The Nano, if you recall, took its avatar to rescue the struggling section of the Indian middle class families to thundering applause from the world in general. The car is widely seen as a fine case of using a company’s PR machinery effectively for marketing a product. And it is not difficult to see reason in the argument – before spending a single rupee towards marketing the product, everyone was already talking about the car. The cacophony grew louder as the product was first unveiled in 2008 and broke to …

‘I don’t want healthy food!’  Such cry might seem to come from a person who is short-sighted and who does not care about the tons of fat he is consuming. Indeed, it is the reality that a lot of multinational companies are facing in India. It is very instinctive for us to ‘Like’ FMCG such as Diet Pepsi, Sugar-free candies, roasted and baked chips etc. But, from the point of view of a consumer who has the habit of consuming these items regularly, the experience is unsatisfactory.
The pleasant feeling of …

While India prepares itself for the final month of the CAT season (I am still astonished that people don’t realize that the CAT derives its name from the only Common Animal Type, namely the cat, missing from the Chinese calendar; a consequence of strained diplomatic ties with China post the Sino-India War of 1962), we at The Marketers felt it would be a good idea to write a short article that attempts to give MBA aspirants some basic insight into the world of marketing.
Airtel recently released a new print and …

[Before I begin, I must mention that most of the information in this article is from a documentary by National Geographic Channel called Inside the Supercar - Nissan GT-R, 2010. You might also find some similarities in between the article and the documentary. Its a great video and I urge readers interested in automotives to watch it.  ]
The following article talks about launch strategy when the product is sure to be a winner. The example of Nissan GT-R shows the creation of enough buzz about the product in the pre-launch …

Following up on the previous article on managing press relations, let’s focus on how it happens on the ground. As mentioned in the earlier article, and also pointed out in a comment, the biggest task for the brand is to get the journalist to write the article as a marketing pitch, and no as a bland news item. The example we took in the last one was ‘Now fly for Rs. 500’ v/s ‘Low cost airline launched’. Here is a case of a permanent conflict between the two parties.
The journalist, …

PR: we’ve often heard this term being used in the marketing parlance. So what is it. Simply stated, it a kind of promotion channel which, in the words of Mr. Kotler, aims at promoting, or protecting the image of a company or a specific product. It comprises various means like Press Relations, Corporate Communications, lobbying etc. I’ll be focusing on Press Relations for the rest of the article, and the views I’m going to present are based on my summer internship experience with a brand which leverages Press Relations quite …