GlaxoSmithKline is to pay a 3B$ fine, the largest ever for healthcare fraud in the US. In the past, numerous big pharma companies including Abbott, Pfizer have been fined and this is something the industry seems accustomed to. It’s important to understand why pharma marketing becomes unethical, if the unethical sales practices are to stopContinue reading “GlaxoSmithKline 3B$ fine – balancing innovation and ethical marketing”
Category Archives: SFA – Sales Force Automation
Best Buy to close fifty stores: rethinking the value of face to face advice with the Internet
If you have visited any US Best Buy store you would have noted the quite extraordinary knowledge and talent of their store sales force. So it is a disappointing to learn that Best Buy will be closing 50 stores. Because neither the stores or the sales people can be much better. It's just that theContinue reading “Best Buy to close fifty stores: rethinking the value of face to face advice with the Internet”
Why Encyclopedia Britannica took twenty years to go digital- the sales force angle
Finally, Encyclopedia Britannica has gone digital (Reuters 2012) And it took 20 years for the 200 year old organization to do so.Above is a 1988 TV commercial and you can see the PC in evidence. PC makers were already giving free Grolier Encyclopedia discs alongwith the IBM PC’s that came with Windows DOS. But BritannicaContinue reading “Why Encyclopedia Britannica took twenty years to go digital- the sales force angle”
What’s your internal organization got to do with marketing and supply chain?
What's your internal organization got to do with marketing and supply chain? Well everything…. but first some nostalgia. This is the 500th post of this blog and happily coincides with the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens who explored perennial and timeless issues of the human condition. So too with organizations whose challenges continue despite technologyContinue reading “What’s your internal organization got to do with marketing and supply chain?”
College Text Book Rentals: Chegg is like Netflix for the supply chain- but a social cause marketer at the front end
Ask any US college student and they’ll tell you how expensive college books are. To come up with a working textbook rental model for this $10 billion segment of the book market is just brilliant for Chegg.com. At the back end Chegg.com has a Netflix type model for logistics. It even has former Netflix Chief Operating Officer Tom Dillon to manage the logistics and distribution (as of January 4, 2011) .
Integrating web marketing to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)
It was in the 1990's that IMC started getting popular in marketing. The Internet was just getting started and social media was in the distant horizon.By the early 2000's organizations particularly in consumer products started figuring out IMC between their packaging,billboards,TV ads,magazine and newspaper ads and Point of Sale materials. The time has now comeContinue reading “Integrating web marketing to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)”
Beware- your customers do their own research ! Of doctors, AT&T and Blackberry
Everyone of us has customers whether internal or external to the organization and the easy research on the Internet is something we need to factor in to our customer service and customer retention efforts. Let's think about doctors,AT&T wireless and Blackberry. Talk to doctors and they tell you how frustrating it is to deal withContinue reading “Beware- your customers do their own research ! Of doctors, AT&T and Blackberry”
Why did online search advertising grow by 27% to over 7B$ ?
When any ad spend goes up by 27% at a six month value of 7.28 B $ marketers , supply chain and innovation folks need to take notice. Is it because everyone has stopped watching TV? No it is because on-line search is perhaps the only advertising method where you pay when someone sees (clicks)Continue reading “Why did online search advertising grow by 27% to over 7B$ ?”
The clean “Vendor Master” problem- when strategy meets execution.
Attended a great talk by Matt Marthinson on working capital on Tuesday (January 2010). Among other very useful things Matt explained the concept of “vendor master” in the context of working capital in ERP systems. The vendor master as supply chain professionals know and marketing professionals may not realize is the master data organizations maintainContinue reading “The clean “Vendor Master” problem- when strategy meets execution.”
Small Business, Google AdWords and B2B Marketing in a recession
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-857684-6"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {} If you think about it, most jobs,innovation and entrepreneurship is in the small sector. Strangely textbooks and academic work in B2B,Supply Chain and Innovation focuses on large organizations-Continue reading “Small Business, Google AdWords and B2B Marketing in a recession”