Technology has certainly become a part and parcel of our lives. Although it offers many advantages, it comes with downsides. It is impairing our productivity and creativity, making us excessively lazy, dependent on gadgets which is potentially threatening our physical and mental health. Mobile phones have already made us slaves of social media. They have distanced our personal relationships physically and emotionally.  The world has literally become virtual.

Continual notifications, multiple web pages open on the desktop, and emails running in every hour…. these are just a few of the many distractions caused by technology.

We are getting everything at our doorstep right from grocery, clothes, food, medicines to flowers and gifts due to which we have restrained ourselves from doing hard work. To top it all AI is making inroad in our majority activities in daily life. 

Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker Open AI, as well as an expert from Google’s AI arm Deepmind and some experts from Microsoft supported and signed one short statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Other tech leaders such as Tesla’s Elon Musk and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have cautioned about the risks AI poses to society. We are paying a heavy cost for technology which has become incredibly addictive, serving as a disruption in majority people’s lives. It is constraining us from releasing our full potential.

The AI technology has gathered pace in recent months after chatbot ChatGPT was released for public use in November 2022 and subsequently went viral. In just two months after its launch, it reached 100 million users. In comparison, it took nine months for TikTok to reach 100 million users.

ChatGPT has amazed researchers and the public with its ability to generate humanlike responses to users’ prompts, suggesting AI could replace jobs and imitate humans. On various platforms many business leaders in the world are discussing about horrifying risks from AI.  One such possibility is AI can automate all the jobs. It can develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete, and replace human minds. If this happens, we the humans in world are risking loss of control of our civilization.

More than 350 of the world’s most distinguished experts in artificial intelligence, including the creator of ChatGPT, have warned of the possibility that the technology could lead to the extinction of humanity. It can erase human race from planet Earth.

Some stalwarts from industry are anxiously sounding the alarm. AI has already started intervention in academics. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis have voiced deep concern for the future of humanity, advancing technology carries with it in obvious terms.

According to an analysis by Swiss bank UBS (merger of two of Switzerland’s largest banks, the Swiss Bank Corporation, and the Union Bank of Switzerland) ChatGPT is the fastest growing app of all times.

Google engineer Blake Lemoine claims that the company’s AI technology has become sentient which means having the ability to use your senses to see and to feel. This is so, so scary, besides, it is just not ethical and moral.  Friends, AI is come to life, and it is possessing a deeper question about what it means to be alive.  

AI has many side-effects more and more cyber crimes are taking place every minute somewhere in world.  ChatGPT can share information about the private lives of public persons, including speculative or harmful content, which could harm the person’s reputation.  Criminal minded people are already using AI systems for thefts from innocent people’s bank accounts, DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, identity thefts, cyberstalking, phishing, online scams, spreading inappropriate content etc. Many innocent people are losing jobs.

In politics AI bias occurs because human beings choose the data that algorithms use and decide how the results of those algorithms will be applied; this is done without extensive testing and by diverse teams. And it is easy for unconscious biases to enter machine learning models and perpetuate those biased models.

Late Stephen Hawking, the most eminent scientist in world had said that efforts to create thinking machines would cause a threat to the very existence of mankind. He had told the BBC “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

It gives me an eerie signal like Covid pandemic…. the widespread panic and the shutdowns and the overloaded hospital emergency rooms. Though ChatGPT has railings in AI is capable of programming used for devastation of mankind. The best example of this is the idea of “autonomous weapons” which can be programmed to kill humans in war.

Long tail marketing strategy refers to the strategy of targeting a large number of niche segments in markets with a product or service. Niche marketing means a marketing strategy of narrowing down focus on product/service offerings to target of small but profitable subsection of a market. Small niches in market are overlooked by dominating market leaders. The best example I can give here is of Netflix Inc. which is an American media-service provider headquartered in California, founded in 1997. The company’s primary business is its subscription-based streaming OTT (Over the Top) service which offers online streaming of a library of films and television programs, including those produced in-house. As of April 2019, Netflix has over 148 million paid subscriptions worldwide, including 60 million in the United States, and over 154 million subscriptions total including free trials.

Long Tail first came into existence because of the Internet culture seen in a significant post by Clay Shirky titled “Powerlaws, Weblogs, and Inequality” he studied why certain weblogs (the original term for blogs) had a power law distribution. It was Chris Anderson who expanded the theory to explore implication for culture, and for business, and coined the term Long Tail. He coined the term in 2004. He pointed that the products in low demand or with low sales volume can collectively make up market share or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters but only if the store or distribution channel is large enough. He pointed out that the internet gave consumers choices beyond what was offered in physical stores; e-Commerce offers niche markets the chance to appeal to their audience through major marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba. With the wake of e-commerce growing in popularity, coupled with affordable shipping or digital downloads, there’s always someone out there looking to buy even the most specialized products. Amazon and Alibaba can buy items in large quantities, lowering the price of the product.

In many retail stores, a small group of popular items such as  Shapewear which is shaping up to be one of the best evergreen niche product in a store. For past two years in row, this product category has made to the list. By 2022, the shapewear market is expected to skyrocket to about $ 5.6 billion in sales. What started as an undergarment has transitioned to a piece for everyday wear. Similarly, in the autumn season and early winter months, plaid shirts searches re-emerge as a seasonal trend. This fashion product item has created a standalone category in retail outlets called “Plaid,” and is considered trendy. Such new niche products help the sales to soar. Many stores automatically promote these already popular items, trying to attract as many customers as they can before their competitors do. Meanwhile, their other inventory continues to sell, without special promotion. However, some stores carry such a variety of inventory that their less popular items, in total, actually make up the bulk of sales. If they plot the number of sales of each individual product, they observe that their distribution curve looks dominant like a long tail because of niche products.

Long tail marketing concentrates on innovative yet less popular products. While many marketing strategies focus on promoting a specific product or brand, long tail marketing involves more inventory management than the product promotion. The fact is this business model is based on the 80/20 rule of the Pareto principle; Amazon and Netflix stock items in centralized warehouses, while displaying them on a virtually unlimited sales floor (their website), resulting in a much lower cost for shelf maintenance. Web-page maintenance has its costs, but they are substantially lower than physical storage which requires sorting, stocking, and maintaining shelves. Meanwhile, sellers of digital products such as iTunes, or Amazon’s Kindle books don’t even require warehouse space, further reducing the maintenance costs.

A brick-and-mortar video rental store or bookstore requires so much shelf space for staking the books and videos, and must devote a significant amount of that space to stocking enough of the most popular items to meet demand. Less popular items compete with each other for limited space, and greater variety increases costs in time and energy in stocking and sorting.

The principles of long tail marketing are also applied by microfinance businesses who offer smaller loans to large groups of people all over the world. A loan of less than $100 is enough to start a business in many places. These customers, who often have no established credit history, have long been ignored by traditional banks; but now represent a significant niche market, and an important component of economic growth in many regions of the world, including Africa and Southern Asia. The plus points of long tail business strategy are as follows:

It offers lower costs to store in terms of distribution and supply: Long tail is suitable because of the lower cost of storing/stocking and near unlimited potential for distributing products. Centralized warehouses are substantially less expensive than retail chains with local stores. Winners achieve better distribution, logistics, inventory management, warehousing, and ultimately have more data to determine how to price and scale.

Lower merchandising costs: Web and mobile storefronts have the ability to display huge amounts of inventory. By reducing the search costs for the average customer, and the cost to display inventory, long tail models increase the collective share of remote and difficult to get products.

Suggestion engines:  Both Amazon and Netflix are famous for their “and you may also like” recommendation tools. It works wonders. The recommendation engines shift demand to the long tail of the demand curve, away from the hits on popular books, media, and products that drive traditional retail demand and toward niche undiscovered products. Based on the use of collaborative filters, preference for a popular product can shift demand back to hits or popular titles.

Opinion of crowd input matters: The way users find what they are looking for is often by recommendations of the volunteers, contributing connections and collaborating directly with a company to create and organize information. Google is successful in creating a long tail of web search with the direct involvement of everyone that uses Google; this contributes linked content on the web.

Data analytics informs product development: Data analytics is famous for using the customer preference data collected over time to deliver not just a marketplace of products, but original content based on deep customer intelligence. Amazon has smartly already launched its own private label brand to sell diaper products, and most recently announced future food products.

The flipside: On the flipside there has been much debate in the academic and business community about the validity of long tail as a feasible business model, and the term is no longer popular for freshly brewed startups. Many neo-entrepreneurs are challenging the potential value of long tail. However, it is worth understanding the basic assumptions which laid the foundation for early thinking in the value of internet delivery. The idea of long tail as a business model has changed with Amazon’s domination of online retail. Amazon literally dominates every possible category. A key question to authenticate a long tail theory is would a company benefit from a wider distribution of inventory, both in terms of inventory and search costs?

A name is the most important identifier of a person, a brand, state, a village, a business, a nation, a pet etc. The name implies race, era, societal culture and religion. No wonder, people take time to name their children, their business, their pet, their memoirs etc. Names have meaning and they do suggest character, traits and acumen of a person/business/state/nation/ product. Each name has power, people work hard to make the name outstanding and influential, and it must be valued.

Beyond just a memorable logo and tag line, good branding adds to the value of a company. It provides employees with direction and motivation, and attracts more and more customers easily. A brand represents the total sum of people’s awareness and experience of an individual, a company, a product, a school, college, a university, a hospital, a park, an auditorium, a nation, a river, a mountain, a flower and infinite things. There are countless components which go in creating a successful brand.

In this article I will be discussing some examples of how names were created of certain brands.

Do you know that Pepsi was named after the medical term for indigestion? The inventor of Pepsi, Caleb Davis Bradham, originally wanted to be a doctor, but due to some crisis in his family, he left medical school and became a pharmacist instead, according to the company website. His original invention, identified as “Brad’s Drink,” was made from a mix of sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, and nutmeg. Three years later, Bradham renamed his drink, which he believed helped digestion; so he named it as “Pepsi-Cola,” taken from the word upset stomach, meaning indigestion.

Panera Bread Company is a chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants in the United States and Canada. Panera combines two words “pan” and “era.” According to Panera’s Facebook page, the chain store’s name has Latin and Spanish roots. In Spanish, “pan” means bread and “era” means age or time. So put together, Panera means “age of bread.” And, in Latin it means breadbasket.

Google owes its name to a typographical error. Its name came forward from a brainstorming session at Stanford University. Founder Larry Page was coming up with ideas for a massive data-index website with other graduate students, according to a Business Insider report. One of the suggestions was “googolplex” one of the largest describable numbers. The name ‘Google’ came about after one of the students accidentally spelled it wrong. Larry Page thought of keeping the name as erroneously spelled and registered his company with this name.

McDonald is named after two brothers who ran a burger restaurant. Raymond Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, used to sell milkshake machines. Once he met brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, who ran a burger restaurant in San Bernardino, California. The McDonald brothers bought several of Kroc’s Multimixers and he was so impressed by their burger restaurant that he became their agent and set up franchises around the US. Years later, he bought rights to the McDonald’s name.

Adidas is not an acronym for “All Day I Dream about Soccer”; it’s a fallacy of many people. It turns out the athletics-apparel brand is named after its founder, Adolf Dassler, who started making sport shoes when he came back from serving in World War I, according to the LA Times. The name combines his nickname, Adi, and the first three letters of his last name, Dassler.

Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, the expensive watches wanted a brand name that could be understood and pronounced in any language. He tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. He thought of hundreds of permutations and combinations by setting and fixing the alphabets. But, none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, the name “Rolex” struck in his mind and ears.

The name LG came from the merger of two companies, Lucky and Goldstar, the acronym of both companies. It was officially decided to use the brand name as LG.  It is a conglomerate in South Korea. When the company started marketing its products to the west and English speaking countries the company rethought about its name using the same acronym as “Life’s Good” as a backronym (an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words).

Nike is the Greek goddess of victory and she often represented with wings. Her presence symbolized victory and she was often depicted as sitting next to Zeus, the Greek god. The swish designed signifies her flight.

SONY the leading manufacturer of electronics products for the consumer and professional markets is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Sony comes from the Latin word ‘Sonus’ which means sound. And, ‘Sonny’ is a slang word used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster. The company was named after bright youngsters – Sonny boys working in sound and vision. The name Sony was also chosen because it could be pronounced easily in many languages.

Vodafone was formed under the Racal telecommunications brand and as was launched in January 1985 under the name Racal Vodafone Holdings Ltd. The name Vodafone is derived from three words which are of significantly important for the industry. The short explanation could be described with the naming formula voice, data and phone. The idea of this name came from Saatchi & Saatchi (the advertising agency) and one of the company’s original directors. It was the agency’s idea of spelling phone as “fone” which at first wasn’t accepted very well by the then CEO of Vodafone. Eventually he pondered over it and accepted the name. This is how the name “Vodafone” was born.

Brand building requires sincerity: Like we individuals have our personalities, style and image; brands also have their personalities. Brands make a personal connection with their customers. Just as people have values, goals, beliefs and even flaws, so do organizations. Customers connect with the brands if only they like them. The connection grows when brands deliver what is promised. Customers go by their own experience.

Organizations need to work on delivering exactly what they communicate regarding their brands. They need to decide on their brand’s personality traits and deliver them as promised.  Over-promising and under-delivering turns out to be short-term marketing strategy.  In fact, it’s often cheaper and easier to create hype, than providing genuine substance.

Initial marketing hype can create little success, but after it fades, organizations fall flat and struggle to retain customers and struggling for their existence. The core issue in branding exercise is maintaining the brand authenticity. And what is a brand? It’s a name!

A doodle is a drawing made while a person’s attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be composed of haphazard and abstract lines, generally without ever lifting the drawing device from the paper, in which case it is usually called a ‘scribble’. Many of us doodle during meetings or lectures. Doodling has become synonymous with day-dreaming. But there’s a plus side to doodling: when we doodle, we do it semi-consciously in which we actually access our most creative self and come up with brilliant ideas for even our most troubling problems. Guys don’t give up doodling.

A Google Doodle is a special, temporary change made in the logo on Google’s homepage. This intended change is made to celebrate holidays, events, achievements and people. The first Google Doodle was in honor of the Burning Man Festival of 1998, this  is one of the world’s biggest and most popular festivals and takes place once a year in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. This Google Doodle was designed by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Subsequent Google Doodles were designed by an outside contractor, until Page and Brin asked public relations officer Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day in 2000. Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries/lands to the French National Day, which is celebrated on the 14th of July each year. From that point onward, Doodles have been organized and published by a team of employees termed “Doodlers”.

The doodle has become a foundation on the homepage and part of Google’s identity. At Google, they now have a full-time staff of resident artists, who are called doodlers, who help to create images, metaphors, smiles seen by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. According to Google job postings, doodle candidates have the world’s best platform to showcase their stylistic skills, their sense of humor, and love of all things – it can be historical, geographical, current affairs anything. Google nurtures talent and imaginative artistry in the doodlers. These are original artwork; quirky and fanciful doodles have been a daily feature of Google’s home page for more than 15 years now. All the doodlers get assigned certain days, but they also have pet projects in which they work on ideas they feel strongly about. They can animate on those strong ideas of theirs.

One of the Doodle paid tribute to silent film star Charlie Chaplin, with this short video, which celebrated what would’ve been his 122nd birthday. Featuring a Chaplin-like actor, the film sees him read a Google newspaper, relate with a Google logo and attempt to draw a Google Doodle himself, albeit unsuccessfully! I think that was one of the best Doodles!

To celebrate the 100th Tour de France, the Google Doodle team developed this elaborate design, depicting a cyclist sporting a Gallic moustache and Le Tour’s famous maillot jaune yellow jersey, with his wheels going like the clappers.

Do you know Google holds competitions for school students to create their own Google doodles, referred to as “Doodle 4 Google”? Winning doodles go onto the Doodle 4 Google website, where the public can vote for the winner, who wins a trip to the Googleplex (it is the corporate headquarters complex of Google in California) and the hosting of the winning doodle for 24 hours on the Google website.

The competition originated in the United Kingdom, and has since expanded to the United States and other countries. The competition was also held in Ireland in 2008. Google announced a Doodle 4 Google competition for India in 2009 and the winning doodle was displayed on the Google India homepage on November 14^th. A similar competition held in Singapore based on the theme “Our Singapore” was launched in January 2010 and the winning entry was chosen from over 30,000 entries received. The winning design will be shown on Singapore’s National Day on Google Singapore’s homepage. It was held again in 2015 in Singapore and was themed ‘Singapore: The next 50 years’.

Google Doodles introduce different culture to world through festival doodles. The doodles announce events around the world, special doodles are designed for Olympics, Soccer World Cup, Cricket World Cup etc. The Google user can recognize what is going around and what is the specialty of the day. If you want to know more about the event, you just need to have a single click and Google will take you to the pages in the ‘Knowledge graph’ for what doodle is meant for. For example, on 22^nd June 2013, Mount Fuji was raised to the status of World Heritage site at UNESCO meeting which took place in Cambodia. Google celebrated the joy of this move by UNESCO and shared the happiness with Japanese people with a special Google Doodle on Japan homepage. This is how the moment you are on the Google site, the doodle updates on the specialty of the day!!!

How is workplace compatibility developed?

Many factors go into making a relationship work; the biggest ones is compatibility. If two individuals have nothing in common and share little or no interests once the newness of the relationship wears off, there’s not much left to work with. Compatibility is the like-mindedness shared by two people or a group. Therefore, when people work together the compatibility component is very important.

How does compatible relationship helps organization

Compatible relationships create individual peak performance and collective organizational reciprocity, resulting in an organization that functions at optimal levels of organizational effectiveness. Performance in an organization is influenced by compatible relationships between the leadership style and the motivational needs of followers. Organizations fail badly when they hire employees who don’t “fit” into the organizational culture and policies. The misfits cost a lot in terms of money and cultural pilferage. It includes cost to recruit, train the employee, and other employee morale gets affected. Wrongly selected employees can hamper an organization even if it is well established. Bad hires negatively affect organization.

While oil and gas companies are prime targets for a lot of negative PR and public ire, Chevron Corporation employees are well-versed towards the company’s culture. They are dedicated to safety, supporting employees and team members looking out for each other. Chevron cares about its employees by providing health & fitness centers on site through health-club memberships. It offers other health-oriented programs such as massages and personal training. Chevron insists employees take regular breaks. In other words, the company shows it cares about the well-being of employees, and employees know that they are valued.  The level of freedom are empowerment is understood in tight sense by its employees. Chevron grew as a corporation because it cares a lot about compatibility with its workers.

How does workplace compatibility affect Mergers and acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions fail staggeringly and cultural incompatibilities play a dominant role in most of these problem mergers. Across industries, the failure rate of M&A is almost at 50%.  The unfortunate thing is that a majority of M&As, simply do not make the expected return on the investment and the toll on employees in merged or acquired organization is much higher.  In a muddled atmosphere key people leave organization which increases fear and resentment in other employees. Organizations lose the momentum on sales, product development, R&D, infrastructure etc. Hence each employee’s compatibility with the organization’s core values matters. The cultural fit is very important.

For a healthy union of two organizations, cultural norms of the two organizations need explicit attention, if it is ignored everything fails. The cultural norms are what drive almost every aspect of the respective companies; instead of assuming, there should be clarity on how the business should be run, how decisions are made, even how people should be treated. The bottom line is that leaders who ignore the role of culture during an M&A activity simply are not fulfilling their responsibility towards all stakeholders.

In Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, self-actualization is located at the very top of the pyramid, it embodies the need to fulfill one’s individual potential. According to Maslow, peak experiences plays an important role in self-actualization. This experience is really rare, which makes the peak experiences elusive. Not all people reach the peak of Maslow’s pyramid. In one study conducted across business firms the researchers found that only about two-percent of individuals surveyed had ever had a peak experience.

Peak experiences are not restricted solely to self-actualized individuals, however. Maslow believed that all people are capable of having these moments, but he also felt that self-actualized people were likely to experience them more often. Maslow also felt sure that the more emotionally healthy we are, the greater the likelihood of a peak-experience.

Workplace compatibility and leadership

This bring the focus on the relationship between leadership style and the motivational needs of the followers. When the leader-follower relationship is compatible, the followers feel motivated to give their best. Compatible relationships create individual peak performance and collective organizational tradeoff, resulting in an organization that functions at optimal levels of organizational effectiveness. Performance in an organization is influenced by compatible relationships between the leadership’s style and the motivational needs of followers. Employees who clearly understand their individual goals-and how they relate to those of the organization they work in are more engaged with their work. When the employees see how they can make a direct contribution, they become successful. They begin to focus on finding ways to work smarter and more efficiently. This boost in employee productivity is most essential for running organizations smoothly.

Southwest Airlines has been in operations for over four decades. They enjoy customer loyalty because of their happy and friendly employees who are extremely hospitable. This airline has managed to communicate its goals and vision to employees in a way that makes them a part of a unified team. Southwest believes in permitting its employees to go that extra mile to make customers happy, empowering them to do what they need to do to meet the organizational goals and vision. Employees who are convinced of a larger common goal are people who are excited to be part of a larger purpose.

To strike the compatibility with assistants’ leaders must talk with clarity; explain what is expected from the assistants. Why is the organization in business? Why should customers care? What is the next level the business wants to move? What strategies to adopt, what policies to make, clarity matters.

Actions speak louder than words. Followers watch their boss: is he doing all that he is speaking?  Employees appreciate a boss who is transparent about the processes and methods, everybody appreciates transparency. Fortunately, transparency does not require the leader to fork over trade secrets but it does mean being honest about how one conducts business. Openness and information sharing helps to build that trust.

That little motivation matters a lot; profitable and sustainable enterprises thrive on original thinking while copycat businesses shutter their doors as soon as the idea they have stolen loses its relevance. Since the successful conception and development of viable business ideas takes time and requires a flexibility motivates employees. Google does this by giving its engineers 20 percent of their time to work on any project they want. This allows team members to develop products they are passionate about. Many times, that means more care and attention goes into each effort. Gmail is the most famous consequence of Google’s generous 20 percent time policy.

So job fit refers to the degree the person hired can perform the responsibilities that the position requires while culture is how well the employees are compatible with core values and norms of the organization. The fact is that different people work and live at different tempos in life. Discovering and acknowledging a person’s tempo before hiring him is an important step to finding someone with a similar and compatible tempo.

Some people are laid-back and let little get to them, while others take every one of life’s challenges to heart. Some people value work, seeing no problem in working 12-hour days, while others value spending time with family and one’s children. What kind of person will suit the organization’s culture, requires decision. Both employees and management need to tune in on same note for deciding priorities, and once the priorities are set there will be lesser hassles and lesser arguments about any issues.

In today’s complex marketing world, defining digital marketing is a bit difficult. On the contrary I will put it like this – in today’s complex digital marketing era defining marketing strategies is no longer a simple job.  Digital marketing is the promotion of products and services using one or more forms of electronic media. Thus, digital marketing is promotion of brands on electronic media. It is different than traditional marketing which involves the use of channels and methods that enable an organization to analyze marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what isn’t.

Digital marketers help in promoting and building awareness, providing research to prospects, and driving qualified prospects to conversions. Their job is not all that easy because there are too many newer platforms emerging and each one comes with its complexities. It involves huge volume of data and streaming process of the data which contains diversified buyers, diversified marketers and a range of marketing channels. Sending the right message to the right buyer at the right time is a big responsibility. And let’s not forget the customer has exposure to more than data he can chew.

Digital media is so invasive that consumers have access to information any time and any place they want it. It is therefore a tricky thing to use segmenting, targeting and positioning. The marketers cannot promote only what they want their customers to know. Digital media is an ever-growing resource of entertainment, news, shopping and social interaction, and consumers are now exposed not just to what the company wants to say about their brand, but what the media, rivals, friends, family, peers, etc., are saying as well. And they are more likely to believe them than the marketer. People want brands they can trust, companies that they know of, communications that are personalized and relevant and which is offered in tailored formats to their needs and preferences.

Using digital marketing without a strategic approach is still customary. Many of the companies use digital media in a good way by using email or social media marketing on their own. But larger organizations need better governance and strategies while using social media; smaller companies can manage on their own.

The larger companies need creation of digital plans in two stages. Initially a separate digital marketing plan needs to be created. This is useful to get conformity and buy-ins by showing the opportunities and problems and map out a path through setting goals and specific strategies for digital including how they would incorporate digital marketing into other business activities. At a later stage, digital becomes integrated into the firm’s marketing strategy which is a core activity – a usual business process that does not warrant separate planning, except for the strategy.

Some companies which use digital marketing very well are:

Nike: This Company used a major sporting event to surround their social media campaign. They skipped the high profile athletes of the 2012 Olympics and instead featured the average Olympic athletes. Nike gained 166,718 Facebook fans during the London Olympics. Nike has been able to evolve its global presence through the careful selection of international sponsorships such as its previous long-standing relationship with Manchester United.  Although sponsorship spending could be fairly unpredictable demand costs surged due to triggers like championships and tournaments. Nike has used such events to capture the attention of a global audience.

Similarly, Heinz primarily, uses Facebook to launch new products, like their 5-bean blend. They created a game where the person answered a series of questions, which was like a personality test. The results were given in types of beans. Personalized beans were sent to five winners every hour. If you shared the app with ten people, you received a goodiieeie bag. Coupons were also offered.

Digital marketers examine things like what is being viewed, how often and for how long, sales conversions, what content works and doesn’t work, etc. While the Internet is, perhaps, the channel most closely associated with digital marketing, others include wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc.

The thumb rule in digital marketing is that it’s not enough to for a company to just know their customers; they must know them better than anybody else so that they can communicate with them where, when and how they are most amenable to their messages. To have the customer’s profile and what they like and dislike the marketers need a consolidated view of customer preferences and expectations across all channels. These channels are web, social media, mobile, direct mail, point of sale, online sellers etc. Marketers can use this information to create and anticipate constant, coordinated customer experiences that will move customers along in the buying cycle. The deeper the insight into customer behaviour and preferences, the more likely the marketers can engage them in lucrative interactions. It requires hand’s on experience of buyer behaviour.

While keeping its overarching branding consistent, McDonald’s practices ‘glocal’ marketing efforts. It used digital marketing to know the local taste.  McDonald’s brings a local flavour, literally, to different countries with region-specific menu items. In 2003, McDonald’s introduced the McArabia, a flatbread sandwich, to its restaurants in the Middle East. It uses digital marketing to the fullest of its worth. And, Domino’s is not far behind either. It used digital marketing to reach out to customers in China where dairy wasn’t a big part of their diet until lately. Domino’s changed just its toppings to suit the taste buds of Chinese.

Leave aside the business community; the Governments of many nations have started using the digital marketing. Their work isn’t just about delivering a public service. Increasingly, government leaders are determined on giving citizens a more personalized and customer-focused experience. In India, the present Government’s digital experience can meet, and even anticipate, the needs of citizens. The present NaMo government relies on digital tools and strategies that are flexible enough to adapt with rapidly evolving technology. By taking a customer service focus to the work, agencies are building customized services, emphasizing efficiency, engagement and security. A digital-customer facing experience is now built-in to many of the outward-facing services of government. The idea of putting the customer first can really help agencies stand out in the digital sphere.

Same is the case with hospitals, entertainment businesses, services such as electricity; income tax, water supply, municipal corporations, banking etc are slowly adopting digital marketing to woo their clientele. Good for the customers!

Though digital marketing and its associated channels are important exclusion of traditional channels does not work. Also, digital marketing comes with certain challenges:

• Explosion of digital channels: Consumers use multiple digital channels and a variety of devices that use different set of rules, specifications and interfaces and they interact with those devices in different ways and for different purposes. Hence marketers need to be alert and vigilant in keeping up with customer’s choices.
• Digital marketing intensifies competition: Digital channels are relatively cheap, compared with traditional media, making them within reach of practically every business of every size. As a result, it has intensified competition in all business spheres. It is difficult to capture consumers’ attention.
• Exploding data volumes: Consumers leave behind a huge trail of data in digital channels. Hence it’s extremely difficult to lay hands on all that data, as well as to find the right data within exploding data volumes that can help marketers make the right decisions.

Lastly, if your company is going to thrive in the digital marketplace, it will be as a data-driven organization.

A group of closely related products constitutes a Product Line. Managing supple product lines involves more than just complementing resources for existing products.  Product managers must help maintain a full pipeline of new products and product enhancements. For Product managers managing various product lines and the overall product mix of the company requires resourcefulness and watchful market intelligence. Product management raises complex issues and to solve those issues the product managers need to juggle the product portfolio wisely.

Hindustan Unilever (HUL) the leader of consumer care products juggles its detergent product line. To elude competition for its premium brand ‘Surf’ from brands like Ghari, Sasa, Point etc HUL has down stretched its detergent line downwards with low priced detergents such as Wheel.  For many companies, this part of the process is driven internally, while focusing purely on allocating resources, concentrating on ROI, and risk/return.  Juggling with product mix needs constant thinking, re-thinking and a lot of market information. Companies need to strategies their product offerings while internally shifting their efforts on product positioning.

One of the many reasons Google consistently brings novel, world-changing products to market is because of their collaborative efforts in Product Management. They are constantly focusing on the future and their team works closely with creative and industrious technicians and engineers to design and develop technologies that improve access to the enormous world information. Google takes the responsibility of guiding its customers right from educating them. Google believes that innovation comes from anywhere; it can come from the top down as well as bottom up, and in the places you least expect. The focus is always on the user.  To give another example of how Google keeps inventing – its engineers came up with the idea of driverless cars after seeing that millions of traffic deaths come from human error. Google already had all the building blocks in place to build a self-driving car – Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View cars. Working with an artificial intelligence team at Stanford University, Google engineers have produced experimental cars that now have travelled to Lake Tahoe and back to the Bay Area and have given the blind more independence by driving them to shop and carry out errands.

Appraisal of each product line is non-stop process in progressive organizations.  These organizations are high on market intelligence. A constant monitoring of the product line helps organizations   in line stretching, line pruning, line filling, brand/line extensions, brand rejuvenations, brand re-launches, portfolio restructuring, product quality up-gradation, packaging innovation etc.

All said and done, when managing ideas for building an expandable portfolio project and products, it’s difficult to know which opportunities show true promise and which don’t. That’s why it’s imperative that product portfolio management be integral with the tools that product development teams use to collaboratively create products and execute the project plan.

One of the major challenges Indian pharma companies are facing today is of handling diverse product lines; the reason why they are unable to handle flexibility  in diverse product lines is that their profit margins do not reflect the constantly increasing investment in drug development. Frost & Sullivan the famous market research company reports that the low returns on investment coupled with various regulatory issues account for the declining focus on research and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry in India.

Since product line involves a collection of related products, sometimes, it may so happen that a particular product line adversely affect the sales of a product in the line, instead of being complimentary to it. HUL controls about 60 per cent of the soaps in the Indian market with brands including Lifebuoy, Lux, Rexona, Breeze, Jai, Moti, Hamam, Liril, Breeze, Dove, and Pears. These brands compete with one another on the shelves creating brand cannibalization. Many of these take thrashing from their sibling brands.

Line filling

In today’s markets, various products ranged from tires to clothes are becoming increasingly value centered. More and more buyers are turning from status and luxury to lower-cost brands that deliver satisfactory quality and features. To fight this trend or to take advantage of it, firms are offering minor versions of their traditional brand-product package. Firms like HUL, P&G, Dabur, and Godrej everybody is forced to offer differently priced products – so their product lines are filled with products that suits peach pocket in each segment.

Cannibalization starts as soon as the consumer exhibits brand switching behavior or even before that. It starts manifesting itself when the manufacturer asks the retailer to stock the new product. The new product launch gets a priority and is at times stocked even at the expense of other brands. But, companies need to take balanced view on cannibalization while line filling.

Firms like Videocon have done line filling fruitfully to plug certain gaps in a range. The intention of the firm was to be seen as ‘full line’ company and customers find a full basket of the products under one roof. In its product line of room air conditioners Videocon initially had just two or three models. But within two year of entry, Videocon introduced a dozen of models. The offers included three models in split ACs, two models in window ACs with rotary compressor and six models in split ACs with reciprocity compressor. By doing this Videocon rapidly improved its market standing and rose from the position of new entrant to a company offering relatively full line products.

Line pruning

Global marketer P&G feels it is better to get rid of complexities and maintain simpler lines. The company firmly believes that whenever it can apply an existing product formula, or package to a new market, it can save a lot of resources and can also move faster. It is famous that this company in 1990s slashed the number of items to almost half: fewer shapes, fewer sizes and package formulae. P&G had thirty one versions of Head & Shoulder shampoo and fifty two versions of Crest tooth paste. The Head & Shoulder brand was pruned to less than half, to 15 variants. It went ahead and pruned its famous Crest toothpaste brand also substantially.

 In Japan, P&G cut the number of Max Factor brand of mascara and foundation items from 1,385 was slashed to 828; the cut took place within just one year, but the sales went up by 6%. P&G also withdrew brands from the market in which it could not be leaders.  In the product line of soaps and cleaning materials, it withdrew 11 brands, like Lest Household cleaner and Lava soap. P&G’s pruning exercise is an excellent example of harmonizing the product lines.

 Stretching down the line

I want explain this conceptby giving a brilliant example of TTK Group. Sometimes,when a company initially takes its position in the high price-slot segment stretches its product line downwards by offering lower-priced products in the same line for lower markets.  For the TTK group, pressure cookers are one of its major product lines their brand ‘Prestige’ is one of the leading pressure cookers in the market. Prestige enjoyed 26% market share in the 1990s. Its major competitor being Hawkins, TTK decided to expand the reach of Prestige to the lower end markets also. The company launched Prestige Popular. It was designed as an economy model and offered to the price sensitive segment. Through this down stretching Prestige increased its market share sizably.

 One more example of stretching down the line is of Parker pens. It was operating in the high price slot of the pen market for several decades. To reach the mass market Parker pens decided to down stretch its line by offering low priced models of pens which the masses could afford. This strategy worked wonders for the pen company it has now become a house-hold name.

 Stretching up the line

This happenswhen acompany is initially positioned in the lower-end of markets and decides to pull its product line by offering high-priced products for top slots. This is called stretching up. The firm moves up its original posture and makes higher priced offers from its basket. Earlier, Philips was synonymous with low-priced two-in-ones, with its wide offers in the Rs.1, 000-2,000 price range. The company soon found that to become worthwhile player in the market it had to stretch up its line for the richer customers. Philips stretched up the line by bringing its powerhouserange in 1991 which ranged between Rs.6,000 – Rs.9,000. In 1993, Philips also climbed the ladder by offering power play range to cater to the top and middle ends of the market. The Power Play priced from Rs.15,000 – Rs.25,000 Philips doubled its profits by stretching up the line and became a household name for the higher end markets too.     

Companies should rationally position and re-position product conflicts within the product line. The marketing strategy of a firm
can place products in a product line in such a way that the products can co-exist, grow, complimenting the streak. A company can add new brands, prune some brands, and rejuvenate some brands by stretching the product line upwards or downwards. A marketing savvy organization can come up with new parallel lines.   The results of efficient product lines depend on formulating elastic lines depending on internal and external environment conditions. The parameters of the product line such as the length, width and depth speaks a lot about the firm’s business policy. Just a piece of advice that the leaner the line the better it is to handle in crisis. To conclude, successful organizations are customer-sensitive and flexible to change.

Why do consumers ignore marketing messages? They are too tired of advertisements day in and out moreover everywhere they go. Because of this boredom they don’t know the brand and what the offering is, they don’t understand how the product or service works, they don’t understand the benefits of the brands, they find the advertised messages ambiguous, they feel the ads are not directed at them, the messages are dull and tiresome, while commercials are aired consumers are busy doing something else, they’re at work, they are not in a mood to hear the ads, in short the customers are tired of hearing from the brands and fundamentally to the company’s value  offering. The moral of this narrative is the good brands don’t need to be advertised too often and good brands sustain on their core values.

It is a fact that brands like Apple, Nike, McDonald or Google achieved their iconic statuses because of an unattainable magical formula, or we can say that they are lucky to have the brilliance of a single visionary leader. However, these companies have adopted specific approaches and principles that transformed their ordinary brands into iconic brands.  

Great brands don’t waste too much time and money on image building; Instead great brands focus on culture, core operations, and customer experience. They reach out to their customers when it is required. Intelligent marketers concentrate on internal marketing communication than external marketing communication. They turn to advertising, promotions, and public relations only after all other elements of the brand have been developed and aligned. These companies believe that actions (customer’s experience) speak louder than words. When organizations cultivate stronger corporate culture, have healthy relations with their stakeholders, believe in corporate governance their brands fuel faster growth.

There’s a lot in name for brands

In my opinion the brand name matters in its success and its life cycle.  Where did the name Apple Computer come from? Steve Jobs & Wozniak wanted their startup to be ahead of Atari Computers in the phone book. They wanted to stay away from the unfriendly, larger than life, complex images created by other computer companies such as IBM, Digital Equipments, Cincom etc. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to pay a tribute to Apple Records, the music label of the Beatles. There’s another tale to it that Jobs in his early life had worked in a farm at California picking and growing apples. The name just clicked and rest is history.

Good brands don’t become complacent

One of the fundamental principles of a brand’s success is its ability to do two challenging things at the same time – maintain consistency in the core of the brand such as quality, features, and price points along with this constantly change in order to stay in tune with the changing times. Doing these two things simultaneously is a big challenge for any brand.  Sony – one of the most distinguished global consumer electronics brand which has enjoyed unparallel brand equity and loyalty is surprisingly losing out its position. Its rivals Samsung and LG are giving it a tough time. Over the last couple of years, Sony has been gradually but surely slipping from its ivory tower.

There are few reasons for Sony’s fall from the top. This is because of its excessive and unrelated diversifications; to name a few – consumer electronics, music label, online music store, semiconductors, a motion picture company and financial units. These diversifications suck its energy and added to heaped costs of unrelated operations.  The diversification’s have not only drained the brand’s resources to a great extent but also abstracted the brand focus from the core of the brand. In addition, brand Sony has become complacent; it has many loopholes left open in its operations making it vulnerable to attacks from rivals. The followers (holding follower position) in the market who are agile, more energized attacked on the loose ends on multiple fronts. Samsung, LG, Apple, Nokia and others have grabbed Sony’s market share in consumer electronics segment.

Good brands don’t chase customers

Regularity and reliability cannot be compromised in the brand building game. The philosophy adopted by Ray Kroc – the founder of McDonald’s is that they can’t be successful unless their operators (franchisees) are successful. The logic is so profound. Approximately 85% of McDonald’s restaurants are owned and operated by independent business men and women. The idea of McDonald’s has always been of wanting to build a restaurant system that would be known for food of consistently high quality and uniform methods of preparations. Their aim, of course, was to assure repeat business based on the system’s reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator. This required a continuing program of educating and assisting operators and a constant review of their performance. The key to uniformity is their ability to provide techniques of preparation that operators have to follow. The success also comes because of its management listening so carefully to its operator’s problems, thoughts, ideas and solutions. The success of this partnership between the company and its operators is that the operators devote full time and best efforts to their restaurant business. Their focus and passion is what makes McDonald’s the number one food service organization in the world.

Great brands when commit stay committed

Another iconic brand Nivea body cream has been around for many years. Nivea is used in a household for generations together making it a habit. You will see Nivea on the dressing shelf constantly in many households; this is because it is super hydrating and makes the skin supple. This body cream product has maintained its fragrance, feel, thickness, packaging design same for years. When you buy the bright blue round tub/tin you know what you’re getting. It is one of those creams that have not changed, thus enjoying a large amount brand loyalty.

The best brands are good inside

Fortune Magazine and the Great Place to Work Institute named Google the 2014’s “Best Company Work For.” It’s the fifth time Google has enjoyed this position. This company has always believed in bringing diverse in demographics, smart, talented young people together. They believe in providing a very conducive atmosphere to people while allowing them to innovate, good benefits and perks, safety to women employees. Well, the company has a systematic hiring policy. Nepotism is completely avoided.  It is one of the employee friendly organizations. When the work atmosphere is great, obviously the employees give their best. 

Good brands stretch out

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare is leveraging on Horlicks’s brand equity to get into new categories. Horlicks is an old player in the market. Horlicks came to India with The British Army; the end of World War 1 saw Indian soldiers of British Indian Army bringing it back with them as a dietary supplement. It has been around for decades. But there are no evident signs of its ageing. Horlicks’ market share is above 50 per cent as per AC Nielsen market survey.  It would be foolish for GlaxoSmithKline not to leverage the equity of such a brand. Thus, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare decided to use the brand’s equity to get into new categories. It has launched biscuits for children, a nutrition drink for women, an energy bar and chilled milk. Thus good brands stretch out.

Pay attention on how you make a relevant brand!