KEL Dubai hosts session on Marketing & Innovation by Walter Vieira

Media Release

Dubai, Oct 15: In a liberalized and global economy, marketing has become a key function in any organization - whether in products, services, or even for an NGO. No wonder, the doyen of management gurus, Peter Drucker, constantly repeated, “There are only two revenue centres in a corporation - marketing and innovation. All the other centres are costs.” That is not to say that the other centres are not important, or can be dispensed with. It is just that the other centres like procurement and finance, have no role if there is no business in the first place. ‘These are my two mute submissions based on Drucker’s immutable principles’ said Walter Vieira, marketing guru who has been described by Philip Kotler (the world’s guru on marketing) as one of the best speakers on marketing in Asia.

He was speaking in Dubai at an event organized by KEL.

‘The truth is when it comes to reality we forget marketing and also forget innovation. We just get involved with our daily routine that we miss out on the true concepts that really make companies and individuals’ remarked Vieira in his introduction. According to Vieira ‘The only reason for existence of a company is to create and keep a customer. If there is one thing that every business owner must understand it is marketing. The right marketing strategy can bring you success just as the wrong one can lead to failure. The first step in devising a good marketing plan is to understand exactly what marketing is. You might think it is about selling products, but that is not entirely true. While the end result is probably selling products or services, marketing itself has to do more with figuring out what your customers need and finding a way to get it to them. It requires you to carefully evaluate your business to see how you can best provide your product or service to the customer’.

He continued, ‘Technology is important but Marketing is even more important in the running of a business’. In any company large or small, marketing is everybody’s business from the chairman to the doorman, all need to be involved in marketing. There is no such thing as marketing department except for convenience. Many times the telephone operator and the reception make or break the image of the company. The earlier a company realizes this the better will be its success. Lots of companies have independent positions called ‘Marketing Director’ and another called ‘Sales Director’. For these companies the Marketing Director prepares the sales strategy while the Sales Director is responsible for Sales. This is wrong according to Vieira. Sales are an integral part of Marketing just like Promotion and Pricing. Else, why don’t you have Pricing Director, Promotion Director just like Sales Director – questioned Vieira. This happens because there is no proper understanding of Marketing. Marketing is providing customer service at a profit making optimum use of available resources.

He stated the three challenges in marketing faced by all companies as first raised by Arthur Felton.

1. There is a need but there is no market – We are enthused when we produce a new product without bothering to find out if there is really a market for it.
2. There is a market but there is no customer – In developing countries like India, there is a potential market for several products but need government support to succeed. As usual, the bureaucrats never look at these products unless they are benefitted from it.
3. There is a customer but there is no sales man – e.g. Krishna stoves which had lot of customers in the rural areas but were sold only in urban areas for lack of sales distribution in the rural areas.

Marketing has gone through a lot of evolution. Marketing consists of four Ps – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. In developing countries like India we need to add another 2 Ps – Politics and Public. In these countries there is lot of interference on any project both from the politicians and public, he remarked. Of late, the 4 Ps are converted into 4 Cs namely customer value, cost to the customer, convenience and communication.

Nirmalya Kumar, Professor at the London School of Business says that you must forget about the Ps and Cs and just ask three questions –

1. Whom to serve? – (Valued Customer). Identify you customer segment. For e.g. low cost airlines.
2. What to offer? – (Value Proposition). Be clear on your value proposition on what you are offering to your target customer.
3. How to deliver? – (Value Network). Be clear on how you would offer your service.

Extending his talk, he said that Innovation is a fascinating thing. ‘I just get fascinated on how innovative people are today, especially the younger generation’. He gave a few glaring examples of innovation. A 16 year old girl studying biotechnology in the US has devised a mechanism of inserting a special glass instead of metal rod inside the body that gels better than metal. Gyanesh Pandey, a young Electrical Engineer from Bihar created a process to convert rice husk into power and has installed 75 power plants each generating about 40 KW of electricity. Each plant powers around 400 households in a village at a very reasonable price as there is no distribution loss (typically 30 -40% of the power is lost in distribution). K R Sridhar, a mechanical Engineer originally hailing from Tamil Nadu has produced a power plant in a box and his company Bloom Energy intends to provide this to every home at an affordable price in the next 5 – 10 years. Companies such as Ebay and Google have already purchased larger sized box plants from his company and using them at present. GE has invented an ECG machine that runs on batteries and can provide ECGs at a nominal cost affordable to villagers in India. Coke has produced ice boxes that run on Solar power to be used in villages that have no electricity. Innovation has no boundaries – boundaries of age, qualification etc. he concluded.

The session was followed by Q&A. Shobha Mendonca introduced the speaker to the audience. Julian Lewis proposed the vote of thanks.