Yo!
I’m feeling a bit sorry for Cyrus Mistry. Not because I have great insight on what he did (or didn’t do) as Chairman, but because till he took the job he would have considered himself a rather successful person. He was a billionaire, he had a good track record running his family business and had time for golf and horses. Now he is left defending his reputation against a perception of incompetence and more. Undoubtedly his shareholding and lineage helped him get the job, but they have not prevented his exit.
It seems like Indian firms tend to build the role around the available person rather than defining the job clearly and then finding the best person to do the job. Perhaps the second approach is more successful – and scaleable – in the long run, and it looks like that’s what the Tata group is hoping to do this time around. Something similar happened at Infosys where for a while the succession was determined by whether you were a Founder or not, which didn’t quite work out, and now they finally have an ‘outsider’ CEO who was picked for the job definition at hand.
In a development presumably unrelated to Mr Mistry’s departure, the Taj hotels are considering rolling back the decision to have separate brands like Vivanta and Ginger. Vivanta is six years old and while I didn’t quite get the logic of having independent brands at the time, the case study on Landor’s website is persuasive, while on the other hand the logic of the CEO sounds good too! In today’s world, I think the value of a brand blueprint lies more in its ability to deliver a consistent or desirable brand experience than in its external manifestations like logo and colour standards and going by the current Tata thinking it would appear that Vivanta has failed in the brand experience department. But this doesn’t stop brands launching (and possibly spending a fortune) on new logos. The latest is Urban Ladder, with what looks like a orange rectangle but is obviously filled with meaning. I do like the animated version of the logo though which actually explains the reasoning behind the logo, and perhaps brands need to think of designing for the internet first going forward.
Paul Writer recently bought a table from Urban Ladder and when the delivery was a little delayed we reached out through Twitter. It was resolved successfully but it got us thinking - ”Has Social media set unrealistic standards of customer service”? I’m co-hosting a Tweetchat session on this topic with IBM on November 9th at 3pm - sign up here so we can bring you into the conversation. Or just follow @jessie_paul and @paulwriter and track the conversation on #cmoindia.
Ashok Soota, Chairman and co-founder of Happiest Minds, one of Paul Writer’s earliest clients is someone who has had a long and successful career run ranging from President of Wipro’s tech business to co-founder, Chairman and MD of Mindtree which he led to an IPO, and now Chairman and Co-founder of Happiest Minds which since inception in 2011 has already hit a run rate of $60 million . He has now co-authored a book on Entrepreneurship based on these experiences and filled with practical advice on being a successful entrepreneur- you can get your copy here.
This is the season of festivals and we have a whole set of them coming up – Diwali, Vishwakarma
Puja, Bhai Dhuj, Halloween and Kannada Rajyotsava. I think as marketers we can do more to make festivals memorable – read my post on 7 Ways Marketers Can Make Diwali Bigger.
Wishing you all a warm and happy Diwali filled with love, laughter and light.
The post Measuring Mistry and More Marketing Mysteries appeared first on Paul Writer.