Are Business Buyers Emotional?

We need to dwell deep into the minds of business buyers to understand the intricacies of corporate decision making process. Let us imagine that we are in a court of law and two advocates representing emotional and rational clients argue the case…

Emotional Advocate: Companies don’t buy from companies. People buy from people.

Rational Advocate: Purchase decision depends on a matrix of tangible features and price.

Emotional Advocate: “Buyers make most decisions by relying on their two-second first impressions based on stored memories, images and feelings.” says Malcolm Gladwell, author of the book titled Blink: The power of thinking without thinking.

Rational Advocate: Business decisions are not made by an individual. It is often done by a group of informed people.

Emotional Advocate: Even a big team can be overwhelmed by choices, features, data and metrics. No matter how disciplined a buying process is, human mind will use heuristics to simplify the decision making. It can be conscious or subconscious.

Rational Advocate: A group of number crunchers can analyze and interpret any complex data and store them within the confines of a spreadsheet.

Emotional Advocate: A business buyer may not be congratulated for making a good purchase decision. But a bad decision can put him/her in an ugly spot.

Rational Advocate: Exactly why business buyer will be overcautious and will not take a decision in haste.

Emotional Advocate: So, buyer weighs purchase decisions both rationally and emotionally. Since brands operate on an emotional level, by creating and sustaining the right brand associations in the buyer’s mind, business seller can close the deal in his/her favor.

Now after a bout of intelligent arguments let us hear what the Judges had to say: “In the industrial world, where rational purchasing decisions tend to be the rule, human factors can also play a critical role in differentiating products and services from the competition. Even if your company sells so-called ‘commodities’, the human factor is often an unexploited element that could strengthen your competitive position. At the end of the day, all business transactions involve people selling product and service solutions to solve other people’s problems.” – By Philip Kotler & Waldemar Pfoertsch – B2B Brand Management.

So, it is evident that business buyers are both rational and emotional. Court dismissed.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Terror through Social Media

Apart from ground artillery and maritime warfare techniques Islamic extremists are also being trained on how to use the popular video-sharing site YouTube! This is to propagate terror through videos.

Social Media is all about community building. And the smart Islamic extremists have understood that well and have identified the most user-friendly tool to form a suicide bomber community for their shamefully cowardly acts.

It will be interesting to see how YouTube, a unit of Google, will handle inflammatory as well blatant terror postings. Freedom to one is weapon to another!!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

IPTV - Pulls Consumers

From Govt regulated Television to Cable to DTH to IPTV.

As of now there are only approx 12,000 IPTV subscribers compared to DTH’s 11 million. But the trend is catching up.

What is most striking about IPTV is that it will not depend on 'Push' advertising but on 'Pull' advertising. That is, Advertising on demand ;)

What is 'Pull'? - you can select from a given category, say second-hand cars, choose the brand, click to know more and the best part : you can simply navigate through the video clips on A-Tube and decide for yourself. On other mediums, you look at the brand, get convinced but still the 'buy action' needs to wait. In IPTV, you just press the button. Red-hot call to action. Money spinner.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Taming Attrition

In the last couple of years whenever I bump into HR heads of outsourcing companies or BPOs, they never fail to mention about the hairy beast called attrition. They have tried everything from Mercer techniques to swank get-togethers to astrology;) … but more employees walked out on them.

Surprise… Surprise… the economic slowdown has apparently done what crazy employee engagement activities, crazier salary hikes and craziest perks and incentives couldn’t: keep more employees of outsourcing companies and BPOs on the rolls.

Sometimes, the best CEO is the market condition !!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

British Airways & Hyderabad Blues

British Airways recently announced the launch of its new routes from Hyderabad to 22 cities in North America. Look at its creative... What a cliche. Akin to showing a Kangaroo if you are flying from Australia.

The rangoli in this ad was specially commissioned from the renowned Singapore based ‘rangoli’ artist, Vijaya Mohan, who has won a slew of awards, including a Guinness World Record for the largest ‘rangoli’, for her creations. Apart from this trivia, nothing strikes a chord. Sometimes, Clients and Agencies get into a cliche trap and fail to realize it.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Recession stumps Cricket !

Now Recession stumps cricket, cricketers, advertisers and cricket lovers. Advertisers will be spending Rs. 300-350 crore less in 2008-09. Immediate casualties – upcoming India-England one-day series and Champions League.

When jobs and heads are rolling - latest news is that BT is laying off 10,000 bodies- Auto companies, telecom, FMCG, real estate, insurance and beverage companies want to play it safe. There will be huge media cuts, nasty negotiations and probably the newer TV commercial scripts will be stalled or dropped. Star values will be questioned. ROI will be the star again.

I think the present scenario can help our cricketers – focus on cricket more and less on camera lens and half-clad sirens.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Another Election. Another Pitch. Who is the real winner ?

Who else can understand the power the communications better than a politician. Big names in national politics are turning to professionals to communicate to the mass. Their blood. Their siblings. Their votebank!

Objective : Campaign for the forthcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections and swing the votebank for a change.

BJP campaign theme : three Is – inflation, internal security and incompetence

General : Bring to light the issues affecting the country at large.

Medium to be used : Use both above-the-line and below-the-line media, including media vehicles such as SMS, MMS and online presence.

Account Size : Rs. 150 crores. Now close your mouth !!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in