Boxed Customer Delight – Do online shopping sites getting it right?

For every consumer ad on TV today there is almost one promoting a website business. Take sites like flipkart, jabong, fashionandyou, myntra, snapdeal, inkfruit, yebhi, caratlane and others have got just 2 big asset to showcase: 1) their own website where transactions happen 2) Packaging of the product their customer order for. Luckily they do not have multiple other customer touchpoints to spend their time, money and focus. On the other hand, unluckily, they have only these 2 touchpoints to attract, entice and retain their customers. While website is an ever-changing tech piece and  it is a stubborn marketing piece yet to reveal all of customers’ sales-push buttons... but most players are figuring it out really good to get this property working and helping trickle-sales to a flow. But how are they faring when it comes to the second asset of theirs – packaging?

This asset is special because this is the one customer touches, feels and experiences. To an extent we can say, if they bungle this up on the last mile of the 2 miles;), they will lose customers. No wonder that most of these sites are working with design experts (Indian and international names like Michael Foley) to make the final delivery of the boxed customer delight to be pure awesomeness!! Most of them are reluctantly jumping into customized packaging ideas like red based packaging for a wedding gift wrapper.  Are they succeeding in Package Branding? Time will tell... but they are extending the branding space and have put more focus on areas like costume branding of the delivery person and delivery vehicle branding. Looks like they are hungry for more sales-driving branding ideas!

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

How racist our brain is !?!

We always believed that a right-brain person is a creative thinker where colours have a field day, while a left-brain person is a boring accountant splitting things in black and white!  This is a myth says science now!

Scientists at the University of Utah have debunked the myth with an analysis of more than 1,000 brains. They found no evidence that people preferentially use their left or right brain. All of the study participants — and no doubt the scientists — were using their entire brain equally, throughout the course of the experiment. (source: http://www.livescience.com)

So... one good feeling I get out of this is the proof that our brain is not racist!

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

Super Optimist or Stupidest Pessimist

Anyone can be a super optimist. Anyone can be a stupidest pessimist. But the toughest thing to be is just being 'human'! I think people who belong to this mid-category usually come up with creative work that packs more energy than the extreme bloats and hollows of the world. Mark my word, it is pure luck to meet a handful of such remarkable characters before you catch the last bus to heaven!!

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

Hey Start-up... What's your carrot?

The moment you become ready to dirty your hands in the muddy pool of business is the moment you stop worrying about dirtying your wrist watch and shoes. The best way to start is to 'start'. 

Tell me what energizes you to be on your own... is it one of these or something else.. pl do share:

1. Simple, I can take my own decisions!

2. I know better than what my boss at work knows!

3. Work flexibility - I can plan breaks, vacations and holidays better!

4. I can spend more time with wife, kids and pets!

5. I get to hire people I want to work with!

6. Because I like to face risks head on!

7. Money, money, money, money. And Money!!

8. Just want to see if I can click in Business!

9. I want to be the next Steve Jobs. I want to follow my passion..

10. I am tired of waiting for things to happen!

11. I want to do something for the society!

12. I don't want to be another sheep. I am the shepherd.

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

Who cuts the oxygen to your Ideas?

Wonder why great ideas are always booed away and shoed away?
Because it creates fear in the minds of people around you - peers and managers! They don't want your idea to challenge their pay cheque or authority or cosy zone.

In most corporates, most of the ideas are rejected for selfish reasons!

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

Post - The Last Emperor

Today is World Post Day! One of the most visible faces amongst community workers is Post Man! From 1700s - the era of messengers, who travelled large distances on foot or horseback to today’s swank mail vans, they delivered smile, laughter, fun, money and sadness. But now whenever I see the vanishing post boxes or fading postal services, it reminds me of Bernardo Bertolucci’s classic movie – The Last Emperor. Only future will reveal how long post can fight the grand entry of emails and smart phones...  but their stamp of red will never be forgotten!

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

Cocktail of Sleep, Dream & Innovation

It is very interesting to note that great ideas most often revolve around sleep. It comes when we are in half sleep or in dreams during sleep or during abrupt wake up or strikes you when you are fresh up from a good night sleep.

I’ve been reading up on life of Otto Loewi and a real incident in his research life gave needed support to my crazy assumption...  Let me transport you back to 1903, then many experts thought nerve impulses were transmitted electrically, like telegraph signals. Otto Loewi (1873-1961), a German-born pharmacologist, barely 20 years in age thought otherwise... he bet on chemical transmission.

He went about his work and after 17 long years, he had a rocking dream... let us hear it in his words:

"The night before Easter Sunday of that year I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at 6 o'clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable to decipher the scribble.

The next night, at 3 o'clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered 17 years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a single experiment on a frog's heart according to the nocturnal design."

Then Dr. Otto Loewi took 10 more years to satisfy all his critics by doing and proving. And that dream at 3AM gave Loewi a Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936.

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