past 3 days has been one helluva an awesome days in eye-eye-eye-tee-bee!!!
The highlight of this week has been Prof. YLR Murthy’s 4 Hours session!!! It was one of the best sessions. When he walked into the room, we thought he was a very serious old prof like any other serious strict prof. But he grabbed our attention in the very first minute with an aggressive statement in front of Master of Technology students: “We need to understand what is the flavor and what lies outside of technology. There are jokers who use whatever you guys create (with technology)”. How many times does it happen that a speaker speaking about his topic for 4 hours makes his audience feel, “God only one session for the entire semester:((“
Abstract of what all he covered in 4 hours. How is IT and Non IT marketing different or similar? How is IT and Non IT branding different? IT and Non IT Marketing has only one thing in common it seems, AGGRESSIVE MARKETING. The best example he gave in Non IT sector was, if a local sales person sees another sales product than his in a pan shop, he will go to the extent of giving 100 200 rupees and will force him to display his gutka/cigarrette brand etc. Another advertisement he shared to drive the home point of how aggression is the hall mark of Pepsi when it comes to marketing. In chennai, Coca Cola put it’s banner in the first floor and Pepsi saw it and the very next day it put Pepsi banners everywhere. Some more examples of how Coca Cola came back to India. How Intel, Oracle is aggressive in their marketing. To conclude, he said one has to be paranoid.
Some awesome ideas he put in front of us..
“How will you design your application if your application is running in Africa where there is low internet speed?! what if they click on the submit button two times?!?!? This is what he called as Customer connect”
“Some books you have to read, if you have not read:
- Matsushitha VCR – Competing for future (Hamlet & Prahlad)
- Intel’s Lawsuits – Inside Intel
- Oracle’s Vaporware – Difference between God and Larry Ellision (Incidentally this book is banned in Oracle:))”
- Turning Japanese – Tim Jackson
“Boss.. money.. money.. they don’t understand anything other than MONEY”
“you have to have the aggression to go from b2b to b2c”
“Trust me, Unless somebody gives ‘Thumbs Up’ your technology will NEVER take off”
“For HR people, KRA is how many lawsuits have been slapped against competitors, this is aggression Sir!”
“Stop having this elitist view sir, even a farmer uses mobile, even he has the reach to technology, if you still think this way, you have to change..phewww”
“Have Break fast or be the breakfast”
“Pepsi believes in frontal attack”
“What Coke? Diet coke? classic coke? oh give me Pepsi!”
“In Asia right to opinion is not equal to right to offend, In America No holds barred”
“There are two types of lock ins: hard and soft lock in.. SAP makes u pay 3 crores for a product and you expect that be better Good, that is hard lock in..”
“IT products at the outset will have Global market and have to survive the challenge of product obsolescence”
“Co-operative competition => co-opetition”
“Branding is not advertisement”
“There are only 3 pitches whether you are in IT or non IT and there are only 3 pitches”
“Rational Pitch : oracle 3500 clients, Darshini=McDonals”
“Emotional Pitch: School zone go slow, can be your child. Nobody was fired for buying IBM”
“Self Expressive pitch : Apple- 80s think differently, Ray ban logo, cult brands”
“Panchantra of marketing -
- Advertising – Bajaj, Intel
- Sales Promotion- Tazo, Paisa Power
- Personal Selling- Eureka, IBM xerox
- Direct Marketing- Reader’s Digest, Kinetix, Dell
- Public relation – Infosys, tata”
It was a breath taking experience, it made us wonder, imagine how profs will be there in IIMs!!! My desire to do MBA got intense!!! Wish we had more sessions of prof YLR Murthy. Now, now, what kind of marketing is my blogging?!?! Any guesses?