One of my favorite scenes from the movie ‘Fight Club’ is the ending scene when Edward  Norton, with his head all blown up, is staring at the concrete jungle spread out in  front him as the buildings start blowing up and The Pixies’ Where is my mind starts  playing in the background. Research in Motion is a company that had every single  individual working in such buildings dancing to their BBM tones till not so long ago.  That was no small following of loyal corporate fans! In 2009, Fortune …

Let me at the outset warn you that this is going to be a longish read. But if you stick it out I hope you find something of value here.
One definition of Positioning goes like this – “Positioning is the art of selecting, out of a number of unique selling propositions, the one which will get you the maximum sales”. It brings to the brand manager’s table a whole range of differentiating strategies. These strategies they say revolve around 4 questions posed on its behalf –
1) Who am I?
2) What …

By now, all of us would have seen the fresh set of ads from Vodafone. I am referring to the campaign about Rs. 4 plan, featuring a weird green creature, which after some research on the net, found out, is a parrot. Finally, after a lot of adulation, quite a few awards, and some criticism from a few quarters, Vodafone seems to have retired the Zoozoo brigade, and have brought in a new protagonist. Let’s see how it’s different from the earlier ads, and if there is more to the …

Most of us are aware of the phrase ‘Product Life Cycle (PLC)’. For the uninitiated, I shall give a very brief description before I begin with the main topic. According to the PLC concept, a product’s life is divided into 4 major stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. In the growth stage, since the category is relatively new, promotion is focused on communicating functional benefits, generally to a small consumer segment. In the growth stage, when a decent number of customers are aware of its existence, the promotional focus stays …

Stories of declining brands abound, more so in a brand-driven market like the luxury car segment. And Jaguar which was once synonymous with sophistication and style finds its brand image eroded while competitors thrive.
So where did they go wrong? When Ford bought Jaguar in 1989, the ‘Big Cat’ was perceived to be low on reliability but their designs were admired. The powers-that-be at Ford thought they had their task cut out. Funding was flooded into the engineering department and phrases like ‘British engineering’ and ‘the art of performance’ were communicated …