Want feed-back: A 'promotion' slogan

Hi all, how are you not? Well, I'm blogging, at this late hour, to take your op on a 'serious' matter.

I have a blog, called Umer Toor Blog: 'On the Sickness of Age'. (Just say 'yea', and click on it.) I've developed a slogan to promote it on campus. As blooming marketers, give your say on it, thanks:

"Vincit Omnia Veritas": Truth Conquers All

With, http://www.umertoor.blogspot.com. (Should add a smiley? be it odd or even?)

Biggest Marketing Challenge of this Course Yet

Biggest Marketing Challenge of this Course Yet: Well, perhaps. Let's see.

When we found marketers talking about 'building strategies and platforms to drive communities' etc. etc., we're reminded of our own communities, of which we've very fade ideas, or facts - curiously. And our book talks about social marketing as well. The 'challenge' for the brilliants minds, as Moazzam would happily call, of Mkting 280:

"In Iraq recently over 500,000 people have died; there’s not even a discussion. It’s not even on the screen. Nobody even talks about it."* So how do we make everybody talk about? Bring it on the screen? Make a cry? All for the sake of 'humanity' (if it exists) and the worth of human life (surely it exists), if not creating value!!! (Philosophical explanation: "That’s one of the very, very important results when this inviolability is based not on a philosophical, religious or metaphysical certitude, but on either simple political expediency or sentimentality.")

Who would like to earn a CP? For heaven's sake...

* Source. Seyyed Hossein Nasr has been quoted here, professor at George Washington Uni.

How to handle customer complaints?

Customer complaints, whether coming from profitable or unprofitable customers, is something universal to all consumer businesses, which can concern any department of a firm. The better replacement for customer complaints is customer feedback, which no sane organization can ignore, in fact all organizations depend upon it to judge their own performance and to improve, simple as truth. Handling complains can become very unprofitable, and the art of handling the complains and unprofitably that comes along it is one of the basics of marketing know-how. One of world's top marketers, John Quelch, offers some guidelines "for expediting the complaint process and keeping customers happy":

• "Understand the full context. Try to understand as much as you can about the complaint. The more information you have, the easier it is to determine the root of the dissatisfaction.
• Propose a resolution. Know what would make the situation better for your customer and propose ways you can solve the problem.
• Show respect. Complaining customers are often upset. Train employees receiving complaints to be empathetic and to reframe the harsh criticism they may receive into constructive feedback."*

From this guidelines it's clear that no matter if the customer burst with anger, the employee(r) should return the rudeness not with rudeness but with smile and respect. I have seen this many times when an angry customer or person would talk rudely to my father, and how he won their hearts, forming deep, enduring relations with them. It all happens in a spur of a moment, and those few seconds are crucial. When we keep in our sub-conscious mind that context needs to be understood at all costs, our reactions would be better, making us more and more empathetic towards our customers.

(* From Management Tip of the day, DECEMBER 2, 2009.)

In Search of Top 5 Most Authentic and Creative Post of Mgmt280.Blogspot.Com

Image source

The criteria is simple: authenticity, underlying business genius to be recognized.

What should be the benchmark? We could hint upon a benchmark none other than the blogging of our esteemed Faizan Badar, Business Formanite. How his short, precise and insightful +80 posts lacked a single quoted sentence from an online or offline source. They were more or less, often: Expositions, applications, analysis, transmission, innovation, creativity, synthesis, deductions of ideas, great ideas of great leaders. Diversity was a mark of his posts, covering so many fields and topics, often in series of posts, something that could easily said to be Faizan's personal asset, the kind of enduring asset, of knowledge created, revived or channelized. But something done, often with pain and deep reflection, although never lacking "flow" in his blogging/blogged posts. An example or two serve our purpose:

His post on the most authentic book, perhaps, of our times on stratgey, Competing on the Edge:

"I have done extensive work on the book and have found it to be illuminating and brilliant. The one aspect where we can further gain is to intertwine the concepts with the new demands emerging post-enron and the financial crunch.

The authors thrash out points of perspective one after the other with some exciting guidelines given especially in Chapter 8 regarding competing on the edge. They keep the reader enthralled through extensive and pervasive use of examples from multinational set-ups which guide and elaborate on the raft of points made with ease and with vigor.

Concepts of Time Pacing, dissipative equilibrium, rhythm formation and ready refernces to the practical mistakes committed by huge companies like Sears and Laura Ashley in the past sheds light on the intricacies of strategic formulation, especially the pitfalls of stagnation.

A thoroughgly enjoyable read thus and a book which should be treasured and not just thought of as just another one to gather dust on the home library shelf. Definitely one to revisit time and again for further insights!"

Another on Tackling Disruptors (post title), he goes on to write, telling the truth:

"The final relationship that cannot be ignored is with disrupters. These are the individuals who cause trouble for sport—inciting opposition to management for a variety of reasons, most of them petty.

Usually these people have good performance—that’s their cover—and so they are endured or appeased.

In Pakistani companies, we have lots of this type - the ones who will backbite no end and would arrogate lots of power to themselves without realizing what negative contribution they are amaking to the organisation...

A company that manages people well takes disrupters head-on. First they give them very tough evaluations, naming their bad behavior and demanding it change. Usually it won’t. Disrupters are a personality type. If that’s the case, get them out of the way of people trying to do their jobs. They’re poison."

The rest of them were no less sweet. I am searching for top 5 most authentic and ingenious posts. In some days, if I find them, I'll post the list. In case you find the exercise futile, feel free to post your suggestions :)

At least, I don't wish at the end this should be happening... Would you?

Creating utility

The American Heritage Dictionary defines utility as "the quality or condition of being useful". Utility is further defined as any quality and/or status that provides a product with the capability to satisfy the consumer's wants and needs. Marketing is responsible for creating most of a product's inherent utility.
There are four basic types of utility:
1- Form utility: production of the good or service, driven by the marketing function. For example, Procter and Gamble turns raw ingredients and chemicals into toothpaste.
2- Place utility: making the product available where customers will buy the product. Procter and Gamble secures shelf space for the toothpaste at a wide variety of retailers including supermarkets and drugstores.
3- Time utility: making the product available when customers want to buy the product. The U.S. drugstore chain Walgreens has many locations open 24 hours a day, and since the 1990's has placed most of their newer stores at major intersections.
4- Possession utility: once you have purchased the product, you have rights to use the product as intended, or (in theory) for any use you would like.
A fifth type of utility is often defined along with the above four types:
5- Image utility: the satisfaction acquired from the emotional or psychological meaning attached to products. Some people pay more for a toothpaste perceived to be more effective at fighting cavities and whitening teeth.