Friday, June 14, 2013

Markathon June 2013 Edition




Dear Readers,

As always, this summer was full of activity both inside and outside the world of marketing. Millions of people who regarded it as a religion were left disappointed after cricket in India went through some ugly patches over the last three weeks. Indian Premier League (IPL) was scarred with controversies including betting, spot fixing and match-fixing. Pepsi used the very lucrative platform of IPL to launch its own brand of a much fizzier drink, Pepsi Atom, with Sushant Singh Rajput as the brand ambassador. While it is yet to fizz up the Indian market, Pepsi should hope it carves a fair share for itself in the pie of Indian soft drink market (worth Rs 50 Billion). Mumbai Indians emerged victors in the sixth edition of the IPL, Bayern Munich were crowed the kings of Europe and Rafael Nadal reinforced his supremacy on the red soils of Paris. The chant and brand of “NaMo” is getting stronger and stronger even as the old guard in Bharatiya janata Party reluctantly gave in to the demand of a greater majority for a greater good. Narayan Murthy’s arrival in Infosys seemed to please the share market sentiment about the iconic Indian IT firm.

We want thank you all for the overwhelming number of entries that we have received for this month’s edition. This goes to show how Markathon has developed as a platform to showcase the best minds of the Marketing domain. For a team that puts its soul into a magazine month in and month out, there simply cannot be any greater source of encouragement.

Though products are manufactured and services are offered by companies, brands are built only by customers. A substantial amount of resources are spent by companies in building their brands. While some companies have been extremely successful in sculpting positive brand equity, majority of them have failed more often than not. Though failures are mostly unanticipated, there are some obvious mistakes which would lead a brand to its peril. The cover story of this month is a compilation of seven such “sins” which brands must stay away from. There is no right way in marketing, which makes the domain even more challenging. Even biggies like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Ford have failed miserably in implementing some of their own marketing strategies. Any marketing activity must be completely in sync with the expectations of customers from a brand.

There would be times when you are completely awed by some people in your lives. Al Ries, the father of positioning era, can be safely counted as one among such people. This man coined the term “positioning”, which is almost used ubiquitously nowadays in marketing. Even though we had him before on “Vartalaap”, we believe you will indeed benefit from the wise words of this marketing guru.

Always high on entertainment, this month’s “Fun Corner” will nudge your grey cells with advertising campaigns. Know more about Dettol in “Brand Story”.

Team Markathon congratulates the winners and all the participants.

 With a host of exciting stuff lined up for you, waste no time in taking on this delightful journey as you flip through the pages of the latest edition of Markathon.

As always, do send in your feedback/suggestions to markathon.iims@gmail.com.

Sit back and enjoy this issue!

Happy Reading!

Team Markathon

2 comments:

sreehu said...

Great going guy! Contents IN mag are cool.Keep it up

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