Indian Web companies are growing or may be Indian companies have started respecting web for its reach and power. Not only Indian companies but all Indian organizations. I just wrote a letter to one of the Christian organization head quarters on web reach. In my previous post I had mention about the alpha phase of Indian web, everyone wants to experience the true web power. It looks easy, attractive and powerful but not till you experience it that way. I knew this phase was to come (in India) and thanks to all who spent plenty on industrial awareness.
What is industrial awareness?
We Indians never thought that we could get a life partner through web (thanks to shaadi.com for the industrial awareness). We never thought of getting a job though web till naukri.com made it a visible reality. It took some time and thanks to naukri.com for having the patience and the will to spend extra on industrial awareness. Hey, orkut knows more about my batchmates than I do, I never thought of such an option. Selling, buying, communicating and everything is now possible through web. Thanks to all the advertisements and extra pain taken by the companies in doing industrial awareness. (Also you can thank me for industrial awareness. I talk about web industry before every pre-placement talks) It costs a lot but it certainly helps in getting the early lead and to become the synonym for the industry (like Google is for search or xerox is for photocopy). Branding for web-industry is not an asset but THE asset and early birds can go all the way to the top as THE BRAND.
Offline example of Industrial awareness
One of the best example I can remember is from the Sportswear industry. During 1995-96 when the global sports majors entered the Indian market, they spent a lot of money on advertisement. Most of the money was spent on industrial awareness, a shoe for jogging, a shoe for basketball and so on (Though many global winners became local losers in India). There was no visible sports wear market but with industrial awareness campaigns it became a need. Everyone then started to desire and own a paid of sports shoe. Recent introduction of after-bath products are other examples (Livon, Marino, after-bath lotion ..).
Does Industrial awareness helps?
In my opinion half of the money spent by naukri.com was utilized for industrial awareness. Web being in alpha phase in India might have cost leaders even more than half of their marketing budget. I have heard people unsuccessfully explaining web illiterate about getting a job through web. Without an industrial awareness companies in the industry will have no relevance either. Now there are plenty of job portals targeting Indian market but I am sure people consider naukri.com as the best and only brand (yet, Also job portals are a different market where a customer, the job seeker, never gains anything in being loyal, surfers uses more than one portal to get a better reach). Becoming the only brand is the only advantage of Industrial awareness.
Good post aji, industrial awareness is very important more is the body that keep a track of industrial branding. What is your opinion of industrial branding?
>> What is your opinion of industrial branding?
This is very very important. I will give you some examples to make my point. Whenever I meet people at various meet and talk about web industry they have bad experiences with their local hosting companies, local SEO experts or local web designers. These local companies hardly kept the standards which makes our life. There are indusries where branding makes no big sense. Let me take an example for such industry.
Taxis (cabs). Just because of some cab drivers the whole industry is looked with supercilious eyes. Cab drivers has no concern about their industry branding as you have no option to select players from the industry but one random always. It is very important that unions come together to regulate such industries for its own standings.