Innovative “Soundbox” from Paytm

I am fascinated by new products. Yes, it is true that 80% of new products are not new and are at best ‘new wine in an old bottle’. They are new, improved versions to induce to the jaded buyer to rebuy the products. At best it is a weak appeal to the customers to get excited again akin to a sixty-year-old Indian hero prancing around in a ridiculous wig and with fluorescent clothes with a young lass who would be in his granddaughter age! 

But some products are new, and they are very much needed. One such product that caught my eye is the “Sound Box” from Paytm. It is a boon for the harried retailers, who are becoming more and more dependent on online payments and that through the omnipresent Paytm App. 

I watch with great astonishment when the twenty-somethings pay six rupees for their cup of tea using Paytm app. What would happen if the internet or Paytm suffer an outage? I am sure that the Indian economy will take a hit on Sensex fearing a massive spread of the Coronavirus causing havoc on world markets. 

Paytm synonymous with digital transactions in India. The app rose to popularity during the demonetisation phase in 2016. When a customer is trying to pay via his smartphone, there is a long, elaborate conversation with the retailer to share the QR code which the customer then scans and then wait till the payment is confirmed and the retailer gets a message. The SMS often doesn’t come instantly, and there’s an awkward silence till the time the SMS comes in.  

Both the customer and the retailer are impatient. In some cases, the customers claim that the payment is made and walk away. The retailer is hard-pressed to balance his concentration between tracking the digital payments and in serving his other customers. 

Paytm is looking to smoothen the payment process with a new smart device the ‘Soundbox’, It has a speaker with a SIM card slot attached that will act as a voice-activated POS (point-of-sale) machine for the retailer. The Soundbox will alert the retailer the payment is complete, instead of the retailer having to wait for an SMS on their smartphone. 

The Soundbox loudly announces the amount paid, thus relieving the retailer of the stress of tracking SMSes. A user will still have to scan the QR code on this device to make the payment. With the Soundbox, the retailers do not require another smartphone to accept Paytm transactions. 

Marketing in Action - Corona Beer and Zica Car from TATA MOTORS

Most of my students of management, especially marketing students, think that mistakes committed by companies should not be committed in the first place.

They conclude saying "these are such basic decisions, why could they not have anticipated such an event". They seem to think everything is orderly and clockwork-like precision watches. What they fail to understand is that the business world is dynamic and fraught with uncertainty.

This Mexican brand of beer could not have even imagined in its wildest dreams that a deadly virus would be named after its famous brand - Corona. And the result, the stock nosedived by 8%. Whom does the company blame, nobody but its fate? That is why Business education is still called Masters of business administration. It is an art and not a science.

A similar fate was forced on Tata motors when it withdrew the name of its car named Zica which was exactly a virus-like Corona that led to many deaths in the year 2016.

Tata was forced to rename its car as Tiago. The loss that Tata would have incurred - many crores, opportunity cost and wasted time, effort and money in brand building the name - Zica.

Business students wake up. The real world is very different from what you read in the books or what you read in case studies. Be ready. The world is full of surprises.

new ideas for management jokes

4)   Can we get the ball rolling (Available)
5)   Time confusion in Ethiopia (Available)
6)   Usha in Ethiopia (Available)
7)   Caring, carrier -?
8)   Massage -?
9)   Taste my urine -?
12) Loss of a country is the loss of territory -?
13) Height of optimism - somebody will catch me on the 15th floor -?
14) Was that 17th salesperson -?
15) No Children only sons -?
16) Big son and small son -?
17) Big hole (hall) in my house -?
18) Snakes will be served -?
19) Big bride and a small bride -?
20) Bureaucracy - life certificate in the month of May too! (Available)
21) Muscat - wearing of lungi is appearing in shorts -?
22) Balushi Omanis can speak Hindi -?
23) Ethiopia is air-conditioned-?
24) Ethiopians are very good looking and fair -?
25) Concepts  of god fearingness (Available) - Churches
26) Midnight in the evening (Ethiopia) - ?
27) Everyone is Shah Rukh and everyone is Rani -?
28) Bapuji and Hind - ?
29) Veronica joke (Available)
30) Lecture - about disagreeing with the audience (Available)
31) first time speech - what were you doing in a ladies toilet (Available)
32, 33, 34) Churchill jokes -  poison your coffee, fat and thin, will not allow fools to pass (Available)
35) Albert Einstien, small cat and big cat (Available)
36) Prince phenyl (Available)
37) Vilan underwear (Available)
38) Quba mobiles (Available)
39) belief in god - let go from five feet from the ground (Available)
40) Payasam - Rama Krishna Paramahamsa (Available)
41) Albert Einstien, forgetting about his son (Available)
42) Snakebite and poison (Available)
43) Albert Einstien, about writing in the dust, formulas (Available) also cab driver
44) Gandhiji and Frugality (Available)
45) Best seat in the world (Available)
46) Sri Sri "is this chair live or dead"
47) BBC Story (Available)
48) Once a thief (Available)
49)  Womb for sale (blog item) (Available)
50) RSVP, Wombat in advertising
51) changing of the bulb (Available)
52) Detergent powder advertising in Dubai (Available)
53) Alcohol and mosquitoes die in a bottle of alcohol (Available)
54) crossing road in Abids - Probability (Available)
55) come inside randi randi, Munda et all (Available)
56) Ikea example of low priced coffee (Available)
57) trying to sell baby milk powder in Africa (Available)
58) Car not liking Vanilla icecream (Available)
59) Apple falling on Newton's head and Sherlock's way of solving the crime (Available)
60) Example of Paint company (Available)
61) Example of Perrier (Available)
62) Example of trying to sell tooth powder in the USA (Available)
63) Nova, makes your ancestors come alive, (Pepsi), yellow teeth in Thailand, Nor liking cute animals as models. (Available)
64) colours in marketing. (Available)
65) case of Maggi and Swiggy (Available)
66) Milk is veg or non-veg, what is fasting food? (Available)
67) Eating sweets, wearing white or black (Available)
68) Unique Selling Proposition (Levis and KFC) (Available)
69) Karachi bakery and Paradise Cafe (Available)
70) Einstein - and the cab driver (Available)
71) 8 and 8.5 size shoes (Available)
72) what is there in your phone is not in my phone (Available)
73) Po Ra Po (Available) should be rewritten
74) first bench, second bench and final bench -?
75) shifting the lift or putting mirrors in the corridors -?
76) Missing to buy Infosys shares -?
77) missing to get into Wipro -?
79) brainstorming - shifting the lift example -?
80) My husband is missing - no vegetables (Available)
81) jokes between doctor and mechanic, with the engine working (Available)
82) Get under the consulting table (Available)
83) same model from adam and eve (Available)
84) Multi-lingual dog says (meow) -?
85) Squeezing lime out of a lemon - income tax officer -?
86) foreigner and driver bit by a scorpion -?
87) Nani Palkiwala can't afford himself -?
88) donkey sleeping on the road - pour hot water on it, make it wake up and it will kick you -?
89) Chikka Swamy, chigga means mad in Amharic -?
90) 4 horses and a mare - (Available)
91) Vishnu is in this pillar too - (Available)
92)  Potato in your organization - (Available)
93)  Thank god I fell in good company (Available)
94) Eureka Forbes type of selling (Available)
95) Sales executives and sales manager (Available)
96) Buying the kitten for the antique vessel (Available)
97) lift shifting from 35th floor to ground floor (Available)
98) gift wrapping each broken piece of antique vessel separately -?
99) Sanke catching government office -?
100) Tigers eating one bureaucracy per day -? 

Fearing the Free! - The Puzzling case of the FREE "NO PARKING" boards

The most often repeated saying from an Economist! “there is no free lunch in this world”. If anyone offers free lunch, there is always a tag (or a price) attached. Finally, someone pays for that free lunch, many a time we pay the price! 

First used in the saloons of the USA, free food was offered which were high in salt (e.g., ham, cheese, and salted crackers). The customers who ate the free stuff ended up buying a lot of beer (as salted products induce thirst). An Eatery offering a free lunch is likely to charge more for its drinks!

People park their vehicles illegally in front of apartments in India, creating problems for the apartment owners. It is quite a nuisance to navigate when someone else has parked their cars and motorcycles right in front of the apartments, on the road itself. 

Many companies have come out with a very innovative idea (at least creative from their perspective). These companies make small metal boards which say “NO PARKING” and to promote themselves they have the name of the company and their product or service also displayed on the same metal sign. In many cases, the boards have the address and the phone numbers of the company sponsoring the metal board. So far, so good!

These companies employ urchins to fit these boards on the gates, boundaries or on the small curbside gardens fences of the apartments. No permission is taken from the owner/s or the apartment owners' association. And adding salt to the festering wound, the board is ridiculously loaded in favour of the advertising company. 

NO PARKING SIGN occupies only 20 to 25% of the space and 75% space is used up for advertising! But surprisingly these boards are tolerated and even welcomed! They are hung up grotesquely and are an unwelcoming eyesore! 

Apartment owners and apartment owners’ associations welcome these as they are FREE! One of my friends wryly commented, “we Indians, we will even drink Phenyl if it is free”. I added, “not only will we drink the free phenyl we would sell the empty phenyl bottles to the raddi (recycler) guy and try to get some money!” 

My conviction that this is not a fair deal has meant that I have never allowed anyone from getting free publicity from our house. As soon as they are fixed, I scrupulously remove the offending NO PARKING boards and throw them away in disdain! 

But it is a cat and mouse game. The boards are back like unwelcome guests, and I need to be extra vigilant to see that our curbside garden fence is pristine and free of unwanted graffiti! 

I wanted to share some snaps of gates with these ugly no parking boards. Surprisingly the apartment owners have caught on! The watchmen are cleaning the gates and throwing all the no parking boards into the dustbin. What a waste of resources. The creativity, the effort, and the money spent on making and seeing that they are fixed are wasted. Money down the drain. I found only two new ones “Green Leaf Stores and Swiggy”. These may have been fixed only today or at best yesterday! 

Some companies may laugh at my assumption of the waste of resources! They would snigger, “It only costs 10 rupees for each board, and it is worth the effort, even if they last for a day or two”. But they are missing the point. They are alienating people and creating a negative image for themselves. 

I have taken a silent vow not to patronize these companies which brazenly fix these no parking signs and that too without any permission. In the process of fixing they damage the foliage of these small gardens. 

But all is not lost, the companies can get the owners on their side. It is all a matter of planning. There are 1200 plots each ad-measuring 400 to 500 square yards in Matrusri colony, Miyapur. That is a whopping real estate as far as NO PARKING SIGNS are concerned! 

Most apartments have small curbside gardens, and most of these gardens are fenced. But the gardens are not well maintained as most apartments do not employ trained gardeners and are at the mercy of the apartment watchman for the upkeep of these small green lungs (curbside gardens). 

The companies that want to put up the NO PARKING signs can enter into an agreement with the owners, employ gardeners and maintain these small gardens and then request if they could put out a board that says NO PARKING (50% of the board), and the rest 50% space can be used up to advertise the products and services of the company. This way, it is a win-win for all. 

Marketers need to look at problems more objectively and come out with innovative solutions that solve their problems and as well as solve the issues and concerns of the customers whom they want to serve. 

TRAI Recent ruling, Broadcasters cry foul while Hotstar, SONY LIV, Amazon Prime and Netflix Rev Up to cash in the content streaming (OTT) platform Craze

The recent report about the TRAI trying to rein in the service provers (TV channel and DTH service providers) is quite amusing. This shows how hopelessly TRAI and service providers are outdated and how much they are wallowing in Marketing Myopia. Both TRAI and the service providers are inward-looking, not focused on customer needs, self-preening and have fallen in love their products services and are blissfully unaware that customer views, preferences and viewing habits have changed drastically. 

TRAI proudly claims that viewers’ cable bills would be down by 12% on an average and that each channel will be available at Rs 12 instead off Rs19 per month? Excuse me, in what time are you living TRAI? The days of Cable operators and service providers holding the customers to ransom are a thing of the past. The bouquet pricing that the broadcasters had thrust down the unwilling customer’s throat is outdated and no longer neither welcomed nor appreciated. 

Let us take an example. A viewer wanting a sports channel has to pay Rs 19/- a month irrespective of whether he watches the channel for a day or a month. One channel in a year will cost 228/-. Only one channel! And all major sports get broadcast on different channels of Star Sports, Ten sports etc. 

The viewers end up shelling out a lot for the live telecast of Cricket, Football matches like the world cup, Euro Cup, EPL, La Liga, Grand Slam tennis, Olympics, Athletics and other major sporting events. 

If one were to cut the cord (I did) the experience is liberating. Cutting the cord is cutting the umbilical cord (the cord that the viewer attaches to the television, like the cable wire or the DTH cable) that tied us to the TV. 

With the arrival of the streaming services, Cable TV and DTH are slowly but surely becoming obsolete. And with entertainment being consumed personally and in private, it might prove quite detrimental to the Cable wallahs and the DTH operators unless they become market savvy and adapt to changing market scenario.

The cost of a Hotstar VIP service is Rs 365/- per year. One rupee per day! Hotstar beams live all the Indian cricket matches and also live telecasts the EPL matches! Rs 365/- a year is quite a steal. Add to that the movies and the TV shows and the viewers' cup floweth full! 

Similarly, Sony LIV has a Rs 499/- package for one year only for Indian content and for cricket telecasts that feature the Australian, English and other cricket team matches played outside India. It also telecasts live the LA LIGA (Spanish Football) league. 

Movies and TV show lovers can avail Amazon Prime available at Rs 999/- per year and Netflix at 2400/- per year. All put together the total comes to Rs 4263/- per year and Rs 365/- per month (Hotstar, Rs 365/-, Sony LIV, Rs 499/-, Amazon Prime, Rs 999/- and Netflix, Rs 2400/-). 

If one is prudent and wants to cut down costs and subscribe only to only Hotstar, SONY LIV and Amazon Prime the costs come down to Rs 1863/- per year and Rs 155 per month. And if one is interested only in sports, the cost can be further be pruned down to Rs 864/- which comes to only Rs 72/- per month. 

The pluses are many. The telecast is in High definition; one can watch at their convenience. We need not be tied to the television, and viewing can happen when one is mobile or from multiple locations. The viewer can watch the same content on multiple devices like TV (with Amazon Firestick, Chromecast), Mobile phones, laptop, desktop, I-Pad etc. three to four people can watch different content as many steaming sites allow multiple sign-ins. 

We can watch the latest movies and shows from the comfort of our homes. We can watch with time-lapse and binge-watch too! 

The viewership figures displayed on Hotstar when India plays T20I or ODI are mouth-watering. On many occasions, the data rake up to 8 million or more. Eighty lakh people are watching only on Hotstar and that too only in India. The shape of things to come!

Of Course, some disadvantages do exist. The viewers have to pay extra for either a broadband connection or opt for a mobile service provider who provides good internet speed. In recent times Reliance JIO mobile speeds have slowed down to a pathetic level. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages by a very long shot!