Direct TV – Marketing Communications – What happened to creativity?

Founded in 1990, Direct TV has had monumental success over the years with being ranked number 1 in customer satisfaction in selling television experience with over 39 million customers, having over 70 HD channels. Cable free technology has become their number differentiator and has affected majority of the cable TV companies. Direct TV promises its customers to “continue to develop the unique, innovative programming and services that you have come to expect and enjoy from DIRECTV.”

Direct TV has a very strong marketing communication budget that has lead them to increase their client base from 15 million in 2005 to 39 million in 2015 with an 11% cumulative growth.  In a stagnated industry growing in double digits draws a lot of attention from investors.

Recently they launched an advertisement starring a talking horse. Drawing millions of marketing communication budget funds towards this integrated campaign launch from television to the home page in their website. The below image is capture from Direct TV home page.

The fundamental value proposition of direct TV is the innovation in the distribution of the television experience. No longer cable when you have direct TV. When a company positions itself through innovation you expect a company to drive its entire strategy based on that concept.

1.       A bikini model

I do not understand the message Direct TV is trying to communicate to the world using a bikini model. Sexuality is not a part of direct TV’s value proposition. When a company for 12 consecutive years has become the number one in customer services, wouldn’t the company want to communicate that, why customers are happy using Direct TV? What special product augmented features offered by Direct TV? Instead they go with a bikini model.

2.     Why does this look like the old spice add

What has happened to the creativity of Direct TV? The first glance on this add just remembered me with the old spice add. It makes sense to have a male model in his beach outfit on a white horse to sell a perfume add. Perfumes are for attraction, it is about presenting yourself. But with direct TV a bikini model on a horse, it just don’t make sense.

I like the idea of the talking horse, you are selling television as an experience. You can expect to see anything based on the producer’s creativity. Which is a fact and people know it, they actually know what television channels offers, Americans know what HBO offers. Direct TV is just mechanism helping to distribute that. We do not want the largest distribution channels to tell us what they are distributing. We do not want Fedex to advertise on behalf of their primary source. Let the television channels to their own advertising, Direct TV can stick with what they do best, they distribute an experience. You should tell the world why Direct TV customers are more satisfied.  

Camry the Bold Choice – Which part is BOLD!!!

Toyota is synonymous for quality. Management concepts like “Just in Time”, quality management concepts like “Total Quality management”, materialized with the evolution of the Toyota production system. Any industry, any company considers Toyota to be the ultimate benchmark for quality. The case study of how Toyota became one of the bestselling vehicles despite its European and American rivals.

I was surprised to see the recent advertisements of Toyota Camry, positioning Camry as a bold choice. When positioning a brand a company attempts to send stimuli to the human brain to create a perception about the brand. Either I do not know the meaning of the world or I really don’t understand which part of driving a Camry is the BOLD CHOICE???

The Real Bold Choice

For me a bold choice would be, go sky diving, around the globe in an air balloon as the greatest entrepreneur Richard Branson once did.  Or in the vehicle space driving the world’s fastest car or f1 formula racing is a bold choice because bold choices comes with the “RISK” component attached to it.

As per research figures from motorintelligence.com from 2014 to 2015 April, the sales have dropped by 10.4%. Considering the maturity level of Toyota the most respected vehicle manufacturing company surprised to witness such a blunder.

In one of their advertisements a family Mom, Dad and the son goes to a Toyota agent to purchase a Camry. This is a terrible analysis of their target market and positioning. When you have a kids, you don’t go for bold choices, you go for safe options, and you go for options with convenience. 

Positioning Blunder

Surprisingly, although in their advertisements they go on to speak about Camry being the bold choice. But not a single product attribute is discussed on any of the advertisements. I personally think this is a serious positioning blunder from Toyota. Camry is the family vehicle, just look at the profiles of customers who has bought a Camry, you don’t want to mess up a brand which is already doing well.

When will I ever learn. Culture Shock!!!

My recent consultancy assignment to United States has been an extremely difficult learning curve. Especially adapting to culture. Before sharing my views on the culture of United States I would like to initially set a baseline to my understanding on the term culture. I would like to stick to a simple definition of culture which is Deal’s and Kenedy’s (2000) the “The way we do things around here”.

We are Independent

The way Americans do things challenges the fundamental concepts of humanity. One of the most prominent philosopher’s Aristotle stated that ““Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human”. In simple words men can survive without one another. Americans challenge this core concepts of human existence by giving prominence to “independence”.

We have a support system to be Independent

Me being a Sri Lankan, even a tea is not consumed alone, drinking a tea is accompanied by someone. To understand how independent American’s are, the best place to go is their source of food. If you go to a super market, most of the food requirements are easy to make, serving one person and packaged for ease. Unlike in Asian cultures where  the mother of the house prepares food for everyone in the house each meal preparation takes 2, 3 hours of preparations, in US the food preparation not only takes a maximum of 30 minutes and also anyone can make the food.

I don't need your help

Recently a person traveling on a wheel chair was trying to open the door it seemed a bit difficult for the person. Me being an Asian, and we being taught to help whoever needs help I went to help him to open the door. The person was offended that.  I learnt that day Americans are independent people who never ever give up. They want to stand by themselves. So to speak there is so much to learn.

Well planned life cycle

It is amazing when I heard the story of an old family themselves selling their house and deciding to go to an elderly home. From where I come from making parents to stay at an elderly home is a cultural crime. I still would have love to see the American culture to be a bit more family centric, it seems they have moved forward from the family concept with a good understanding.

No one will help you - Grow up

I recently moved from Connecticut to Boston. In Sri Lanka if I was moving from one place to another. All my relations would have come to help me, all the neighbors would have come to help. This instance no one knew, I just went to home depot got the packaging material and called the movers. None of my neighbors even knew that I existed. This is cultural shock to me, but I am learning every step of the way. These cultural aspects surely have made America the power house in the world.

Who thinks in Pictures?

Continuing from the previous blog article, I wish to further elaborate on the eye movements and how to interpret them.  What benefits would it bring to your day to day life? Will you be able to understand whether a person is lying?

Eye is moving up left and up right.

The first thing that we need to understand is if the eye is moving upwards, most likely the person is a visual person. Important thing to note is that eye movement itself does not tell whether the person is a visual or not. But might give a glimpse to understand whether the person is thinking in images or sounds or talking to thyself.

Eye moving upwards means most of the time is that a person is thinking in pictures. If the eye moves towards the up left corner. That means the person is referring to an area which the already has experienced. The person is referring to a memory in pictures. If you ask a simple question like do you remember the first day you went to school and you see the person’s eye moving up left corner. The person is remembering that very instance in pictures and images. The color of the cloth the person was wearing all that they try to remember.

If the eye is moving towards the upright corner. The person is constructing something in pictures. If you ask a visual about how yourself in 10 years. His eye would move towards the upright corner, where the person constructs that position in images. Identifying these simple things will help you a lot in building rapport with a person.

Visuals use words like “see”, “envision”, “looks great” where their vocabulary has a close link with how they think. Which is in pictures. Pay close attention to these simple things, you can easily create rapport at the subconscious level with visual people using words to in line with their thinking pattern.

Although this sounds very simple, in practice it is very difficult to identify and leverage on this knowledge areas.  

What Eyes Tell You..

You need to look directly in the eye of a person to really understand that person. Is this statement overrated? Day in and day out we hear things like this in the movies we watch, with the people we work with. If the person does not look in your eyes is he really lying? Or is it all a myth.

If you really try to analyze this, from our sensory inputs eyes dominates on how we perceive this world. In our minds we do not remember the world as a Smell, world has no taste, it is not the feeling of touching sand on the ground nor a sound that depicts or reminds us about the world. The world is a set of images right embedded in our minds. Even if you look at the pre-historic era our ancestors left us with carvings inside caves to depict what they saw the world.

The shape of our eyes are a bit similar to animals who hunt for food like tigers, lions. These animals have pointed eyes so that they can have sharp focus on the pray. Likewise our eyes are focused and pointed to perceive the world from a focused view width. But if you look at innocent animals like rabbits their eyes are big and direct outwards so they can see any predator who is approaching with a wider view width. Likewise evolutionary humans with their advanced thinking capacity their sensory input glands has also evolved significantly.

From evolution perspective is there any truth behind the fact that if a person is lying that the person will not look into the eye? Has evolution made us more defensive or has evolution made us more offensive? Think of the last time you closed your ears from your palms so that you could not hear the noise? Highly likely that either the sound was unpleasant or of high decibels or it roused fear. When will we close our noses, is if the smell that we absorb is unpleasant. When will we want to stop tasting something? Isn't it because we do not like the experience we are having?

Likewise when you think about eyes, you tend to look away if the experience is unpleasant. Remember when you are watching news and see a sensitive video, the immediate reaction is take your eyes away from what you are seeing.  Food for thought is that, is the person really lying or does the person not like the experience?

Actually there is a way of understanding, what a person is thinking based on where the person’s eye ball moves. Brain has different compartments which stores different information. Visual, Auditory information is stored in different areas of the brain. Thus if you carefully observe a person’s eye, you can see the eye ball moving towards the Upper Right, Upper left, Right, left, Lower Right and Lower Left. Just see whether you can find any relationship to what he talks about and where the eye ball moves?

In my next blog article I tend to discuss more about these eye movements. 

Three greatest challenges being a Business Analyst

There are many challenges being a business analyst. The role evolved with the limitation that existed when technical competent personnel designing solutions with their captivated solutions driven approach. These personnel were more concerned with driving solutions that they know rather than focusing to understand customer’s actual business requirement.

#1 Promising the Impossible

As a Business Analyst we use a number of tools to analyze the customer requirements in detail. But at many times the main problem is that, Business Analysts not knowing the limitations or the capabilities of the proposed technology. Many projects are specific core technologies driven hence, when attempting to analyze requirements the business analysts need to understand the capabilities and limitations of the proposed technology. Many experienced business analysts would challenge this statement by stating that Business Analysts should focus only on the requirements and not the solutions. In the environment that we work on currently customers are eager to know how it will look and feel when they actually see the system, hence prototyping is a widely used requirement elaboration method. Thus demands Business Analysts to know the boundaries of the playground.

#2 Multiple Vendors

Multiple vendors are demanding document perfection day in and day out. In majority of the cases nowadays in projects requirements and development done by one vendor, quality assurance by another vendor.  Business analysts are constantly challenged with the understanding development team has and the quality assurance team has. It is extremely important to ensure that we attempt to eliminate the gap between the two teams. Although how perfect the documentation is there would be gaps in communications in the practical world and with the tough time lines we work nowadays. The method I adapt is have a look at the test plans and the test scenarios at a very high level. This will always help to assess how much the QA team has grasped from the requirements perspective.

#3 Stringent Timelines

Stringent timelines has become a part and parcel of the Business Analysts job. We are continuously pushed to complete work on impossible time lines resulting in probably compromises in quality of the work we do. To best way to manage difficult timelines is plan ahead. Business Analysts tasks also fall into a waterfall methodology where we wait till we finish the first task to proceed to the next. The method that I use is simultaneous documentation. While attempting to elicit, analyze and elaborate I start documentation. This not only helps to get the consent of the client while doing the requirement elicitation phase itself. After every meeting I ensure to send a lengthy meeting minutes with action items and the part of documentation completed for that session. This constantly gives opportunity to get feedback from the client.

Is Happiness a Myth?

Life has never been challenging with the modern complexities in the society. Majority of us are in a battle for happiness. A perceived happiness hindering our minds abilities to be self contented. The moment you reach your life's next goal, the quench for the next keeps us pondering what is the real happiness, where is the real happiness.

Society the complex creature

If analyzed properly, the stimuli that we receive from the current society, the society that we wish to live in and the highest level of the society are impeccable. From a grin of a celebrity on a red carpet to the television advertisement telecasting the next Ferrari car, attracts our subconscious to believe that the happiness is there.

Facebook... Twitter.. Linkedin Please!!!

The modern society is filled connected through networks like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin. People share their life experiences on these networks. Again what we see is a perception of a friend's life, the perception that the friend wants to create, the predicament of how an amazing life the friend has. Is that the reality?

Blinded we are!!!

Is happiness a myth? Is anyone in this world happy. The more you work towards, the perceived happiness. The more you realize you are reaching far from the reality.

The happiness a small child has when the child gets on receipt of the first gift. When was the last time you were that happy? When was the last time you laughed as if it was the last day of your life. Life is complicated enough for us to worry about what the future holds.

Live simple. Do small changes to life. Life is too short to run after a myth. It is your life own it.   

Confusing P's of Marketing

As a student of marketing I always fascinated the  fact that many people misinterpreted the word marketing to Advertising. I have even heard top management in some companies using marketing synonymous to advertising.

Marketing goes way beyond what human mind can grasp. It goes to an extent of studying the human brain and doing the most difficult thing in the world which is understanding humans.  Marketing it is not just a management practice or a department with highly paid staff. The philosophy attempts to analyze human behavior and predict the possible changes in needs and wants of humans.  The more you learn this subject the more you get amazed of its power.

Marketing Fruit Salad

The Marketing mix is the bread and butter for Students of marketing. We learn to manipulate the 7 P's (Product, Place, Price, Promotions, Physical Evidence, Processes and People) to optimize the level of delightfulness of the customers. From a marketing budget perspective a common perception is the to sell more the marketing budget allocation should be centric towards Promotions. This is evident from huge advertising budgets  Ex: JPMorgan Chase spent $1.88 billion in year 2013

Focus on Product

But from a contemporary view perspective it always surprises me the level of emphasis on "Product". Day in and day out we read stories of how apple became successful through extensive focus on product design.  When will we ever learn a lesson. Marketing department is responsible of identifying the customer needs and wants and delight them ensuring that they generate profit. Surprising to see why the marketing departments are not getting involved in product design. 

Leverage on the Rush or the outcomes from the Rush

It is evitable that Sri Lankan society is going through significant socio cultural environment changes. With effects from globalization Sri Lanka is shifting more towards a westernized culture.

Walawwa is no longer luxury

40 years back, if a Sri Lankan lived in a Walawwa they were considered to be the richest people living in this country. Walawwa used to be a symbol of inherited wealth. Living in a Walawwa was the luxary 40 years back. If you observe the current Sri Lankan social behavioral patterns it is evitable Walawwa is no longer the luxury living place but apartments are. Real Estate industry has cleverly positioned apartments as the ultimate luxury mainly through the choice of place of the apartment buildings where most are located in prime locations. They also augment their product offering through value additions like fitness centers, community socialization areas, and security services in addition to luxurious furniture and state of the art apartment designs.

Healthier Life Styles

Nowadays the society is becoming more and more concerned on healthier life styles. Generation before this was not concerned on health and they are increasingly having health problems which are indirectly pushing the younger generations to be more concerned on healthier life patterns. The modern society is pushed through various stimuli around them to spend time and money on physical fitness. So many business opportunities are out there leveraging on these transforming life styles.

Sri Lanka among top boozing nations

Sri Lankans drink till they die. Sri Lankan culture was enriched with its routes strengthened through core

principles of Buddhism. The fifth core principle in Buddhism is you should not booze. The reason is it affects the “Samma Ditti” or alcohol effects the state of mind. But now Sri Lankan society is boozing for purposes like fun or devastatingly because life is a problem to them. Sri Lankans no longer looks for solutions they drink alcohol for temporary sensation. These trends are shifting the core routes of Sri Lankan culture and there are a lot of businesses leveraging on these life style shifts.

 New Sri Lanka Rushing

If you closely observe these trends societal trends a question that arises is the new Sri Lanka rushing. If you look at the core reasons of why a preferred luxury living option is apartments, or why people are concerned on healthier life styles. Or why they booze don’t you think that new Sri Lanka is rushing.

Key reason for opting for apartments is the convenience of place, less travel to office. An average Sri Lankan now spends more than 55 hours at office where as the expectation is only 45 hours. The workplace has become more competitive that people are making all their decisions based on the career that their involved in. Healthier life styles, more than anything else Sri Lankans are having health concerns because of the enormous stress levels. Unbearable stress levels demands for people to look balance both physically and mentally.  Even boozing it is the same reason; people look for a temporary escape from their current state of mind. Percentage increase of working women is directly proportionate to the increasing trend of women boozers. Sri Lanka is rushing at a deadly pace.

From a business perspective, majority of the businesses are centered on the outcomes of a rushing nation. But there are fewer businesses focused on the root cause of all these outcomes. Sri Lanka is rushing there is tremendous opportunity both while rushing and around the outcomes of rushing.

Kumbhakarna Syndrome Explained

Most of you have heard about King "Rawana". King Rawana defines the prehistoric era of Sri Lanka with his kingdom still seen as the highest state a Sri Lankan king has ever been in. King Rawana had a brother named Kumbakarana. Kumbakarana is known for this very famous trait of his where he sleeps for days. Not a single person in this world is able to wake Kumbakarana up. Even today a person who sleeps too much in Sri Lanka is called a "Kumbaya" evolving from the Kumbakrana story. 

One fine sunny warm day Kumbakarana went to sleep. Since it was warm day he was not wearing the typical heavy King's clothes but was dressed in light clothes since he was going to sleep and he orderred his servants to keep the window open expecting that breeze flowing through the windows will suit the warm weather conditions. He went to sleep on this warm day and he went on sleep for days and days. One fine day he wakes up and starts shouting at the servants why they have kept the windows open? Kumbakarana has slept througout a season. It was the winter season the environment has changed and you can't keept he windows open in the winter season. 

This is an amazing example of how important it is for us to understand that the enviromment around us is changing. If you do not adapt to the environmental changes then you end up being just another kumbakarana.

Walt Disney any childs dream with 200 outlest across the globe with a theme "It's a small world after all" ventured in to France where 17 millino Europeans live less than a two hour drive and 310 million can fly  there in the same time or less. Everyting sounded perfect French Government granted $ 1 Billion worth incentives expecting 30000 jobs. Company made a blunder in understanding the French Culture.

1. Monday Vs. Friday - Friday and Fun both starts with "F". Friday is the Fun day in the calendar. Walt Disney went with the same assumption and capacity planning was done in away that they expected more people to come on Friday. Assumption was wrong majority came on Monday.

2. No Wine - In Sri Lanka serving wine on a Themes park would have been a crime but in France people have wine for their every meal its a part of their culture. Not having wine in restaurants was a disaster. 

3. Europeans don't eat breakfast - Again incorrect assumption, Americans eats the Lunch and Breakfast together. But French had breakfast, breakfast was very important to them. 

Walt Disney had made a blunder in analysing the evironment. Walt Disney being the giant it  failed to realize that the seasons change, envirnments change.

There are some companies that levrage heavily on changing environmental conditions. An example is Diet Coke, in 1981 Coke invested on Diet coke predicting that peopl'e life styles would chagne and be centric towards being healthy. Diet Coke is now ahead of Pepsi and second to Coke 2nd Best brand in the carbonated drinks market. In 2013 Sri Lankans are concerned about being healthy eating less sugar where as Coke predicted this trend way back in 1981. 

The envirnoment is changing everyday observing these changes will define how successful a comapny or how successful a person is. 

Finding your True Passion

Over the years we have seen many personal development gurus talking about how important it is to find what you like to do, what you are so passionate of doing. The reason is this passion will drive you to go beyond your capacity. These statements was misleading me and I was talking with few of my other friends with similar backgrounds, are you doing what you really like, and are you passionate about what you are doing. They were doing exceptionally well at their current positions and surprisingly the responses were not in line with what the famous personal development gurus were thinking.

Majority of us are not sure of what we really want out of life or what we are really passionate about. For most of us life is a mystery, which at times does not make much sense. But further analysis showed the success behind some of the young executives is not mainly due to their passion on what they do. They are challenge seekers. Generation Y unlike Generation X are driven with challenge and there is red ocean competition between young executives to prove that one is better than the other. 

Generation Y has built a lot of self-ego around them and continuous challenges has proven to become a critical motivator for these young executives representing the Generation Y. Time has come to revisit the traditional techniques and methods that were deemed to be the mantras of success.

One has to challenge himself to understand his boundaries; it may as well be limitless. Time is ripe for most of us who spend 9 hours working on the same old job, same old role to rethink and challenge our status quo. More comfortable you are in what you do, the opportunity to grow is hindered. Time has come to challenge ourselves to go beyond what we have already achieved. 

May be you could be wondering why your next promotion is not working, what to do to ensure that you get your next promotion. I was going through a motivational video and the advice was very simple. You need to “Work on  Your Work”. You need to continuously improve on the way you work, how you work, processes or tools used, invest on skill building or it could be investment on a professional qualification. Unless you are willing to challenge yourself, our horizons will always be limited.

Be Different - Be an Eagle

Eagles Fly above the Clouds when it Rains

Nature is amazing. The way nature adapts with impossible solutions to problems is amazing and there is lot to learn in all aspects. I was going through this video and the presenter was taking this amazing example to depict how different animals adapt different approaches to the same problem. 

If you look at the sky when it is raining all of you can see birds flying all around searching for shelters under trees and other shelters. But there is this special bird that adapts a different tactic to the same problem of avoiding the rain. This bird does not fly in search for shelters, this bird flies above the clouds to avoid the rain. By this simple change of approach in solving the same problem, Rain is never an obstacle for the eagle to go its destination.

Steve Jobs way

Similarly in life also we come up with so many problems but we continue with the same approach even knowing that for a fact that it is not the ultimate solution. One of the amazing innovators in our own time Steve Jobs the master mind, Master craftsmen, specialist designer had the same attitude from him it was never about trying the same solution for the same problem. For him it was always about looking for ways and means to innovate , find better and effective ways and means of doing it better. If not for Steve Jobs all of us would be carrying with us the difficult to carry walkman CD Player with less storage space for our mobile entertainment. Steve Jobs saw the world differently he came up with this amazing concept of     i-pod which has changed the mobile market like a storm.

In our lives we should also challenge our perception, we should challenge our attitudes and thinking differently think innovatively. What is innovation from a conceptual framework Innovation is having a conceptual idea, Technical knowhow to execute the idea and the ability to commercialize.  But starting point to become great innovators like Steve Jobs starts from the little changes that we do in our lives, the little things that we do to innovate and improve our normal lives.

You might Die Tomorrow

One of the greatest psychological philosophies that Steve Jobs had was he always thought what if I die tomorrow. He had that feeling everyday and wanted to ensure that he wants to live the life he did. Who knows we might die today, tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Are we living the life that we want to live.

Gamification - New Performance Management Mantra

Traditional Performance Management Systems

There are many reasons why the traditional performance management systems fail. One of the most common reasons for these performance management systems to fail is the in ability to objectively measure a person’s performance, because performance is measured by people and human subjectivity can play a significant role in the accuracy of performance predicaments.

There are many evolved concepts of performance management systems like 360 degree appraisals, Balance Score card which attempts to minimize the subjectivity towards a certain individual. These performance evaluation systems are further strengthened through concepts like performance normalization which eventually increases the number of people who evaluate a single person’s performance leading to lower levels of subjectivity.

But still with all these evolved performance management systems in place don’t we still hear conversations, “He got a better ranking due to this manager and not because of he is a great performer”. Still these performance management systems have not been able to accurately diminish the top down approach to performance evaluation and possible subjective appraisals.

Concept of Gamification

Gamification is the new buzz word in the field of performance evaluation. Gamification techniques strive to leverage people's natural desires for competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, and closure. For example game players play to earn more points and get a  good rank amongst the other game players. They are concerned about a socially engineered brand. Likewise evolved version of this concept is used in performance management.

Gamification utilized for Performance Evaluation

This challenges the traditional performance measuring mechanisms and takes performance measurement to a next level optimizing social networking dynamics. Rather than a manager evaluating the performance, the whole society evaluates the performance. For example an employee helps another employee on finishing some task where the manager would not have the exposure of this. Hence aspects like team working may  not be taken into consideration. But what if the second employee who was helped by the first employee goes and thanks him on a social network for helping him with the task. The concept of like’s, raves, badges are utilized by the gamification performance management system.

Through concepts like gamification a person is socially evaluated and also this encourages organizational wide appreciation. This will eventually mould the workforce into social team workers constructively contributing towards company growth.

Pricing your Product Accurately

In few of the previous blogs, I discussed a number of theories around strategy, strategic directions of the company and competitive strategies. Whichever strategy a company adapts, Pricing plays a significant role in adapting a differentiation or a cost leader strategy.  (Porter, M.E., "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors" New York: The Free Press (1980))

Buying behavioral analysts affirms the point that majority of lower, middle and middle upper class market segments are highly concerned on the price tag, and price plays a significant role in purchase decision making. From a seller’s perspective having the right price on the product will ultimately determine the successful sale or the product

There are three main views on Pricing strategies,

Economist View on pricing

In understanding the economists’ view to pricing, please see the graph which highlights the movement in supply and demand with Price and Quantity as key variables. As it is inevitable when the price is low there will be a significant demand on the product and as the price increase the demand goes down with affordability.

When the price is low, supply will be low and as the price increases there will more suppliers with the possible margin improvements due to price increases. Thus the ultimate price will be defined by the equilibrium of supply and demand.

Marketers View

Pricing plays a significant role in the marketers view towards pricing. As you already may know marketing tactical strategies are built around four main pillars which are knows as the 4P’s in marketing. 4P’s include Product, Price, Place and Promotions.  Pricing is the second most important pillar in marketing and as per marketers view the pricing is defined by the customer. As per the marketers view a product should be priced at an amount which the customer is willing to pay.

This is also in line with the Japanese concept of target pricing. Where the pricing for the product is first defined and then manages the cost structure to have an acceptable margin for the product.

Accountants View

 Accountant’s view to pricing is does not work on a hypothetical framework as the economist or the marketer’s view. Accountants view to pricing considers the total expenditure (Both Variable and Fixed) for the product and adds a standard profit mark up to arrive at the pricing for the product.

Three main pricing views takes into account different dynamics, a company to leverage on pricing as a key market strategy should take into consideration all these three views in deciding the correct price for the product. 

Managing your Personal Finances 1

There are so many discussions around defining an optimum equation to manage personal finances. Managing personal finances has become so difficult nowadays and many are drowned in huge debts. This vicious debt cycle starts right at the point a person starts earning money.

Second day at Work

The very first day we start working in our first job, the next day we will be getting a call from a fancy reputed bank offering a credit card. We think that these banks love us so much and they perceive us as wealthy men and the next thing we know, we end up with multiple credit cards. Credit cards nowadays come with fancy credit limits and into the bargain they couple credit cards with very attractive credit card shopping offers. All of a sudden we start spending forgetting whether we can afford or not.  Spending money Vs. paying using a plastic card psychologically affects the spending patterns and credit card companies successfully leverage on this. And this continues, then they offer us car loans, then housing loans and by the time we are in mid age all we will be having would be huge debts and higher percentage of income is spent on interest.

Overcome the Vicious Credit Cycle

How to overcome this vicious cycle? What are the specialist views on this vicious cycle? Rich Dad Poor Dad defines the ultimate finance freedom is where your investments generate earnings similar to your investments. Warren Buffet advises, that we should never depend on a single source of income.

Majority after reading these statements will say it is easy said than done. The starting point is to know what an investment is. In very basic terms it is an asset which will generate an income. The common assets that can generate income are publicly traded shares, savings accounts, fixed deposit accounts.

Do we need huge capitals to start investing? It could be 5% of the monthly salary or even 1% of the monthly salary.  If we start investing the investment would accumulate monthly and grow monthly. 

Increasing your net wealth can be done in two ways. You can increase the income, through multiple sources of income, investments increasing your asset base. Or you can reduce your costs. Reduce credit card expenditure which will result in decreasing both interest and debt costs. 

Personal Branding as a Rocket Science

There are so many discussions over the concept of personal branding. I did some research on this concept of personal branding to understand the underlying principles over it. Well it does not sound rocket science at all if you have a goal and an action plan to achiever the goal. 

What is your Brand?

If you take a brand like Body Shop for an example. What is the first impression that you get. It is a brand with a social purpose. Body Shop never use animals to test their cosmetics products. For us to perceive Body Shop as a philanthropic brand with a social purpose every time we see or hear about it, is a result of years and years worth of work. They knew how they want to position themselves in the market and they did it over the years keeping to its key principal never to test cosmetics on animals. 

Personal branding process is also similar. Its about how you want yourself to be perceived others. What values you want to be represented by. It is simple, for example if "Being Macho" is how you want others to perceive you, you better start going to a gym and karate classes so that you build your physical appearance to suit how you want others to perceive your self.

Action Plan 

First step,  is that you have to know exactly how you want others to perceive you.  These are called brand values. The key messages your personal brand represents. Next step is you need to have an action plan. The time span will vary based on the deviation from the current brand positioning. The time span will be longer if there is a significant deviation from the current brand positioning.

Well congratulations, with the amount of social networking in the modern days life makes easy to launch a good communication plan for your personal brand. Each and every post, each every page you like, each and every status update that you put represents what you are. You can take control of this. You can purposely ensure that your posts are in line with your brand values. 

Accepting the Motivation Cycle

What is the mantra for the optimal performance? Day in and day out management theories will talk about how to optimize performance, and there is a science supporting effective performance measurement systems. But at the end of the day it all boils down to motivating the workforce to perform at their best capacity.

One of the key weaknesses that I see nowadays is the whole practice of bench marking  I think we all should agree with the fact that different people are of different skill levels, different competencies. In my personal opinion a good manager should not push his team members to be someone they are not, a benchmark figure. A good manager will motivate an employee to reach their personal best, and will leverage on his abilities performing at his personal best. I have been lucky enough to be led by best managers in my short career span. They have adapted many different leadership styles to motivate their workforce and all of them were experienced and mature enough to know motivating the team is the only way to succeed, and they invest both financial and time resources in building the team with a long term view to exceling as a team.

But there are instances where your team is hyper motivated but you feel that your motivational levels are less than zero. This feeling forced me to do some research on the concept of self-motivation.

Whether we like it or not life is a cycle filled with ups and downs. Unless you learn to accept the life cycle and the cycle of motivation it will be difficult to succeed in the corporate life. At certain times you will be motivated with challenge and you will seek for responsibility and it will motivate you. But at times you will not want to take any responsibility and not face any challenge.

I had a discussion with a life coach regarding this matter. The simple advice he gave me Sajith accept the motivation cycle. The other important question he asked me was how bad I wanted to be successful and he asked me to watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPsnqwmn21g.

Most of us so badly want to succeed; we have our own interpretation of success. But do we actually do anything about it. He went into explain many people want to succeed but they do not take any actions to succeed. Desire to succeed without an action plan can demotivate anyone, hence it is the small actions that we take will make the difference. Accept the motivation cycle, have small executable actions which will keep on pushing you for success. Make things happen, do little changes to your life that will help you to succeed.