What's your opinion about Airtel's new identity?

Bharti Group recently launched its new Airtel logo. Many of you must be airtel users. Even if you are not, this massive exercise deserves your opinion. Are you happy with the new brand identity? Or not?

Take a minute. Just click here, and submit.

Stunt Driving or Safe Driving?

Interface Communications has launched Mahindra Stallio's TVC featuring Aamir Khan, which comes as a relief from the usual bike stunts. Bajaj Pulsar came up with stunt mania ads and soon thereafter became a sponsor for the MTV show too that promoted street biking and stunts by youth. Chandigarh itself saw the emergence of many such stunt bikers who used open wide roads in the wee hours to practice and demonstrate their hands on dangerous stunts.
The new TVC comes at a time when India is sitting up to the challenges of traffic related accidents that are almost assuming epidemic proportion. Time to think indeed: stunt or safe driving? 
Good, simple communication.

Revitalize Your Nonprofit's Brand Image

Just recently I was a part of internal discussions of a 30 years old professional body where best brains from different disciplines mulled over the need for 're-branding' the organisation to attract more members, and improve participation in various events. The brain-storming did brought out some key issues of repositioning the organisation, engaging families of members in activities, getting involved in social activities, and even redefining the vision statement. 

Well, when I asked the participating members about "what made them join the organisation?", the response itself laid bare the inconsistencies between expectations of members from their organisation and what they got. 

Surprisingly many professionals were looking for wanting to look for self-actualisation needs whereas the association was focusing more on doing activities that were not addressing those needs. 

The mission or the vision, despite being there, was not shared with members, and nor the new inductions ever got the feel of it. The absence of long term goals did not engage the members who could feel themselves a part of the organisation. No shared goals. No short-term or long-term goals. No attempt to institutionalise the operations. No plans to raise the corpus that kept the activities minimal and frugal lest they overshot the available kitty. 

Unlike the commercial world, where buyers and sellers maintain a well-defined relationship, in an NGO or a professional management body, the relationship between its members, and other stakeholders has to be nurtured with shared convictions.  

Ken Burnett in his book Zen of Fundraising (Jossey Bass 2006) defines nonprofit's brand as "the set of ideas, image, feelings, beliefs, and values that are carried around in a person's head."

That's true for every brand, commercial or otherwise. It is the set of perceptions about an organisation that every individual carries in his/head, and emotional connects with the brand or the values that it portrays. 

In an era, when an individual has numerous choices available to address individual's emotional context, a nonprofit has to identify its niche, have clear goals, and excite its members to be a part of a much larger mission through collective participation. 

To reposition and strengthen your brand, follow the CorePR's Branding Rules: 

a. Define your vision. What is your key mission! What is our promise?

b. Communicate unified, standardised message

c. What do you want to achieve in the next one, two, five or ten years? 

d. What are the values that you wish your members to imbibe and portray? 

e. How would you like your organisation to be perceived amongst your stakeholders?

f. Identify your key stakeholders. Understand each segment's personal preferences, needs, etc. Most importantly, the first and foremost key stakeholders of a nonprofit are its members.

g. Customise your deliverables to meet the need of each stakeholder. 

h. Innovate. How different is your organisation in terms of its deliverables?

i. Do conduct periodic communication and social audit to assess whether the needs of the stakeholders are being addressed effectively?

j. How effectively we are using ICT to keep everyone fully informed and involved?

k. Leverage technology and entertainment as additional plug-ins to customise delivery of your products/services or rather more importantly, your brand promise. 

l. Nurture your nonprofit through consistently innovative yet engaging fund-raising ideas. The membership subscriptions or casual donations are not enough to maintain sustained development of a nonprofit. It must be built into regular activity plan. 

m. Lastly, keep your brand dynamic, relevant and vibrant to achieve sizable mind-share in the minds of its stakeholders. 

Media Kit

Media kits had been around for ages and is a standard procedure in most media briefings. Though the online media kits are pretty convenient for computer-savvy journos, but nothing beats the stuff that anyone would love to carry back home. More

Media Kit

Media kits had been around for ages and is a standard procedure in most media briefings. Though the online media kits are pretty convenient for computer-savvy journos, but nothing beats the stuff that anyone would love to carry back home.
During my days as trainee reporter in Delhi, I would love those fancy folders and jackets at the press conferences for the neat package of information that one could find handy, there were those from public sector undertakings, that stuffed anything and everything from annual reports, to brochures, to product literature, the CEO's messages, and lengthy typed out press releases running into several pages, and it used to be a real effort to search out the desired information. That of course was the time in 80s when there were only typewriters and bulky smudgy xerox machines.
Today the media kits are much more fancy and we have already moved on from floppy drives, to CDs, and now to small pen drives containing the entire information, photos, data, can be neatly organised and distributed.
There had always been innovative media kits that some of the organisations do experiment with, especially the real estate, and entertainment industry. The recent 3Idiots release carried a small 'guide to being an idiot' with usual merchandise, while Taare Zameen Par had a notebook with scribbles of the child character Ishaan.
I still remember when one of the real estate developer wanting to sell his housing project in Himachal, created a media kit shaped like a book, with cutout inserts inside containing a bottle of perfume that smelled like deodar trees, had neatly packaged leaves of a tree, and a cassette that described the project with ambiant sound of a forest in the background.
A good media kit, however, always is useful that helps strengthen the brand and its recall value. However, one can avoid stuffing the information that may not be of much use, or can be supplied on further enquiries.
A good media kit for a press briefing session should have :
a. A usable news release with contact details;
b. A translated version for the vernacular media (or in languages of the media expected to participate)
c. Hi-res photographs, corporate logos, and photographs of the product being talked about;
d. Brief profile of the spokesperson/CEO
e. Separate sheet indicating the name/s of the persons on the dais (in case sitting order is known in advance) for giving out to the photo journalists and tv-crew.
f. FAQ sheet and other background information
g. Corporate/product literature relevant to the press conference;
h. Writing pad and pen inside the docket will always be a welcome addition.

CJ, CorePR

Regional Seminar on TV News

Media Information and Communication Centre of India (MICCI) in collaboration with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and CorePR, are organising a one day seminar on "TV News: Market Forces vs Social Responsibility" in Chandigarh on 21st August 2009.

This is an open forum in which the communication professionals, opinion leaders, and others are participating to brain storm on the growing commercialisation, and becoming entertainment oriented with 'news value' becoming more of a 'nuisance'.

Please respond back and email back to me for more details and participation in the debate.

CJ . CorePR