IBSCDC on YOUTUBE

IBSCDC, Asia Pacific's largest repository of management case studies, has conducted interviews with a few enterprising entrepreneurs, leading politicians, sports celebrities, senior executives and NGOs specialists and all the samples are available both on IBSCDC and YouTube

All these video interviews have been conducted with a specific management learning mind. These video interviews can either be used independently or along with case studies. All these video interviews bring rich learning insights and they can effectively aid students' managerial skill training.

Executive Brief

Executive Brief

Case studies have become a powerful instructive lifeline for business schools. Management education has changed because of them, which even helped globalize it. Many more changes are also sweeping in (culled from experiences):

• Internet has a gold mine of information that, if channeled properly, can grow into rich knowledge. This trend has even altered the role of a teacher - from a knowledge provider to a learning facilitator
• Students are seeking more than classroom learning. Just analysing case facts and figures is no longer making classes come alive
• Not every faculty can work out a case study as it must be. It requires strenuous hard-work and disciplined training.
• Business schools can shape the best talent but can't get them to teach. Teaching doesn't seem to fit in as a lucrative job

Closely observing these pertinent changes have got us, at Icfai Business School Case Development Centre (IBS CDC), thinking as always. Solutions were hard to come by, but we got around this dilemma too. Months of shrewd thinking and careful testing created a novel product, Executive Brief.

Executive Brief is by nature a video presentation. It recounts dilemmas faced by an executive, who can be an entrepreneur, manager, VP, CEO, etc. These dilemmas can either be retrospective or futuristic. Of course, business schools have to instill valued corporate virtues in their students.

Their multimedia edge can take learning to the next level, seizing student's fleeting attention for quite some time. That's not to say that they can replace case studies. But Executive Briefs can become nice add-ons to student's learning, as case studies are. This, we strongly feel, after we tested them out and got a glowing response from students as well as the faculty. And if the executive is around when the Executive Brief is played out, nothing like that. Running through some of these Briefs, one can feel the joy in using - and learning from - this powerful pedagogical tool. This product tries to speak to the students in their language - the language of videos (YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter!!!).

Social Cause Marketing In India

When I recently saw print and video advertisements about Tata Tea's Jaago Re! campaign, I was pleasantly surprised. It was pleasant because of two very important reasons. It's probably one of those rarest of rares - where a company is not advertising (at least directly) about its product. It is an equivalent of PIL (Public Interest Litigation) in marketing, probably! The advertisement is sensitizing the Indian people about their voting rights and almost convincingly arguing that it's a responsibility (once in five years hopefully). I am sure you would have come across " Har Subah Sirf Utho Mat. Jaago Re!" campaign. Wasn't it pleasant, for a change? Secondly, it is talking about the most powerful and vibrant part of any functional and operational democracy - people voice.

Of course, apart of Tata Tea, other Indian companies - HUL, for instance - have taken up social causes too. It's a welcome change from all these FMCGs? Why only FMCGs, by the way? I hope we would see more of these social cause marketing campaigns.

Of course, the cynics would have their plate full of arguments. Why not? After all, if there's no free lunch, why this? Just the way Adam Smith said, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages".

The arguments aside, I am intrigued about :

(a) Why social cause marketing? What is the intended objective? Why should companies commit their shareholders' money for social issues? Or is it to do with the company's values?

(b) What is the difference between a Social Cause Marketing initiative and a Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, after all?

(c) Just the way brands are endorsed by celebrities (famous sports persons, actors, etc) , should a social cause be endorsed by a powerful brand, in that the powerful brand becomes the celebrity endorser for the social cause taken up? What happens if an important social cause is addressed by a not-so-well-known brand? Would it have the same reach as a powerful brand would have?

(d) At what stage of brand life cycle, would it be meaningful for any brand to get out of its comfort zone and start embracing social causes?

(e) Are the social cause marketing initiatives truly sustainable?