Drawn by Joyeeta, my 3 yr's old daughter.

Drawn by Nikita, my 6 yr old daughter.

Shubho Bijoya.......and Happy Durga Puja to one and all.

The three flowers represent my 3 women / girls in my life.

(By the way these are not scanned images, they have been drawn on the computer :)))

That's my friend Ravi........for some reason I could not upload the image in my previous post............Cheers!

Delhi - A city of distances

We must have heard that a zillion times. But my (and my family) meeting with Ravi and his family epitomizes this. Ravi and we were together in IMT - where we did our MBA together and shared a nice rapport. Out of the entire lot of 200 people I am in touch with 5 of them, he is one of them.
He has been out - Japan then in Bangalore. I used to make it a point to meet him when I was in Bangalore. Keep in touch on mail, talk over the phone etc.
He shifted base to Delhi 1 n half yr's back. After 1 n half yr's of planning.....finally our families met.....and of course we had a good time......
But it makes me wonder,
Is it really distances, or is it the commitment to a relationship or is it that there are too many things which we want to do....our life has been a game of prioritisation, friend or wife or children or colleagues or boss or movies or my hobby or my body....End of the day we have a finite time and we can maintain finite relationships.. ......that's the truth of our life but it's a paradox.
When I was young and used to stay in Cantonment (DAD being Air Force)...we used to interact with atleast 1 family a day or alternate days, have regular parties, go out for picnics, read books......and literally grew vegetables in our garden.
There was no mobile to be in touch all the time, no PVR / Barista / Ansals to indulge in movie and then window shop and then have a bite.....or drink and take a rick back home / barsati early in the morning.....
I somehow feel we were more connected in 19 70's with our inland letters, PCO's to make STD calls, than the 2000's - when life has become so impersonal.....that everything is done through the net / computer / phone ......where is the personal touch?
Is technology bringing us closer superficiously ......but taking us apart as individual and our relationships.......Perhaps!!???. Some cute snaps to end the post with.

Can we make consumers Loyal?

Million Dollar Question, I wish I could answer that. Recently I made some one who stunned me by the basic premise. We want to run a loyalty program for a set of consumers

• who didn't want to get recognized .
• Also he / she won't give any of her details

So, the basic premise of recognition and customisation, the holy grail of direct marketing and loyalty programs went out of the window. Interesting, but more on that later...

I feel it's critical for anybody to answer 2 basic questions

• Why do we want to do the loyalty program? A loyalty program is a process, the expectations should be set every 3 months, speak to customers / meet the members, get into the data, chk the impact. There is nothing wrong in changing the objective after 6 months. Most of the times we are fixated with the no of members which we can garner and not the quality n returns, the members are giving.
• Are u in sync with the current Technology and Trends? RFID, Blue tooth, internet , mobile.......In my mind technology is core to any loyalty program. One - in terms of consumer behaviour , Two - reaching out to the consumer. There are many brands which can run the entire program only thru a consumers mobile and the e-mail id he/she has.

Below is an article (Brand Equity) which explains how Shoppers Stop, one of the largest (& oldest) loyalty program in India and some others are coping with the change.......

A pointless exercise?

Last month, Vishal Kumar received a rude shock when he went shopping at Shoppers’ Stop in Malad, Mumbai. At the billing counter, he was told by the staff that the loyalty points accrued over a year as a First Citizen Club member of Shoppers’ Stop had lapsed, as had his membership.

The staff went on to add that all members had been informed of the changes in the loyalty program via SMS, which Kumar hadn’t shared. This was in addition to the store announcing a 30% cut in reward points for its six-lakh strong First Citizen Club members, early in April.

The staff went on to tell him that his membership wouldn’t be renewed and he’d have to apply afresh. An exasperated Kumar remarks, “In spite of the plethora of changes, there was absolutely no communication by mail from Shoppers’ Stop.” It’s certainly not the only jarring note to be hit by a loyalty program. In the first week of August, Lifestyle’s Inner Circle echoed Shoppers’ Stop by sending out a note via SMS to members, informing them that their reward points were slashed by 30%. So, if previously a bill of Rs 10,000 yielded Rs100 as reward, after the cut, one could expect only Rs 70.

On the face of it, slashing reward points, or even telling customers they can’t redeem them beyond a certain time frame seems perplexing. Eight years after it launched its rewards program, Shoppers’ Stop garners nearly 62% of its revenues from the First Citizen Club. A little over half of Westside’s turnover is credited to Club Westside, with nearly five lakh members.

The mismanagement of loyalty:

Dig deeper, and the real truth begins to emerge: there are too many retailers running reward programs that aren’t very different from each other. So, while it is simple to acquire new customers, making them spend more at the store is far from easy. In fact, according to Ajay Kelkar, marketing head, HDFC bank, “In India, marketers looked at loyalty programs as a promotion-led customer acquisition device.” What’s more, running a rewards program costs a pretty penny — and thinking of it as a cost rather than an investment seems to be the dominant line of thinking.

Most reward programs are started for the sake of beefing up frequency of visits to the store. Yet last year, a major retail chain discovered that out of 35,000 new members, barely 5,000 visited a second time, throwing the entire cost-benefit equation out of gear. That’s not all.

Most retailers tend to over-rely on reward points. To make matters worse, says Harsh Vardhan, director, Kandor Solutions, a business analytics company, “Most initiatives by retailers are benchmarked against credit card loyalty programs. These offer just 1%-2% as rewards, but retailers haven’t understood that credit card usage is much higher than consumer spends at stores.” So for every Rs 1,000 spent at the store, the customers ends up earning no more than Rs 20.

Whereas, for most credit card customers, the spends tend to average around Rs 20,000-Rs 22,000, according to an ICICI Bank estimate. This magnitude of spending makes a 2% reward more significant than what a retailer has on offer. Lacking the incentive to stay committed to any single program, most customers flirt with the competition.

The result: a growing number of people hold multiple loyalty cards. A retail study conducted by Kandor showed that nearly 50% of reward program participated in three or more such programs.

Besides, many members do not redeem their points. Retailers privately admit that redemption rates could range between 35%-50%. That poses an accounting challenge. All unredeemed points have to be shown as contingent liability (liabilities that may or may not be incurred and which depend on the outcome of a forthcoming event) and therefore affect the bottomline.

Quick-fix:

So what do retailers typically do? They can try to induce customers to spend all their points within the same year. But thanks to inertia, that isn’t always easy. The other solution is limiting the liability to a fixed period, a year for instance. Shoppers’ Stop, however, claims it faced a different problem. It chose to extend the validity of reward points to two years, presumably to enable a greater amount of redemption. The result: redemption rates, says CEO Govind Shrikhande, jumped to an alarming 90%. That once again threw the cost-benefit equations out of whack, forcing the chain to slash reward points.

In many ways, it is a Catch-22 situation. Clearly, marketers need a new way to reward loyalty which goes beyond mere points. There is strong logic for continuing with loyalty programs — marketers reckon that the cost of customer acquistion is five times greater than that of retention. What then is the way forward?

One of the important learnings has clearly been the need to offer meaningful rewards and segregate the high-value spenders from customers who aren’t adding any revenue. Shopper’s Stop has been among the early movers in this direction.

According to Shrikhande, “We have been offering spot rewards like free movie tickets to shoppers above a certain threshold, in addition to points.” Yet, not everyone agrees with this strategy. Industry sources say that time and again, rewards like movie tickets aren’t going to work as well as thoughtful rewards from their own portfolio.

Shoppers’ Stop is currently the only retail chain that has segregated it’s users into three groups, based on their spends. Others are only just beginning to segregate high-value customers. Kabir Lumba CEO, Lifestyle, adds, “We have invested in analytics giving us more details on spends, and we can now tailor our rewards.”

United, we stand: Perhaps the most interesting way forward is coalition loyalty program. It involves a group of partners collaborating. i-mint, launched in early August by the ICICI Venture-funded Loyalty Solutions and Rewards (LSRL), is the first, and thus far, only coalition program in India. Already, six companies have signed up as partners, including Lifestyle, ICICI Bank, HPCL, Airtel, Indian and makemytrip.com. Rather than customers garnering small amounts across different programs, they could be members of a single loyalty scheme which aggregates rewards. According to Vijay Bobba, CEO, LSRL, “The companies that have signed up are in categories that involve frequent usage, or have high consumer spends.” The ‘points velocity’ — the rate at which they earn additional points — will be great since they earn them across a spectrum of companies. Bobba says the objective for i-mint would be to increase redemption to nearly 50%-60% of all points, up from what he reckons is currently 30%.

Partners entering the loyalty program see a substantial reduction in operating costs. B Madhivanan, general manager, ICICI Bank says, “The total costs could be cut by nearly 30% just by joining a coalition loyalty program with like-minded partners.” Besides, points would no longer remain a contingent liability and go off the books completely if a company would merge its existing loyalty program into a coalition. According to Bobba, redemption can either be with any of the six partners, or from a selected list of i-mint rewards. Globally, two successful precedents of coalition loyalty programs exist. In the UK, Nectar, which is partnered by many of the UK’s leading retail chains including Sainsbury’s and Debenhams, has signed up nearly 55% of all the UK households to its loyalty program. In Canada, AirMiles started off as purely an aggregator of airline points, but has expanded to include more than a hundred companies. So will it be successful in India? Not everyone is convinced.

A coalition program could disconnect the loyalty between the customer and the company, since it’s purely transactional and rewards-driven in nature. Adds Kelkar, “They work best in a country where the market is more homogenous and less fragmented.” Vardhan concludes: “The quality of the merchandise has to be single most important offering in a competitive market to gain loyalty.” Many global retailers have begun to use their loyalty programme to target specific merchandise at select customers. It’s a new game that local retailers are likely to graduate to.

Tomorrow's Consumer

Is market research all about doing a group in Chandigarh, Hubli, Asansol (to get the regional flavour), mix of marred women n men , of the right age........."Getting the right person".or is it also about "predicting trends - seeing the future". A brilliant article published in Brand Equity (originally in Guardian) which says that most of the consumers on the net create identities which maybe diametrically opposite of theirs - so while we may think internet (as a media) wherein you can target the person accurately - and hence get the maximum mileage, the reality might just shock us........But read how an Apparel Company is actually taking advantage of this Jekyl & Hyde nature of the online segment to sell it's product...............

Web of deciept:

From the assumed privacy of an internet search to actively assuming a different persona, most people who use the internet are interested in the obscurity it brings. And, for marketers in this space, this brings new and interesting challenges, because as the digital environment grows, people are increasingly not who they say they are.

So who is the real you? The survey questionnaire you fill in? Your Acorn classification? The person your partner knows? Or is it better defined by your online behaviour?

User 98523 (not her real number) is pregnant. She is currently shopping for living-room furniture, shoes and a new mobile phone. Her partner has bipolar disorder, uses cocaine and abuses her. She is thinking about emigrating to Australia. She is one of the thousands of AOL users whose search data was released on the internet last month, and it is a fascinating insight into the private life of the consumer. It is unlikely she declares much of this publicly, but online, her behaviour reflects the underlying issues in her life - and this is more likely to reflect her real personality than anything she will tell a focus group.

Online behaviour goes much further than merely concealing the true identity of the user. Multiplayer online games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft attract millions of users, each adopting an on-screen persona and living out an alternative existence in cyberspace. As developing technology enables more immersive environments, they are becoming a growing area of internet use. Second Life is a trading economy - you can earn and spend money in the game, and convert your earnings into US dollars - even using a real-world cash machine to withdraw it. And as this economy has grown, real-world firms have started to take an interest.

American Apparel, the US clothing line, has opened a store in Second Life selling virtual clothes. Starwood Hotels is opening a hotel, and Suzanne Vega recently held a concert there. This might seem the stuff of nerds, but at the time of writing, £188,824 had been spent the previous day on Second Life. So, there are people who act differently online and there are people who have completely different lives online to their �real� world lives. This is an increasingly pervasive trend - a survey in 2001 reported that 24% of teenagers in chat rooms said they had pretended to be someone else. A Canadian survey in 2005 claimed 60% of students pretended to be someone else online.

This means a significant chunk of your audience is spending time being someone else, which is rather disconcerting if you are in the business of communicating with people. Marketers like to put people in boxes. They are 16-24, they are male, they are AB. But here is a bunch of people not just climbing out of boxes, but pretending they are in completely different ones. It has always been the job of the planner to use consumer insight to form strategy. If the consumer is pretending to be someone else, it is going to be much trickier to discover what they want. If you were ever in any doubt as to why media and account planning were worthwhile pursuits, now is the time to take interest.

As choice and diversity have flooded the consumerÂ?s world, both in products and media, understanding what drives people to navigate certain paths is becoming an increasingly crucial skill. And if this trend continues, this understanding is going to be harder to obtain, and more valuable by the day.

Can "BLOGS" change the course of a company?

Read below an article (from Hindustan Times Delhi)which how a simple blog resulted into recalling of Laptops and almost a snow balling into a crisis.........Growing trend which will impact us marketers, what I call "The power of i". Deep down all of us feel that what can we do to change / influence.... this world / society / people around me. "Who am I" - till now this self expression was thro surrogates like - the car u drive, phone u use, places u dine.....BLOG's has given that self expression a new meaning.......probably the most intimate moment of truth of a consumer........where he/she decides on her action without being influenced by the million dollars spent by, let's say a Dell / McDonald.......Did u know there is something calling BuzzMetrics started by AC Nielson.......Read ON...Also some popular blogs (on brands / company)which u can visit..

DELL LEARNT recently about the growing power of the blogosphere when it recalled 4.1 million laptop batteries after a video that showed one of its computers bursting into flames was posted on the Internet. The brief clip zig-zagged through cyberspace and went from cult viewing to national television.
Dell's spokesman Jess Blackburn insists that the company had been working to address that particular problem long before the bloggers got hold of it. He adds, though, that Dell has begun keeping tabs on the blogosphere.
"We began a concerted effort in the springtime, says Blackburn. We do try to stay alert to what's being posted out there about Dell although we only respond when we think there are completely inaccurate reports and misinformation." Many firms have started to pay attention as a rapidly expanding slice of cyberspace is devoted to vitriolic, often obsessive blogs listing the shortcomings of well-known companies.
There is McChronicles, which offers detailed accounts of visits to branches of Mc Donalds. recently describing a fly infestation and missing lavatory doorknob at the Clinton, New York, outlet of the fast-food chain. Mostly, the contents of such sites are anecdotal. But they can become a significant rallying point for a company's critics.
There are well over 35 million blogs on the net. Keeping abreast of all of them is impossible. But Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a New York firm, has developed an expertise in monitoring blogs, it works for 150 of America's Fortune 1,000 firms.
Â?ItÂ?s a new culture, a new world,Â? says Nielsen BuzzMet ricsÂ? marketing vice-president, Max Kalehoff. Â?For every company thereÂ?s a huge, long tail of blogs with many, many niches.Â? He maintains that although blogs can be a thorn in the side of carefully nurtured brands, they can also be useful in alerting executives to hazards ahead.
Bigger firms are taking time to catch on. Â?Most Fortune 1000 companies are not of cultural mindset where they talk to their customers,Â? Kalehoff adds. Â?TheyÂ?ve built so many walls and silos that theyÂ?ve lost that direct communication.Â? Keeping firms on toes Many firms have waken up to a rapidly expanding slice of cyberspace devoted to vitriolic, often-obsessive blogs listing the shortcomings of well-known companies WWW.THINKSECRET.COM (APPLE) The site broke the news about the iPod ahead of its 2001 launch and gave details of the Mac Mini ahead of time. The latest rumour is a touch-screen iPod MCCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM (McDONALDS) Aims to Â?discuss brand experience from the customer point of viewÂ?. Postings can be as bland as the food WWW.WALMARTWATCH.COM (WAL-MART) Culls stories on issues such as alleged low wages, healthcare and impact on local firms. Provides tools such as Battle-Mart Â? guide to keeping Wal-Mart out of your town WWW.THEINQUIRER.NET (DELL) More of a technology news site than a blog, it posted the clip of an exploding Dell laptop at a conference in Japan on June 21. It was put up by a reader and spread quickly through the blogosphere WWW.UNTIED.COM (UNITED AIRLINES) Jeremy Cooperstock first wrote to United after a bad trip to Japan but got no response. After a second complaint, he received just a form letter. The site was born. Today he vents his spleen against the airline and invites others to do so.

Some blogs and website :

WWW.THINKSECRET.COM (APPLE)

WWW.MCCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM

WWW.WALMARTWATCH.COM

WWW.THEINQUIRER.NET (DELL)

WWW.UNITED.COM (UNITED AIRLINES)

An ode to a friend

This is the last post on the ITC gang , before I get on to some serious blogging on CRM and stuff. That's Rohit Chitteth, Called Cheettah....at times and i will give that name to him because of his prowess with numbers and his cool / calm presence in his meeting.....Of course, I will never forget - the way ould say DADA......Ki korbo..(that's the expression u can see in the picture - here)..meaning how do we do..

After a love hate relationship with NV (no offence if u are reading it buddy), Rohit was a welcome change....beyond work there was Tarantio, Doors, Billy Joel to give us company Still waiting to hear the 5 songs which he can play on his guitar. Will remember the training sessions and the Mondegar bout.

Cheers! (and yes we will do that stag session at ur place some time)

Gang of Boys

I couldn't resist giving this post that name, after I saw the pic. Thanx Prachi for sending(at last!!!) n clicking it. That's Rohit in the background, sort of depicts his status, from managing the CRM for last 1yr almost and now moving on as BRAND MANAGER - JOHN PLAYERS. Also in the background is Gopa - quite & behind me (as always - for all that we did together - Thx Buddy). Saket -> Dominating in the pic and the new force behind NEW CLUB WILLS - to be relaunched. All the best - call on me anytime.

Below - me n Anjali "-Thx for the sweet send off Anjali...we all had a blast.......Well some pictures do tell a story.

The ITC Customer Care Team:

Another team I am very-very proud of, Headed by Rhituraj, they are the backbone of Club Wills. Veeru (second from left) an me have spent countles nights to decipher.....and get some intelligent insights out of data........Every time I called and uttered the word "DATA". I knew the response ......Aaj to night lagni hain. Like Gopa, Rhituraj managed the entire operation flawlessly. From a situation wher in I used to go there on a daily basis and reply to each n every mail......to a situation wherin I go there once in two weeks.

Thx Guys and do carry on the good work.

The Moment of Truth:

My last speech at RMG Connect on 13th September 06'.Well I just started the proceedings, but Gopa stole the show with a brilliant la'Oscar acceptance speech......Bravo! Good going, you will have to do lot of talking (?!!). And thanks for all the kind words you said about me. Cheers! n Thx for being my "WALL"during my stint at RMG....

Well, the fever didn't infect us but my highpoint with Avaya was the advantage series which was kickstarted by Mr. Amit Sinha at the cafeteria in Feb 05' It saw a burst of almost a mailer a wk. The first 6 monts saw some great & prolific creative work from Ajay+Madhu....cool dudes of RMG Connect Delhi. Purnima was the accelerator behind these creative....But missed the CEO FORUM, which I really wanted to do.

The changing face of Fashion - Wills Lifestyle

Wills Lifestyle is almost part of my DNA, right from the time when there was one store at South Ex and Krishnan was a single man army doing everything to 40 stores, 30,000 Club Wills members, 1.5 Lac people buying every year.......I have been trhrough it all.

First with Lowe, where we did the user interface deisign for their website and touch screen kiosk (placed at their stores) .

For last 2 yrs, I have been doing all their CRM activities, direct mailers, store promotions etc. But what I enjoyed (and learnt most)was planning for the new club came. I had to first understand the data before I could try andthe data bit, imagine going thru tons and tons of data and try to see who is shopping what, see a pattern emerge, make assumptions......it was crazy but probably the most stimulating experience in my career. I ordered books from the US, went thru websites, white papers .......spoke to few people in retail......so much so that I still feel like delivering a baby.

Thanx also to the team at ITC - Samit n Rohit - I always felt that I was part of their team and not an outsider.

Learning :

Don't order books from US, if u havn't gone thru it in detail, u will waste lot of money without getting what you thought you will get :-))

Data is the heart and soul of any company, get into it and you will be part of their business (I know very basic stuff in CRM.....have u tried doing it ???)

Don't give up on net, from Einstein to Picasso to Ogilvy..............you will find them all there to give you advice.

That' probably one of the best pics. This was taken at Mumbai, when we had gone for the RMG Launch in APRIL 05. That's the Sun setting in Marine Drive. One of my favourite place's where I had spent most of my formative years in advertising....munching (singh - that's groundnut in Mumbaia hindi) and having a philosophical discussions with my colleagues in Lintas

My favourite client

Self, originally uploaded by bidyutn.

That's the Oracle Headquarter at Redmond. Probably, my best client till date and the best customer experience / appreciation........Somesh & Atik always felt that we (meaning direct marketing)contributed hugely to the success of marketing n sales in india. So, we made that extra effort & walk the extra mile......

Thanks to the team at RMG (Sandeep, Jai, Shailender, Sunil.....not to forget Sunirmal da who came out with some jazzy ideas to be given as give-aways),we did some fantastic creative work here,

Some unforgettable incidents:
- Oracle Open World -- On 30th December 31st, we went for the yrly bash (and obviously got partially drunk :-)).....but the entire team sandeep, me, kariba, pushpanjali (she was not drunk.....she doesn't drink u see) managed to reach office...me and sandy went to the dhaba infront of genpact got some parathas for the team......had dinner...and then worked thru the night....to finish the Program Guide.

The last Supper

The first of the series of send off parties post my departure from RMG. Leaving behind an orgz is not easy, for me it's almost like a relationship which was coming to an end. Like any other relationship it was not an easy one to end.

We had a good time, an important insight was that more than the past everybody was more concerned of the present and future. As I always say (and this is one of my favourite quote" What seems to be the end.......is the start of something new".

Some images to cherish....don't go by the haze....that's the special effect created by Gopa ......and it was also our state of mind..........Cheers

Welcome to my Blog,

This is Bidyut Nath. I am working in account planning in one the top agenies in India. I will using this as a platform to put forth my view in the domain of CRM.

You will start seening some posting after a fortnight.