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Performance Marketing Exercise - Watching Fishes that Can Swim!

The joke goes back to when we were engineering students. A highly respected professor, who inspired awe in Mechanical Engineering students had just finished teaching concepts of IC Engine and left for home in his car. The car unfortunately broke down near the hostel, and the professor had to arrange a mechanic. It was a strange sight of two types of experts - one who probably know all about the mechanics of a car engine but could not figure out what was wrong with his own car, and the second(mechanic) - who knew how to get the car started, but probably knew little about the calculations of valve timing or the firing sequence of cylinders. Paradox, isn't it? Digital Marketing today has exactly these two types of 'experts'. Unfortunately, the industry needs practitioners one can interweave conceptual understanding backed by hands on expertise on tools and techniques - knowing one of the two is not enough.  It is with this intent that we subjected students of Martech career tr
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Traditional Retail is the Next Big Business Transformation Story, and Oops! We almost Missed it!!

For way too long, observers in business transformation space have kept their telescope intently focused on large, billion-dollar enterprises. The unintended consequence of this telescope vision is that small enterprises, that are all around us, have been missed. We can contend that maybe something akin of a ‘periscopic view’ that allows for a 360 scan of the neighbourhood is required to observe something remarkable that is taking place next to us. However, to understand this in proper context, we must step back and look at the waves of technology adoption and its impact on the businesses. In the initial years of IT adoption, or computerization as it was called then, was primarily a functional level adoption in large organisations in the West, be it Banks (transactional data of customers), Hospitals (patient records management), Manufacturing (production planning or inventory) or Insurance companies (claims processing). It was all about efficiency. In the next wave, organisations took

Customer Experience is Deceptively Simple and Deviously Complex, but, Unavoidable Part of the Deal

 Cornflakes are not very preferred breakfast in my house so very often we don't even have it in stock. So this morning when I told my daughter I am going out to get a pack, she insisted I get the plain flavour. She reminded me specifically not to get the honey flavour. I assumed this is because she did not like the honey flavour which I seem to have bought the previous time.  What happened next is quite intriguing. Not only did she pour cornflakes and milk in the bowl, she also poured a large spoon of honey on top. I asked her the reason - "that's the  right way  to eat cornflakes", she insisted.  The brand would read this act of pouring honey in cornflakes as potential demand for honey flavoured cornflakes - the agency would helpfully bring in the supporting data probably - but only one problem -  this customer cluster does not want it, they want to  experience  adding the honey to it! Many brands still sell by deconstructing their physical product - CPU, RAM, Screen

Convergence 2020: Live from the Conference Day One

 Live blogging is fun, especially if the event is such intensely engaging. BTW, conferences are supposed to happen in large auditoriums or hotel banquet halls, aren't they? Fortunately, the answer is a no. This is the inaugural session of Convergence 2020  and there are over 150 attendees not visible in the picture, because they are online!! Dr Atish Chattopadhyay, Director, IFIM Business School, while speaking at the start of the event, brought the concept of Service as "seva", which he pointed our as worship, as believed in the eastern philosophy, as opposed to a transaction (or a set of transactions) in the West. Dr A. Parasuraman,  while introducing the event make the remark (I think he was quoting someone but I could not make a note of that), "Nothing is more practical than a good theory". He was underscoring the point that research is not an exercise in isolation, but it has to be take away for the practice. Such a telling point in few words!! Two amazing

Winning Through Service Excellence: Theory and Practice - Convergence 2020 at Jagdish Sheth School of Management

Conferences have meant different things to me at different times. Over a decade back, when my wife was working on her PhD, I was curious to know what is it that academicians and researchers travel across the world to speak and listen to, because I used to see her very excitedly prepare for such conferences. I was in the industry then, and my view was guided by  industry conferences  attended and organised. They were full of gloss - dazzling presentations, jargons being dropped and lapped up, dapper looking executives who were more found in the lobby than in the main hall, and the my-car-is-more-expensive-than-your-car glance that was noticed at the hotel entrance.It was my view then that it was only the travel and hospitality industry that gains from conferences! Things took a different turn when I switched careers and crossed over to academia. While conferences retained the fun quotient, they became an interesting hot-spot to meet the real thought leaders . White background slide pres