A team of students from the Harvard Business School will be working closely with DY Works and Reliance Retail India in January to understand cultural trends and consumer triggers in the Indian context. The experience is part of a required first-year course at Harvard Business School called FIELD, which stands for Field Immersion Experience for Leadership Development. DY Works is one of 156 FIELD Global Partners spanning 13 countries around the world. Together they will host more than 930 students in all.
“We are looking forward to this engagement. As a company that bases its work on culture and semiotic enquiry, this experience falls seamlessly into our vision of research”, said Alpana Parida, President DY Works. “We are pleased to be working with Harvard Business School to provide students with a real-world learning experience in Mumbai, India. We feel certain that the students will gather insights here that they would never be able to glean from a classroom discussion alone.”
FIELD has three modules that run through the entire first year of the two- year MBA program. The first module focuses on developing individual leadership skills through team feedback and self-reflection. The second focuses on developing global intelligence by immersing them in a foreign country to develop a new product or service in the country for their Global Partner organization. The final module brings all the lessons together by challenging students to develop and launch their own micro-business as part of a small team back in Boston.
This collaboration includes India’s retail giant, Reliance Retail who will facilitate the engagement of the students with consumers and their purchase environments. DY Works executives have been working with the team remotely in the months leading up to their arrival in country. While here, they will pitch their ideas to the leadership team, conduct field research with consumers around Mumbai and present their final recommendations to management.
Harvard is quick to acknowledge that this important learning experience would not be possible without the Global Partners.
“We are extremely grateful to DY Works, Reliance Retail and all the FIELD Global Partner organizations for all they do on behalf of our students,” said Professor Tony Mayo, the faculty head of FIELD. “The students benefit immeasurably from this experience and we hope the partner organizations do as well.”
When corporations create brand identities, they design and craft symbols that represent their lines, business or philosophy. The result is a differentiated visual identity that both enhances how these corporations are regarded; as also acts as a receptor of all perceptions about the corporation. Eventually, the symbols get so loaded with meaning, that a single glance at them unlocks defined associations in the minds of the viewer.
The design sophistication, choice of colour and the elegance of crafting all add to the power of the symbol and add elements of professionalism, quality and trustworthiness to the overall corporate brand.
The political symbols in India are handed out by the Election Commission – and at best are chosen from the repertoire on offer.
There is little scope in design (some of the symbols are used in colour as well), but the opportunity for the symbols to have a deeper meaning is certainly present.
Apart from AAP, and for the first time in a small way – Congress; no other party has used their symbol to describe or further their philosophy and manifesto.
MUMBAI: Jann Mardenborough, a 22-year-old race car enthusiast, will soon participate in GP3 racing and take a step closer to his dream of racing in Formula 1 championship.
The platform for Mardenborough was being offered by Nissan's GT Academy in Europe which has now come to India. The academy aims to reach out to 5,000 young people in five cities in India to test their driving skills on simulators installed in malls. The company will filter 14 best drivers, but the main aim is to spread awareness of the Nissan brand to the participants.
This kind of experiential marketing is increasingly turning out to be a new brand building tool for automakers in India. Be it Mahindra's Great Escape `off-roading rally' for its customers or Tata Motors' recent truck racing.
"Experiential marketing is a fast gaining currency in India for high engagement categories such as automobile and luxury goods. Advertising is increasingly very expensive and is like carpet bombing,'' Alpana Parida, president at DY Works, a brand strategy firm said.
Parida said there was a direct correlation between higher level of customer engagement with a brand to conversion and preference for that brand.
"Experiential marketing reaches out to opinion leaders, who are the innovators and early adopters in a category. They are the influencers, the enthusiasts, who today, thanks to the evolution of technology, are more important than ever. They create a viral buzz that quickly reaches a wider audience. This is a very effective strategy to build brands beyond advertising," Parida said.
The country's largest fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, Hindustan Unilever (HUL), has just kicked off Project Sunlight, simultaneously with Unilever's other markets, to compile the social missions of its many brands. It is an attempt to invite consumers to get involved in doing small things to help their own families, others and the planet. In India, HUL will highlight brands such as Lifebuoy (cleanliness), Dove (improving women's self esteem) and Knorr (work with farmers).
It is a manifestation of how brands are combining CSR with business objectives.
HUL has been scaling up initiatives for social good across brands. Its recent Domex Toilet Academy, for example, has the objective of building 24,000 toilets by 2015 in areas where there is lack of sanitation. The motivation came from the increasing importance its parent Unilever is giving to the cause of social good as espoused in its "Sustainable Living Plan" flagged off three years ago.
Besides specific sustainability targets, managers at HUL were asked to interpret a social purpose in the local context. The lack of basic sanitation afflicts Indians is well-known in a country which accounts for almost 60 per cent of open defecation in the world.
HUL saw an opportunity to plug its brand Domex, a toilet cleaner competing with Harpic from Reckitt Benckiser. Hemant Bakshi, executive director, home & personal care, HUL, says, "We realise the importance of the need for safe and hygienic sanitation practices. We have an important role to play to help make our communities free of open defecation. As a brand, Domex can make toilets free of disease and safe to use."
Under Lifebuoy, the company has been running a large school contact programme to help sensitise children to the need to wash their hands. Experts say, it is a clever marriage of social and business objectives. By targeting children and instilling in them the need to use a soap to wash hands, HUL is playing a good corporate citizen, even as it creates a ready market in the schools and among the parents of the students.
Tanishq and Havells, through their recent ad campaigns, have been questioning so-called taboos. Tanishq's on-going campaign for its bridal collection, where it portrays remarriage of a woman with a child, has been noted as a break-through by pundits on social media (though, a similar trope had appeared in a Femina ad in 2001).
Havells, the electrical components and appliances brand, touched on issues such as inclusivity (a domestic help being asked to join her employer-family for dinner at the table) and women's rights (a husband's decision to adopt his wife's surname) in its summer campaign this year. Vijay Narayananan, vice-president, marketing, Havells, admits the campaign did stir people enough, making them sit up and take notice of the brand. Launched at a time when the clutter is high on television, Narayanan says the campaign induced recall in a low-involvement category such as fans.
Tata Tea's Jaago Re campaign, meanwhile, has evolved into a viable platform for change. Jaago Re's current edition, coinciding with the relaunch of Tata Tea Gold, dwells on how women should not be ignored by politicians since they constitute 49 per cent of the voter base. Harish Bhat, MD, Tata Global Beverages, says, "At a time when the country is gearing up for elections, it made perfect sense to dwell on this aspect."
As corporate social responsibility (CSR) becomes mandatory for Indian companies, the seriousness with which most are approaching it has increased. Gautam Chemburkar, partner, KPMG, says, "From something that was tracked by a small team, CSR has moved up as a key item on the CEO's list. By making it mandatory for companies to disclose what they've done with the two per cent of profits they now have to set aside for CSR activities, companies will track where the money will go, since it will form part of their distributable profits."
According to industry estimates, the likely obligation arising out of the CSR Bill, which comes into force next fiscal, will be $2 billion (or Rs 12,400 crore). This is if the cumulative profit of India Inc will be $100 billion (or Rs 6.2 lakh crore) by then.
Chemburkar says the Indian corporations can't afford to ignore such an amount. "If earlier companies paid lip-service to CSR, restricting their efforts to communities around their factories, today the scope of their operations has increased," Alpana Parida, president, DY Works, a Mumbai-based brand consultant, says.
Beauty major L'Oreal has just announced its commitment to transform the way it does business by 2020, spanning the entire value chain from manufacturing, marketing to business development. L'Oreal, like Unilever, hopes to touch consumer lives with not only sustainable products, but also initiatives that can help make a difference.
A team of students from the Harvard Business School will be working closely with DY Works and Reliance Retail India in January to understand cultural trends and consumer triggers in the Indian context. The experience is part of a required first-year course at Harvard Business School called FIELD, which stands for Field Immersion Experience for Leadership Development. DY Works is one of 156 FIELD Global Partners spanning 13 countries around the world. Together they will host more than 930 students in all.
“We are looking forward to this engagement. As a company that bases its work on culture and semiotic enquiry, this experience falls seamlessly into our vision of research”, said Alpana Parida, President DY Works. “We are pleased to be working with Harvard Business School to provide students with a real-world learning experience in Mumbai, India. We feel certain that the students will gather insights here that they would never be able to glean from a classroom discussion alone.”
