Lipton is Unilever’s global tea brand. This is also the leading tea brand in the world. Lipton mainly offers three varieties: tea bags, packet tea and Ice Tea. Offered in both hot and cold format this brand is targeted to ‘Aspiring’ segment and mainly to the youth. The intended current positioning of the brand is ‘tea for out-of-home consumption’. So, the brand is available in forms like: 250 ml glass bottles, 200 ml vending cups, 245 ml cans and one litre tetra pack. For the same reason the brand is sold in 15,000 vending machines across the country and recently HUL has also tied up with Pepsi to use Pepsi’s extensive distribution network to market and sell Lipton Ice Tea. In sync with the brands targeting and positioning the ads shows aspiring youth consuming the tea in out-of-home conditions. Here is the official website of the brand – http://www.lipton.com/ – here you can learn a lot more about the brand along with some interesting information about tea and sustainable development.

Lipton uses some very innovative ideas to promote itself worldwide. A very interesting approach that I came across is this Lipton website named Brain Train. To directly quote them: “Brain Train users will be able to challenge their minds with brain exercises ranging from simple maths problems, reaction tests and memory, with the ability to chart and compare results. Registered users can keep track of their mental development, play stimulating games and learn more about the benefits of tea all while being in the running to win $30,000 in cash!” Seems in innovative idea to promote tea by promoting mental health. What do you say?

I will end this post with a Lipton ad in a language I could not figure out. Let us know if you can. Lol.



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To MBA or not to  MBA is eternal debate appearing in news and forums, especially when results of CAT , XAT are out. Admission season keeps the debate live  with comments. Some say: MBA – oh that makes you mediocre but arrogant!

Examples of non-MBAs making it really big in the business world include Steve Jobs,  Bill Gates who were college drop outs and yes our own Dhirubhai Ambani who built his entire empire without any MBA degree. On the other side there are blogs like Youthcurry and Pagalguy who are never tired of talking about MBA. No offense but majority  of these comments lack  any methodical support.

From another perspective recently an article was published in BusinessWeek (was also published in Harvard Business review). It is in fact a outcome of rigorous research by a professor of Organizational behavior at Insead.

Analysis of 1109 chief executives from 1995 to 2009 found that those with MBA performed on average better than without MBA. Important point here is – individuals with MBA reached pinnacle of CEO post before the age of 50. Research concluded definite correlation between holding MBA and achieving high performance as CEO over a long term by controlling many other variables that might have explained the superior MBA performance.

Purpose of this short note is not to put a weight behind the “MBA” argument but to understand the benefit of attending a business school. Some of the comments on those article are succinctly bringing it out. One is choosing to attend a business school is choosing to improve oneself. Diverse student community is bound to bring creativity out of you. A good business school, irrespective of one year diploma program, two year degree program or four year research program – grooms student to look outward, think out-of-box, to consider new models of growth, look at new geographies and new knowledge sectors. These versatile perspectives are the most valuable learning. It is an investment for all round personality development. You are bound to be successful once you develop such holistic and broader perspectives. MBA applicants and critics may please take note.

(Image Source – http://www.insidesocal.com/click/presentations/ )

This article is authored by Santosh. He is based out of Japan. An engineer and MBA, Santosh believes that – learning is continuous process and currently pursuing his PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human resource management at a top B-School in Asia. His hobbies include – Photography and Reading. You can contact him at: santosh [dot] sali [at] gmail [dot] com

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Water is a must for living. But even a decade back none really bothered much about it. India being a land of rivers water was never scarce. But as they say resources are always constrained. And, here comes a time when you need to pay for a basic entity of living called ‘water’. In last few years we have seen hordes of companies jumping the bandwagon of water business. Bottled water has become an omni-present phenomenon. With the huge success of initial brands like Bisleri, companies like Pepsi (with Aquafina) and Coca-Cola (with Kinley) also joined the competition. And of late, even India’s largest FMCG company went to the limit of changing its industry to enter the lucrative water market.

With Pureit HUL enters the business of water and also the consumer durable category. It is a water purifier targeted to the mass market. The water purifier market in India is valued at INR 9 bn in 2009. And it has to be when 80% of diseases in India are water borne diseases like: jaundice, diarrhea, typhoid and cholera. Ultra Violet (UV) based Purifiers, Reverse Osmosis (RO) purifiers and storage / resin based purifiers. UV based purifiers controls two-third of the market with Eureka Forbes’ Aquaguard being the clear leader with 68% market share. But there is enough room for other players as well. 80% of urban population don’t purify tap water and most of them being low or middle income people – can’t afford UV or RO purifiers. This is the market which Eureka Forbes and HUL wants to tap with their chemical based purifiers Aquasure and Pureit.

The target segment for Pureit is Indian households who need safe drinking water. The positioning of the products is: ‘The world’s most advanced in-home water purifier’. The product provides the benefit of drinking pure water and thereby avoiding water-borne diseases. The product also promises ‘unmatched convenience and affordability’. The product is offered at very affordable price of around Rs. 2000 and it doesn’t need gas, electricity or continuous tap water supply. At it is at the introduce stage of product life-cycle – most of the marketing efforts of the brand is targeted towards creating awareness and generating interest. The ads of the brand focuses mainly on technical and functional attributes of the products like: affordable price, the benefits, Germkill Battery^TM technology, comparison with other existing water purifying methods etc. It also makes an emotional appeal: ‘Protect your loved ones with a Pureit today!’. Till now, across India boiled water is considered as the safe drinking water and hence the tagline of Pureit is: ‘As Safe As Boiled Water’. The official website of the brand is: www.pureitwater.com. As changing the consumer behavior and getting people to try the product was the biggest challenge for Pureit – they used a aggressive campaign which said if anyone can locate a purifier which has the advanced features which Pureit has – Pureit will pay them 1 crore rupees.

Who thought that someday we will pay for even drinking water! Someone rightly said: “Luxury of one generation (buying water) becomes necessity for the next generation”. With the commercialization of water – may be the only thing left is free air and with the proliferation of industry and increasing pollution levels buying fresh air does not seem to be a wild imagination. Of course, it creates huge opportunities for our esteemed opportunistic companies. HUL – are you listening? Is not it really ironical that something that makes living so difficult for some also becomes big source of revenue for someone else! With all these one key question that comes to my mind is are we really ‘free citizens’ in a free world? We knew that there is no free lunch, now we don’t have free water, and I doubt how long we will breathe for free!!

(Image Source: http://www.time.com)

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There used to be something known as snail-mail and office-memo, to transfer your message. For example sometime it used to take more than 22 hours to reach  memo to next table ( quoted from  Maverick by Ricardo Semler ). Then we saw the phenomena called internet and mobile. We now have text messages , email ,audio-visual mobile calls and the list is growing. Steps and time between “speaker” and “listener” is reducing as well as the channel richness (amount of information ) is improving. But this is just no substitute for face to face talk at workplace or outside.

Here is a interesting short film “Signs” that underlines this fact. Do watch and let us know what you think .

This article is authored by Santosh. He is based out of Japan. An engineer and MBA, Santosh believes that – learning is continuous process and currently pursuing his PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human resource management at a top B-School in Asia. His hobbies include – Photography and Reading. You can contact him at: santosh [dot] sali [at] gmail [dot] com

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I’m writing again after a long time. Really sorry for the long break! But all this time I was busy making TNMG a more valuable offering for all of you. Time is precious so without any more elaboration let’s come to the point.

Yesterday, Manoj – a very good friend of mine came to me at around 3 AM in night (or should I say early morning ). Now,  in a busy B-School none has time for any crap at such a time and that means it was something serious. And it was! To give a background to the uninitiated – it is the much anticipated placement season in Indian B-Schools. And, this is the time for which budding managers wait for 2 years – placement – one single panacea for all (or is it?).

Anyway, coming back to the core topic – Manoj had some doubts which I think many other people might have – about basics of Marketing. And in last few days some more people pinged me for similar stuff. Now, I suddenly remember that I had written a small document about the basic concepts in Marketing and I think it might be very useful for the ongoing placement season. So, here you go…

Feel free to download and share. And in case you have any doubts in any aspects of Marketing get back to me at ghosh.angshuman.fpm@gmail.com. I would be really happy to help you. All the best!

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It is all about grabbing attention when it comes to marketing and who would not want “ALONE TIME” with the consumer. Marketer would feel elated if he could convey his ads/promotional campaigns when the consumer can’t drive past or change the channel.

The evolution is interesting to study –

Companies tried getting their ads outdoors – so it was banners/hoardings in addition to ads on TV, radio & print media

Then it was essential to create curiosity in every ambience – so the concept of ambient marketing took over – be it the dumb bell shaped holder in a bus(ad for a fitness company) or a broken floor with a buried microphone (ad for BBC) – all these attempts did catch the attention of many consumers.

Next they tried catching hold of every product right from eggs to sick bags in airplanes. People sold their foreheads and other body parts (!!!) as ad space and there were many takers in the marketing sector.

But there were places that were left untouched… How could the people in the advertising sector and the marketing circle not think about this marvellous ad space for so long? What a sin?

Just imagine a closed place where people are always left alone – it is always DND, no mobiles/pagers – in fact they love privacy – no friends and acquaintances – this rule was common to everyone –NO EXCLUSIONS whatsoever.

EUREKA – so came in the concept of ADVERTISEMENTS IN WASHROOMS – the concept I like being termed “loo advertising”. Malls, pubs, bars & cine complexes are the HUBS – they host ads in their Washrooms. The space sells like hot cakes. There are agencies that specialise in these kind of ads – Admedia is claimed to be the biggest player in UK and owns about 25,000 washroom panels. There are loos which are designed like ski resorts, urinals are designed such that they resemble a football ground or a golf course – ads for Sports channels.

Advantages:

1. Undisputed consumer time – no clutter in customer mind space
2. No chance to switch or avoid
3. High brand recall seen
4. Most of the ads seem to be engaging – captive;  e.g.  Marico came up with hair strips in the loos which could be plaited/braided. This was for their product which was a hair detangler
5. Highly gender specific – no cross usage ever seen àhence, no reluctance seen in condom, sanitary napkin ads in the loos
6. Several ads have tear away business cards, discount coupons which encourage footfall
7. Increases brand visibility

The disadvantage of this concept is that it might put off a few people – “please let us have some peace at least here” – this might add to a negative image for the brand.

So care must be exercised. Brands which have an oomph factor, elements of naughtiness/sexiness – positioned as humorous, hep, sexy could go in for this strategy. Their image that has been established would be enhanced. A good example would be that of Axe brands and ads. However, when a soft brand wants to exploit this space, it needs to design its ads in such a way that breaks away from this FUNKY factor & still communicates its mild tone conquering attention without angering the consumers. One of the finest example would be that of this social campaign for drunken driving.

So next time you visit a LOO look out for ads and brands – Be a wary consumer…

- Saradha G, feel free to write back at geeyes18@yahoo.co.in

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Greece, which is a part of the Euro zone was supposed to follow the strict fiscal guidelines of the euro zone. However, corrupt officials, huge public spending and an outdated tax collection system meant that the deficit was well above 12%. On the top of that, the previous government misreported the figures giving the rest of Europeans a fall sense of belief that while things aren’t in shape, they will get better. As the new Government assumed office, the belief was shattered.

Greece today stands on a €300bn+ debt mountain and it will be a tall ask to get the house in order. For a start, it needs over €50bn before the 1st half of the year to avoid a default. The new Government has already started the so called reforms (by bringing down the 14,000 expenditure lines in the budget to 1000) and has promised to get back the deficit within the 3% limit by 2012. However it is easier said than done.

The tremors of Greek debt crisis are being felt all across Europe. Euro continues to slide and has touched $1.38 to a euro. Its getting weaker against the yen and other currencies as well. The same is happening to Swedish and Norwegian currencies. The reason is simple – lack of credibility, lack of confidence that all is right with the eurozone countries. Greece is having to borrow at pretty astronomical rates by European standards. The yield has touched 7.25% and the premium over German Bund is the highest since Greece adopted the Euro. The Greek PM may blame the “malicious forces” for the problems in the bond markets, but that doesn’t solve his problems. Also, the confidence in the oversubscribed €8bn issue seems to be misplaced as first its too small a amount in comparison to what he needs and secondly the rumors about Chinese buying into Greek debt may gave a hand in it.

The question then is what happens next? Will Greece default? Or will someone come to the rescue! The rest of the Eurozone countries are capable enough to help Greece, but they need to do it with caution. Definitely, the Germans and the French don’t want their people to believe that they have to save while others squander. Also, they don’t want other countries to feel that they can keep running their socialist agendas as the French and Germans will come save them when its needed. At the same time, the choices are limited. IMF as the lender of last resort can help Greece, but none in Eurozone want that. IMF help comes along with their own terms and conditions and IMFs interference in Eurozone is not acceptable to any. China with $2.5 trillion of forex reserves is another option, but they are clearly not interested. Chinese are conservative and Greek debt at this point is too risky. It serves none of their political ambitions as well. Chinese exposure to euro is about 20% or less of its total portfolio and they would like to keep it that way. Some analysts have also said that if the rest of Eurozone decides against doing much, Greece might become the 1st country to drop out of Euro. That’s one scenario everyone wants to avoid.

The problem however isn’t limited to Greece alone. Portugal, Ireland, Spain and a few others are running huge deficits as well and need to cut spending drastically to get to the 3% level. Anything that happens in Greece will have a domino effect in these countries and will impact the euro. That’s one disadvantage of tying so many countries with different growth rates to one common currency.

The confidence in euro is at an all time low and it will be an interesting next few weeks to see how it all pans out.

This article is authored by Saurabh Bagrodia. Saurabh is based in Amsterdam and handles Business Development (Banking and Capital Markets space) in Netherlands and Nordic countries for a global IT major. He had done MBA (Finance) from a top B-School in India.  He likes to follow the financial markets and is also interested in derivatives. You can contact him at saurabh.bagrodia@gmail.com

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This article talks about ways to convert the competitive environment in leading B-schools into collaborative environment and abstracting it for general model of competition to collaboration in organizational context.

1] Only one winner

Most of time, B-school creates the environment where there will be only one winner. This leads to hiding information and competitive strategies than collaborative strategies among students. We can overcome this problem by having group competitions, declaring the winner to one who can pull off the worst performer up, some special incentives for collaborative work, some competitions where everyone will be winner. What we need to change is the assumption that only one can be winner with all can be winners.

2] Lack of resources

Because resources are scarce, students compete among themselves to gain those resources. Resources scarcity will be part and parcel for the most part of careers to all managers. We need to create feeling of resource abundance among students which will help them to work towards collaborative strategies even in competitive environments. We can create the system where all the resources are open to all and are shared. Professors and college toppers will share their resources online. Colleges needs to create some simulation where you can win only by sharing resources and not by hiding and fighting for resources and set an example where value of resources are increasing for each successive sharing. What we need to change is the assumption that ‘resources are owned by somebody’ with ‘resources are common pool which is shared by everybody’.

Society level system design problem

I think “comparative scale to measure success” and “difficulty to build mutual benefit relationship” are both society level design problem. We need some remedies at organizational level to cure these inabilities coming from society level. Thus I will suggest some organizational level remedies for these two issues to create collaborative strategy in competitive environment.

1] Comparative scale to measure success

Students rather than comparing their current performance with past performance, use others’ performance to measure their success. This lead to spirit of competition where your only motive will be that your performance is better than other. Now it is hard to change this mental perception but we can reduce it by some system level interventions. We can redesign success measurement scale at institutional level with some weight age for measuring success as improvement in past performance than only comparative performance. We need to increase the self efficacy of each student and create an environment where everyone will feel that each one of them is unique. If possible institutes can remove ranking system or CQPI system completely and replace it with grading system or some other system which will not compare one’s performance with other but will evaluate it absolutely. What we need to change is the assumption that success is beating others with success is improving oneself.

2] Difficult to build mutual benefit relationship

Many times you can’t write complete contracts, or there are chances for divergence for one party because it is not simultaneous sharing. This leads to lack of trust and not mutually benefit relationship. I think we need to create environment where “trust” will be positively reinforced and deviant behavior from contract will be negatively reinforced. We need to create the practice across the B-schools where incomplete paper contracts will be supplemented by complete psychological contracts. We can also amplify some examples where current sharing may not have given benefit by immediate gain but by long term gain. What we need to change is the assumption that contracts are only on paper with contracts are psychological.

What we need are the people who can collaborate and fly together. !! Who will take everybody together at greater height!!

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This article is authored by Gaurav Marathe – Gaurav is a doctorate from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India, in the field of Organization Behavior and Human Resources. He is a footbal enthusiast and shares a passion for biking, social entrepreneurship and teaching.
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1. Competition in business schools

I was thinking about extreme competitive environment that exists across the B-schools. I thought why it is not collaborative environment instead of competition, what are the factors behind it, and what structural or system designs can make this change happen? Is it possible to extract some general model from this particular issue which can be use in organizations for converting the extreme competitive environment into collaborative environment? Here I am assuming that competitive environment is not always bad (as it make everybody work hard), but is it possible to have collaborative way of working in given competitive environment? I believe that it will lead to better personal satisfaction (lesser stress that is produced from competition) as well as relatively more group output.

Let us first see what are the factors that lead to not displaying collaborative way of working and then I will also look at factors that can help in working collaborative way even in competitive environment.

Why people compete and not share the information

1. Only one will win the race and everybody wants to win it as rewards are associated with winning race and not for knowledge sharing.
2. Sharing resources will lead to losing out competitive advantage.
3. It may be possible that one may not lose by sharing but he is not gaining by sharing as it is not mutual beneficial relationship but there is asymmetry.
4. You can’t write complete contracts for sharing and therefore there are high chances for deviation and opportunistic behavior.
5. Action of giving and action of return are not simultaneous. There is time lag so there are chances for opportunistic behavior.
6. Students cracking the MBA entrance are generally lagging the mutual trust which is base for collaborative relationship.
7. Scale for measuring success for most of the students is based on comparison.
8. Resources are scared.
9. Role models we set in front of us are always people who win the competitions by beating others and not people who collaborate.

Thus competition is inevtible in b-schools. What is important though is how to convert the competitive environment in leading B-schools into a collaborative environment.

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This article is authored by Gaurav Marathe – Gaurav is a doctorate from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India, in the field of Organization Behavior and Human Resources. He is a footbal enthusiast and shares a passion for biking, social entrepreneurship and teaching.

___________________________________________________________________________

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1. Explicit Phrases:
If you want all of the phrases to be part of search then use all of them within double quotes. For example, suppose you are searching for next marketing guru. Instead of using the next marketing guru as four separate words in the search box use “the next marketing guru”.

2. Either OR:
By default Google searches for all the terms in your search query so it basically uses AND operator. When you want to search for either of the terms then use the OR operator. Note that – you can also use pipe operator (||) in place of OR.

Example: “TNMG OR the next marketing guru”

3. Excluding Words:
Good Googling is not just searching for what you want but also avoiding what you don’t want. To avoid the unwanted results just type the minus (-) sign in front of the word you want to exclude.

Example: suppose you want to search for the content for “the next marketing guru” but you don’t want the results that contain the term “blog” then in the search box type the following: the next marketing guru –blog

4. Synonyms:
How many times you included a word in the search but thought it would have been better if Google could search for the synonyms as well. What your need to do is just place the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term.

Example: “~fast cars”

5. Word Definitions:
Many a times I was searching for the definition of a word and had to first search for a dictionary website and then only could search the meaning of the word. To cut the process really short simply use the “define:” command.

Example: “define:serendipity”

6. Specify Document Type:
Imagine you have a presentation in 5 minutes and you are yet to start your PPT. It would have been just great if you could directly get a PPT to present. Believe me – you can. You just need to add the modifier “filetype:ppt”. You can use other file extensions (doc, pdf) etc as well.

Example: “the next marketing guru filetype:ppt”

7. Calculator:
Of course you have your desktop or hand calculator for the purpose. But your Google browser window which is already open is as good as or even more convenient. Just type the expression and then equal (=) sign.

Example: “4/2-1*3+5=” or “2^10” or “20% of 500”

8. Unit Conversion:
Did you know that you can convert between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and volume using Google? This is a very powerful tool and can be used for numerous other conversions like converting temperature.

Examples: “10.5 cm in inches” or “10 gallon in litres” or “100F in C”.

9. Currency Converter:
This is very similar to the unit conversion and the syntax is similar as well.

Example: “150 GBP in USD”.

10. Public Data:
How much time did you spent searching for data like population, unemployment rates and other data of some city, state or country? Now it’s easy. Type “population” or “unemployment rate” followed by a state or county name. Note that – these commands should work for all major cities, states and countries – but may be not for all.

Examples: “population Kolkata”; “unemployment rate India”; “area West Bengal”; “Chief Minister Delhi” etc.

11. Time:
Knowing the current time of a city is now so simple. And you don’t need multiple clocks installed in your room or desktop. Just type the ‘time’ and then the city name.

Example: “time Jamshedpur”

12. Weather:
Planning for a trip to India’s financial capital? You might be interested to know the weather of your destination. Just type ‘weather’ followed by the city name.

Example: “weather Mumbai”.

13. Site Specific Search:
Sometimes you want to restrict your search to one website which is relevant to you. For that use “site:” modifier.

Example: “the next marketing guru” site:http://www.tnmg4u.com/

14. Number Ranges:
This might be used rarely but can be very useful in some situations. To specify a range of numbers in your search query use the format X..Y i.e. the lower limit (X) followed by two period (..) and then the upper limit (Y).

Example: Say, you want to purchase a laptop but your budget is between $100 to $150 – then you can use the following search query “Laptop $100..150”.

15. Related Websites:
If you want to search the pages which are related to a specific website then you can type the command “related:” followed by the website address.

Example: “related:www.xlri.ac.in”.

16. Plus (+) Operator:
The ‘+’ operator is used to search for exact word search. Say, you want to search an exact word and don’t want any plural or other tenses or synonyms of the word to be part of your search results. Then place the ‘+’ operator immediately before the word. A special use of this operator will be in the case of common words. As you might know, Google ignores common words and characters such as the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down your search without improving the results. In case a common word is essential for your search then Plus (+) Operator just before that word

Example: “+the next marketing guru”

17. Fill in the Blank:
You had done those ‘fill in the blank’ type questions during your school days. But not needed any more. Now, Google can do it for you. You just need to use the asterisk (*) where the blank is.

Example: “next * guru”. This search query will search for the words next and guru separated by one or more words.

The ‘*’ operator might also be used to ask a question and let Google find the answer for you.

Example: “TNMG means *”

18. I’m Feeling Lucky:
The last but not the least! Have you noticed the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button just right of the “Google Search” button and wondered what’s that? This is just to save your time – it takes you directly to first web page returned for your query.

So, that’s it! Hope these tips will be useful. The list is definitely not comprehensive. But with these you can definitely give tough competition to even the best Googlers out there. In case, you know about some more useful tips on Googling please share in comments so that others can also benefit. We would love to hear back from you.

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