Looming CWG Fiasco in India

I'm trying to grasp the frustration everyone seems to have as well as the overwhelming urge to appoint blame and lay responsibility on a few individuals trotting around as figureheads... BTW, not absolving anyone from taking personal respon...sibility. Yet I am probably correct to assume that everyone of us who is demonstrating this "supposed" indignation is miles away from the ground reality in the planning, organizing, and execution of these games. Come on guys these are just games! Seems we are living in a pre-cold war world when the US & USSR tried to project their capabilities via the Olympics and we now know how hollow that projection of capabilities was / is. SCREW THE CWG, WHY THE HELL HASN'T ANYONE COMMENTED ON THE PLIGHT OF THE FOLKS DISPLACED BY THE ONGOING FLOODING IN NORTH INDIA!!! See how F#$%ed up our armchair brougeoisie mentality has become! If the events leading up to games had not been exposed by the media as a humongous SNAFU, I bet everyone here would have then reveled in basking in the glory of such great CWG games, and hailed the capabilities of India Shining! While we all know how superficial and limited those capabilities are... Development of infrastructure has always been the Achilles heel in India. Let's first accept this only then can we hope to move ahead, otherwise we will only move on...(!?!?!?)

Update: 12Hours later...

It was interesting to see Sr. Editor Headlines Today Sandeep Bamzai echo the exact same sentiment about India's weakness in infrastructural development as the major cause of the current CWG fiasco as well as the issues facing the general public due to flooding.

Follow-up: More Facts About $35.00 Indian Tablet

A NDTV report with Indian Union Minister of HRD Mr.Kapil Sibal with a working prototype of the $35.00 Tablet computer.

Gadget Guru - NDTV LINK



See a video from a few other Indian Tech wizards from a company called AllGo Systems at Trade show in Florida, USA.

"Mercy killing of Brands... Pros & Cons"

A really thought provoking issue. Secondly, what a question... probably good enough for a Phd dissertation in marketing.

Anyway, to keep it simple and see other viewpoints also. My take is fairly simple - business is there to provide a return on capital employed, when there is no significant return on the capital employed either in the short or long term the business should be liquidated. Obviously, this is a very simplified scenario, hopefully all due diligence is done and all tangible and intangible cost benefit scenarios have been objectively evaluated.

If after doing all the above there is a negative trend for future ROI yes by all means the brand should be killed, otherwise it will negatively impact the overall business, giving a perception that not just one brand is doing poorly, but the entire business is also subject to the same malaise.

To touch upon GM, in my opinion they were too slow and too late in pulling the plug on - Oldsmobile, and even to some extent are doing the same with Buick now. GM makes some of the best vehicles around technology wise, but their perception is that of a stodgy car manufacturer.

The reason you think of "mercy killing" or using the proper term in my opinion "euthanasia", for a brand at-least, would be mainly because the product, service, and it's communication is no longer relevant to the market audience the - consumer. So removing any support would not really have a backlash from the customer. If enough consumers really wanted to use the product or service you wouldn't be thinking about "mercy killing" a brand.

If you look through the marketing history of the major FMCG organizations worldwide there are numerous instances of killing off various brands and not all of them mercifully! In 1993 Phillip Morris Companies, killed off their corporate name when they renamed themselves Altria.

Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons to initiate the killing of established brands, this may sound quite shocking, but look at the marketing from Microsoft which has a history of such behaviour. BTW, I do not want to get into discussing the merits of the product itself.

In 1995 they purposely killed "Windows X.1" OS to introduce "Windows 95". Then in 1998 they killed "Windows 95" to introduce "Windows 98". In 2000 they killed "Windows 98" to introduce "Windows ME". In 2001 they killed "Windows ME" to bring out "Windows XP", and this year they officially killed "Windows XP" to introduce "Windows Vista".

In each cycle of killing off a major brand MS had a perfectly good product at the stage and an established revenue stream that generated billions of dollars, yet they chose to start completely afresh rather than create a line extension.

The above was done as part of a planned strategy known as phased obsolescence, which is based on the theory that if one rests on their laurels too long someone will come and eat their cake, so rather than have that happen one eats their own cake and goes out searching for more. Again another simplistic viewpoint, but it should get the message across.

Hopefully, that provides some fodder for thought. There will never be a right or wrong answer to a query like this, only hindsight will make us comment more on the merits and demerits of each.

"Brands on Steroids"

Brands on 'roids' quite an interesting concept...

Brands are built and nurtured in relation to the corporate business philosophy to execute a business plans, having said that let's examine the concept.

Usually, a branding plan is strategic in nature and to introduce a new greenfield product / service a 'nurturing' approach strategy may be employed to gain market traction in response to whatever opportunities and constraints that may have been evaluated by the business unit.

Sometimes a branding plan may be tactical in nature, to either be a offensive or defensive response to market opportunities, due to this issue you may see the emergence of - 'Brands on Steroids' syndrome. Sometimes the defensive or offensive tactical moves may open up significant opportunities for the brand to move in the limelight and from a tactical launch it may morph into long term strategic role, but still employing the original tactical moves that brought it in the limelight. The above would be the disciplined and rational explanation to the 'Brands on 'roids' syndrome.

However, as mentioned there are definitely situations when due to a change in management focus or to maximise short term revenue generation you may observe the same syndrome. When you see 'Brands on 'roids' in such a scenario quite often they follow the way of 'Humans on 'roids' , a brief spark and glimpse of a meteoric rise and then discarded and forgotten in the depths of oblivion once the spark is extinguished.