Seminar Series Confluence '09 at DoMS, IIT Delhi Discusses "Marketing in the Time of Recession"

Seminar Series Confluence '09 at DoMS, IIT Delhi Discusses "Marketing in the Time of Recession"

The next speaker was Mr. Arun Tyagi, Vice President, Marketing at IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd., who is also an alumni of DMS. He presented his views on the current market scenario touching upon how it was imperative to minimize clutter, i.e., get

more marketing space for less and to gain more mindshare. He stated that the only thing that changes about marketing is the platform used for it and used the example of IndiaMART which had relied mostly on marketing via the Internet; he also reiterated Prof. Chaudhary's call to get back to basics.

Up next was Mr. Prasad Narasimhan, Chief Marketing Officer at Virgin Mobile India. He centered his position on the proposal that it was time to shift from advertising-led marketing to idea-led marketing; an idea is likened to a sneeze albeit one that is contagious and refreshingly original. He stated that new marketing should focus on building new relationships with customers and that the future of marketing was Word-of-Mouth marketing. He closed by stating that the marketing manager of fore was the idea manager of today.

The last speaker of the session was Dr. K. V. Damodaran, Joint Advisor at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Dr. Damodaran presented his views on how the government implemented regulations such as the National Do Not Call Registry to enforce discipline in the market. These were enforced to protect consumers from over-enthusiastic marketers. He also said such measures, especially in the telecom sector, were part of national security. The need of the hour was to produce products of quality, and these would bring the customers back.

After a short Q&A session, Confluence broke for lunch after which the panel discussion on "Marketing In The Time Of Recession" was conducted.

Prof. Rajat K. Baisya, who was the chair for the panel discussion, opened the session, briefly dwelling upon innovative marketing initiatives, alternative marketing models and marketing channels. Ms. Preeti Mehra, Deputy Editor, Business Line, acted as the moderator. She spoke about the need to recognize the actual changes taking place at ground level in the market, the trickle down effect of the actions we take during a recession. She then gave the floor to the other speakers who mainly cited their companies strategy at the present time.

Mr. Ajoy Shah, Chief Product Manager shared the story of how JK Tyres was coping with the current economic downtrend. He highlighted how different industries were dependent on each other. He added that though the firm had cut internal costs, such as travel expenses, they had not cut costs that would dilute their presence in the market.

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* Contributed by -
Mary Parayil,
Media Committee,
Department of Management Studies,
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

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