SMIA Hits The Nail On The Head!

The marketing discipline has always been more art than science; corporations have spent untold billions on marketing without any exact way to determine how much the resulting 'Brand Equity' or 'Consumer Awareness' contributes to their bottom line. With this in mind, SPJIMR organized the Marketing Effectiveness Conclave to showcase real life instances where marketing initiatives have helped enhance marketing effectiveness.

The event also hosted the SP Jain Marketing Impact Awards, a competition in which companies presented their best marketing initiatives – which were judged for the return on marketing investment. The finalists for this year were Ginger Hotels, Motorola, Marico and the first international entry of Pentland. At the ringing of the final bell Marico was declared the winner for its advanced IT based Sales Information System with Motorola as the runner up for the impact of their marketing initiatives.

The keynote address was given by Mr. S. Sivakumar, Chief Executive of ITC agro-business. The brain behind the award winning e-Choupal model talked about the evolution of marketing thinking with special regards to the social marketing network in rural India and how firms can make a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

The event included a panel discussion of industry experts, discussing how to make marketing accountable to the business. The discussion ranged from the limitations of quantitative metrics in marketing to Brand Equity and how to effectively leverage its benefits for business. Prof. Atish Chattopadhay commented, “A data driven basis for making broad, strategic marketing trade-offs are yet to be established. This event aims to create awareness about the fact that the trade-offs were made on the basis of projected financial impact and long-term sustainability of the organizations."