Balakrishnan!!! And MORE Paparazzi

Today was pretty much the most exciting lecture because we had a lecture on branding in India by Prof. Balakrishnan!!! Balakrishnan is the type of guy you’d want as an uncle and he had the greatest accent! Also, he was talking about marketing which is obvious more interesting to me than logistics, but then again, it doesn’t take much to be more interesting than logistics.

Branding from an Indian perspective is a bit different than that of a US or even European point of view. He said the function of branding was to create risk which I found to be a rather interesting way to explain the concept of branding.

Another difference I found was on two points: the objective of marketing is to disorient the customer and the objective of branding is to re-orient the customer. Not quite how we learn it in the States, but I suppose this is due to state they are in with their evolution of marketing in India which is not as sophisticated as the States. India is moving from individuals producing their own flour (for example) to buying it from manufacturers in chain stores. As traditions such as this change, their reliance and enslavement by brands will develop. I have to say, it’s probably really nice not to be slaves to brand names like we are here.

After our lecture we were encouraged to stay behind for yet another meeting with the press. This time the press was much more probing with their questions. They asked us a lot of questions of us which we were inappropriate. Granted, they could ask us whatever they wished, but some questions we were not in a position to give a statement on, such as “why do you think America is in a recession?” and “do you think American schools are better than Indian schools?” we are neither economists nor were we fully submerged into the traditional styles of the Indian education system.

The reporters then asked some of the SDM students what they thought of us and not far from the truth came “They work hard, and they party hard”. Not necessarily the impression we wanted to give off, but quite unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to really interact with the students in an academic setting.

Quick as lightning, the next day my fellow colleagues were misquoted in the news papers as saying you MUST have industry experience to pursue an MBA in the States. Most of the articles we are mentioned in can be found in an on-line format of these prestigious papers. This goes along with the “Informing” flattener Friedman talks we could always keep up with everything thing news worthy in Mysore, these students could find out what each of us are doing five, ten, or fifteen years down the line, and of course our parents or bosses can keep tabs on us.