One coin = all your cards

So you have a problem forgetting cards when you go out to dine, shop and travel? Wouldn't it be great if you have a reminder that your card is with you?

So here is the solution from the One Coin team. the video is self explanatory and I think this will revolutionaize the cards business and drastically and positively reduce the lost cards, fraud and both head and heart aches!

Education is fun... if you want it to be

Monday Blues: The first day

This Monday is the first day for the rest of your life. Think about it.

The first day for the rest of your life. So you have a chance. This Monday to start something you always wanted to start, something you always wanted to do. Be it at work or at home or for yourself, get out and get going.

Have a great Monday.

Meticulously thoughtoutness

The problem with too much thinking is that there is no action involved. Mere thinking isn't going to take to you anywhere. I am talking about plans we make in daily life and how they change with time and how we settle for something or should I call conclude and finalize. The reason I am quoting this is because thinking of loopholes and what usually happens is that you would end up with things that tell you why you shouldn't be doing it.

While it is good to think, it is equally important to put things on paper in to practice, be it in life or at work. One of the people I pay attention keeps telling me, nothing works like clockwork and it is true. Many things happen and come up when you set out to implement plans that seem water tight and sure to happen.

What is the point in telling me all your plans when you don't even step out and do something in that direction. Leave all ifs and buts and actually get out and do something. Being lazy and finding excuses has become a fashion these days. Don't be one of these this May.

What is life without risk? But isn't it foolish to sit down and relax, waiting for some miracle to happen yet unwilling to take the risk. Can I hear some ayes?

Pic is from www.explodingdong.com

Recession proof sectors in India

As every business sector is affected by present global crisis and everybody is talking of slow down in business, still in India there are few sectors which will grow in this adverse situation. Lets have a look at Azaz Motiwala's list of top 10 sectors that would continue to grow even in recession.

1. Food
2. Railway
3. PSU Banks
4. Education
5. Telecom
6. IT
7. Health care
8. Luxury products
9. M&A & Marketing Consultants
10. Media and Entertainment

The time factor

Like most of the fads, blogging is losing popularity especially by teenagers and young adults who have dropped by half over the past three years as texting and social networking are picking up. A study released by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site.

According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 -- and only 8 percent were using Twitter.

According to the study, 73 percent of teens who were online used social networking sites. Much of the communication between young people now takes place on mobile devices, which don't lend themselves to long-form writing.

Teens may be shying away from Twitter because they see it as designed for celebrities, and because of reluctance to put their thoughts on such a public forum when they can post them to their Facebook page instead. Blogging among adults has held steady since 2005, Pew found, but it has dropped among Internet users between the age of 18 and 29 -- while rising in those over 30. "Older people are becoming more comfortable with the online environment and young people in the meantime have moved on to social networking and text messaging," Smith said.

Lack of "excellent" coffee blends

Is there an excellent or very good coffee blend? The answer seems to be a no! After tasting 37 different blended coffees, Consumer Reports couldn't find one that measured up to its "excellent" or "very good" ratings.

The less-than-glowing report follows a year that saw tight supplies of high-quality arabica coffee beans in Colombia, followed by steep premiums that caused some roasters to look for cheaper and more available options for their blends.

Ranking at the top of the list of 14 caffeinated blends -- earning a rating of "good" -- are the Starbucks House Blend, calculated at 26 cents per cup, and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast, at 23 cents per cup.

Blends are the best-selling type of ground coffee and contain beans from at least two regions or countries, the publication said.

The highest score for the 13 decaffeinated coffees also failed to reach the top two categories. The better scoring varieties included Allegro Organic Decaf, Blend Medium Dark, Peet's Decaf House Blend, Caribou Daybreak Coffee Morning Blend Decaf and Bucks County Decaf Breakfast blend.

Consumer Reports has a rating criteria in which the tasters look for specific characteristics including the flavor and aroma.

The publication advised coffee drinkers not to count on familiar brand names or expensive price tags, noting that the cost doesn't accurately reflect the cost per cup due to varying grind densities, and recommended ratios of coffee to water.

Consumer Reports is published by Consumers Union, an independent nonprofit organization that does not accept outside advertising or free test samples, it said in a release.

Go rural

The potential of the rural market in India is huge. Even after all these years of studying and understanding the rural consumer, distribution channels still remain one of the biggest challenges of working in rural India. When compared to the consumerist urban society, the rural consumer's choices are need driven first, which results in him being a thrifty cost-conscious buyer. There is a conscious effort to spend less but this doesn't mean good quality products don't get picked up. In fact the rural market absorbs huge amounts of products and in certain categories they are faster than their urban counterparts. A study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) threw up some interesting facts. The rural market accounts for:

• 53% of FMCG sales
• 59% oc consumer durables sales
• Almost 100% of agricultural product sales
  

With the current slowdown ringing death bells n several firms, the focus has shifted towards Indian villages and custom made products to suit these consumers are being sold. This is a good sign. Like I said in the beginning, Indian rural consumer holds a lot of potential and is worth a look.

Kurkure's health pitch

Kurkure has become one of India’s most loved snack food brands and created a new category of ‘tea time’ ‘snacks. ‘It’s become a lovable family brand, examining Indian traditions with a perspective that is new and different,” he says.

Kurkure, according to Vyas, has been a brand of many firsts – from packaging to flavours keeping Indian tastes and preferences in mind. In 2009, for instance, Kurkure went regional with a vengeance with flavours like ‘Mumbai Chatpata’, ‘ Parar Tok Jhal’ and ‘South Special’, which are targeted at the western, eastern and southern parts of the country. On the anvil are Kurkure Funjabi, Kadai Masala, made with rajma (kidney bean) for the north Indian consumer.

The positioning, analysts say, has been unique. For example, last month, Pepsico came out with a print campaign which told readers how Kurkure is made from what can be found in any Indian kitchen, underlining that the ingredients are as wholesome as what goes into home-made food. Kurkure now on will be less about flavours and more about ingredients.

What it means in terms of branding is that Kurkure will have another differentiation from FritoLay's other brands (Lays, Aliva et al), apart from staving off competition from a growing tribe of roasted snacks, including Aliva, Parle Product's Monaco Smart Chips and Parle Agro's Hippo.

Kurkure has also managed to snack its way even into the highly-lucrative festive season in India, with new tamper-proof packaging along with an online gifting option, where consumers can now send a gift pack of the product via the internet.

Features such as these, say analysts, have helped the brand carve a special place for itself in the Indian snack food market, which would be hard to replicate not just by competitors but also by the company itself. “Kurkure is a classic example of exemplary product innovation and a good marketing strategy. The purely Indian outlook and taste has helped it make a mark on the minds of the consumer”, notes Purnendu Kumar, senior analyst. Technopak India.

Pitching the product on the health platform has also helped Kurkure. While the claims are not direct, the company's statement that Kurkure has zero per cent trans fats and no cholesterol and that it's made from corn, rice and gram flour, have helped the product give consumers a ‘guilt free eating’ experience, according to analysts. Its Snack Smart initiative has cut out trans-fat from its products and changed the oil used for Kurkure to rice bran which cuts saturated fat by 40 per cent. An attempt to control portions consumed by users has seen it launch Rs-3 packs. This has pushed sales in the lower-tier towns.

These and the first-mover advantage are reasons why Kurkure enjoys a virtual monopoly in its category. While ITC tried to compete with 'Tedhe Medhe', the impact has not been encouarging so far. While ITC did not respond to queries, Anand Ramanathan, sector analyst from KPMG, says “ITC has a great distribution network. But 'Tedhe Medhe’ is not doing well because ITC couldn't add anything different than what Frito-Lay's Kurkure alreday had.

India's rural inventors drive change

Mansukh Prajapati invented a first-of-a-kind refrigerator that is made out of terracotta, works without electricity, costs US$53 and is selling in the thousands. It's a sample of an innovation wave from rural and small-town India enriching the world with common-sense products.

Anil Gupta, a professor at India's premier business school, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, leads a pioneering tribe of technocrats working for no-frills change at the mass level, by harnessing knowledge wealth from economically weaker sections of society.

"Being economically poor does not mean being knowledge-poor," Gupta told Asia Times Online. "But the poor who are at the bottom of the economic pyramid are often considered as being at the bottom of the knowledge pyramid as well. Nothing could be further from the truth."

To prove the truth that wisdom does not depend on university degrees, Gupta's 21-year-old Honey Bee Network has compiled an unprecedented database of 140,000 innovations created by farmers, villagers and small-town inventors. Many have no formal education or technical training. Teams of Honey Bee volunteers scout across India to hunt out local innovations, inventions and traditional knowledge practices.

The Honey Bee Network of rural and small-town inventors, academics, scientists, entrepreneurs, policymakers and volunteers gather, pool, develop and share know-how from a mass-based, much-ignored source. India's heart beats in its villages, and the country is entering a phase of listening to its heartbeat.

Read full article here.

Come to life!

Awesome isn't it? Check http://www.pomegranatephone.com for the firm behind it and Wiki for summary. Nice brand name :)

Fun = better behaviour

If stairs played musical notes when you walked on them, would you be more likely to take them?

The video of people skipping the escalator in favor of composing music on the piano stairs of Odenplan subway station in Stockholm, Sweden, has been viewed more than 2.5 million times on YouTube.

The video is part of a new viral marketing campaign called “The Fun Theory.” The concept, created by Volkswagen Sweden and ad agency DDB Stockholm, is based on the idea that “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.”

Be employed, always

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

• Sales
• Additive effort
• Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you've produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor's office--she's just filling a chair.

The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you're the person who can initiate useful action, if you're the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.

--- Seth's Blog

Covetousness

Covetousness kills revival. There is no point in blaming that the world is unfair with you, your job, family and life. This is a world that applauds the winner and forgets who came second. No one actually cares if you have put in equal or some times more effort and still haven't succeeded. Not every one can be a P T Usha who came back time and again. To covet is not going to help as it never happens for real. And it is not fun. You need to be focussed on updating your self, training, working hard and ensure that you get it the next time you have a chance. Revival is needed to ensure that you are on your track.

Many times brands try to wrench a leading brands market share but fail miserably. Instead work out a niche and cater to that niche. The chances of success are pretty high and are the satisfaction is too good. To develop a niche you need to go back to your drawing room, check for market opportunities, gaps and build it up.

Much better than complaining that you deserve better. Ain't it?

I go online. How abt u?

I just saw this ad on my yahoo page. Internet has seeped well into the suburbs and is gaining land all the time. It wouldn't be an understatement that soon we will find online payments happening from the so called godforsaken places too. This is a good sign as it saves time, money and effort. We are going online to check my bills, clear them, book my tickets and what not. The point is I am online and so are many of my friends.

This is a good sign for the marketer to push your brand presence online and ensure your availability when I browse. May be I will shop. May be I will recognize your brand when I walk into a store. You better be there.

Unless you want to be a touch me, feel me, get me product.

Omron smile 100%

First seen @ Buyer Behaviour

Coke, Freestyle

Coca-Cola doesn't think its customers have enough drink choices. So starting this summer, diners at some California, Georgia, and Utah fast-food joints will get to try a self-serve drink dispenser that pours more than 100 varieties of sodas, juices, teas, and flavored waters.

Coke plans to roll out the Freestyle drink dispenser nationwide, eventually putting tens of thousands of them in places such as McDonald's, Burger King, and Willy's Mexican Grill. And while the machine is taking the concept of customer choice to new heights, the most interesting aspect is the technology it's built on. Freestyle will become Coke's front-line robotic army for business intelligence, sending massive amounts of consumption data back to the beverage company's Atlanta headquarters.

Pic and the full article.

Stay out of the dog house

J.C. Penney Company Inc. is the recipient of this year's World Retail Award under the "Best Digital Retail Advertising" category for the mid-tier department store's "interactive viral marketing campaign" it calls Beware of the Doghouse, which targets younger shoppers.

The award was presented to JCPenney at the World Retail Congress in Barcelona in May for our innovative marketing efforts. Beware of the Doghouse has proven to be a fun and engaging campaign, building on our success of developing new and innovative strategies that connect with younger consumers on their terms.

Voted by industry experts from around the world, the Beware of the Doghouse campaign received high ratings for its creativity and multi-channel integration. Calling it “truly 360 degree" and one based on a “witty and intelligent” idea, the campaign was described by judges from the World Retail Congress as having “bubbled out into the media, creating great value for the money.Divided into four key media categories – traditional media, in-store advertising, direct marketing and new media – the retail advertising section of the World Retail Awards includes a diverse selection of campaigns. Across each of the categories, the awards annually go to companies that offer "the very best of retailing in all its key areas of operation, assisting retail businesses to secure a vital edge in winning business and gaining market share".

JCPenney, which operates 1,101 units in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, first launched Beware of the Doghouse – which centers on women who to comically reprimand their loved ones for bad gift choices – on November 21. Throughout last year's holiday season, the campaign logged more than 7 million visitors to www.BewareoftheDoghouse.com and more than 14 million total video views.

Is brand relevant? To brand or not to brand

I was talking to a friend about branding and why would customer prefer to go for a brand and this point came up. Let us assume you have two options of mineral water available at a store: Bisleri & some local brand. Which one will you pick up? Bisleri is costlier than its local counterpart. My answer was like this... Am I dying, for water? If yes I don't care what the brand was. But if I was just taking water then I do.

Branding is important when the consumer looks for a distinctive feature, reason while purchasing. And isn't that important when the purchase is for fulfilling a non-distinctive, non-important need. Doesn't depend on what you think as a brand. Depends on what I think as a consumer. If you want to sell a brand, go ahead and ensure that the customer believes on what distinctiveness you are going to sell to him. If you are not opting for a brand ensure that your consumer believes that there is no uniqueness required and your product fulfills the requirement and works just fine. The stress should be on service, guarantee and performance.

Marketing Crisis

Call it marketing gimmick or the pick at opportunity, Hong Kong's mask makers are having a blast. With Swine Flu outbreak and a global alert being declared its time to protect yourself. Designer masks are in. This young girl sports a cool look with her shades and mask. Fools look for opportunities, wise create them.

Pic by CHANG KIM-FUNG for www.thestandard.com.hk