Internal Communication with TWB_ I www.twb.in
25 Dec

7 ways your enterprise communications will change in 2019

By TWB_ In Communication, HR Communication, Internal Communications, Strategic Marketing /   No Comments

Communication is fundamental for an enterprise and you use Marketing Communication, Corporate Communication and Internal Communication to influence customers, partners, employees, shareholders, governments etc. 2018 saw key communication trends emerge with cloud-based systems from chats to telephony, the advent of video in the mainstream and inflection point of influencers over brand ambassadors with exponential digital reach.

Based on our experience with customers, in enabling their enterprise communication strategies in 2018, this is our take on what will create the most impact for your communication in 2019.

Democratization of Enterprise Communication

The speed of change outside and inside an organization is simply too great for communication to be the sole responsibility of a few ‘designated’ communicators. 2019 will require everyone to be a competent communicator and respond quickly to information that flows up, down, and across traditional channels. Enterprise communication will democratize. 

AI & Emerging Technologies

AI-powered chatbots are already powering customer interactions and they are set to raise employee & partner experience too. 60% of business-to-business companies are likely to redesign their processes to accommodate and ensure human augmentation for scalability and precision. What is your strategy? [Request a copy of the TWB_ book on Leveraging AI in the Modern Technology Enterprise]

Unified customer journey

While the idea of a unified customer or employee journey has taken root the journey still has to be mapped out for most organizations. The communication needs at each touch point yet to be ascertained. Transactional touch points — from invoices to product packaging to salary slips — will emerge as the key places to focus communication on as businesses realize attention spans here are short but attention is highly focused.

Visual & Print Communication

Pictures speak a universal language and with the need to connect to global customers as well as employees visual communication will continue to be a key communication trend both within and outside the enterprise. Print will see an upswing as well — as organizations realize that their focusing on digital only inadvertently closes down a key touch point. Digital and print can work together – and it creates simpler communication for customers.

Outsourcing of Communication

Creating relevant personalized communications requires enterprises to process data & preferences and manage presence across channels. Most organizations just don’t have the expertise to manage all three and it is therefore not easy to deliver relevant and personalized communications that appeal to the breadth of your customers’ preferences and across different media. Outsourcing communications can bring in expertise on demand, reduce costs, and diversify channel strategy. [Read more: TWB_ as the outsource communications partner of the Fortune 500]

Improved Storytelling

Markets will get noisier & storytelling will be the major differentiator between businesses that get noticed and those that don’t. Businesses and brands that create human connections through the art of story will rise. [Read more by TWB_ : Great storytelling for business leadership: What makes listeners connect? ]

Global Teams are driving Internal Communications

Teams are becoming the basic unit of business as more companies move away from hierarchical organizations to functional teams. Teams are likely spread geographically and members have diverse cultures and communication styles. Importantly teams need to resolve conflicts on their own and work through complex issues to arrive at consent on a course of action. This requires people to communicate even more effectively.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_ CEO

Tech Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker & Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a BTech-MBA & CEO of the world leader in communications for technology businesses with a worldwide Fortune 500 customer base. Rakesh is a speaker on Leadership, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Communications, creating world-class bootstrapped Startups & resurgence in business. He lives with 800 rescued dogs, has no work-life balance and will not have it any other way! Rakesh has been featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies etc.

Are you looking to create or improve how you communicate?

  • TWB_ makes complex technical and business ideas of technology leaders across the world easily understood by their stakeholders. Over forty Fortune 500 technology majors in Information Technology, Defense & Aerospace, Engineering, Energy & Life Sciences in the US, India, Europe, Taiwan, China & Japan leverage on TWB_
  • Call  TWB_ Bangalore 96860 59020 | Houston (832)689-6456 | Tel Aviv +972.544.603.612 or mail shift@twb.in
  • Get more TWB_ insights on the TWB_ Blog | LinkedIn | Medium  | SlideShare

 

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Saturation Strategic Marketing from TWB_
08 Aug

TWB_ strategic marketing brings home a $200 million opportunity on a $30K spend

By TWB_ In Content, Marketing Content, Product Strategy, Strategic Marketing /   No Comments

TWB_ strategic marketing leveraging TWB_’s entire suite of services delivers a $200 million RFP to an Indian prime.

An Indian software vendor wanted to be in consideration for a $200million RFP from a US telecom giant.  However, the US company refused all attempts to make the Indian prime a respondent to the RFP since they felt the Indian vendor is not a product company of the same caliber as the other respondents including Cisco and HP. The customer felt that the Indian company did not have visible technological depth.

Making a play for the $200 million RFI

TWB_ was brought in to deliver the RFP from the RFI stage. TWB_ developed and worked on a 3-month plan to bring about the perception change for the customer which included a plan to develop a brand position for the solution, deep content to support this technology space and high visibility of this brand with the executive management of the customer.

The plan included,

Branding

  • Technology Branding: Branding not just as a name or a logo but with attributes of leadership, and aspiration in the defined space and the ability to deliver. From consideration a set of visual deliverables – logo’s, guidelines of the campaign, the language and brand promise are created. It is this that was followed through in all forthcoming communication.

Presence

Creating credible presence including

  • Event & Speaking engagement: Creating & delivering an Event & Speaking presence plan with the support of the marketing team of the Indian prime
  • PR/Media presence: Creating a PR campaign leveraging the existing PR partner to start plugging in the information that will be created for print as well as online distribution especially in the US and target trade & technology press.

Targeting

  • Creation & delivering on a digital ‘targeting plan’ included TWB_ drawing up a list of the most important execs of the US giant, and the most significant locations in the US where this particular technology base is located, as well as the most significant customers they have.
  • Then TWB_ draws out and delivers the most important aspect of this campaign – creates high visibility high volume presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and Google on these locations and these exec so these ‘ads’ follow them around – each leading to a high quality ‘engaging content’ artefact which in turn leads to a quality ‘deep content artefact’. This targeting allows spends to the focus on specific people, interest areas, and locations targets.

Intellectual Leadership

  • Engaging content: Creating & deliver ‘engaging content’ for the technology solution through blogs, social media posts, explainer videos etc (1-2 minute). TWB creates the content, does the branding and actually develops the assets.
  • Deep Content: Creation and delivery of ‘deep content’ once they ‘engage’ – this is done through White papers, Position papers, and evangelism. TWB_ created the topics for these artifacts, created the design of the content, researches develops and creates finished content including layouts

Over the next 3-4 months digital ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google would follow the execs. They would interact with quick engaging content. And would have access to deeply intellectual content. They would interact with Indian execs at trade conferences. The Indian prime for the RFI and then the RFP.

TWB_ Content & Strategic Marketing I www.twb.in

This saturation marketing situation showcases TWB_ entire ability to deliver a world-class in-house integrated solution including branding, research, authoring, content reuse and digital marketing. And a customer win.

Looking for a Strategic Marketing partner to create market wins?

 

 

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Technology Manager in Leadership Roles - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
01 Jan

Moving Technical Managers to Management Roles: Leadership Transformations by TWB_

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership /  9 No Comments

Technical Managers moving into Management roles is a script that plays out every day in large tech companies. Managers with the best technical expertise and ability to reach performance goals consistently are the first consideration for senior management roles. It is clearly an expectation from managers that they are promoted to management, the management thinks it is great because it represents continuity and that deep understanding of technologies, products and systems. Until it hits everyone.

The new management candidate gets increasingly frustrated because they spend little time using their technical skills and instead on  “people problems,” navigating office politics, and coordinating.  Such a transition hits hard because there is a no clear fit of existing skills to new professional demands and there is no quick way to acquire them. In this article, we’ll explore how the HR/ Management of the company, the Tech-manager can make the transition. This transition can occur from early to mid-career roles, and again from mid-career to management. Here’s what each of the participants in this situation should need to consider to get Technical Managers to move into Management roles:

The HR/ Management checklist to promoting Technical/ Functional Managers

Making this transition to Mangement roles gets harder as the candidate gains years and experience — so the first thing to consider is transitions that come earlier in career say in the middle management level.  To begin with, how do you determine that functional/technical manager is a good candidate for a management role? To begin with they should have demonstrated these skills:

 

  1. Great Communication & People skills: (S)He has strong great writing, oratorial and presentation skills as well as people skills.
  2. Willingness to suspend ego gratification:  to concentrate on helping others succeed: Management is about ensuring success at an organisational level and is not about pursuing personal success or fulfilment as much as it is one’s colleagues and co-workers.
  3. Strong ‘hard skills’: They need to not only have great organizational, project management, and budgeting skills management requires being able to task-switch among them. It also requires overall inputs into detailed deliverables, and to manage — people, time, technology and money — in getting things done.
  4. Strong strategic thinking bias: They need to have a deep understanding of how the technology works to help businesses and organizations meet their goals and objectives. This requires an understanding of the risks and rewards that technology presents, and how to produce the best returns on customers’ investments and activities.
  5. Ability to manage communications in both directions: Success depends on understanding the needs of those above and below them in the organizational chart. Stakeholders are on both sides with management the incumbent has to communicate to both sets carrying expectations, instructions but most of corporate goals and actions to produce the most positive outcomes possible.

The Technical/ Functional Managers checklist to Management position

If you are a technical or functional manager moving into a management position you need to prepare yourself these 2 fundamental shifts:

  1. The first is your mindset has to change — Your technical knowledge is only limited help in your new management role as you now have to focus on the skills and successes that involves multiple functions and teams.
  2. The second is that your identity in the company will change –Being a superstar in your functional role will not save you from starting at the beginning again, and you need to be prepared for this “identity demotion.”

Here are some steps you can take to make your transition into a management role smooth

  1. Solving Strategic Problems: You need to translate problem-solving into a management context. Problems will require multiple functions within the company and other industry players etc to solve. Reading on cutting-edge business thinking can allow you to think & engage on a broader front.
  2. Build a cross-functional understanding: Technical Managers frequently have a narrow worldview. Unless you understand and leverage the marketers, sales, operations and and others, you will struggle to move beyond your role as a technical manager.
  3. Find a mentor — Look for someone in your organization who has succeeded in a management role coming from a functional role. A mentor can help you avoid some of the mistakes that they made and help get across to the right people within the organization critical for your success.
  4. Stay away from technical work– Resist the temptation to get involved with technical projects that aren’t your responsibility.
  5. Meet with your reports and their teams —  Meeting them allows you to find out what interests and motivates them, and they have the professional environment necessary to be successful in their role. It also allows you to find out what your team expects from you.
  6. Be a good communicator —  You need to learn how to write, learning how to speak and learn how to behave as ‘management’. Emails need to be crafted with care and sensitivity. Communication needs to demonstrate your intelligence, knowledge and thoughtfulness.
  7. Dress up: Your colleagues, the industry and ecosystem you inhabit expects it. Always dress the part for the position.

Technical & functional managers from IT, finance, sales, or marketing are promoted to management because they know their job well. The problem is that they have little management experience and most organizations offer very little management assistance.  In a management role instead of focussing on macro influences, strategic issues, and “people aspect” of their new role, they continue to stay in their comfort zone — their own projects and technical skills. It is important for the organization to focus on how to make the transition smooth so the organization benefits from the deep functional understanding that the incumbent brings as well as fresh ideas and thinking.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

 

Are you looking to leverage technical managers transition to management?

 

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7 Steps to Creating a Powerful Technology Brand - Branding for Technology Branding - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
30 Dec

7 steps for creating a powerful technology brand: Branding for Technology (Part 3 of 5) by Rakesh Shukla

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership, Product Strategy, Strategic Marketing /  5 No Comments

Discussing branding for technology, we’ve seen earlier what makes a brand — the idea of brand promise and lessons from FMCG branding for technology branding. In this article, we elaborate on brand concepts and suggest some specific steps senior managers can take to move their companies from a product-centric to a promise-centric, brand-driven business.

Let’s consider how the buyers and sellers of technology participate in the sales cycle and perceive branding,

From a tech buyers perspective: When B2B consumers of technology especially information technology weigh the merits of a vendor’s bid, they weigh not just how well the vendor’s products and services complement their own business and technological environment but also how the purchase decision looks to others. They are just as concerned with the image of the product as they are with the technical merits. Therefore while it is meant to be a rational decision that maximizes value, it is based on objective or subjective data. That is where a technology brand comes in.

From a tech marketers perspective: Conversely managers in high-tech businesses find brand management concepts interesting but see no merit in moving from a product-centric to a brand-centric model. The common refrain is “it doesn’t apply here”. This argument is based on what they believe to be unique characteristics of high-tech products and markets, mainly fast-changing technology and high levels of uncertainty.

As we’ve seen in the previous 2 chapters it is precisely this expectation gap that a technology brand solves. Indeed when things change quickly, buyers face great uncertainty and they want to deal with a company they perceive has a vision of their needs.

Challenges in high-tech branding are the same as others businesses in formulating distinctive and credible promises of value. However, in high-tech markets, offering a distinctive value proposition is especially difficult since competitors match one another’s clearly defined performance characteristics. There isn’t a great deal of trust between customers and companies in high-tech markets simply because there are many and frequent new entrants, and most have not had the time or the wisdom to build a promise of value that goes beyond price-performance.

For technology branding in the first place it important that before defining a brand for the company to define where it is and where it wants to go. In the first instance: what’s the brand promise? Google stands for discovery. Apple stands for quality and innovation. What’s yours? Aspiration? Trust? What should the customer feel each time they think about the company or use the product. This emotion is what needs to be built into the brand.

In the second place, the process involved in the development of a branding strategy requires us to review the purpose of the company, its reason to be. “Why we do what we do” is much more important than “what we do” and “how we do it”. What do customers, prospects, partners, investors, reporters, analysts, even competitors think? Bridging the gap between the two with messaging, positioning, and a visual language is the branding.

7 steps to creating a powerful technology brand

Price – Performance in branding

“Price” and “performance,” for example, may mean different things to different people. Does price mean initial cost or life cycle cost? Does performance mean microprocessor speed, the speed of delivery of services, the product’s ability to keep pace with the market? Does performance include presale and post-sale service and support? High-tech companies can make it clear exactly which aspects of their offerings’ price and performance benefit their customers through branding.

Developing the brand promise

The promise of value must be relevant to the people or businesses a company wants to have as its customers; no business can promise everything for everyone. But it is possible to tailor a promise to meet the desires of a specific subgroup of customers, as long as that promise can be kept and as long as it doesn’t confuse anyone. That’s why a company must consider its own capabilities and its target customer segments before developing its brand message. 

Branding on Benefits

Many high-tech managers are most comfortable a brand as a set of tangible, verifiable product characteristics. However, high-tech purchases involve not just technologists but also business managers and end users, who are far more interested in what a technology product does for them than in how it works. As high-tech managers come to understand this, many start changing the way they speak of their offerings. Instead of selling “products,” they sell “solutions” or “benefits.” Such a shift in thinking is not enough. A company needs to decide it wants to be in the space of product competition or brand competition. Competitors can continually match and leapfrog over one another by offering better and more features and by identifying the benefits of their products for customers.

Brand promises need to be enduring

While a brand needs to make an enduring promise. Making and keeping a promise, and keeping it consistently, can be a powerful source of competitive advantage. However making too many promises, or changing them frequently, raises uncertainty and erodes brand value. There’s a high probability that truly strong brands will continue to be leaders because they make and keep a promise of value over successive generations of technologies. True, newer technologies can eclipse older ones but an enduring promise of value can buy time for a brand in the face of new technology even the face of serious lapses in product quality.

Market share is not brand promise

Companies sometimes think that a leadership position in a market is a promise. However, market share, even overwhelming market share is not, a promise of value. Brand equity will distort customer perception of size and value very quickly and there is no way that a company can stay immune to if the competition focuses on it.

Brands provide emotional rewards

It is very difficult for many high-tech managers to acknowledge,  the idea that emotions can be so important to a company’s success. But goods and services that reside in that third level are indeed developed and positioned as a way of fulfilling a promise of value to selected customers, not simply as technologies in search of a market. How do customers feel when experiencing the benefits of the brand? Do they feel confident? Productive? Innovative? Caring? Responsible? Successful? 

Brands have personality

Brands have deeper values — such things as conservative values, family values, achievement-oriented values. These are characteristics the brand would have if it had human qualities: friendly, warm, caring, confident, decisive, aggressive, or the like. They attract a customer set they are focused on and are the differentiating characteristics of the brand. 

Brand Performance should be measured

Too often the only yardstick of performance is awards or 3rd party rankings – both of which may not be adequate -markers of brand performance. For high-tech companies, it is important to track how customers perceive the brand relative to its competition over time. It is also important to monitor the health of key dimensions of a brand’s promise of value. Even the most benchmarked aspect of customer satisfaction managers need to determine if satisfaction is leading to loyalty.

A company cannot expect to build broader acceptance simply by making a promise of value in advertising. It must first know what promise to make and to whom. That requires the ability to assess the potential of relevant technologies and to anticipate its customers’ current and future needs—even before customers can articulate those needs. It must also ensure that the promise of value is understood and fulfilled as the company manages complex networks of value-adding partners, ranging from consulting firms to systems integrators, from independent software vendors to resellers.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

Are you looking to create or improve your technology brand?

 

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Storytelling for Business - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
30 Dec

Great storytelling for business leadership: What makes listeners connect?

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership /  10 No Comments

How many of your management team are true leaders — those who can inspire the organization, set a vision, teach important lessons, define culture and explain what the organization. Of those who are, how many are great communicators? Turns out some of the leadership and all of the communication are learnt skills. The easiest and the most powerful communication skill is telling great stories or ‘storytelling’.

Storytelling is critical for management and leadership because very often nothing else works. Graphs will leave listeners untouched. Conversation and dialogue can be too didactic. But the same listener can be moved with a great story. Storytelling in the business context translates abstract numbers into compelling statements of a leader’s goals —  by drawing the listener(s) into the story. Though business cases are made of hard numbers, stories make them spring to life because storytelling can show causal relationships. The question, therefore, is not about telling or not but rather to tell them unwittingly and clumsily or intelligently and skillfully. Storytelling can be learned by anyone who wants to be a leader — CXOs, Senior and Middle management.

Why is storytelling important?

In a  meeting or a talk in a short time-span, a leader can communicate maybe only 1 or 2 powerful ideas. Storytelling, however, allows for multi-layered complex ideas to be told since they are not sequential but interwoven. It is this association that and sharing of complex ideas that can allow leaders to – spark change, transmitting values, share knowledge and lead people into the future.

Leaders establish credibility through telling stories. The audience can feel and respond immediately and deeply. Stories can communicate complex ideas, break status quo, generate interaction & transformation. Rather than merely advocating and counter-advocating positions through constructed and business focussed meetings, talks, emails and other such communication a  story, especially a personal one, breaks through the acceptance barrier. Communication becomes empowering – even as the leader comes across as more vulnerable – yet someone who is still a leader because (s)he has persevered.  

Why is storytelling so powerful?

Storytelling draws in the listener and draws on the active, participation of individuals as against conventional management focuses on lifeless elements  – mission statements,  strategies, processes, budgets and assets. Stories make people discover a degree of coherence that is otherwise very difficult to achieve — something that has been an underlying principle of psychotherapy.

When a listener hears a story that touches him or her they feel their lives have a meaning.  This feeling eventually vaporises and the listener inevitably falls back into an everyday pattern — but with the difference that a radical shift in their lives have taken place and their motivation and behavior are primed for change.

What makes a good story and a good story-teller?

First and foremost the story needs to be personal and it needs to imply values. People make deep associations with leaders that have the courage to tell a strong personal story, and where the story implies certain values. The second is that the audience associates with people with a ‘consistent’ self‐image. For a leader, it is important to have a clear view of a personal life‐story that is aligned that is the thrust what you want the audience to see.

The leader tells a story to show people who they are. Their identity as an individual doesn’t lie in their roles, it is in the one‐of‐a‐kind person they have become as a result of the experiences they’ve had. The leader must tell stories interactively and model it on a conversation — that creates a relationship between the leader and the listener that is symmetrical — such that the listener could speak next. It is this feeling with the listener of being in an open conversation that the leader is vulnerable that the listener is drawn ‘into’ the story.

Types of storytelling

  • Style: The leader should tell the story as if it were being told to a single individual. The story should be kept simple, focused and clear with no alternate points of view. 
  • Don’t argue the truth: The leader should offer listeners an unobstructed view of the truth and listeners will see it and recognize it for what it is — that any reasonable person would have to agree.
  • Practice ease: Only 7% of the meaning of a communication came from the content of the words spoken 93% comes from nonverbal communication. The leader should seem spontaneous. They should choose the shape of the story and stick to it. Practice ease. 

Points of action

The story needs to have an end in mind — what do you want the listener to do when the story is over? These could include:

  • Sparking action: The story describes how a successful change was implemented in the past, but allows listeners to imagine how it might work in their situation. Communicating who they are – provides audience‐engaging drama and reveals some strength and vulnerability from the leaders past.
  • Transmitting values: The leader uses believable characters and situations and ensures the story is consistent about values and actions.  This feels familiar to the audience and will prompt discussion about why they can’t follow the same values/ action too!
  • Sharing knowledge: Leaders focus on problems and shows, in some detail, how they were corrected and why the solution worked and solicits alternative – and possibly better – solutions.
  • Leading people into the future: The leader evokes the future they want to create without providing excessive detail that will prove to be wrong.

No matter how compelling the numbers of sheets, charts or infographics if they require people to act in unfamiliar ways that is unlikely to happen. But effective storytelling often does. Storytelling can inspire people to act in unfamiliar ways. And remember storytelling not only gets the message across effectively, its incremental cost is zero. 

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

 

Are you looking to create or improve how your leaders communicate?

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Lessons from FMCG branding for Technology Branding - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
30 Dec

Lessons from FMCG branding: Branding for Technology (Part 2 of 5) by Rakesh Shukla

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership, Marketing Content, Product Strategy, Strategic Marketing /  9 No Comments

Because the brand concept evolved in the consumer goods markets it is no reason to reject it in business-to-business technology markets. But neither can it be used as is. In this article, we understand the branding gap, draw lessons, and understand the differences, from an industry that creates enduring brands – the FMCG businesses.

A great deal of our knowledge about branding and brand strategies comes from the accumulated experience of consumer-packaged-goods companies (FMCG) such as Unilever,  Procter & Gamble and Nestlé. They practically invented brand management and have created a wealth of enduring and highly profitable brands. We’ve seen in Part I how for a large part of the high-technology businesses identity is seen as a logo or trademark and branding, where does that thinking come from and why. That is the major gap in how enduring the technology is in the market-place.

High-tech markets are often more segmented, focused, and granular. Marketing high-tech products and services, especially to the enterprise, costs less than marketing consumer packaged goods. An individual’s decision to buy a certain brand of soap may be more emotional than that of a company’s decision to go with a certain line of networking equipment, but the line between a high-tech product and a consumer product is becoming increasingly fuzzy. Parallel motives exist even in business-to-business high-tech purchases. Therefore there is a great deal to learn from the FMCG business on bridging the technology branding gap.

Lessons from FMCG branding

While the High-Technology industry is crowded and thrives on discontinuous change, marketing hardly ever focuses on benefits. The FMCG industry (as a surrogate for other industries with mature marketing practices) on the other hand has a much slower rate of change but articulates great continuity in branding! They very successfully make a promise of value is critical for a company to differentiate itself from its competitors and stake a solid claim in its intended market sometimes for decades.

But if FMCG industries are great in branding then why don’t tech companies just run with it? Why doesn’t the high-technology industry leverage FMCG (say) marketing? In the first place, each is defined by the contours of its industry. The channels are not the same. The customer is not the same. The buying decision is not exactly the same. Understanding the differences allows us to highlight how to fill the branding gap in high-technology. Here are some high-technology branding aspects and how they are different from their FMCG counterparts.

Promise of Value

A fast pace of change renders all technology product brands obsolete quickly. Customer criteria and expectations change rapidly. The overall expectation of experience that a customer has with the brand that is it’s purchase-use- feedback-repurchase is the something that the FMCG business likes to tightly control even though the product travels through long-chain channels for delivery and renewal. On the other hand technology businesses have fewer degrees of separation from the actual consumer to where the product originates but the high-tech businesses seldom actually completely articulate their promise of value which is core to building a brand.

Product Longevity

In the FMCG industry, technology is not fast changing and there is a greater emphasis on emotional messaging and building a connection with the consumer. The relationship between a brand and its consumer forms the basis of loyalty and companies build a brand with a horizon that is years if not many decades. In high-tech businesses, not many brands attempt to establish that connection with the consumer primarily because even the best B2B product life cycle is seen as 3-4 yrs.

Communication Asks

The purpose of branding is different in both.  FMCG branding builds a communication cycle to build recall or induce purchase. FMCG brands focus on the ‘touch’ points where the consumer will experience it to induce an interaction. For high-tech businesses, a large part of their business may be with B2B customers, and advertising is a less important ingredient of the promotion mix than more cost-effective ways of approaching customers such as trade shows, the Internet, and user groups.

High-tech users look for solutions to problems — they are invariably looking to ease a pain point or make life easier and they often start by searching for an answer. In high-tech branding, therefore, it is utilized communications that reach customers at the exact moments and places where they seek to engage to solve problems.  

Articulating Benefits

The most key lesson that FMCG brings to branding is the focus on benefits. Most high-tech branding talks about features and not benefits. There is a lot of engineering stuff narrated in high-tech branding whereas  FMCG branding has been able to convert those features into a consumer benefit that in turn focuses on a single promise of value.

Perceived Risk

FMCG products typically carry relatively small perceived risk. Unit prices are low. Time to repurchase is short. Demand for user behaviour change is low. High-Tech products, on the other hand, have much steeper learning curves and most of the time a multi-year purchase lock-in. High-Tech branding message needs to address this risk and manage it through the adoption curve.

Purchase Cycles

FMCG purchase decisions are made quickly and most often by lone consumers based on few criteria and purchases often characterized by impulse buying. High-Tech purchase decisions are more B2B decisions and are made by groups or committees over long evaluation cycles based on many criteria followed by extended negotiations. The high-tech brand, therefore, should be used to set and influence decision-making criteria as well as defend pricing and terms.

Availability, Distribution & Time to Experience

FMCG products typically have deep vertical supply chains for delivery direct to consumer at the time of purchase. Consumer enjoys immediate gratification. In the technology business multiple vendor components ‘assemble’ the product experience. Delivery to the customer includes partners, resellers or multiple third parties such as integrators. Implementation and operation trail purchase by weeks or months. High-Tech branding, therefore, has a large role to play to assure buyers of user experience, risk avoidance, and return on investment.

Tech Branding Lessons from FMCG

High-Tech companies often focus too heavily on the product that they’re selling, rather than telling the story behind it. Technology decisions, especially B2B purchases, are expensive especially when they impact an entire organization. These costs are both direct and indirect (maintenance, training, etc). As against FMCG where risk is low, gratification is immediate and cost of purchase is simple. To induce buyers to buy a high-tech brand must sell a vision, not just a product. A customers’ emotional response to high-tech branding has far more influence in their purchasing decision, even a B2B product, than the actual product itself. High-Tech branding requires continual reinvestment to ensure users engage with the product and develop a strong loyalty to the brand.  High-Technology products reach a threshold of functional breadth and depth quickly which then delivers diminishing marginal returns to customers. Only companies which have developed a brand preference, over more temporary ‘product’ preference, insulate themselves from commoditization and set themselves apart for continued growth.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

Are you looking to create or improve your technology brand?

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17 Jul

automationshift_ India’s first CXO conference on automation in IT businesses announced: 15 Sept 2017, World Trade Center, Bangalore

By TWB_ In Communication, Product Strategy /  4 No Comments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bangalore: TWBShift_ Conferences today announced automationshift_ — India’s first conference for CEOs and other CXOs to share their approaches and technological direction leveraging AI + automation + machine learning that drive higher efficiencies across Marketing + Product Engineering + Product Management + Service Delivery + Learning across their organisations. automationshift_ brings together large enterprise users together with exciting start-ups to create a larger automation ecosystem and is created by TWBShift_ Conferences. The conference is on 15 Sept 2017 at the World Trade Center, Bangalore.

Rakesh Shukla, Founder & CEO TWB_ and TWBShift_ Conferences said, “Automation is changing the technology and manpower landscape rapidly. The common narrative is the pain caused by automation however automation is inevitable and TWB_ itself has been at the forefront of automating content for several years. ” Rakesh further said, “It is a natural step for TWBShift_ Conferences to focus on how automation is transforming businesses and highlight the best products, processes, enterprises and start-ups”.


automationshift_ CONFERENCE

automationshift_ is a 1-day conference that packs in

  • a keynote address
  • 5 individual CXO speakers
  • 1 CXO panel discussion
  • 1 product developers round table
  • Release of a 100+ page publication in leading automation thinking from around the world
  • 1 exhibit area with India’s leading software automation products being exhibited.

automationshift_ SPEAKERS & PANELISTS

The speakers & discussions include

  • CEO perspectives the rapidly evolving machine-learning technology landscape and how the industry is leveraging it
  • Chief Marketing Officers perspectives on the role of CMOs in they leveraging to transform marketing.
  • CTO’s, Heads of Engineering & Chief Product Officers discuss efficiency in product design, development & delivery through automation
  • Chief Learning Officers discuss how AI is personalising learning, skyrocketing understanding and crashing discontinuation.
  • Chief Experience Officers discuss how customer service delivery is being transformed through automation

automationshift_ SHOWCASE

The automationshift_ automation showcase brings India’s 7 buzziest AI products together. The showcase is a curated selection of game-changing AI products that impact how business are run. Interestingly they will be under the same roof as the businesses that leverage them.

automationshift_ PERSPECTIVES

The show report has 10 leading voices in automation of marketing, learning, engineering and customer service from across the world writing for automationshift_ in details. It also has over 15 Indian CXO’s sharing their thoughts succinctly. The 100+ report is called ‘Leadership perspective on the autmotomationshift_’ and will be made available in a limited print run to the Indian CXOs at the conference.

 

About automationshift_

automationshift_ is India’s first conference for CEOs and other CXOs to ideate and share their approaches and technological direction leveraging AI + automation and drive higher efficiencies across Marketing + Product Engineering + Product Management + Learning across their organisations. automationshift_ a TWBShift_ conference, also brings together large enterprise users together with exciting AI + automation start-ups to create a larger automation ecosystem. More details available on www.twb.in/shift

About TWB_

TWB_ is the home of Business + Learning + Product content for Fortune 500 technology leaders and start-ups alike. TWB_ creates, automates, repurposes and publishes content achieving unprecedented efficiencies, enhancing content quality, achieving faster go-to-market and lowering costs. TWB_ is the worldwide pioneer of offshore development of technology content (since 2006), was the first India-based company to roll out & implement enterprise-grade Content Automation solution (2010) and the first India-based company to roll out & implement  IETM IV/V solutions for Defense and Aerospace (2013). TWB_ operates across Information Technology, Telecom, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences and Aerospace & Defense. TWB_ delivers to over forty Fortune 500 technology majors including AXA, ABB, Cisco, Fidelity, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Israel Aircraft, Microsoft, Oracle, Société Générale, Samsung Shipping, Siemens, Toyota etc located across the Silicon Valley, the US East Coast, France, Luxembourg, Germany, India, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. More information on TWB_ is available at www.twb.in

 

PRESS CONTACT

Sangeeta Velegar

Vice President – Marketing

The Shift_ Conferences by TWB_
1st Floor, Pine Valley Building, Embassy Golf Links Off Intermediate Ring Road

Bangalore – 560071,  India.
Mobile: +91 9880819180 | sangeeta@twb.in  

 

Intro video: https://youtu.be/QlWbwC79Gss

Press kit: https://goo.gl/wc3ZSs 

Conference details: www.twb.in/shift

Registrations: https://goo.gl/eYYHyr

 

PRESS INVITES, SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS, SPONSORSHIPS

Selena D’Souza

Marketing Manager, The Shift_ Conferences by TWB_

96860 59020 I selena@twb.in

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15 Jul

Automation in Product Engineering & Management I automationshift_ Sept 15, 2017 WTC, Bangalore

By TWB_ In Product Strategy /  7 No Comments

Large parts of understanding, adapting, constructing and modelling both software and processes can be automated as of today. This can increases quality, productivity and go-to-market.

As much as 45% of the the Product Lifecycle can be automated using existing technologies!

Be at automationshift_ to get in-depth insights from heads of product and engineering on how they are transforming engineering and development.

 

automationshift_ is India’s first conference for CEOs and other CXOs to share their approaches and technological direction leveraging AI + automation + machine learning that drive higher efficiencies across Marketing + Product Engineering + Product Management + Service Delivery + Learning across their organisations. automationshift_ brings together large enterprise users together with exciting start-ups to create a larger automation ecosystem and is created by TWBShift_ Conferences. The conference is on 15 Sept 2017 at the World Trade Center, Bangalore.

automationshift_ CONFERENCE

The 1-day conference has a tight schedule that includes a CEO keynote address, 5 CXO speakers, 1 panel discussion, 1 round table and 1 exhibit area with India’s 7 leading Artificial Intelligence startups exhibiting their products. CXO perspectives include the rapidly evolving machine-learning technology landscape and how the industry is leveraging it, perspectives on the role of CMOs in they leveraging to transform marketing, impact on efficiency in product design, development & delivery through automation, how AI is personalising learning and crashing discontinuation and how customer service delivery is being transformed through automation

automationshift_ SHOWCASE

The automationshift_ automation showcase brings India’s 7 buzziest AI products together. The showcase is a curated selection of game-changing AI products that impact how business is run. Interestingly they will be under the same roof as the businesses that leverage them.

automationshift_ PERSPECTIVES

The show reports has 10 leading voices in automation of marketing, learning, engineering and customer service from across the world writing for automationshift_ in details. It also has over 15 Indian CXO’s sharing their thoughts succinctly. The 100+ report is called ‘Leadership perspective on the autmotomationshift_’ and will be made available in a limited print run to the Indian CXOs at the conference.

 

What next?

  • Visit the automationshift_ website here | Register for the conference here
  • Sponsorships, Speaking Opportunities or other information call 96860 59020 or mail shift@twb.in
  • Watch the automationshift_ intro video
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TWB_ (formerly TWB) is the world leader in Technology Content and the Strategic + Creative + Technology Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in
22 Jun

Competitive Intelligence is fuelling the explosion of an Indian major into a ₹ 100,000 crore/ $16 Billion behemoth

By TWB_ In Strategic Marketing /  4 No Comments

When a ₹ 10,000 crore Indian major, the darling of stock markets, decides to become a ₹ 100,000 crore/ $16 Billion organisation this commitment to shareholders comes with a lot of gravitas. This TWB_ customer operates in a market where each category has organic growth, strong incumbents.  The customer has the cash flow and the access to capital but how do you grow the market and innovate at an explosive pace? Innovation technological and business is a vector and TWB_ is helping in the disruption.

The customer operates in a hyper competitive market. How do you grow the market and innovate at an explosive pace? With a little contribution from TWB_ of course!

The customer turns to TWB_ because TWB_ bring the intersect of Strategy + Creativity + Technology:

  • The customer requires reams of competitive intelligence to figure which markets to attack and how.

TWB_ pours through millions of pages of present data & legacy information and creates actionable reports to map out the competition, geographical penetration and dashboards to easily access this before drilling down. One of the hundreds of such artefacts can be seen here (partially shared since this is now dated).

  • The customer requires a way to access its own IP portfolio!

The customer is not only a strong R&D company with a large IP portfolio – but is so large and so old it is not digitised and there is no longer a complete view of it! TWB_ starts digitising and making this discoverable bringing it into a Content Management System

  • The customer requires better market presence since the really deep technical understanding is not visible to consumers without high-quality articulation of this thinking.

TWB_ addresses with continuous training interventions within TWB_ Corporate Certifications designed to allow them to do create world-class scientific research reports using TWB_ GRAPE™ 

Competitive Intelligence provides competitive advantage

TWB_ maps out competitive landscapes and provides strategic and tactical intelligence to enterprises on competitors. TWB_ helps enterprises stay three moves ahead of the competition, reduce business uncertainty, and take more strategic decisions. TWB_ services include

  • Competitor analysis
  • Brand-specific intelligence
  • Company monitoring
  • Cost competitiveness best practices
  • Preventive strategies for competitive shocks
  • Strategic performance benchmarking

10 yrs ago when a large South Korean mobile brand was planning to enter India, they’re turned to us to make out the competitive technological landscape too.

TWB_ is Strategy + Creativity + Technology. Want your business to stand out?

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F16s to be made by Tata, TWB_ partners Tata companies
20 Jun

Tata Advanced Systems & Lockheed Martin will make F-16s in India. TWB_ partners multiple Tata defence companies

By TWB_ In TechPubs /  3 No Comments

Tata Advance Systems and Lockheed Martin today signed an agreement to manufacture F-16 fighter jets in India. Not only is it a milestone for the ‘Make in India’ program and Indian defense production but a great opportunity for downstream contractors to work on the state of the art weapon systems.

TWB_ has been a partner for Tata defense companies for many years, including Tata HAL, Tata Power SED, Tata Advance Systems & Tata Technologies for Air, Land and Sea based civilian and military platforms.

In 2015 TWB_ became the first India-based supplier of Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM) Class V standards. TWB_ was also the first S1000D based IETM Class IV compliant technical publications (Tech Pubs) in India in 2009-10. TWB_’s class leading defense TechPubs expertise can be seen here.

F16s to be made by Tata, TWB_ partners Tata companies

TWB_ is the premium provider of TechPubs in India and partners almost all Tata companies in defense production

TWB_ has presented perspectives as a niche defense supplier in several defense conferences in India including on technology in tech pubs, and on participating in the defense procurement process. TWB_ has also published several papers in Defence & Aerospace TechPubs.

What Next?

  • Connect at Bangalore 96860 59020 | Houston (832) 689-6456 | Tel Aviv +972.544.603.612 or shift@twb.in
  • Request a TWB_ publication on phone or mail | Read more about TWB_ & Defense in this Position Paper
  • Get more TWB_ insights on the TWB_ Blog | LinkedIn | Medium  | SlideShare

 

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