With the aim of encouraging all round development of the students and to impart not only knowledge, but also skills and attitude, the institute regularly organizes events, seminars and workshops which are of very high quality. Some of the seminars conducted this year are:
Excerpts of the seminar on "New Paradigms in Brand Management" - 26th March 2011
The seminar on "New Paradigms in Brand Management" held at Saraswati Institute of Engineering and Management was a grand success with more than 250 participants attending the event.
The speakers talked about various topics in Brand Management which held the audience captive till the last minute. Some of the snaps are:
The speakers talked about various topics in Brand Management which held the audience captive till the last minute. Some of the snaps are:
Mr. Sanjay Chakraborty, Roopika Raj and other guests inagurating the event by lighting the lamp.
From left: Ms. Roopika Raj (IIM-A), Prof. Bhavin Pandya (SV, Kadi), Dr. Prateek Kanchan (BK School of Business Management), Honorable Trustees, Dr. K N Sheth (Director SIEM), Mr. Sanjay Chakraborty (Chief Guest, Associate VP, Triton Communications Ltd.)
Excerpts from Mr. Sanjay Chakraborty's talk:
Mr. Sanjay Chakraborty started his talk on ‘Consumer Insight & Marketing’ by first highlighting the fact that consumers is a rather mysterious species and the challenge for every marketer is to understand his/her consumers. He started his presentation by showing some hilarious videos (the audience was up in splits) and thus drove home the point rather effectively in his own trademark style.
Mr. Chakraborty said:
“Understand that you do not understand, that you will not understand, that you cannot understand all your customers but still you have to do your best to understand them.”
He said that there will never be any boss but the customer. He went on to talk about various concepts like customization, CRM and customer experiential marketing. He beautifully explained these by giving apt examples like that of Levi’s store and Barista. Combined with wit and humor, Mr. Chakraborty struck a chord with the audience with every example he gave…
The complexity to understand the Indian Customer was also highlighted and even the differences between the male and female customers was shown – again by using a couple of funny videos. The focus of the presentation then shifted to advertising and the need to have a ‘consumer insight’.
About advertising, Mr. Chakraborty said in simple terms:
”Advertising is nothing beyond communication”
He gave an example on how communication can make or mar an advertising campaign - an imaginary bank having a tag line in Hindi “Hum Hain Na..” which means “we are there for you”. Some customers might (mis)understand the message as “Hum Hain?.. Na!” which means “are we there for you?.. No!” Thus, it is not just a play of words, it is the way a marketer uses his insight into the customer’s mind and uses it in his communication that finally decides a successful ad campaign.
According to Mr. Chakraborty, some of the reasons why marketers must delve into ‘customer insight’ are:
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It’s a ‘me-too’ world. No product or service is monopolized. Customers are spoilt for choice. “A ‘red paint’ is a ‘red paint’ is a ‘red paint’”. It is the communication at the time of buying that makes the difference.
It satisfies a hidden need of the customer which goes beyond the product need.
Mr. Chakraborty concluded his session by reiterating the fact that the need to understand ‘customer insight’ was extremely important for an effective ad campaign. This was backed by a lot of examples which proved that good and effective communication can be created by understanding the hidden needs of customers.
The audience at Saraswati Institute of Engineering and Management, which comprised of more than 250 participants from the industry, academia and student community benefitted a lot from this very informative and eye-opening session which was also the key-note address for the day. A lot of questions and interaction ensued and some audience members were so impressed that they even came up to Mr. Chakraborty for his autograph. Overall it was a fantastic opening of the day which held the participants spell-bound.
Watch his other video at YouTube: http://youtu.be/Qv3lvPM4060
Watch his other video at YouTube: http://youtu.be/Qv3lvPM4060
More than 250 participants from industry, academia and student community had an interactive participation with the speakers.
Excerpts from Dr. Prateek Kanchan's talk:
Dr. Prateek Kanchan, who specializes in Advertising and Brand Management, talked about the various challenges faced by marketers in managing their brands. He said that while there are huge challenges in this area, they can be taken head-on by the companies and can even be converted into opportunities. Thus, his topic of presentation was “Brand Management: Challenges as opportunities in managing brands”.
Unlike the preceding speaker, Dr. Kanchan did not make use of multi-media content and also limited his presentation slides to have minimum content. He talked to the audience in a very engaging style and drove across the points to make them easily digestible.
Dr. Kanchan started by saying that
“Education does not dictate knowledge”
A person having many degrees may not have as much knowledge as a person who is a high school drop-out. (Indeed, many fortune 500 companies were started by school drop-outs). Hence, we have to understand that our customers also possess a lot of knowledge about our own products and brands and many a times they out-smart us. (He gave an example of how customers hacked the software of mobile handsets of a telecom company so that they could be used with any other SIM cards)
The main body of the presentation was about how brand evolves over time and how challenges can be used as opportunities to re-build the brand. Dr. Kanchan asked the following teasers:
“Who creates the vision of the brand? Is the vision permanent? Does it change over time?”
He went on to give numerous examples to illustrate the fact that a brand vision is a very dynamic-living-breathing entity which evolves over time. By giving an example of Maruti Udhyog, he presented some statistics that between the two 14 year time spans of 1983-1997 and 1997-2011, the brand vision of Maruti Udhyog has undergone a sea-change due to the opening up of Indian economy and entry of competitors in the market.
Dr. Kanchan’s address was very informative intertwined with a lot of latest examples and it attracted a very healthy audience participation and questions. The talk gave a very new angle of thought to the theme of the Brand Management Seminar.
Excerpts from Ms. Roopika Raj's talk:
Excerpts from Ms. Roopika Raj's talk:
Ms. Roopika Raj gave a very interesting talk on “Brand extensions: A boon or a bane?” in the second half of the National Level Brand Management seminar at SIEM. Ms. Raj started her presentation by asking the following basic questions pertaining to brand extensions:
“What do you mean by brand extensions? Why do companies go for brand extensions? How should we go about brand extensions?”
She emphasized that by answering the above questions, we can get an idea about whether brand extensions are beneficial (boon) to the company or they are harmful (bane) to the reputation of the parent brand.
Quoting a very concise and clear definition of brand extension, Ms. Raj said:
“Brand extension is about leveraging a well-known brand name in one product category to launch a new product in a different product category”
She clarified that this is different from line extension in the fact that line extension involves launching new variations of the same product whereas brand extension involves the launch of products in completely new categories.
Ms. Raj made her presentation a two-way affair by involving the students from the audience and ensured that all the concepts regarding the topic were clarified. The advantages of brand extensions can be many in terms of the financial advantages to the company as well as the variety of products made available to customers. However, there can also be pitfalls if the extension is not done with proper ‘consumer insight’ which can actually backfire on the parent brand.
Ms. Raj gave ample examples to give a very impartial and just view of the entire concept of brand extensions and left it to the audience to evaluate the topic in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. It can either be a boon or a bane: what matters is how brand extensions are executed keeping in mind the customer needs.
Excerpts from Prof. Bhavin Pandya's talk:
Last but not the least was the talk by Prof. Bhavin Pandya on “Managing Brand Portfolios” and he started by giving success stories as well as failures in the world of brand management. He talked about how Hyundai Motors had successfully down-sized and up-sized their ‘Accent’ brand to create successful car models. Quoting an example from an earlier talk, Prof. Pandya said that although Maruti Suzuki had launched many brands in the past 14 years, still considering the overall revenues, it was a failure in terms of net profits.
Prof. Pandya did not engage in a structured presentation format but talked about various concepts and theories intermingled with lively examples to create an overall idea about how brand portfolios should be managed. He talked about various topics like brand positioning, brand revitalization, brand extensions and brand rationalization. He also presented some startling facts and figures (like P&G downsizing some 1000 brands in the last 5 years) to create an impact on the audience.
Prof. Pandya initiated the audience and sparked their thinking process by giving an example of his own bathroom having more than 16 SKUs (stock keeping units) of various brands of toiletries. Hence, he said that the Indian consuming class is huge and there is a deluge of multinational brands among this segment.
Overall, Prof. Bhavin Pandya did a wonderful job in keeping the audience at the edge of their seats in his unique and bombastic style of presentation and the talk was thoroughly enjoyed and it made the seminar to have a very exciting end.
From left: Mr. Manish Parihar (co-ordinator), Ms. Tanvi Faldu (convener), Ms. Roopika Raj (IIM-A), Dr. Prateek Kanchan (BK School of Business Management), Dr. K N Sheth (Director SIEM), Prof. Bhavin Pandya (SV, Kadi), Mr. Bimal Kumar (SIEM)
Greetings from Saraswati Institute of Engineering and Management! Hope this post finds you in the best of health, wealth and spirit . . .
1. Mr. Sanjay Chakraborty
2. Dr. Prateek Kanchan
BK School of Business Management,
Ahmedabad
Topic: “Challenges as Opportunities
in managing brands".
3. Ms. Roopika Raj - IIM-Ahmedabad
Topic: “Brand Extensions - A boon or a bane?”
4. Mr. Bhagwat Patel - Manager, Marketing, Idea Cellular, Pune
5. Dr. Bhavin Pandya - Director,
SV Campus, Kadi
Topic: “Managing Brand Portfolio”
website: www.ssesic.org.in
find us at facebook, twitter, YouTube: "lifeatsiem"
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
National Level Seminar on "New Paradigms in Brand Management" - 26th March 2011
Greetings from Saraswati Institute of Engineering and Management! Hope this post finds you in the best of health, wealth and spirit . . .
We are a premier institute of Engineering and Management affiliated to Gujarat Technological University; located in the peaceful and serene countryside of Gujarat, at Rajpur, Mehsana.
Since the last two years, Saraswati Group of Institutes has been reaching milestones and creating benchmarks in the fields of engineering and management education. We strongly believe that for the overall development of the students, they need to be acquainted with the real workings of the industry, hence we regularly organize high quality seminars, workshops and other activities to meet this goal. Some of the programs that we have successfully executed are:
- 3-Day Soft Skills Development Program - 23rd November 2010
- Networking Workshop - 29th Jan 2011
- Electrical Installation and Safety Seminar - 8th February 2011
- Robotics Workshop - 9th February 2011
Apart from that we also regularly organize cultural and sports events with great zeal so that students can put the hair down and enjoy themselves while learning.
In the pursuit of excellence, Saraswati Institute of Management has yet again organized a seminar, this time on “New Paradigms in Brand Management”
Brief about brands:
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things in a well manner. Marketing is not a battle of products; it's a battle of perceptions. The power of a brand lies in what resides in the minds of customers – what they learned, felt, saw and heard about the brand as a result of their experiences over a period of time.
Brand has become increasingly complex. Marketing efforts must be supplemented to create a successful brand. Our main objective to conduct such a state level seminar is to know what companies are doing to create competitive advantage through their brands.
Consistent, strategic branding leads to a strong brand equity, which means the added value brought to the company's products or services that allows the marketer to charge more for the brands than what identical, unbranded products command. Hence, it has been integral part of any organization to succeed without proper branding strategy adoption.
We are pleased to inform you that very distinguished speakers from industry and academia have agreed to come and speak on various topics under brand management:
1. Mr. Sanjay Chakraborty Associate Vice President,
Triton Communications, Ahmedabad
Topic: “Consumer Insight & Advertising”
Triton Communications, Ahmedabad
Topic: “Consumer Insight & Advertising”
BK School of Business Management,
Ahmedabad
Topic: “Challenges as Opportunities
in managing brands".
3. Ms. Roopika Raj - IIM-Ahmedabad
Topic: “Brand Extensions - A boon or a bane?”
4. Mr. Bhagwat Patel - Manager, Marketing, Idea Cellular, Pune
Topic: “Brand repositioning of Idea - case study”
5. Dr. Bhavin Pandya - Director,
SV Campus, Kadi
Topic: “Managing Brand Portfolio”
Looking at the stature and ‘brands’ of the above speakers, you must have got an idea about the level of seminar that we are planning. It will attract a large audience of students, industry delegates and academicians from all over the country. A couple of foreign students are also likely to participate. The campaign is already under way and we have started the marketing efforts both online and in-person.
We look forward to have you with us! For more details, contact:
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Registration: Ms. Rupa Shah - 9825067651, Ms. Indira Datt - 9427675643
Transport Manager: Sureshbhai - 9824055424 (For free bus facility from Kadi, Mehsana, Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar)
Program Convener: Ms. Tanvi Faldu - 9824954560
Program Convener: Ms. Tanvi Faldu - 9824954560
Co-ordinators: Ms. Dhara Chokshi - 9427617350, Mr. Manish Parihar - 9274807737
website: www.ssesic.org.in
find us at facebook, twitter, YouTube: "lifeatsiem"
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OUR PROGRAM PARTNERS:
