The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Modern marketing requires a breakthrough in thinking: B. Santhanam

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Friday, Dec 18, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Modern marketing requires a breakthrough in thinking: B. Santhanam

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Modern marketing requires a breakthrough in thinking that seeks to engage non-consumers, explore uncontested market spaces and evolve collaborative models, B. Santhanam President - Flat Glass South Asia and Managing Director Saint Gobain Glass India, said on Thursday.

Addressing ‘S’Marketing Convention ‘09’ hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mr. Santhanam advocated “a mindset shift” from existing customers to looking at non-engaged customers in order to explore new avenues for growth.

Advocating engagement with non-consumers, he pointed out that marketing had to grow out of its war metaphor of win-defeat and increasingly look at collaborative potential. “Marketing needs to reinvent and reinvigorate itself to look beyond customers and competition and explore areas of collaboration in distribution and promotion.”

According to Mr. Santhanam, marketing had now become one of the functions and not the central task of creating and enabling customers. In fact, marketing has lost out to business strategy.

“Marketing needs to get rid of incrementalism to the four Ps — product, price, place and promotion — or risk being cast as the glorified errand boys in an organisation.”

In his key-note address, Santosh Desai, Managing Director & CEO, Future Brands, said marketing was all about giving meaning to a product, which would change the life of people. K. S Ramesh, Chairman – ‘S’ Marketing Convention, CII Tamil Nadu, said there was an immense need for marketers to innovate and reinvent to reclaim their right place in industry during tough times of tardy growth rates, little innovation and declining price power.

C. K. Ranganathan, Chairman CII - Tamil Nadu, emphasised the need for a fundamental shift in the thinking process of marketing professionals as consumers had become more intelligent. However, the core principles of marketing such as customer satisfaction remained critically important for an organisation.

Anita Gupta, Senior Vice President of JWT, spoke.

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