Sustainable Marketing - Really?

As an engineer by education and profession, it's not surprising that I am at ease with quantitative content and am a fish out of water in marketing. Marketing comes across as a bunch of paradoxes, too fluid and amoeba like to put any meat around anything or have any sort of structure, sometimes too obvious and sometimes brilliant too. For instance, I came across this line "Marketing questions the assumption of rationality by classical economic theory by factoring in fairness". Often times, I also see that it relies on "fooling" the customer or creating a misplaced perception. This in my opinion, is not something that is sustainable. Even if it can't be said that people are getting smarter every day, one can't deny that mankind is advancing every day and with increased computational power at the disposal of a customer (read internet, mobile phone yada yada...), marketing will become an increasingly harder game to play. Numerous pricing models will break down if there is information sharing amongst customers. With word of mouth advertising in social networking and increased technology penetration in everyday life, the game just gets harder. With the non-linearities that exist today, can marketing successfully factor in consumer behavior and be sustainable?

And some more...

In some kind of weird bacchanalian orgy, I have decided to write after quite some time. For the next year, I will mostly be writing about my time at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Yes, student life ishtarts again.

There, I said it, now, Google, do your thing and make sure you direct traffic to this page.

Golden temple at Sripuram

On the way back from Yelagiri, I stopped with family at the Golden temple at Sripuram. The usual followed - tickets for a fast lane and a regular lane, information about more pujas for pay etc. However, it wasn't hard to notice that this temple was a little different from the rest once I walked in. The temple was spic and span with a nice wide walk way and neatly trimmed grass all around and very quiet. What impressed was the first billboard to the right of the walk way which in effect said one might question building a temple as opposed to a school or hospital and went on to say that the temple provides the wisdom to build many schools and hospitals. Though I don't necessarily subscribe to the logic, what impressed me was that they were willing to accommodate questions about the construction of the temple. Many more billboards I mostly rated good to impressive followed and touched upon integrity, hard work and the importance of giving. I enjoyed the 20-30 min stroll to the main sannidhanam and back the most. The founder also runs a correction centre, a hospital and doles out water from the temple to the city of Vellore during summer months. I haven't seen his balance sheets or any of that kind of stuff online, so I can't say much more than this - When people are willing to accommodate questions about their own faith, it discourages extremism and promotes peace.

Silver Strand Half Marathon 2010

All my limbs and joints held up okay after I ran slightly shy of 13.1 miles the other day. I think I can go ahead and update this space now.

Please consider supporting me as I run my first half marathon and more importantly the bigger cause - AID San Diego's many projects in areas such as education, women's empowerment, agriculture and much more. I tell myself that a 2 hour session in "pain management" is not in any universe commensurate with the throes of the underprivileged. I am grateful that through AID, I have found an avenue to contribute and make a difference.

Visit AID San Diego's project page for a list of projects and initiatives supported.

All donations to AID are 100% tax-deductible, under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code.

Ranga.

Esam Al-Amin: Who Killed Hariri?

Esam Al-Amin: Who Killed Hariri?: "America's Best Political Newsletter."

Dr.Wreck’s take on Mobile Devices and IC Convergence

Dr.Wreck’s take on Mobile Devices and IC Convergence: "

We love consumer electronic tear-downs, we’ve seen and performed a ton of them. In the past year we’ve seen a pretty considerable level of convergence in multi-use/multi-function IC’s.

A few notable corporations have played a major role in what we’ll call “hardware convergence”. One company that really stands out for leading this front is Qualcomm. Founded in 1985, these guys have definitely withstood the test of time.

Their “do everything mobile reference designs” cover everything a mobile device needs – BaseBand, AppCore, PMIC and even radio tranceivers. This makes it super easy for ANY run-of-the-mill ODM to build state-of the art smartphones. All you really need these days is Google and Qualcomm – save some special extra boutique devices we come across from time-to-time.

We can trace similar HW convergence to what happened with age old PC architecture (leading to the X86 design of modern PC’s). Combining all functionality into a tiny package ARM based processor core is very attractive from a cost and PCB design perspective. Unfortunately, these do-everything IC’s are often met with heavy power requirements. For perspective, each new BlackBerry device that get’s launced is met with reduced charge longevity. Of course, LCD screens are getting brighter and larger but these devices get really hot with use. This has to be related with packing a 1GHz Baseband/App Core/Kitchen Sink under the hood.

Is hardware convergence really even a good thing? In our opinion, yes and no. On one-hand, it should open the space for smaller companies to develop market ready and attractive smartphones. On the other hand, if every device uses the same HW and OS, the only differentiating consumer factor is overall physical design. Building that top-of-the line do everything well device requires custom hardware configurations. We’re talking Capacitive touch screens, Laser-navigation devices and even devices that boost USB transfer speeds.

We can compare this convergence to a Toyota Corolla – it’s reliable and get’s the job-done but doesn’t include the bells and whistles. Our dream device is more comparable to a BMW M5. It’s fast – (maybe not so reliable :S) but allows us to tweak our experience with more options then we’ll probably ever use. Sure, most of those options can be enabled at the Firmware level, but having the supporting Hardware is absolutely required for the optimal, Dr.Wreck approved experience. Let us know what you think!

@DrWreck

"

Lula and the Brazilian moment

Lula and the Brazilian moment