Thursday, May 3, 2012

Industry leaders discuss Marketing for Not for Profit Organizations @ BIMTECH Marketing Summit

Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida hosted Indian Marketing Summit on Friday, April 27, 2012 and Saturday, April 28, 2012. The theme of the Summit was, ‘Marketing for not for Profit Organizations in emerging Markets’. Prof. Jagdish Sheth explained the theme by saying, “Most of the Not-for-Profit organizations attach marketing with profit motive and selling. Therefore they refrain from it most often. This makes them miss out on many ways to create a sustainable enterprise.”

Dr. H Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH Greater Noida talked at length about Social Marketing and emphasized on sustainability and its importance in the long run. While quoting researchers Kasturi Rangan, Karim and Sandberg Dr. Chaturvedi said that conventional marketing methods were not always effective when used in social change.

Ms Cynthia Round, EVP, Brand Leadership, of United Way World Wide stressed that ‘trust’ is the most important factor, in context of Not for Profit Organizations. “World is facing a trust crisis.” She said. According to her, there was more trust amongst the Indian NGOs in comparison to the rest of the world. She also emphasized the need for the application of the concepts of ‘Brand strategic thinking’ in the social sector.

Mr. Pradeep Kashyap, founder, MART, mentioned that more than five per cent of India’s GDP goes to the support of development sector. He also shared the evolving concept of ‘Business Mind and Social Heart’ organizations. 

Prof. Jagdish Sheth, Founder AIM, discussed 4A’s of marketing with the perspective of social change. While sharing his thoughts he said “Most NfPs lacked the skills of marketing their offerings. He suggested that “the best way to encourage NfPs to use marketing is to take a customer service perspective instead of a marketer’s selling perspective.” He dwelt briefly on 4A’s of marketing for NfPs and equated Market Development to a combination of Market Accessibility, Market Accessibility, Market Affordability and Market Awareness.  The absence of any one of these factors would not lead to Market Development.

In the technical session with the theme ‘From Non Profit Organizations to Non Profit Marketing’, Ms. Cynthia Round equated Brand to a Relationship and stressed on the importance of significance of an organization in the lives of supporters.  Mr. Bill Toliver, Executive Director, The Matale Line, said that emotional marketing has a short life span.  It would appeal to the customer once and would get bypassed the second time. Marketing based on real cause without ulterior motives has the potential to stay for long.  Mr. Ian Correa of Hope foundation said that love and respect would engage and enable confrontation to solve a problem and a marriage of passion and professionalism would be a more lasting relationship.

The Day 2 of the Summit started with a session with the theme social marketing as a catalyst for development in emerging market. Dr. Alan Andreasen, Professor of Marketing, Mcdonough school of Business spoke about the different models which can be used by social enterprises to reach out to wider audience. He talked about his BCOS frame work wherein the emphasis was on the beneficiaries.

Mr. Ramesh Ramanathan , founder of Janagraha said that even the urban population has its pain points. His area of focus started with Bangalore his home town’s living conditions. “Each ward in a city has its budgets which is to be allocated for improving the civic conditions. So without rocking the boat too much, Janagraha started off with five per cent of the wards budget. The community involvement was started by asking people to act as “FOOLS”- fools courageous enough to want to change their cities civic conditions. It started off a s small movement but now it is reaching a humongous proportion of people.”

Mr. Kalyan Paul ED, Pan Himalyan Grassroots Development Foundation talked about how their model has helped many areas which were having water problems. He said the main issue right now is creating a second line of young people who can lead the next wave of social enterprise.

He said that attracting the best talent to this sector was a huge problem because of the costs involved in their education. Many of the passionate youth are not able to join because they bring with them a big baggage of education loans. He also exhorted the educational system to come out with a solution.

Mr. Anshul Gupta, Founder, Goonj talked about how the rural poor are facing the problem of even the basic necessities required for a dignified life. Everybody talks about basic needs of food, shelter and clothing, however, when we talk about different policies and issues on various forums, we ignore clothing most often. He quipped, “We don’t donate, we discard”.

The second session was on the theme ‘Emerging Digital Tools for Not for Profit Marketing’. This covered areas like Social media, Mobile Media and the next digital trends. Ms. Jennifer Elwood, ED, Red Cross talked about how the online experience for Red Cross was cumbersome, complex and inconsistent. She emphasized on the need of the art of story-telling for effective usage of social media marketing. She gave some relevant examples from Red Cross, US.

Ms. Jessie Pau, CEO, PaulWriter Strategic Services shared ‘ABCD’ model for marketing. This ABCD represents Added value, Behaviour change, Complexity and Diffusion respectively. She said it’s always a trade of between time & money. “If you don’t have money for advertisement then spend time to market”. She also said that the same tools used for commercial marketing can be used by social enterprise.

Ms. Saloni Malhotra, Founder, DesiCrew Solutions Private Limited, shared her experience of creating a local BPO and her experiments with social media in facilitating the business. She emphasized the fact that ‘The message and the medium both are equally important.

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