Business lessons from the Indian Grand Prix

Major sporting events are no longer just about who won the match or who won the medals. Who hosted the event — “Formula 1 in India? You must be joking!” — can have a major impact on that nation’s image worldwide.

And when India did host Formula 1, on October 30 this year, that nation’s status was instantly ratcheted up several notches — globally.

This is yet another example of how emerging economies are increasingly bidding for major, prestigious global events.

Since the great success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, mega sporting events have been travelling to new destinations, particularly to the world’s fastest growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS).(See table below)

From a public relations perspective, the lure of large and spectacular sporting events is often seen as an opportunity to also attract tourism and new investment. The sporting event becomes a platform on which to showcase the culture of the host nation. But the whole event becomes even more than that: it highlights the country’s arrival on the world stage.

The Formula 1 race in New Delhi generated huge international media attention, not just because of the global popularity of the sport, but because the arrival in India of the most expensive sport in the world also signalled that India had now come of age.

For global brands this was a wake-up call: India (and China too) has a growing middle-class with disposable income and they want to buy your goods, so tell them what you have to offer.

The success of the F1 race (against the background of shoddy preparations for the Commonwealth Games) offers instant PR and marketing lessons for foreign firms who want to break into India. Unlike the public sector — that handled the Commonwealth Games —private ventures in that country can indeed deliver world class standards. This flare of the private sector is further underlined by the active involvement of various Indian conglomerates in mergers and acquisitions overseas.

In terms of market demography the young Indian middle-class consumer is trendy, well-informed (due to a free media), cosmopolitan, and exceptionally open to global ideas and cultures (the first F1 race had around 120,000 spectators). It is a country where aligning brand with any truly global event really works.

It could be just a matter of time before there is massive hysteria and a major fan following for the Formula 1 teams, as already exists for the Indian Premier League cricket teams. India might even become the world’s largest market for F1 merchandise.

Marketing gurus should look behind all those depressing figures for literacy, poverty and poor infrastructure: India with its vast young population offers enormous opportunities. The nation of 1.2billion is likely to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030, if not before. However, to get a good slice of that pie, it’s important to get into the market right now — not the day after tomorrow. 

Mega sporting events in emerging nations	Destination
2008 Olympics	Beijing
2010 FiFa World Cup	South Africa
2010 Commonwealth Games	New Delhi
2014 Fifa World Cup	Brazil
2018 Fifa World Cup	Russia

Why companies should blog?

Blogs are one of the exciting ways of communicating to your audience. The concept of blog is not new. It is a digital adoption of the old tradition of writing a diary, but the difference lies in the author’s ability to publish his thoughts online.

In business, blogs are great way of communicating informally with the wider audience both externally and internally. Blogs can be used to tell a story or express an opinion about something. Ideally, for business communications, blogs are an effective tool to build a relationship with the consumers or the targeted audience.  It provides a widow for consumers or other stakeholders to communicate directly with someone at the top position  of a company. By engaging with the audience, and by responding to their comments, the company can win over consumer confidence and loyalty.

Blogs fill a strategic vacuum in a brand's communication process with the wider audience. It sits between advertisements and   customer service by creating a relationship with consumes where they don’t feel simply feel bombarded with messages but also get a chance to air their views on the products and services they consume. 

From company’s perspective blogs help to build what can be termed as ‘emotional quotient’with the consumers. Since blogs can be on anything, it can open up a forum and can be widely used to discuss ideas from the consumers themselves about their next product launch or their opinions about a new product. In many ways by engaging with the consumers, it can help to find out what exactly people think about the company or the brand.

   

The Audience Factor

Five centuries ago, William Shakespeare declared that the ‘all the world’s a stage.’  Over the centuries the stage has become bigger, wider, sophisticated so much so that it is not about an individual playing his individual role, but it is about corporate, brands and governments enacting their roles in front of a global audience.

In literal terms, an audience is described as a group of people who participate in an event of any kind. The classification of audience can be based on a number of factors like gender, age, race, religion and so on.  The data about audience is broadly used for understanding the consumer patterns of a given population; it also provides valuable insight about the preferences, attitudes and behaviour of a given culture. For example, an audience for a football match is much higher in Europe than in Asia, which indicates that most people in Asia prefer other sports over football.

For media, PR and communication, audience form the very basis of marketing.  Whilst audience can be more specific where it comes to a concert, television show or a theatre; the universality of the internet and social media communication tools has meant that the audience for a particular message or advertisement can be potentially global. Moreover, audiences today are not just receptors of a message; they in fact influence or even participate in the creation of messages. In other words, brands and businesses increasing use communication tools to talk about things that they perceive that their audience want to hear about.

 

Let's be quiet

Silence, they say sometimes can be golden. In the world of PR, communication is the core of all that we do. It involves disseminating news about our clients through various channels of communications. PR also involves doing crisis management for the clients, especially when the information sent out is misconstrued by the receiving parties. With the advent of social media, communication has become a two way process. Whilst social media is a great tool to maximise the reach of your messages, brands and companies have to shore up contingency plans to bear the knock on effect should there be negative comments about them.  

For consumer brands, using social media is an absolute necessary.  It provides a great platform to directly engage with the consumers, learn about what they think of their product and so on. However not all responses on social media sites can be positive. Sometimes consumers load embarrassing photographs of a minor flaw in service or can sometimes post a disproportionate response to something unpleasant they experienced with the product or a service. Whilst it is a good idea to engage with your customers, it is also necessary to understand the type  messages they you are going to respond to, and more importantly what information should you put up on public forum.

You cannot surely please all the people at all time, and  this applies to business too. Therefore it is good to be quiet and let the minor storm pass without any damage. 

Engage with Social Media

To be a good communicator, it is essential to engage well with your stakeholders. Engagement in PR and media is about constantly keeping your clients updated about what being done in terms of promotional activities. It essentially involves having a clear and coherent dialogue to understand the aspirations and needs of the clients.

 In PR it is also imperative to have an important relationship with the press. Engagement with the press is important to let people know about the upcoming events, internal management changes and to disclose other news worthy stories that might be relevant to some sections of the media.

In recent years, the avenues for putting a story in the media has widened due to the emergence of social media. While the traditional media is still the preferred choice for announcing important press releases, it has to however, be  complemented with the a strategic use of social media.

Social media ensures a strong online presence. It allows instant engagement with people who are in the ambit of the digital circle. For the event industry in particular, the use of social media is a two step process. At one level, it is used for promotion and for broadcasting interesting bit and pieces of news on a daily basis. At another level, it is used for following up news once it has been released in the main stream media. In fact, the use social of social media revolves around people, objective, stories and technology. We need to understand who the type of people we are targeting at, what is the objective- is it engagement or marketing or both, what strategies we want to adopt, and finally what technology we are going to use: it is a blog, tweet or any other relevant social media tool.

The Power of Dialogue

As the United States solemnly commemorated ten years of the horrific attacks on 9/11, the rest of the world stood by its side showing solidarity and reflecting how the events on that fateful day had an impact on our daily lives.  Much has changed since then: the airport security all over the world got tighter, going for any big public events anywhere came with a tag of having to go through security checks; psychologically, the symbols of defence and security represented by armed police man in London’s Piccadilly Circus or almost fortified airport in New Delhi constantly remind us of the threat and the vulnerability from terror strikes.

On geo-political front, new allies were formed, old allies went to war. As I write this, reports of a major gun battle around the US embassy is pouring in from Kabul.  The war against terror has run into trillions of dollars; during the process some controversial strategic mistakes may have been made particularly with Iraq, the US succeeded in eliminating Osama bin Laden but the actual threat to global peace and security hasn’t subsided.

One of the major unfortunate fall out of the war on terror has been is the stereotyping and prejudiced shown against an identifiable religious community. This has not only created divisions within multicultural societies but lead to the rise of radical and right wing groups that tend to undermine the very ideals of freedom and democracy.

What is the solution to all these problems? On September 11 this year, I had a privilege to take part in a global peace meeting at a very local level. The meeting was organised in a picturesque village near Gloucester in south west England. As we deliberated about the cost of the war and the number of British and other lives lost, we discussed at length how individually we can contribute to the global peace.

Global peace can sound a lofty term but it begins with us at the very local level by forging strong relationship with people of races and religions in our neighbourhood. It is about shaping a public opinion first at the local level and then at national level for peace and dialogue. Together by forming a strong public opinion, we can put pressure on our governments to adopt policies which are based on dialogue and peace rather than war and devastation. This includes forcing governments across the world to come to consensus to get rid of nuclear arms by 2015. I am not saying that we should disband the military; they should exist for our defence and for operations that can alleviate humanity from oppression and undue suffering.

In the meeting titled Humanity at a Crossroads the following was read out:

More than half a century ago, Gandhi spoke out against the unremitting violence that wracked him times. What distinguishes us from brute beasts, he said, is our continuous striving for moral improvement. He declared that humanity was at crossroads and had to choose between violence, the law of jungle, or non violence, the law of humanity. The world in fact now has an unprecedented opportunity. We have a change to open a new page in the human history.

Dr Daisku Ideka , the president of SGI, a global  Buddhist peace organisation said this after the attacks on 09/11:

“We regard the recent terrorist attacks in the United States as a challenge to the law of humanity. As a result, we refuse to follow the law of the jungle upon which the attacks were based . We declare our determination to find a solution not by military means but through initiation of extensive dialogue with the Arab world. Instead of pouring oil on the flames of hatred, we choose to douse those flames with a great flood of dialogue that will enrich and benefit all humanity.

This terrible tragedy took place in the first year of the 21st century; we will mark that event by making 2001 the first year of a new era of dialogue with the Arab world. This is the best and only choice to assure that the horrors are never repeated , and we believe it is the most fitting way to honour the memory of all those who lost their lives in the attacks.”

Such a declaration, put into action, would certainly be met with the unstinting praise of future historians. When great evil occurs, great good follows. But great good doesn’t come about on its own. Courage is always required to accomplish to great good. Now it is the time for us to demonstrate the courage of non-violence, the courage to engage in dialogue, the courage to listen to what we don’t want to hear, the courage to control our desire for revenge and follow reason.

(The above excerpt is from the essay by Dr Daisaku Ikeda on his encounter with Mrs Veena Sikri, former director general of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations)   

      

 

Reflection: 28 August - a day where I have always been a winner

St. Augustine' School, Kalimpong, India

Good days always comes unannounced, but while in school there was one day that I always knew was going to be a great day for me and my friends. The day, 28^th August, was my school day: the feast of St. Augustine. The week leading up to the day was full of celebrations, concerts and other activities. It meant fewer classes and more time to engage in a range of extra –curricular activities. The school building and the hostels got freshly painted; the gardens and the lawns were immaculately mowed and tendered, the school chapel  was relentlessly polished and decorated by the sisters(nuns), there were surprises in every meal ( which was always better than the food served during  the rest of the year).

Many students got an opportunity to show their talent in music, drama, dance and singing during the week. It was a culmination of weeks of rehearsals where teachers, staff and students worked very hard to put up the best show. It was also on this day our much loved and celebrated girls from our neighbouring sister institution St. Joseph’s convent marched eloquently in pair to our grand auditorium to watch the annual concert. It was a major anticipated moment for most boys!

school concert

Personally for me, it was day of glory. The inter- house swimming competition was held on this day. I was a good swimmer and every year on this day I filled my kitty with gold and silver medals. It felt great to be cheered by friends and receive those medals in front of the entire school. Weeks later the inter-school swimming tournament, the Burn’s Shield took place, but it was not always in front of your school crowd.

Winning the medals was a joy: it made you popular, your friends and teachers congratulated you. You wanted to write everything to your parents and wished they were there to see it. But above all what was great was that the spirit of camaraderie that existed. It made you feel that everyone is a winner. I celebrated my victory with the very friends I competed against. No one envied you; and you stood by your friends when they took part in something.

Later in life, the day continued to be great for me. I got my first job in London on this day last year. I certainly miss those great school days, but that day was just not about convent girls and celebrations alone. It taught us some great values of healthy competition, love, team work and loyalty that helps me in my day to day life. Possibly I might have forgotten about this day, but thanks to Facebook, boys of St. Augustine’s or Sasonians as they are called, have been pouring wishes from Kathmandu to the US. I wish all my friends good luck wherever they are.