King of Good Times

Kingfisher has a style, though its offering and pricing are similar to that of Jet Air. Branding sets Kingfisher apart. It does provides an apparent feel good factor through its simple yet effective consistent branding techniques.

Ironically Jet is careless about its branding. For example, in the lunch pack I was surprised to see a Kingfisher slip! When I pointed this out to the air hostess, she took it away, and said "now atleast you know we serve the same food!"

On my way back, flying JetAir, they canceled serving tea/coffee on pretext of turbulence. When I told the waiter that Kingfisher had served me coffee on much more worse weather. He was aggressive at first, but soon enough by slip of his tongue he said that Kingfisher hostess are paid better and so they serve better.

Don't Let a Shirless Man Sell You a Suit

Here is another branding gotcha, guess what the shirtless Bollywood actor Salman Khan, is now the brand ambassador of a suiting. Though the brand recall was dim, I thinks its Mayur. We were flying with Kingfisher when I noticed this ad in a inflight mag, and when my fellow passenger asked me what was so funny, I showed him the ad. He too burst into a gafoo and couldn't stopped laughing. The hostess was curious too, and she too shared a laugh when she go it : "Shirtless man selling suit" joke.

The saving grace was that while landing I quizzed my co-passenger what's the name of the suiting Salman was selling? He could not recall it.

So this advert, joins the classic Khan Branding Gotchas; Hritik, Shahruk and Saif Khans selling laptops. Sachin, the school dropout, teaching CIOs' how to calculate the TCO of a Cannon enterprise print station.

How Not to Sell

This Blog entry is a case study of a selling campaign and the lesson learned about how not to sell.

Serena Software, wanted to conduct a seminar for its ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) software. It claims to be the leader in this field, probably its world famous in India :)

So, they hire www.gotocustomer.com to market their seminar. I recall that IBM or Intel had conducted a seminar, which was co-ordinated by Gotocustomer, I had attended the seminar. So, they probably used my contact without my permission. I am sure IBM or Intel would not permit their contacts to be sold.

First they mailed me, and then called me up on my mobile. when I asked them where did they get my contact they could not answer it. They were like, sir, its our backend database, blah-blah-blah. Then they say, sir, there is a free lunch at a five star!

Hey get this right! the kind of profile, you guys are targeting, the CXO, they are not into 5 star buffets. Most are members of high dinning clubs and are not lured by FREE lunch buffets.

After 20 emails and 10 phone calls later, I got totally frustrated with them. So, when I was sitting with SIPL COO, Benny john, they called again. When I was giving them a piece of my mind, he interrupted asked what was it about? I told him the story and somehow he was interested in ALM! So, I passed on my phone to him. Thank God, I thought, some one is taking away my daemon. But I was mistaken, though he exchanged emails with them and probably registered; they started to bug me to give me his mobile number!

Three different people calling me for his mobile number! When I asked them why did not they respect his privacy and that I had asked them not to call me or Benny. They apologized saying the other caller was from the call center! After it happened thrice, I lost control.

I don't care if they are from Serena or call center, its not the customers' problem, the call center and the outsourcer MUST co-ordinate.

The Lesson Learned:
1. before outsourcing, ensure that you customers' private information is not misused.
2. Don't bug you potential customer. Communication is good, over-communication is bad.
3. Co-ordinate seamlessly with your call canter.
4. Respect your customer's privacy and value her time.
5. Don't try to lure CXO with "Free Buffet Lunches".

I hope others can learn from their mistakes!

Learn to Sell from Squidoo

Squidoo is a social networking (read blog) site focused on selling by references.
They call their blogs lens. They have widgets that help you refer customers to website and you get a cut, :) simple? not quite so, selling is an art of presenting content in an non intrusive manner.

Read Megan Casey's e-book at:
http://www.squidoo.com/pages/freetrafficebook.pdf

What they say in a nutshell is that they have optimized their blogroll for e-bay sellers. An e-bay seller cross links Squidoo lens (blog), flickr or picasa (pictures) and UTube (video) to maximize their traffic and therefore sales.

I really like their approach.

Personal branding of Guy Kawasaki

I came across Guy Kawasaki's post syndicated at techTribe.com, that lead me to Guy Kawasaki's web site: http://www.guykawasaki.com . I am quite impressed by his branding.

In fact, this is one image that all of us can learn. I am for one certainly inspired by his honesty and frank admissions of his personal disabilities. In 20 minutes I spent on his site and listening to his recording, I got an image of an honest and straight talking guy.

Again, a good example of how to create a brand out of your self!

Cuteness Does Not Equal Effeciency

I was just reading one of the techTribe blogs posted by Aditya Sanyal. He was short changed by the cute looking Kingfisher hostess. Also recently there was a news item that a cute hostess of Kingfisher was caught in the camera disposing the customer feedback forms!

Many more horror stories about Kingfisher is exchanged around the corporate and cyber water coolers. So I think, though Vijay Mallya may be the Richard Branson of India, he is yet to get the concept of customer service right.

Before now he has been in the product space and not is service domain. In service domain, the customer touch-points affect the brand equity much more than the media image. The mirage created by the media can bring the customers in, but just eye candies are not enough to get a repeat business. It takes 4 times more effort to get a new customer than to retain an existing one.

Therefore, Vijay should listen to what the customers have to say, and fix the user experience.

You can't get away with short changing your customers, if they want to sustain their brand image, Vijay must work upon the service delivery mechanism, processes and above all csutomer oriented policies.

Hope that the King of good times does give you a hell of a flying experience.

Zapak Fall Flat

The other day, encouraged by my friend, who convinced me that as a brand defense tactics, I should claim my name, before others grab it; And, also hyped by the glamorous TV advert. I created an account at Zapak Mail.

But hey!! far from being lightening speed, it was dead slow! No, my connection was not the culprit, as the gmail (also in its beta) was blazingly fast.

To add insult to the injury, they sent my password back in clear text!! can you believe this? The CTO should be fired immediately, or better still Crusified.

Zapak mail should not waste their preciously earned revenues (or is it VC funding?) on a product that is half baked pre-alpha quality.

Yeh guys, no wonder people say that we Indians can't create web sites for ourselves.

Yes, I hang my neck in shame when the people who clothe the world remain shirtless.