No I am not referring to any scientific cycle over here, it’s the same two wheels, which we loved to ride when we were young. Here in India its the first love of most of the kids and this doesn’t stop here for rural India it is the integral part of personal transport system, its the supply chain vehicle for Milk-Men in our country, the post-men spend their lives with this magnificent piece of work (for the record, Indian Postal System records one of the highest names in accuracy).
Do you remember the brand? I can bet 9 out of 10 people reading this would jump out with the name "HERO".
Yes, the very "HERO" brand of this country, which brought in the motorbikes with a storm and overtook the market.
Wait a minute from Bi-Cycles to Motorbikes isn’t it moving away from the core? Isn’t that been registered as the most dangerous move that an organization can make?
Well, yes it is. "Hero" did move from the core to shift to an adjacency.
One of the most vital reasons for their success is the bicycle market that they had created for themselves. It created the strongest "footprint" in the core of the market, the heart of the Indian consumer.
* Strong customer loyalty and brand respect will help you move from the core.
India has grown to a level that a motorbike is affordable to a generous number of people in rural India. Still, Hero didn’t dump their bicycle business, not for the reason of sentiments but for the fact that it is one product that will sell across the wide spectrum of customers spanning from farmers to professionals, from students to shopkeepers. Hero has been successful in coming up with great variants of bicycles at the right times to cater the need of all the consumers so far.
* Effective Market Segmentation and Market Surveys will help you cater a larger audience to your product and will ensure the ROI you are looking at.
Go around the city or a town or a nor very rural area of the country the chance that you will find a Hero Dealer is 100% and the chance that you find a Hero Honda dealer is pretty decent too. They have been successful in creating a vast and reliable dealer network , reaching far and creating a greater respect for the brand.
* If you know the target audience you have to build your brand carefully around them. Make sure your channels to reach the customers are not just wide spread but strategically spread.
Hero Honda were phenomenal in past few decades when it brought in bikes ( they have a tough competition in the market now...but still they where the "First to Market" people ). With initial models doing great in market they moved to upper segment bringing in urban class bikes, which were doing well till Bajaj entered the market with the greatest card of all " Fuel Efficiency ". This is when they started working with Honda their Japanese partners to get in fuel-efficient bikes...
* You will definitely reap the benefits of being "First to Market" since you have set a standard, captured the customers, but this stays only till someone else doesn’t come in to raise the bar. If its not you, who is raising it, then you have a tough competition to catch up with. So investment in R&D guided with the appropriate Marketing inputs focused on what in future will the customer demand and a watchful eye on competition will keep you above the water.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
A Lesson from the Wall Street
In the fiscal year just ended, Harvard paid its top five investment managers an average of more than $4 million. Each. Per year.
Have they been overpaid ? Just look a the investment managers on the same footing on Wall Street and you will say no , in fact they may as well have a right for a few more dollars.
One evident thing to it:
The massacre at Wall Street has shown one thing very clearly that "talent" + "effort" does not relate to "salary". Highly paid managers took down the backbone of the system with them. Why? Because the "talent" never showed up in learning from the mistakes and "effort" never showed up in forecasting what can go wrong and "integrity" ( for that case a virtue ) never showed up on communicating to the world what will go wrong.
The reason :
They were driven by the force of performance which will be a measure of their skills. When the market is good they are the gods and who wants to point the fingers at god in good times . And thats where they kept working "bring money home and no one asks you the questions", and then when thunder sounds we pray to god for safety and when continuous prayers don't get heard its then we start complaining about the "gods", but by then most of it is lost. So yes its not them just but also the system beneath them which is responsible for this financial bloodshed.
The Lesson :
Marketers are driven by the very force of performance of organization ( for the product /services etc. that they are responsible for ) and the performance of themselves, since that will be measure of their expertise. But before you are taken for a ride with just these goals. - Learn from your mistakes.
- You are winning now doesn't mean you stop their. Develop foresight and create the platform for your products/services in future, what i have learned is called "network" yourself for future.
- Have the courage to accept what can go wrong in your strategy if you can predict its good, if you didn't predict and now you are about to face it , don't throw a black curtain on it. Since it will show up anycase but if you throw a curtain , it will bring huge losses and if you prepare and accept it you may create a cushion of least damage both to the market and your organization.
Knowledge, foresight, courage will take you a long way as a marketer.
Have they been overpaid ? Just look a the investment managers on the same footing on Wall Street and you will say no , in fact they may as well have a right for a few more dollars.
One evident thing to it:
The massacre at Wall Street has shown one thing very clearly that "talent" + "effort" does not relate to "salary". Highly paid managers took down the backbone of the system with them. Why? Because the "talent" never showed up in learning from the mistakes and "effort" never showed up in forecasting what can go wrong and "integrity" ( for that case a virtue ) never showed up on communicating to the world what will go wrong.
The reason :
They were driven by the force of performance which will be a measure of their skills. When the market is good they are the gods and who wants to point the fingers at god in good times . And thats where they kept working "bring money home and no one asks you the questions", and then when thunder sounds we pray to god for safety and when continuous prayers don't get heard its then we start complaining about the "gods", but by then most of it is lost. So yes its not them just but also the system beneath them which is responsible for this financial bloodshed.
The Lesson :
Marketers are driven by the very force of performance of organization ( for the product /services etc. that they are responsible for ) and the performance of themselves, since that will be measure of their expertise. But before you are taken for a ride with just these goals. - Learn from your mistakes.
- You are winning now doesn't mean you stop their. Develop foresight and create the platform for your products/services in future, what i have learned is called "network" yourself for future.
- Have the courage to accept what can go wrong in your strategy if you can predict its good, if you didn't predict and now you are about to face it , don't throw a black curtain on it. Since it will show up anycase but if you throw a curtain , it will bring huge losses and if you prepare and accept it you may create a cushion of least damage both to the market and your organization.
Knowledge, foresight, courage will take you a long way as a marketer.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)