When I was studying communications 12 years back, my Professor often said, “Questions are never stupid. Answers are. So ask.” Today when I have lots of questions, I feel stupid. Maybe I need someone as strong as my Professor to help me find the answers and make me more confident.

So here I go.

Do IT marketing teams really do marketing? Or focus on branding and corporate communications? I am confused.

As I understand, building a brand is all about engaging and involving every touch point inside and outside the company using a broad set of communication vehicles. And this can include both strategic and tactical activities. Most initiatives like PR, analyst relations, events, internal communications, ad campaigns etc can all be part of the broader umbrella of branding. Be it building an online presence; demonstrating thought leadership; developing internal campaigns; advertising or even CSR, these initiatives are towards enhancing the brand image and perception of the company. Well, each company may look at brand building in their own way based on their priorities.

While the default remains visibility and awareness, sales enablement still remains a gap. Is sales enablement the most difficult thing for marketers? Does this require marketers to get out of their comfort zones?

Some of the marketing folks have often said that branding and communications is all about sales enablement. While it is essential to help the sales organization communicate value and differentiation in clear, consistent and compelling ways, do the marketing folks believe that the right information is being delivered to the right audience in the right place at the right time to help move the sales opportunity forward?

Some marketing folks I know have often said that sales don’t need us. Does it mean that the age-old sales and marketing love-hate relationship is responsible for marketing to focus more on comfortable pieces of branding and communications?

Help me with answers. I am confused.

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I am often asked by friends and extended family about what I do and I always fumble to explain that. After 12 years, my mother-in-law still thinks I do ’something’ in multi-media (that’s where I started my career!). The situation worsens when I am asked what’s next.

So how do I explain what Industry Analyst Relations (AR) is? To put it simply, AR is about managing and engaging a focused group of influencers who play a key role in a customer’s decision making process. This is different from reaching out to a broad audience to generate exposure. AR is about leveraging and maximizing the value of a prioritized few versus maximizing number of contacts / relationships. And yes, AR is very much part of a strong and serious Marketing & Strategy function.

All the AR professionals I know have similar traits. They are multi-taskers, quick thinkers, great communicators and collaborators. They understand business, brand and market dynamics. As a necessary attribute, they are good at building relationships and connections.

Incidentally, I got into AR by accident. And that was four years back! But, it was my choice to stay on. Today, when I am thinking of what is next, I feel lost. ‘Googling’ and reading is throwing me options but unfortunately people here in India don’t understand the function or attributes required for the role so that the person can be evaluated for other roles which require same or similar skills.

If journalists can leave the media and head brand communications, why can’t an AR person be looked upon as just another communications professional? Any thoughts?

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While in the midst of an interesting debate on whether social media has any use for B2B tech companies, I chanced upon this analysis during my morning’s browsings I found so apt and “linkedin” with the topic of contention!
For its special feature on CEO Guide to Sentiment analysis, Businessweek had asked Netbase, a company that analyzes online sentiment, to compare what users felt about leading tech companies. The results, complied through an analysis of conversations on facebook, tweets and product review forums, are mostly predictable, but did have some surprise element as well.
That Apple and Google are the most “loved” brands comes as no surprise. Likewise, Twitter and Apple are also among the most talked about brands. I however found it interesting that HP and Linkedin have managed to create a passionate fan following and move into the “love” quadrant- HP has managed this with its printers and laptops! I also found facebook’s position in the “hate” quadrant intriguing (given all the drama around it’s half a billion users) though not entirely unsurprising. That Microsoft is discussed far, far less than, say, a twitter or an Apple or a Google, did take me by surprise, though its positioning in the passion index map did not.
Another observation (related to my debate too) is that leading B2B brands including Cisco, Oracle and Intel feature in the “like” quadrant- though, of course, they are far less discussed than B2C players. Still, isn’t it worth monitoring what users say about their brands? Example- Cisco, a company that is currently doing some soul searching of its own, is the most liked brand- and the company would be happy to note that! It scores high on reliability and that is something the company would factor into its ongoing re-focusing exercise.
In conclusion, unsolicited opinions from end users are an important input for any company, big or small. They are probably more honest than formal efforts, at times and need to be judiciously interwoven into a company’s market tracking mechanisms. I believe that we are past the stage where we can ignore online conversations, whatever be the area your business operates in. Do you agree?
Netbase incidentally uses an NLP based engine to do sentiment analysis. Their site claims that its analysis is more than 80% accurate, which is a tall claim in an area which is still evolving. More on that in another post.

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“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet.”

says Juliet in Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet.  It resonates with my own position in the ageless debate between form and content. What matters is what something is and not what it is called.

My latest foray into branding, however, has made me seriously consider the antithetical position, at least in the world of business. My task was to come up with a name for a product/service. I began with a thorough study of the product/service in question. This was particularly difficult since I am new to everything that has to do with technology. Thanks to Google and Sudha’s directions, I had a fair grasp of the offering. I am still slightly unsure about it but suffice it to say that I knew just about enough to come up with a name.

Second, I made a list of names  of similar products/services that are already in the market. This turned out to be a very interesting experience. It came as a surprise to me, that so much thought had gone into the process of coining a name. At the same time, some names reflected the dearth of creativity in their coiners. People in business were taking this ‘naming’ exercise really seriously.

Finally, it was my turn to play with words, abbreviations, acronyms etc. This was the fun part. Coming up with creative names that did not have any kind of negative connotation is challenging. For every name I came up with, I had atleast one of my colleagues objecting to it because they felt it was remotely suggestive of something not wholly positive.

Colleagues’ inputs, however valuable, never get the job done. I finally relied on my own discretion and sent out the first set of names. Some were liked, others were not. It’s back to the drawing board for me. In the meantime, I am sure to think twice before I exclaim, “What’s in a name?”

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If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world; if you sat down to watch all the videos uploaded on YouTube as we speak, you would need around a 1000 years! A quiz on such interesting trivia kicked off the social media workshop that Prayag conducted last week at L&T Infotech for their leadership and marketing teams. The workshop was a culmination of an engagement we did for the company that included creating the social media guidelines and evaluating their social media roadmap.
Social media networking is thought to be a millennial thing, a fad, or, at best, as a wave that will impact B2C companies. Our workshop sought to dispel this myth and educate the audience, through real life case studies and current research that B2B companies can benefit as much, if not more, by embracing social media. We also did some hands-on exercises which helped the audience get a first-hand feel on how they could use social media tools to achieve business goals.
Gauging by the participation and feedback, I can confidently say that the marketing team, which is spearheading L&T Infotech’s social media initiative, achieved its objective of laying a solid foundation for the company’s social media program. Also, by creating a comprehensive guidelines document, they have ensured that the rules of the game are clearly defined upfront. This would definitely stand them in good stead as they ramp up activities.
At Prayag, we interact with a number of companies, all of whom, without exception, are curious, intrigued and wanting to know more about social media and how it can be interleaved into their marketing strategy. We must doff our hats to L&T Infotech though for taking the important first steps and getting started on their social media strategy.

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I started my stint at Prayag with a hospital client. It seemed like the ideal way to ease my way into marketing, branding, and everything else corporate. The hospital was new and six months down the road, they felt the need to rev up their marketing efforts. In particular, they wanted to sell the idea of their hospital as a ‘boutique hospital’. I hadn’t heard the word ‘boutique’ associated with a hospital before and was intrigued. ‘When in doubt, google/wikipedia it’ has been a maxim I adhere to for some time now. So that’s exactly what I did. I mentally noted the recurring characteristics of boutique hospitals that appeared in all the hits. It seemed a boutique hospital was one that had highly specialized surgical facilities and it focused on excellent patient care. Obviously, the word was also associated with luxury and being high-end.

However, the medical/specialized surgery aspects of boutique hospitals did not show up when we surveyed around 60 residents of the area. People seemed to associate the term boutique with luxury, unnecessary expenses, lots of frills, maternity (this may be because a maternity hospital in the area had arrogated for itself the term ‘boutique’) and everything feminine ( because of its association with beauty parlours and fashion houses). The client, subsequently, abandoned the use of the word ‘boutique’ in promotional literature.

What is interesting, however, is that even if words have a certain contextual meaning that is precise, it might help to go with words that are less accurate and more widely understood and appreciated. As a skillful wielder of words, creating marketing and branding campaigns, one must steep oneself in semantics rather than just limiting oneself to dictionary meanings.

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