Read Between the Ps

I Was browsing through the Advertisement Blogs – Ad Jab and Ad Rag , when suddenly a familiar face came up …an Indian face in an American Ad.. And guess what the product is for? Nintendo Video Games! The Latest Commercial from Nintendo is called “ The Sad, Agonizing Tale of Bhuvan Ganguly ” and has been created by Leo Burnett, Chicago . According to the reports in Sun Times and IGN.com , the 60-second commercial has been aired exclusively in more than 5,000 theaters in the US starting July 29th through August 25th and could make its way on to television at a later date. A sad worker, Bhuvan Ganguly, pulls his cart in a dry desert on a bright sunny day. During the course of his tiring journey, he takes a break and sits next to his cart, pulling out a small shoddy packet from it. From the packet, he takes out a single banana, peels it off, and eats it up, busy in his own morose thoughts. When he is finished, out of a natural instinct, he throws away the skin on the ground. Suddenly,...

Last I spoke about the giant was about its keen interest in India This time ….there is nothing different that I intend to cover, except probably a progress report . The Story is not new. There are NO twists, and the conclusion is predictable. The only thing no one knows and is still a BIG question …is when ? And how ? An article in the Business Standard yesterday (on the 25th of August’05) spoke about the future plans of Wal-Mart vis-à-vis procurement of raw materials from India. For the past 3 years, the sourcing from India has been growing at 30% every year with a cumulative figure of goods worth $1.2 billion . Now, it intends to grow this by 40 per cent for the current financial year, considering the opportunity and cost differential in the Indian Markets. Specifically, a pertinent question that concerned me was “ What is being sourced? ” Supposedly, Textiles Sector , such as apparel and home furnishings contribute to the tune of 50% for the sourcing. Other sectors that Wal-Mar...

The worst and the riskiest part of any subject like Consumer Behavior / Human Behavior , or for that matter, Marketing is its subjectivity – Lack of an Objective Evaluation! Unless you have a rationale behind your statements, and objectivity behind your analysis, there is restricted receptivity from the audience, or more recently, it is considered to be “ Gas ” in modern times! One such model that gives an Objective Perspective to Personality Assessment is the 16PF model. This Sixteen Personality Factor model was developed by Dr. Raymond Cattell and is a copyright of the Institute of Personality and Ability Testing . It talks about the primary components of a personality. The personality traits are broken down into 16 basic traits, called primary factors, and then, combined to form 5 secondary traits – called Secondary Factors or Global Factors . Each factor is measured from a scale of 1-10 and the scale is called as Sten Scale (Standardized Ten Scale) . Historically, a score of 4-7 ...

I had planned to first make an entry on Sensory Branding and the 16PFs first and then look at something else. But the moment I read an article in the Economic Times, dated 20th August 2005 , couldn’t resist finding out more on it and typing it out here. The article talks about an altogether ignored segment, a segment which is nothing but a “ side-effect ” of the growing economy. Though the article talks about India particularly, the concept per se is a global one, that of a “ Sandwiched Generation ” applicable across the different economies and markets. The article talks about Women who are aged between 35-45 years , and are staying in a joint family. They need to look after 2 generations – the youngsters or the Gen Nexters, and the elders – the Boomers. According to the article “A study conducted by developed economies shows that a woman spends 17 years bringing up children, and another 18 years helping parents” Now, an after-effect of a growing economy is late marriages – resulting...

A Concept that gets confusing sometimes. Here is something I would take as the benchmark from now on. These are the details collated from various sources, and something that is significant for most of the Marketers who base their strategies based on this generational divide. Following are the generations, based on their birth years as well Generation Birth Years Lost 1883-1900 GI 1901-1926 Silent 1927-1945 Baby Boomers 1946-1964 Gen X 1965-1981 Gen Y 1980-1999 Millenial 1982-Current Though different websites claim different timelines, based on the maximum number of websites that talk the same language, I chose this division, as it is accepted by quite a lot of groups worldwide. The Generational Imperative classifies the people of America in 5 Generations and talks about their habits and tastes. Similarly, Life Course Associates has different articles based on these generations. In fact, they have added 2 more variations to the generations – Generation Jones --> 1954-1965 Baby Bu...

According to Business Standard (15th August’05), AT Kearney has come out with the rankings of 2004 for countries in terms of FDI preferences. The order goes like this – - China - US - India - UK - Germany - France - Australia - Hong Kong - Italy - Japan - Russia These FDI Confidence Index Rankings are based on an annual survey of CEOs, CFOs, and other top notch professionals in the Global top 1000 Companies, and is carried out by the Global Business Policy council of AT Kearney . As for India, it moved from 6th place to 3rd place , as compared to its standing last year. More importantly, the Gap between US and India has also reduced significantly. According to the survey, China’s Index was 2.03 ; US was 1.45 and India 1.4 Thus, there is not much of a gap between the 2 countries. This fact has been endorsed by US, which has identified India as the new "economic star" , along with China. Another part of the survey talks about the Mergers and Acquisitions in the world, a fac...

Happy Independence Day! It has been a long time since the last issue. I didn’t want to compromise on the questions, so did not post a few I had already in the kitty. Here is a fresh set of this week’s business dose. Should wet your appetite! Earlier he was a salesman for Aga cookers, today his guidelines are “The Golden Rules” of a particular industry. Who is he? (David Oglivy) In which US city do you find Coca-Cola Museum? (LasVegas) Which company was co-founded by Jack Smith at Firepower systems, a US based software company? (Hotmail, along with Sabeer Bhatia) What does BMW stand for? (It stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke , or Bavarian Motor Works) More details are available at this link Sweden-based Wimco owns which popular match Brand in India? (Homelight) What are “Missionary”, “Enchiladas”, “Heatwave”, “Malted” and “Blue Ice” ? (Barbie Dolls) Dr. Winston O Boogie is better known to the world as whom? (John Lennon) This company was originally called Badische anilin & Soda-f...

A few days back, I had done a book review on “ How to be creative ” that covered the “attributes” of creativity – what essentially constitutes creativity, and how do rake the creative cells in us? Now that we have decided to be creative, there are definitely going to be roadblocks on the way. There could be tangible blocks in terms of constraints and restrictions in our lifestyle and the work cycle, or intangibles that block our subconscious mind, that pose to be bottlenecks in our thinking in creative or unconventional ways. There are certain Mindsets that need to be changed, certain perspectives that need to be redone, certain perceptions that need to fine-tuned… I had a session on Creativity and Innovation in my organization a few months back. There were 7 such barriers listed to us, based on a questionnaire that was given to assess and evaluate the degree of each of these barriers to creativity in each one of us. They were: - Allergy to Ambiguity - Conformity ...