Name:
Location: Mumbai, India

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Marketing Icons

I was recently asked in a discussion to enlist my choices for the Top 5 marketing icons. This set me thinking as I had never bothered to piece together my own list of favourites. Gathering my wits, i quickly chose the following.

1) Mahatma Gandhi : How a person unleashed the potent force behind the ubiquitous - 'Word of Mouth'. Imagine an impoverished, illiterate nation rising up to face the greatest imperial power on earth, all through a few grains of salt. Mahatma cleverly figured out the weapon which even the humblest strata of population could identify with.

2) Steve Jobs : How does a techie almost always stay ahead of the innovation curve. All this while ensuring that his products are the most customer friendly.

3) Madonna : How does a diva change her colors as routinely as the chameleon. In a career ranging from waitress, singer, style icon, bedroom story teller, broadway and screen actor, religious bigot and finally a children author, she has always defied the norm.

4) Amitabh Bachchan : How does a person rise Pheonix like, after being mauled so badly. A superstar appearing on idiot box and then climbing up his way to work with best of the directors.

5) Sunil Lulla : How does a person go againsts the conventional wisdom and customize a medium (MTV), whose founding USP was "teenagers are same everywhere". Later at Sony Entertainment, he cleverly used every tool in the book like product placement, flash mob, co-branding to create a buzz around an imported upstart - Jassi.

The above personalities operate/d in different spheres but one underlying theme unites them - their strong sense of individualism and self-belief.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is a bit unrelated ... came across your blogs ... wanted to know some quizzong club's address in Mumbai ...

1:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Madonna? I am very impressed with this list - Sunil Lulla for instance - thanks to all that he has done, MTV can now run almost on auto-mode even without him... and by the way, MTV could take a lesson or two from your list when they do their yearly youth icon number!

6:28 PM  
Blogger MAVIS HOME -HOME RETAIL said...

I would say Laloo ...

He practised what they called the perfect Targetting , perfect segmentation ,perfect communication and has the perfect hypnotic effect on his target segment !!

Pity he is not the perfect product !!!

9:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Amit,

Kiran here! stumbled onto ur blog thru rashmi's. Since when have u taken up writing with such gusto? great start.

i completely disagree with sunil lulla on your list of mktg brains.

i vividly remember an interview in sunday times while he was at MTV.
he was caustic while referring to Ch[V]. He called V as 'channel paanch' from its roman numeral and said that it appeals to the teenager, the grandmother?, the family dog etc. (Those were the days when V led the localized menu whereas MTV stuck to its phoren maal.) Turns out later that he ate his own words after that and was forced to go the V way and audaciously take credit later.

The fact that he cant stay at any one place for more than 2 yrs is the icing on the cake.

besides a common interest in quizzing, i love tracking people (movements and quotes).

7:30 PM  
Blogger muditosh said...

wonderful blog.

8:50 PM  
Blogger Pilot-Pooja said...

You and I have one icon in com'n:

Steve Jobs:

If you want to visit my list, plz visit:

http://pilot-pooja.blogspot.com/2007/03/big-shots-i-admire-most.html

1:40 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home