Quarter 7 - Week 10

Irrespective of the two-week-earlier deadline, it looks like we've managed to wrangle all submissions till this week. The same old bleary-eyed student swearing at the professor, his team mates, his colleagues, his life made an appearance today, and with everyone giving each other the same look, it was a we're-in-this-together atmosphere all around.

All that was fine on the first day, but on the second there was a great upbeat feeling going around. While it was partially due to the fact that projects were being submitted, and load lightened, and partially due to the fact that the quarter was getting over, the overwhelming reason was that half of the students were leaving college, and attending their final class on Saturday. The seniors all had their awesome teeny-weeny Cybershots out and were clicking away to glory, lest they forget the miseries they've been through together. And yes, they were all very nostalgic when they thought of their time here together.

The juniors were happy that we finally get to pick whatever courses we want without having to jostle with the seniors, but very few of us missed the opportunity to tell the nostalgic seniors that we could exchange places. The fact that misty-eyes immediately gave way to frightened eyes, and hence brought seniors back to reality is a different matter altogether. All jokes apart, our batch wishes them the best-est in their future, and hope that they further the cause of the PGSEM programme, and give us all reason to hold our heads high.

E-Business Models and Strategies

The final week continued with presentations of our cool new e-businesses that we were claiming to start. It finally dawned on me that we were all primarily just starting new businesses, and were less worried of whether we'd handled the taught frameworks correctly. But then again, I'm sure we got it fairly well, the prof and the guest lecturers taught from their experience. It's difficult to miss out when someone talks about hard learned lessons. I, for one, am definitely not going to forget the fact that entrepreneurs and bigshots are normal people, just like us. To their credit, most of them didn't need to do an MBA to start a business and make it successful.

Research for Marketing Decisions

Similar situation out here like in EBMS. Project presentations and a bunch of gleeful seniors twiddling their thumbs and thinking of how they'd still be twiddling their thumbs next weekend without worrying about god-forsaken assignments and team mates.

I don't know where our profs get their patience from. They must have expected serious, nose-up-in-the-air sophisticated IT folk in this course, and they find this jabbering bunch of gleeful kids who're trying their level best to skip assignments and projects. Their claim to fame over the general full-time students? They have more work experience and jabber a little less.

I think our profs deserve the gold medals that are being dished out to that student of the year.

Marketing Communications

I really liked the first session on Viral Marketing and Word-of-mouth marketing. The case was one of Hasbro games, who were launching their game called POX. It was really interesting to know how they identified alpha-pups (what a cute name! Alpha-pups! for lead generating kids!) from various schools in the Chicago region and let them loose with their gadgets. Interestingly, these kids were key influencers in their social circle, and they would pass the toys around to their close-knit group, who'd then influence other kids to buy the toy. Worked like a charm! However, it didn't make sense to run their intense operation on a country-wide campaign as it might have bankrupted the company. Still, it was pretty cool to see that these guys tried out some cool new ways of marketing their products and driving diffusion of the game.

Another way to look at it is the very way of doing it. They actually misused kids into selling their games! It's evil when you really think about it! To drive your sales, you mislead some kids into thinking they're very cool and give them the power to flaunt their awesomeness. And then, you capitalize on the wave of demand that you just created amongst other kids! Brilliant, but evil. Where's the line to be drawn? It's so difficult to choose whether to admire the concept, or be repulsed by it.

The second session had a final case on an Indian Ad agency called Rudhra. Interesting one no doubt, it talked of how the company chooses to keep its segments clearly defined and hire specialists for each of these. A good peek into the life of an advertising agency. Unfortunately, there was a major rush towards the end of the class since we were running out of time, and I'm sure I missed a couple of important lessons from the case, but it was a good end to the course. A reality check on how ad agencies run, and what we might be faced with.

And now to study for the final exam, which will hopefully be chilled out. Unless the prof suddenly turns around, shows us his true colors and gives us the one reason why he shouldn't be given a gold medal.