Annual Marketing Seminar of IIM Kozhikode, Synapse 2006, Achieves Resounding Success

Annual Marketing Seminar of IIM Kozhikode, Synapse 2006, Achieves Resounding Success

Mr. Deepak Sood, Senior Partner, Erehwon Consulting, delivered an inspiring talk on the importance of innovation in succeeding. Through stimulating examples, he explained how conditioning and 'mindset gravity' stifle radical thinking and prevent growth. To stay in the lead, he said, businesses must challenge internal paradigms while constantly re-evaluating their core competencies.

He ended by saying that 'the understanding of the power within and the desire to unleash it' differentiates innovators from the milieu.

Mr. Atul Phadnis, Founding Partner, Media e2e, discussed communications planning in the global economy. The first part of his presentation dealt with complexities in communication and the second part dealt with the fallout of these complexities. Mr. Phadnis also focused on the need to quantify the effects of brand experience, PR coverage and how the consumers cope with surprise advertising. He also spoke about the ubiquity of advertising, citing the example of how a typical cricket match bombards viewers with as many as 400 brands.

"Consuming content has become as natural to humans as eating or sleeping," said Mr. Tarun Tripathi, the Marketing Head of Yash Raj Films. In a four-hour workshop whose aim was to educate and sensitize budding media professionals to the emerging context of content management and marketing, he enumerated the roles for management graduates in media. He described the international and national markets and their evolution into segments and niches. He also took the students through the process of an in-film pitch and the evolution of marketing strategies at Yash Raj films. Through the examples of recent Yash Raj movies like Dhoom, Fanaa, Hum Tum, Salaam Namaste, Saathiya, Bunty aur Babli, and Veer Zaara, he gave riveting insights into the whole movie scenario right from concept inception to release and post-release marketing. He also mentioned snippets from his experience with distributing other banners' films, such as Krrish and Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna.

Mr. Tripathi maintained that the major challenges in movie marketing are cutting through the clutter to reach jaded audiences on a shoe-string budget and ensuring that the decision to watch the movie is made well before the film releases. Content is king and to succeed in marketing one needs to leverage it, he said. Giving the now classic example of Hum Tum, which was one of the pioneers of 360 degree marketing, he said that the reason for its success was that the various channels of communication integrated perfectly to create a win-win situation for all.

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Contributed by -
Media Cell Team,
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode,
Kozhikode, Kerala.

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