Quarter 7 - Week 3

With such amazingly cold and foggy weather in IIMB, it's surprising why people would want to even get out of bed. You enter the campus, and you notice the fog enveloping everything beyond the second floors. The trees are enveloped in mist, and all the people around are walking around with sweaters and scarfs, blowing into their sheltered palms, while remembering the case for the day. Oh, and we had classes on Christmas Day. Not just classes, we had a test. Just like the day before on Christmas Eve. IIMB's way of wishing us all Merry Christmas.

E-business Models and Strategies

On the first session, we were warmly greeted by this guest lecturer who happens to be a VC. It looks like he was primarily in the tech-venture space, (well duh, this is a e-business course, and honestly, which VC is not in the tech-venture space?), and he went about explaining how they select their ventures. Since this is the second VC we're seeing (the last was in ENVC last quarter), they're slowly losing their godly unreachable status. It is so cool to see them as human, as people who can make their fair share of mistakes, and who're just trying to make some money out of money. Lot of very interesting facts about how VCs fund startups.

The second session was about Petstore.com. Entirely about how every dollar they got in revenue would boost their share value by 300$, about how they needed a big gorilla like Animal Planet to help them compete with the other pet sites, and the assumptions they were making about future growth and potential and conversion rates. Was a pretty cool class as we looked at the different aspects about getting started in the business of pets, and as to what seperated the online model from the brick-and-mortar model.

Research for Marketing Decisions

Honestly, even though I'd hate to admit it, I must. These tests are a good thing. For one, I actually read the chapters so I can come prepared! So, now I know a lot more about the difference between a marketing research decision, and a marketing research problem. It's not just words. Then a little linking in of all that hypothesis mumbo-jumbo that we learnt waaaay back in quarter 2. We also had a bunch of case presentations by some members from the class, and the prof was correcting us wherever we made the mistakes. Our group was one of them. As it turns out, we didnt realize we had the case study till the night before, and then a whole amount of panic and rush, and we got the stuff done by the end of night! (See how we don't say EOD, it's EON for us. It's a reality. Really, get prepared!)

The test by itself was all left unto God, for in Him, we trust. Taking his name after ticking off an option in a Multiple Choice Test, does atleast leave you with some confidence to attempt the next question. Honestly, why DO we have exams with scores and everything? It's not like we have to prove ourselves to the companies that come for placements... we DONT get placed! We're here for the learning! Someone tell the profs!

Marketing Communications

We had a test in the first session which honestly wasn't all that difficult. But I'm very confident in my skills to surprise me and show just how grateful I should be to just pass. Anyway, the cases themselves are fun as always. We were still discussing the Coke and Pepsi case, and in the second session we moved onto Advertising Wars like Tide and Rin, Horlicks and Bournvita. Honestly, when I read the case, I was rolling with laughter... these ad guys have loads of fun at the expense of their competitors. All their tongue-in-cheek ads... it's just too bad that people are actually converting from one brand to the other. Takes all the fun out of poking fun at the other.... or does it actually add to the fun? :)

It's so easy to derail the class due to the open-endedness to prevail. The prof really does try to keep us on track, but she kind of lost it in the second session. And then, something happened that hasn't happened to us in almost 5 quarters.

She yelled. Softly.

Pretty much everything about "Stop acting like nursery kids" in a nicer way. "Stay on track", "discuss the case", "dont ask me about some ad that was aired that has absolutely no relevance to this case", "I am serious! Dont derail to some other disconnected ad!" to the awesomest insult I've heard in a long time "First you dont read the case for the day, then you dont watch the ad videos that I've collected for you, then you come and ask me about some absolutely unrelated ad and want me to explain why that happened! What is WRONG with you people? FOCUS!"

I love college.