Gone With the Wind Got Me My First Job

And how to get a FREE review copy of my book, Marketing Without Money

Yo!

I have to confess that my?engineering grades were not great. Luckily?companies like Tata Elxsi used an entrance?test as a?qualifier, and I?love those kind of tests! The HR folks were a bit disappointed to discover that their entrance test scores were inversely correlated to engineering grades :) They then decided to "invite" the top scorers in both categories to apply. My interview was with Dr?Uday Shukla, who rapidly realized that my?engineering skills were not the best. However, the HR person was on a?lunch break so we had some extra time to chat and we ended up discussing Gone With the Wind,?one of my favourite books. At the end of the interview he recommended that I be given a job in sales or support as I could talk beautifully about many things. And thus started?my working life as a?System Support Executive in Tata Elxsi which at the time was the highest paying company on campus!?

What was my "selling proposition"?

You might imagine that grades would be the USP for an engineering hire, but no, there are other attributes. USP - Unique Selling Proposition - is a much?used term in marketing. Discovering your USP is much easier if you have a single product marketed to a homogenous audience. For example, "milk is good for kids" works if your target audience is only parents. ?But if you have multiple audiences then you may have multiple key value propositions, that?are unique in that context. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how playing a piano can be a USP for marketing. ?This one thing attracted my first suitor, not all my other positive?attributes, like academics or typing speed. Those would have been relevant for a different audience.?

Multiple Selling Propositions vs USP

Let's take the example of a TV subscription. For a sports fan it may be super important that the key matches or championships were included in the subscription at the lowest possible cost. But as Rama Bijapurkar says, Indian consumers are value sensitive not price sensitive. In a recent podcast she tells the story of how a lower economic strata lady "invests" in multiple subscriptions because it ensures that (a) her sons don't leave the house and (b) her mother-in-law stays home to watch her shows and makes dinner while she's watching. I'd now have a different selling point for the lady of the house vs the sports fan.

The Branding House

I recommend the use of the Branding House to identify the unique differentiator, which is a part of brand positioning strategy. Which in this case might be "All of the popular family shows". But when I run campaigns I should break it up into sports vs serials and target that particular audience. Even better I might envisage these as two different product offerings and run a whole different marketing and branding program around it. With digital it is possible to do this economically.?

Core Vs Surround Marketing

Core marketing talks about the functional benefits of a product. Surround talks about everything else. For example, storage capacity or camera quality of a phone would be a functional benefit or core attribute. On the other hand saying it was "Designed in California" is a surround attribute. It conveys all kinds of design cool that?"Designed in Suzhou or Shenzhen" does not. I have a whole chapter on this topic in my?book on frugal marketing?The point is that if you do the exercise you may discover your Gone With the Wind along with your engineering qualifications. One advantage of surround attributes is that they are much easier to change. I could keep reading influential books and talking about them whereas I have just one engineering degree. On that note, I'd love to gift?you a copy of my book! If you'd like a free copy please apply to join the waitlist here.?

Frugal Marketing

It's important to pick the right attribute for the right audience - otherwise your marketing could start to get very expensive. The tighter the message and more focused the audience the less wastage there will be.

I did a webinar on Frugal Marketing for StreamAlive recently - watch the?live recording here!

If you're wondering what we discussed about Gone With the Wind, it was about the relative merits of Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes. ?Dr Shukla felt the world had many more Ashleys than Rhetts. ?What about you??

I didn't know it then, but the heroine, Scarlett O'Hara also had an antidote to worry - "I'll think about it tomorrow!"

Have a great weekend!

Best regards

Jessie?Paul