How do you sum up any institution, person, place or organization? How can even elevator pitch be shortened to describe something? How uniformly message be understood by most? It is branding.
These questions highlights the associativity of perception and not necessarily the attributes of products / services that entities are in the business. So, it is easy to infer that brands manifests the perception among the masses. Pepsi is not necessarily a drink for the youth, but perceived to be for the young (remember Youngistaan), as they are the largest customer base for them. Why anyone builds a brand and how to build it?
When a brand is built and seen positively, it becomes very easy, less costly and quite faster to sell products / services for that entity. Even brand can be monitized. Not everyone is able to create a favourable brand and it is definately not in short time. To quote a scenerio, why is it so easy for selectors to choose an IIM candidate over any other, giving benefit of doubt to IIM candidate even if Interview has not gone all that good. It is pre-conceived notion in the mind of Indian recruiters that IIM candidates selected after intense CAT process are bound to be cream-la-cream. Go to France and recruit an IIMer over a non-IIMer and chances are both on the equal footing till the other candidate happens to be from INSEAD, when he will get a edge over IIMer as this institute is French and perceived to be top-rug. Harvard and Stanford are universal brand with positive communication about them that has reached universally. Besides getting real value, it helps to back the brand in at least two other ways - play safe to justify yourself to others and it hides any selection shortcoming one may have!
Changing the human behavior into buying habits and starting to associate best to oneself, is a slow and consistent process with each step involving two things - positive baby step and omni-directional positive communication. To build a brand, it has to be strategically thought, executed in parts and communicated in full (in geography where executed using media and buzz, buzz being more important).
Ashish Jain
Japan's Fukushima is unfortunate in bearing the wrath of man-made disaster, made by design.
Increasing human need for continued energy is making us think for ways which are risky and fatal to the very existance for which we desire energy. Some lives are sacrificied for the sake of others need. But is it not what everyone does in order to exist? It may be right but not correct.
Stuart Brand argues, “Air pollution from burning coal is estimated to cause 30,000 deaths a year from lung disease in the United States and 350,000 in China. A one gigawatt coal plant burns three million tonnes of fuel a year and produces seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide, all of which immediately goes into everyone's atomosphere. Using nuclear reactor to generate one gigawatt a year requires only about 20 tonnes of nuclear fuel, but with zero carbon dioxide”. Is it better to have nuclear reactors for energy in view of less number of deaths caused in comparison to conventional fossil fuel? Not necessarily.
Oil resources are depleting, nuclear energy is frought with avoidable risk and with coal causing slow and steady deaths, what are the alternatives?
Solar energy in India is untapped. India is densely populated and has high solar insolation, an ideal combination for using solar power. With about 300 clear, sunny days a year, India's theoretical solar power reception, on only its land area, is 600 trillion Watt per year. Assuming the efficiency of PV modules as low as 10%, this would still be thousand times greater than the domestic electricity demand projected for 2015. Currently, the amount of solar energy produced in India is less than 1% of the total energy produced. High cost of solar power notwithstanding, it has decreased four fold in a decade and is at GBP 125-180/MWh in comparison to coal at GBP 100-155/MWh (2010 Matt MacDonald Estimates). High usage and therefore high consumption volume of solar photovoltaic cells will reduce the per MWh cost of solar energy further, making it attractive energy option. Solar energy is not only green, saving carbon credit costs and helps in fulfilling Kyoto obligations, but also averts any man-made disasters. Distribution losses can be contained by grid-based and non-grid based power network that are possible only using solar power.
India is uniquely placed in harnessing solar energy unlike many developed countries in the cold region. Our energy sources can well be different too. Energy sufficiency will make superpowers of tomorrow and India can catch that advantage as it did in IT, by design.
Ashish Jain
