Jayakumar Balasubramanian

One of my friends just got back from US and gave me a pack of stride chewing gum, which he bought there. More than the gum, their cover design fascinated me, because it embedded excellent word of mouth marketing messages (check out the pictures below). Here are some of the interesting things I have learnt: They have smartly used caption -- "The ridiculously long lasting gum",by mentioning "Good for you, bad for us". Excellent sense of humor in their messages (even the cover cuttings include smile), while conveying the marketing message indirectly. Asking customers to participate in conversation by logging new ideas into their website Overall its a very interesting design, thus provides a reason for people to talk (crux of word-of-mouth marketing). They have not spent anything extra to spread marketing message. Embedding marketing messages along with a product is a great idea. Next time you buy a product (be it a chewing rum or gadget) watch out for its cover design...

Came across this interesting picture which reflects my current thinking. May be Dilbert put is too bluntly calling Marketing as a 'fraud'. In reality (based my real time experience) it doesn't matter how great a particular product/service is. It is all about how well it can be marketed and sold to customers. Business/Entrepreneurship happens when the customer signs a cheque and nothing else is more important than that.

Found a very interesting sponsored 'no parking' board this afternoon. It reads: 'just give a MISSED CALL to xxxxx and get information about Bangalore (picture below)' In their website the caption is mentioned as 'A new gateway to Bangalore just a missed call away' :) This is a really cool marketing technique, which generates instant word-of-mouth.

After reading Andy's word-of-mouth marketing (WOMMA) book , I was thinking my favorite WOMMA examples. Here is the list came right on top of my mind Example Word-of-mouth strategy Bata chappals Pricing their products with ‘95 paisa’. (Rupees 199.95, Rupees 99.95 etc...). It has created hell lot of talking among consumers and even today. If not anything Bata has provided an interesting reason for people to talk about them. Costs nothing! Virgin Mobile Increasing customer base is the top priority of Indian telecom service provides. Virgin mobile has come up with their new idea of ‘paying for incoming’. Nobody knows about the intricacies yet. But it has already generated enough word of mouth among people by making them curious. Check out more details here. Gmail When they started it, only gave accounts to power users with some specific number of invitations. It created curiosity am...

Author: Andy Sernovitz Price : 24.95 USD How smart companies get people talking? As an engineer it’s quite possible to think everything from a technological perspective. Most of technologists think what if they have some ‘cool’ product they can build a business around it. In reality only 15% of overall product cost is spent towards engineering the product. Remaining amount goes for marketing, sales and support functions. No matter how much ever better the product is (in terms of technology, cool features, price and performance), if it is not marketed properly it will be a failure. Most of the technology startups fail not because of their technical expertise, but mainly because of their inability to market and sell the product. In fact, marketing determines the success or failure of these ventures. Coming to marketing, quite some numbers of methods were invented over the years. For a startup/entrepreneurial venture (which is of my interest), its hard to invest heavily on some of the ...

I was trying to book a bus ticket thro’ redbus.in by logging in the travel details into their site. After few minutes got the following SMS: We have received your request. We will call you if we can arrange a ticket for you. For an urgent requirement you can reach us at our call center. I found this message very irritating due to two reasons. First, I don’t want to hear “ifs” and “buts” when I am approaching for a bus ticket. Second my travel requirement is urgent. In fact most of the cases it is and getting bus tickets (especially over the weekends) is pretty difficult. On top of all where is the call center number? The mobile advertising or status messages should be short but convey proper information. Unlike the one mentioned above.