incubating think tanks and innovation in 2012. In addition to investing the millions that innovations usually require, social learning will enable a more inexpensive way of coming up with the Big Idea. Social learning in India in 2012 will create benefits of utilizing people’s undocumented knowledge, the ability to work across time and space, making informed real time decisions and solving complex IT issues through collaborative strategies. If you have been a student of Knowledge Management, then you will understand that social learning will enable the archiving of knowledge in educational institutes and corporates which can be reused later on.

State sponsored Social Learning

2011 saw the Rajasthan State Government investing in a social learning platform similar to Facebook, in order to provide access of education to all possible corners of the state. As ET reported, this education social network would include all the standard features of a social networking platform with its central focus on educational collaboration and real time learning.

How much of a success such state sponsored efforts would be is a different story, but 2012 will only see more of government social learning initiatives being out into practice. It’s time we realized that social media learning is only going to save the state’s resources in education. In an ideal situation, arm students with internet and computer literacy and you need no large building infrastructures or teachers.

More Gaming / Interactive Applications

On one hand, while India struggles to bring all its learning and training initiatives on the electronic medium, on the other hand, social learning trends in India in 2012 will be veering towards making learning and training fun. While social learning through gaming add fun to the whole academic process, it can also be used to add rewards, points and bonuses to the regular learning system. The value addition the social media will bring to e-learning gamification will be real time, collaborative and competitive learning.

Strategic Implementation

Although there are many players of e-learning in the Indian market such as Tata Interactive Services, Thomson Digital, Cognizant, Zensar Technologies, Patni Computer Systems, Reality Information Systems and many more who are at the top of their game, chalking out strategic implementation of social learning in the current e-learning infrastructure in India will be a challenge. Social learning is not a copy paste module which can be seen reaping benefits in India as it did in the West. The learning modes, adaption capabilities and behaviors of Indian content consumers are different. As aptly put by Ambarish Datta, previously Head – Technology Aided Learning at Reliance Retail,

"India is not America. Our learners are different. We’re behind on technology, and incorporating live virtual classrooms are not a reality for sectors such as retail. The Japanese have a ‘guru concept’ where they must have an instructor to be able to learn – India is similar in learning philosophies. Trends such as Web 2.0 applications for learning… we’re actually light years away from that! Providers have to understand and innovatively cater to buyers’ needs in India. It isn’t the electronic platform/medium that’s important, but the overall blended learning that enriches learners’ experiences."

[Source]

What are your thoughts on Social Learning Trends in India…?

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Amazon has finally made an official India debut, but don’t raise your hopes in anticipation that you will have the similar product buying experience as its parent Amazon.com – infact, far from it.

Amazon comes to India as Junglee.com, essentially a shopping comparison engine. According to news broken by Rajat Agrawal of BGR and then featured by medianama, labnol & pluggd, Junglee is a product comparison platform that advertises and compares products from different Indian online retailers. Amazon will not be selling anything directly to consumers right now.

Amazon Product Ads

Instead of calling it a shopping comparison site, Amazon terms Junglee as a platform for “Amazon Product Ads”. One interesting thing to note is that Amazon’s main India domain www.Amazon.in is still not directed to Junglee.com, while the platform is hosted on http://services.amazon.com.

From what I can say, when amazon starts selling its own products in India, it will be hosted on amazon.in, and junglee.com will remain as a third-party product advertising site. Amazon has taken this route currently due to the fact that Multi-Brand retail FDI is still in limbo, and till the time clarity comes on that front, I guess Amazon will be taking this route.

Junglee.com Product & Brand listings

Coming back to Junglee.com, the site clearly states that visitors cannot directly buy from Junglee. It serves as a platform that will display their customer service phone numbers and provide their physical store locations to help buy the products directly from Sellers. Junglee claims to have gone live with over 1.20 crore products and 14k brands from various Indian retailers.

However, it is interesting to note that major Online retailers from India like Flipkart or Infibeam do not have their product listing. Either Amazon has declined to have them on their platform, or these Indian retailers look at amazon as a threat and do not want to help them by bringing on their products. Whatever the reason, we should know it soon enough.

Amazon User Database Integration

One thing is for sure, Amazon is approaching this with a lot of seriousness and Junglee.com  foray is a well thought out strategy. They have already integrated their Amazon user database at Junglee.com. So if you are an existing Amazon user comes to Junglee, he/she can use their existing credentials to login.

It would be interesting to know readers views Amazon’s India debut with Junglee.com. Let us know what you think!

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9.47 Million new mobile subscribers were added in December 2011 taking the total tally to 893.84 million as on December 2011. December also registered the highest growth rate since March last year. Past 6-8 months, there had been a constant slide in the Mobile subscriber growth rate.

Indian mobile subscriber addition since March 2011

Highlights of Telecom Subscription Data as on Dec 31st 2011

• Total Telecom Subscribers in India stand at 926.53 million, with Mobile base at 893.84 & wire line base of 32.69 million
• 4.93 million Urban subscribers were added as compared to 4.54 mln from rural area.
• Urban Teledensity reached 161 percent, while rural teledensity stands at 36.56.
• 3.4 Mln subscribers opted for Mobile Number Portability in December 2011 alone, taking the total tally to 29.24 Million.
• Out of total 893.84 Mln subscribers, active subscriber tally stands at 646.77 Mln. This percentage has risen drastically to about 73 percent, which was around 55% an year back.

Telecom Operator Net Additions [December 2011]

Idea Cellular has been the biggest beneficiary of MNP, as it has been consistently adding over 20% of all subscribers additions in last few months. In December 2011, it added over quarter of all net additions (2.38 Million). Even Uninor has been doing quite well – It added 22% of all subscribers (2.12 Million) followed by Bharti (10.1%), Reliance (10.0%) and Vodafone (9.6%).

Tata had lost significant subscriber base last month, probably due to MNP and even this month it has managed to add only 1.1% of all subscribers.

Telecom Operator Market Share [December 2011]

Bharti still reigns supreme with 19.65% of total Indian Market Share, followed by Reliance (16.79%) and Vodafone (16.53%). Idea, thanks to its stellar performance is now 4th with 11.90% of total Indian Mobile Subscriber Market Share.

Broadband Subscriber Growth

Total Broadband subscriber base has increased from 13.13 million at the end of November 2011 to 13.30 million at the end of December 2011, there by showing a monthly growth of 1.30%. Yearly growth in broadband subscribers is 21.88% during the last one year (Dec 10 to Dec 11).

At the start of last year, I was quite sure that India will reach 1 Billion Telecom Subscriber base by end of the year, but it has fallen short by a very large margin. To be honest, I had not expected such a sudden slow-down in mobile subscriber growth. Given the situation now, I think it will probably be by end of next year that we should see that figure…

What do you think?

[Source: TRAI December report]

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Companies are going to aim at targeting more sales and customer engagement conversions, bloggers are going to increase their affiliate marketing opportunities and more movements like IAC are going to give birth to more number of Anna Hazare’s through social media in 2012 in India. In short, 2012 is going to be a big year for social media in India. Lets look at some of the Social Media Trends that you may encounter in Indian in 2012.

Internet memes, flashmobs and Google Hangout marketing

With owling, planking, falling, rickrolling and LOL cats having trended, more and more internet memes are going to be birthed by social media in 2012. Flash mobs have caught the fancy of Indians is 2011 and more of such witty, innovative and interesting memes are going to drive internet traffic in India through social media. As for Google+ Hangout, international brands have used it successfully to get feedback through one on one video conferencing.

In India, we’ve simply begun to scratch the surface of Hangout with SRK and Kareena interacting with fans for promoting Ra One, Farhan Akhtar promoting Don 2 and cricketer Virendra Sehwag interacting with his fans. 2012 is likely to take one on one interaction to the next level.

More attempts at viral videos

It’s impossible to say how many viral videos are going to hit India in 2012, but Kolaveri Di has definitely begun a viral revolution. More and more brands in India are going to attempt to make their own Kolaveri Di’s, with many of them likely to fall flat. In India, we’ve seen brands like Airtel who enjoyed the success of going viral through their Ali Baba and Chalis Chor ad along with the ad for True Roots International Calling Service, both standing at more than 2 lakh views.

The Silent Indian National Anthem by Reliance Big Cinemas too enjoyed popularity the viral way with an approximate of more than 12 lakh views.

Branching of social media beyond just networking

If you think you’ve had enough of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Orkut, you could try the recently released Pinterest. A social networking site with a twist that receives more than a million hits per week, Pinterest is all about creating ‘boards’ according to your interest in areas like Design, Technology, DIY, Film, Gardening, Fitness, People, Pets, Music, Books and much more. You can ‘pin up’ conversations according to your interest and network with other people on the basis of your creative connect. All the other social media features remain the same.

Lots of small businesses, not-for-profits and individual sellers are already using Pinterest to sell and engage internationally. China is hooked on to RenRen, a Pinterest clone for the same and India is definitely next.

Government behaviors and backlashes

2012 has started off with a glum note of government censorship of the internet because of SOPA and closer home, the Indian government is asking popular social media platforms to censor sensitive content. Due to the growing strength of social media in the world, people are only going to get back to their ‘oppressors’ through this very platform. If an IAC movement repeats itself in India, it’s going to be no surprise. In 2012 social media in India will continue to carry for the flavor of protest and outrage.

Online Reputation Management

Tech experts across the internet predict that a big trend for social media in India in 2012 is going to be the setting up of ORM teams in corporates. Currently, departments like Corporate Communications or Marketing handle company’s social media portfolios or in most cases this services is outsourced to IT or SMEs. But considering the kind of social engagement that Indian brands are having with users online (E.g. ICICI launching on Facebook, airline companies managing customer feedback on Twitter, Vodafone having harmed their brand repute due to a 3G coverage issue that a customer faced and so on), ORM for social media will be a trend and an alarm in India in 2012.

Do you think any other Social Media Trends that will be in forefront in 2012 in India?

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2. Air India gets bitten by Social Media Bug!
3. Social Media Is Going Mainstream And How [Survey]