Sue Morem (www.suemorem.com) is a book author, president of training and consulting firm Premier Presentation Inc., a media columnist and an “authority” on career training. Below are excerpts from an article entitled “The Indisputable Character Primer for Work and Life,” published in her Web site.
1. Be careful
Your permanent record, for the rest of your life, begins NOW. Enjoy this clean slate. Embrace this fresh reputation...Take care to cultivate one that you can live with for the rest of your working life. Think of your reputation as your little shadow because it will follow you wherever you go.
2. Be grateful
No job is beneath you... Any job that pays you for a legal activity is an honorable job, and it probably pays you more in a month than people in many parts of the world make in a year. Appreciate the opportunity to work, and do your best regardless of the position.
3. Be appropriate
It does matter what people think of you. Maintaining your individuality is great. But a certain amount of conformity and maturity in appearance and behavior is expected in the work place... If you are adamant about looking and acting exactly how you want, consider self-employment.
4. Be prompt
There is nothing fashionable, cute, sexy or impressive about being late. So be on time for everything. Tardy is tawdry.
5. Be willing
Enthusiasm matters a great deal. Employers notice people who are regularly willing to take on the tough assignments and the boring but necessary assignments, and who are willing to stay late, come in early, skip lunch and do whatever is necessary to get the job done well and on time. If you can’t be enthusiastic about what you’re doing, get another job.
6. Be still
Work on your listening skills. There is a reason we all have two ears and only one mouth. Use them proportionately.
7. Same as no. 6
8. Be joyful
Find joy and meaning in what you do. Life is too short to have a job that makes you miserable... If you can’t decide to be happy in your job, then move on. Remember “Joy is contagious.” Yours will “infect” the people you work with and make for a more pleasurable, meaningful work environment.
9. Be nice
Take time to acknowledge and really see the people you encounter in all types of jobs throughout your day. Be courteous and caring to everyone, regardless of status or position. As you mature, you will come to realize that it’s not who you know, it’s who you are.
10. Be moral
Take the high road. The term “Business Ethics” doesn’t have to be an oxymoron. As a wise man—or cricket—Jiminy Cricket, once said, “Always let your conscience be your guide.” Listen to the cricket.
11. Be better
You are a work in progress. Your status quo isn’t good enough. Who you are today doesn’t have to be who you’ve been or who you’ll be 10 or 20 years from now. Strive to improve yourself professionally and, more importantly, personally.
12. Be patient
It’s essential to remember that “patience is a virtue”—especially as it relates to finding the ideal job, or awaiting promotions and pay increases. Like Rome, your career won’t be built in a day! Everything takes time, persistence, a game plan, a belief in oneself and the right attitude...
I did not quote the above to praise Ms. Morem nor to anticipate everyone nodding vigorously in agreement with everything she said. I quoted the above to dissect it and to make a distinction between professionalism and sucking up to make it in the corporate world. I have no quarrel with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9 and 11. So, let’s leave them be.
Let me start with no. 5, the “Be enthusiastic” bit. Enthusiasm is an attitude— a positive attitude. It connotes willingness and openness. But when does an attitude cease to be merely enthusiastic and become something else?
A few years ago, I took on a job of managing a national professional organization. I saw a classified ad, I applied for the job and I was hired. Little did I know that there was an employee who had been promised the position that I was hired for. This employee, let’s just call her L, became my assistant.
L had been with the organization for over a decade. She knew the ins and outs like the back of her hand. Truth be told, in terms of experience, she was more qualified than I was. Why didn’t she get the job?
At the outset, the ostensible explanation was that she did not have the academic qualifications. But, after three months or so, I realized that the job did not really require academic credentials. All that it required, really, was the ability to play nice to the various personalities, boost their egos and that was it. I was hired because I was supposed to change all that by ushering in a new brand of professionalism that was not personality-oriented and did not require sucking up. The problem was that the organization, as a whole, was not ready for change.
L was an enthusiastic employee. She fit the description of Ms. Morem’s enthusiastic personality. She worked late hours, she was willing to skip meals, she willingly ran the personal errands of some of the bosses, she made them coffee, poured their drinking water... In short, she did more than her assigned tasks just to keep everything together.
Did it create a professional reputation for her that merited respect and opportunities for progress? No. In fact, some of the bosses stepped all over her and took advantage. The more willingness she showed, the more abuse she got. Working late into the night, and even on weekends, without overtime pay and night differentials. Toward the end of my stint with that organization, I taught L and the rest of the staff to fight for their basic rights under the Labor Code which I had already set out in an employees’ manual, and which I fought tooth and nail to get approved by the Board. Yes, I know, I was the manager and I was teaching the rank-and-file employees about labor rights. Well, sometimes, one has to choose between what is right and being enthusiastic about keeping the job.
What’s my point? Enthusiasm, especially the kind that requires extraordinary effort even beyond the normal working hours and conditions, is good if an employee is dealing with professional bosses.
There is nothing more lop-sided than a situation where the employee is willing to bend over backwards to get the job done, and to keep the job, while the bosses merely take advantage. In a society where there are far more qualified workers than available jobs, the situation takes on horrific proportions. That’s why we find office workers washing plates after the boss’ birthday party, taking and retrieving the boss’ laundry, helping the boss’ kids with his homework and projects... While all these are beyond the parameters of getting the job done, everything starts with willingness and enthusiasm to work the extra hour and mile.
Let’s now move on to the “Be still” part. The ability to listen is an asset but that is not the reason we have two ears and one mouth. We have to ears to allow us to hear things AROUND us; we have one mouth because the only people meant to hear what we’re saying are the one’s we’re addressing. The whole room is not meant to hear something being said to one person alone. Worse, two mouths and two speeches, well... that would be confusing. I just wanted to point out how ridiculous Ms. Morem’s illustration is.
“Be moral.” Right. But whose morality are we talking about? I know far too many stories of idealistic young employees getting corrupted by the “ethics” of the corporation they work for.
W, a new graduate, joins XYZ Corp., a food corporation that purports to sell hamburger patties that are 100 percent pure beef. As W rose up the corporate ladder, he eventually lands a position high enough to make him privy to the real ingredients of the burgers sold by the company. He discovers they are 40 percent beef, 30 percent pork and 30 percent extenders. But, as part of his job, he is required to approve advertising contracts that say XYZ’s burgers are 100 percent pure beef.
If W lets his conscience be his guide, he will either resign or go public with the information he has. If he resigns, he will be lying to the public by withholding the truth. If he makes a public statement, he will never be hired in another corporation. Professional suicide.
When one equates ethics with conscience, therefore, whose conscience is being referred to? If we go with personal professional ethics and it clashes with the corporate ethics, how can it be an asset to make it in the corporate world?
“Be patient,” says Ms. Morem. Patience to get a promotion or a raise... Well, patience works if every promotion or raise is based on merit. If moving up the corporate ladder is dependent on performance and skills, patience would be relevant. Under such circumstances, it is reasonable to presume that reward will come in a timely manner. But corporations are bastions of personal politics. Bosses have their personal favorites and promotions are as much a product of PR than performance.
Let’s say Ana and Juana are in the same department. In the corporate hierarchy, they are on the same level although they perform different tasks. Juana’s job requires focus for long hours and, after a day’s work, she is mentally exhausted and does not have the energy to perform extra tasks just to show her “enthusiasm” for her work. You know, exhibit “team spirit.”
Meanwhile, Ana’s work is lighter, leaving her time to help her boss’ school-aged son with his build-a-model-house project. Ana has the time to peek in to her boss’ office to ask if he wants coffee or a sandwich. She even has time to pick up his laundry and hang it neatly in a small closet inside the boss’ office.
Ana moves up the corporate ladder ahead of Juana. Is it really just to expect Juana to show patience under the circumstances? Oh, come on.
In the end, you know, that’s why I rarely read those books on so-called self-improvement written by so-called authorities.
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
Corporates dip their toes in the blogging waters
by Sarah McDonald
Starting a corporate blog – and thereby putting the company into a global fishbowl – is sometimes seen as a risky strategy. This view is reinforced by the handful of large companies with large marketing budgets that have spectacularly failed to read the blogging waters. Like the Wal-Marting Across America blog (walmartingacrossamerica.com), a tale of the adventures of couple Jim and Laura travelling across the country and visiting Wal-Mart stores along the way. Its positive impact on Wal-Mart’s reputation was short-lived when it was revealed Wal-Mart was paying Jim and Laura to write the blog, in a publicity stunt concocted by Wal-Mart’s PR firm Edelman to present a different side of the oft-criticised retailer.Electronics giant Sony also ran into strife last Christmas when it was revealed that an “All I want for Xmas is a PSP” blog, supposedly authored by gamers desperate to get their hands on a PlayStation Portable, was in fact created by Sony’s marketing firm Zipatoni. Both deceptions caused a huge fallout for the companies involved.But businesses that follow a few basic rules (most importantly, don’t lie) have found there can be many positives to corporate blogging. Not surprisingly, the IT community has been one of the first to come on board. Former Microsoft employee Robert Scoble is credited with helping to change perceptions about Microsoft within the IT community, through his popular blog (scoble.weblogs.com).That Microsoft supported his “warts and all” style of blogging, including his dissatisfaction with his salary, earned respect for the way the company encouraged a more open style of discourse.Local examples of corporate bloggers include Fronde CEO Jim Donovan (En Avant: jimdonovan.net.nz) and IT entrepreneur Rod Drury (www.drury.net.nz). Mr Drury sees his blog as an investment in building his and his company’s profile and brand. “Building a communications mechanism and being open with your customers puts money in the bank for when you need it … it creates a lot of loyalty,” he said. Mr Drury said for corporate blogs to work they have to be interesting and offer some value for readers – like looking at industry issues rather than just being a PR mouthpiece for a company. Blogger David Farrar (www.kiwiblog.co.nz) said corporate blogs can work as long as they are written by an individual and avoid PR speak – “as long as it’s not just a sales pitch from an unknown hack.”According to an Ogilvy paper entitled “How trust, technology and personal media affect brands and issues,” it’s all about making sure a company “leads the conversation” – that is, being first to the punch with both the good news and the bad.This way, it’s more likely that people will accept a company’s version of events when something goes on, rather than allowing other bloggers to take the high ground of uncovering a scandal. The paper also offers advice about the way information is presented: “The tone of voice in social media is conversational and authentic. Anything that sounds rehearsed, contrived or meant to sell or manipulate will not be accepted in a social network.”Saatchi & Saatchi general manager Dean Taylor echoed this sentiment, saying the cardinal rule of blogging – and other forms of social networking – was to be emotionally honest.
Starting a corporate blog – and thereby putting the company into a global fishbowl – is sometimes seen as a risky strategy. This view is reinforced by the handful of large companies with large marketing budgets that have spectacularly failed to read the blogging waters. Like the Wal-Marting Across America blog (walmartingacrossamerica.com), a tale of the adventures of couple Jim and Laura travelling across the country and visiting Wal-Mart stores along the way. Its positive impact on Wal-Mart’s reputation was short-lived when it was revealed Wal-Mart was paying Jim and Laura to write the blog, in a publicity stunt concocted by Wal-Mart’s PR firm Edelman to present a different side of the oft-criticised retailer.Electronics giant Sony also ran into strife last Christmas when it was revealed that an “All I want for Xmas is a PSP” blog, supposedly authored by gamers desperate to get their hands on a PlayStation Portable, was in fact created by Sony’s marketing firm Zipatoni. Both deceptions caused a huge fallout for the companies involved.But businesses that follow a few basic rules (most importantly, don’t lie) have found there can be many positives to corporate blogging. Not surprisingly, the IT community has been one of the first to come on board. Former Microsoft employee Robert Scoble is credited with helping to change perceptions about Microsoft within the IT community, through his popular blog (scoble.weblogs.com).That Microsoft supported his “warts and all” style of blogging, including his dissatisfaction with his salary, earned respect for the way the company encouraged a more open style of discourse.Local examples of corporate bloggers include Fronde CEO Jim Donovan (En Avant: jimdonovan.net.nz) and IT entrepreneur Rod Drury (www.drury.net.nz). Mr Drury sees his blog as an investment in building his and his company’s profile and brand. “Building a communications mechanism and being open with your customers puts money in the bank for when you need it … it creates a lot of loyalty,” he said. Mr Drury said for corporate blogs to work they have to be interesting and offer some value for readers – like looking at industry issues rather than just being a PR mouthpiece for a company. Blogger David Farrar (www.kiwiblog.co.nz) said corporate blogs can work as long as they are written by an individual and avoid PR speak – “as long as it’s not just a sales pitch from an unknown hack.”According to an Ogilvy paper entitled “How trust, technology and personal media affect brands and issues,” it’s all about making sure a company “leads the conversation” – that is, being first to the punch with both the good news and the bad.This way, it’s more likely that people will accept a company’s version of events when something goes on, rather than allowing other bloggers to take the high ground of uncovering a scandal. The paper also offers advice about the way information is presented: “The tone of voice in social media is conversational and authentic. Anything that sounds rehearsed, contrived or meant to sell or manipulate will not be accepted in a social network.”Saatchi & Saatchi general manager Dean Taylor echoed this sentiment, saying the cardinal rule of blogging – and other forms of social networking – was to be emotionally honest.
Blogging and PR learn to co-exist
by Sarah McDonald
The explosion of social networking and user-generated-content on the internet poses big challenges for the world of public relations.Life was simpler when the perceptions of people and brands the industry was trying to control came mainly through the mainstream media.Although word of mouth has always had some influence, it is now becoming more important as online social networking booms.So how will the public relations industry deal with a phenomenon it has little hope of controlling?Bob Burton from the Centre for Media and Democracy in the US is sceptical about the role public relations has to play in blogging.He said PR tends to hype itself as being a solution to whatever the latest challenge is to clients or potential clients. Although corporate blogs will proliferate, that doesn't mean they will have the impact that independent blogs enjoy."The credibility of blogs, like anything else, relies on people treating their audience with respect by being upfront. Then people can decide by themselves about how to interpret the information."If you have no vested interest, people will give it more weight."But public relations companies argue that their job is to guard their client's corporate reputations and that the online community can have a huge positive, or negative, influence on this reputation.David Farrar, whose kiwiblog.co.nz recently hit a record high of 15,000 unique visitors a day, said he's definitely aware that PR firms pay attention to what he writes.On several occasions after reporting on what other people think about products, he has been offered them to review for himself.His advice to PR people is to be careful how you treat bloggers."If you ring up and harangue a blogger, they're likely to post about it."Ogilvy PR now includes blogging in its service offer to clients. This can include getting executives up with the play on the size and scope of the blogosphere, monitoring blogs for mentions of a company and analysing the opinions expressed, and helping with writing company blogs.Although it's impossible to control everything written on the web, the successful handling of corporate blogs can give companies a human face, provide a means to communicate with consumers and offer them the opportunity to tell their side of the story.TBWA\Whybin PR managing partner Kelly Bennett considers blog monitoring a part of carrying out market intelligence for a client. TBWA\Whybin PR has used MySpace for a launch.The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (Prinz) annual conference in Auckland next week includes a workshop on social media and the tools and tactics PR people can use.
The explosion of social networking and user-generated-content on the internet poses big challenges for the world of public relations.Life was simpler when the perceptions of people and brands the industry was trying to control came mainly through the mainstream media.Although word of mouth has always had some influence, it is now becoming more important as online social networking booms.So how will the public relations industry deal with a phenomenon it has little hope of controlling?Bob Burton from the Centre for Media and Democracy in the US is sceptical about the role public relations has to play in blogging.He said PR tends to hype itself as being a solution to whatever the latest challenge is to clients or potential clients. Although corporate blogs will proliferate, that doesn't mean they will have the impact that independent blogs enjoy."The credibility of blogs, like anything else, relies on people treating their audience with respect by being upfront. Then people can decide by themselves about how to interpret the information."If you have no vested interest, people will give it more weight."But public relations companies argue that their job is to guard their client's corporate reputations and that the online community can have a huge positive, or negative, influence on this reputation.David Farrar, whose kiwiblog.co.nz recently hit a record high of 15,000 unique visitors a day, said he's definitely aware that PR firms pay attention to what he writes.On several occasions after reporting on what other people think about products, he has been offered them to review for himself.His advice to PR people is to be careful how you treat bloggers."If you ring up and harangue a blogger, they're likely to post about it."Ogilvy PR now includes blogging in its service offer to clients. This can include getting executives up with the play on the size and scope of the blogosphere, monitoring blogs for mentions of a company and analysing the opinions expressed, and helping with writing company blogs.Although it's impossible to control everything written on the web, the successful handling of corporate blogs can give companies a human face, provide a means to communicate with consumers and offer them the opportunity to tell their side of the story.TBWA\Whybin PR managing partner Kelly Bennett considers blog monitoring a part of carrying out market intelligence for a client. TBWA\Whybin PR has used MySpace for a launch.The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (Prinz) annual conference in Auckland next week includes a workshop on social media and the tools and tactics PR people can use.
O&M B'lore to be Lenovo's global ad hub
IRSHAD DAFTARITIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, JUNE 05, 2007)
MUMBAI: In a global first, PC manufacturer Lenovo is moving its entire global advertising portfolio to WPP Group agency Ogilvy & Mather’s Bangalore branch. Account planning, servicing and creative — all will now be handled out of the Bangalore hub, which will work closely with other O&M branches all over the world to customise the advertising for different regions. The ‘Lenovo Hub’, as it’s called, has been on a test run over the past week or so and has been fully operational since Friday, June 1. The team in the hub will work on global print, television as well as Internet advertising for the Chinese PC maker, which could potentially go out to 160 countries where Lenovo has a presence. Though China might have been the logical destination to set up a hub for Lenovo, O&M’s experience with the IBM account in India swung the deal in favour of Bangalore. In the past, according to sources, O&M has been used for some work at the Asia-Pacific level by IBM. The fact that O&M has been handling the creative business for different markets for Lenovo, the world’s third-largest PC manufacturer after Dell and HP, has also come in handy. When ET contacted Lenovo, it refused to comment. Piyush Pandey, chairman of O&M India, and Pratap Bose, CEO of O&M India, refused to comment on the implications of the move. Sources told ET that talks had been going on between the two parties for over 3-4 months. O&M has hired more than 50 people in the past few weeks, a mix of domain experts in technology and advertising, to work only on Lenovo’s account. Sources indicate that these numbers will rise as the quantum of work increases. The team in Bangalore will work closely with other O&M offices in Europe and the Americas to use cultural insights that the other offices bring to complete the product. Sources said Vinod Menon will be in charge of operations for the hub and will be reporting to Prateek Srivastava, president, O&M (Bangalore). The resulting advertising campaign is likely to focus around Lenovo’s current theme ‘From the world’s best engineers come the world’s best-engineered PCs’. By all accounts, Lenovo will spend big money in advertising in the next two years. During last year’s Turin Winter Olympics, Lenovo spent a total of $16 million (around Rs 48 crore) as a sponsor. Also, it retained the rights for the IBM brand name till 2010 after it acquired IBM’s PC division in 2005, but has indicated that the phase-out might happen sooner. It is also a sponsor at next year’s Olympics in Beijing, which will culminate in another big advertising blitz. The advertising industry is finally learning a lesson from its more successful counterparts in the IT industry. It marks a definite coming-of-age for the Indian advertising industry, reckoned to have the potential for a low-cost but high quality advertising hub, with total cost savings on execution and production totting up to as high as 50% of cost. In the past, a few campaigns have been executed and produced with Indian agencies as the back end after the concept was formulated elsewhere. For instance, Mudra Marketing Services has, in the past, worked on a few print and Internet advertising campaigns that were originally conceptualised in DDB London, and the detail and body copy was developed in Bangalore. Says R Laxminarayanan, CEO of Mudra Marketing Services: “Many agencies have tried to latch on to the opportunity that offshoring presents, but nobody has been anywhere as successful as O&M.”
MUMBAI: In a global first, PC manufacturer Lenovo is moving its entire global advertising portfolio to WPP Group agency Ogilvy & Mather’s Bangalore branch. Account planning, servicing and creative — all will now be handled out of the Bangalore hub, which will work closely with other O&M branches all over the world to customise the advertising for different regions. The ‘Lenovo Hub’, as it’s called, has been on a test run over the past week or so and has been fully operational since Friday, June 1. The team in the hub will work on global print, television as well as Internet advertising for the Chinese PC maker, which could potentially go out to 160 countries where Lenovo has a presence. Though China might have been the logical destination to set up a hub for Lenovo, O&M’s experience with the IBM account in India swung the deal in favour of Bangalore. In the past, according to sources, O&M has been used for some work at the Asia-Pacific level by IBM. The fact that O&M has been handling the creative business for different markets for Lenovo, the world’s third-largest PC manufacturer after Dell and HP, has also come in handy. When ET contacted Lenovo, it refused to comment. Piyush Pandey, chairman of O&M India, and Pratap Bose, CEO of O&M India, refused to comment on the implications of the move. Sources told ET that talks had been going on between the two parties for over 3-4 months. O&M has hired more than 50 people in the past few weeks, a mix of domain experts in technology and advertising, to work only on Lenovo’s account. Sources indicate that these numbers will rise as the quantum of work increases. The team in Bangalore will work closely with other O&M offices in Europe and the Americas to use cultural insights that the other offices bring to complete the product. Sources said Vinod Menon will be in charge of operations for the hub and will be reporting to Prateek Srivastava, president, O&M (Bangalore). The resulting advertising campaign is likely to focus around Lenovo’s current theme ‘From the world’s best engineers come the world’s best-engineered PCs’. By all accounts, Lenovo will spend big money in advertising in the next two years. During last year’s Turin Winter Olympics, Lenovo spent a total of $16 million (around Rs 48 crore) as a sponsor. Also, it retained the rights for the IBM brand name till 2010 after it acquired IBM’s PC division in 2005, but has indicated that the phase-out might happen sooner. It is also a sponsor at next year’s Olympics in Beijing, which will culminate in another big advertising blitz. The advertising industry is finally learning a lesson from its more successful counterparts in the IT industry. It marks a definite coming-of-age for the Indian advertising industry, reckoned to have the potential for a low-cost but high quality advertising hub, with total cost savings on execution and production totting up to as high as 50% of cost. In the past, a few campaigns have been executed and produced with Indian agencies as the back end after the concept was formulated elsewhere. For instance, Mudra Marketing Services has, in the past, worked on a few print and Internet advertising campaigns that were originally conceptualised in DDB London, and the detail and body copy was developed in Bangalore. Says R Laxminarayanan, CEO of Mudra Marketing Services: “Many agencies have tried to latch on to the opportunity that offshoring presents, but nobody has been anywhere as successful as O&M.”
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Tips to Build Your Email Address Database
WHY BUILD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS DATABASE?Gaining your customers’ email addresses will:Provide an additional channel for reaching your customersIncrease the ROI of your marketing investmentsSignificantly reduce your customer acquisition and marketing costsAllow you to easily measure the impact of your marketing campaignsIncrease your customer participation and retention ratesWith ongoing postal and telemarketing pressures impacting marketing budgets for many organizations this year, email marketing could become the “silver lining ” for many marketers. But how do you create a successful email marketing campaign if you do not have a substantial email database? That question may be one of the largest Internet related challenges facing companies this year.Research shows that the majority of organizations have email addresses for less than 10% of their postal files. So how do you level the playing field and start to add quality permission - based email addresses to your database?Here are some tips that you can use to cost effectively build your email address database and increase your customer participation and retention rates: START TO ASK FOR IT! Every communication or touch point with a customer should start or end with a request for an email address. By utilizing the four points below, you should be able to add email addresses for 5% to 10% of your postal file over the course of one year.1. Direct Mail CollectionThink about how much time and money you spent for copy and design on your last new direct mail piece. Most companies have started to ask their customers for their email address information within these mailings. This is a great step forward. However, companies need to look at one major improvement if they want to increase their email address collection rates. To date, most requests for email address information have been pushed, shoved or jammed into whatever white space remains. It should be no surprise that the success rate has been less than stellar.To improve on these efforts, you need to provide your members with a reason to release their email addresses to you. E-newsletters, purchase confirmations, petitions, and special discounts and offers are but a few of the benefits that will encourage your members to come on board.2. Web Page CollectionMany companies have an email address collection function in place via the web. To improve your sign-up rates, add text below the email request box that informs your visitors of the special email benefits that they will receive (i.e. e-newsletters, purchase confirmations, delivery updates, etc.) upon registering. You can also utilize a pop-up link to inform users of these special benefits.Finally, your email address request function should be available on your home page. Don’t make your users go and look for it. Every click away from your home page reduces the chances of your users taking an action and providing you with their email address information.3. Existing Email Database CollectionDon’t forget to ask the members of your existing customer base for email addresses of their friends, family and associates. Viral marketing is a powerful tool to use and is extremely cost effective! You could ask them either to provide you with additional addresses or simply to pass on your newsletter, email specific offers, or other information to others they feel have similar interests.4. Telemarketing CollectionDon’t assume that your telemarketing agents are asking for email addresses from potential customers. Ensure that your agents have an updated script, which outlines the previously described benefits to potential customers of providing their email addresses.The suggestions above are a great start! Yet they really should be viewed as a secondary plan for building your email database. To exponentially and expeditiously grow your email database, please read on!EMAIL APPENDING Utilizing an email appending service enables you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4 weeks.Email Appending - is the process of adding an individual’s email address to that individual’s postal record in side your existing database. This is accomplished by matching the postal database against a third party, permission based database of postal and email address information.Best Practices - Email Appending is not a prospecting tool. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) and its interactive arm AIM (Association of Interactive Marketing) have guidelines in place that dictate that email appending only be used to append email addresses to your existing opt-in postal record house file.The Process - Your opt-in postal file is securely transferred to an email appending provider, who will do an initial gross email address match of your file against its opt-in database of postal and email address records. Your appending provider will then send these matches a permission-based message prepared by you. All bounces and opt-out requests will be removed from the list. At that point a valid permission-based email address file of your customers will be delivered back to you. Cost - Less than the price of a postal stamp!IN SUMMARYThe first step of any successful email marketing effort is to build a permission-based email address list of your customers. The simplest, quickest and most cost-effective way to do this is through email appending, which will enable you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file. Secondary efforts of email address collection via focused direct mail, web, viral and telemarketing practices are also important and will enable you to add email addresses for an additional 5% to 10% of your base on an annual basis.
Best of luck in building your email address database.
Best of luck in building your email address database.
To Advertise or to Publicize?: 5 Questions that Will Help You Decide
New York, NY – June 2007 – It is the age-old debate: When should a hotel or hospitality business allocate marketing dollars toward advertising - and when is PR, public relations, a better spend?
In an ideal world, you do both – put advertising dollars to work to drive sales from the national market, and utilize PR to strategically build image and target business from niche markets and specialized audiences.
But suppose you do not live in an ideal world (and most of us don’t).
Here are some occasions when, with limited marketing dollars to spend, public relations may be your best choice.
1. You are a smaller hotel, or a hospitality business with a limited budget – All things being equal, public relations is more cost-effective than advertising.
Usually, that’s because when you “do PR,” you engage a person or firm to find your strongest stories and tell them, via the “free” or editorial media. In other words, you pay for the time and sweat of the PR consultant – and that’s pretty much it.
When you buy advertising, however, you pay for the advertising consultant’s time and expenses - but you also pay for the “space” of the ad, in whatever print or electronic media you are working with.
You pay for ad space in each and every publication you target. And those dollars quickly add up.
By contrast, an effective press release, properly pitched, can land in hundreds of media outlets – and get placed again and again, on the Internet.
2. You want to be flexible – When you place advertising, you design an ad, make the purchase, that’s it. You’re done. The ad may run once or repeatedly, in one publication or more than one. It depends how many you pay for But you are assured that your message, the one you have chosen to sell, will reach “so many” eyeballs – and probably not a single one more.
There is comfort in assuredness. But there is flexibility in PR.
Suppose that a week after you have decided to advertise, a hotel owner tells you she is investing $30 million in renovations. That is now your most important story. But, oops! – You can’t change the ad that is running next week!
On the other hand, you can quickly write a press release to announce the news, and place it in appropriate media, quickly.
Or suppose you have hired a new executive, or won a prestigious national award for excellent service.
Advertising these facts will make you sound self-serving. Publicizing them will present you as professional, polished and market-savvy (and probably make your phone ring).
3. You want to target special markets for business – Suppose you are a 200-room luxury hotel that thrives on upscale leisure and FIT business travel, but also wants to target individuals and meeting planners in the group travel, financial, pharmaceutical and sports industries.
Advertising targeted at each of those markets, in addition to affluent consumers, would cost you a bundle – and take lots of ad-firm time (“ka-ching!”) to design targeted messaging and imaging.
An effective PR consultant can take the temperature of each industry’s media, carefully target appropriate messages, and nail the placements – at a fraction of the cost (and time) of a multi-layered advertising campaign.
4. You want to get the message out in “real-time” - Unless you are prepared to march into the sticky thickets of banner ads and direct e-mail advertising, nothing gets the word out quicker, or more effectively, then a well-written press release.
Need proof? Other than advertising for Presidential campaigns – or perhaps, the narcissistic Hollywood ramblings of some over-hyped movie celeb -, how many ads do you see making news on reputable news web sites? Not too many.
By contrast, hundreds of online news sources are continually running stories that began as a catchy press release, born in some ambitious PR Guy’s imagination.
That imagination could be working on behalf of your product’s message.
5. PR is a whole lot more fun – Let’s face, do you really want to sit through another two-hour advertising presentation, replete with blue suits, storyboards, and punch-the-clock creative “geniuses?”
Perhaps . . . and if so, I’ve got half-a-dozen Madison Avenue firms to recommend.
But if you’re looking for the ingenuity, flexibility and “close-to-the-mind of the masses” creativity of a consultant that spends his time effectively selling stories to the most skeptical players in the business world – journalists –, I’d advise you to go with a PR specialist.
His suits may not be as blue, and his polish not quite as slick.
But after all, you were looking for results, weren’t you?
In an ideal world, you do both – put advertising dollars to work to drive sales from the national market, and utilize PR to strategically build image and target business from niche markets and specialized audiences.
But suppose you do not live in an ideal world (and most of us don’t).
Here are some occasions when, with limited marketing dollars to spend, public relations may be your best choice.
1. You are a smaller hotel, or a hospitality business with a limited budget – All things being equal, public relations is more cost-effective than advertising.
Usually, that’s because when you “do PR,” you engage a person or firm to find your strongest stories and tell them, via the “free” or editorial media. In other words, you pay for the time and sweat of the PR consultant – and that’s pretty much it.
When you buy advertising, however, you pay for the advertising consultant’s time and expenses - but you also pay for the “space” of the ad, in whatever print or electronic media you are working with.
You pay for ad space in each and every publication you target. And those dollars quickly add up.
By contrast, an effective press release, properly pitched, can land in hundreds of media outlets – and get placed again and again, on the Internet.
2. You want to be flexible – When you place advertising, you design an ad, make the purchase, that’s it. You’re done. The ad may run once or repeatedly, in one publication or more than one. It depends how many you pay for But you are assured that your message, the one you have chosen to sell, will reach “so many” eyeballs – and probably not a single one more.
There is comfort in assuredness. But there is flexibility in PR.
Suppose that a week after you have decided to advertise, a hotel owner tells you she is investing $30 million in renovations. That is now your most important story. But, oops! – You can’t change the ad that is running next week!
On the other hand, you can quickly write a press release to announce the news, and place it in appropriate media, quickly.
Or suppose you have hired a new executive, or won a prestigious national award for excellent service.
Advertising these facts will make you sound self-serving. Publicizing them will present you as professional, polished and market-savvy (and probably make your phone ring).
3. You want to target special markets for business – Suppose you are a 200-room luxury hotel that thrives on upscale leisure and FIT business travel, but also wants to target individuals and meeting planners in the group travel, financial, pharmaceutical and sports industries.
Advertising targeted at each of those markets, in addition to affluent consumers, would cost you a bundle – and take lots of ad-firm time (“ka-ching!”) to design targeted messaging and imaging.
An effective PR consultant can take the temperature of each industry’s media, carefully target appropriate messages, and nail the placements – at a fraction of the cost (and time) of a multi-layered advertising campaign.
4. You want to get the message out in “real-time” - Unless you are prepared to march into the sticky thickets of banner ads and direct e-mail advertising, nothing gets the word out quicker, or more effectively, then a well-written press release.
Need proof? Other than advertising for Presidential campaigns – or perhaps, the narcissistic Hollywood ramblings of some over-hyped movie celeb -, how many ads do you see making news on reputable news web sites? Not too many.
By contrast, hundreds of online news sources are continually running stories that began as a catchy press release, born in some ambitious PR Guy’s imagination.
That imagination could be working on behalf of your product’s message.
5. PR is a whole lot more fun – Let’s face, do you really want to sit through another two-hour advertising presentation, replete with blue suits, storyboards, and punch-the-clock creative “geniuses?”
Perhaps . . . and if so, I’ve got half-a-dozen Madison Avenue firms to recommend.
But if you’re looking for the ingenuity, flexibility and “close-to-the-mind of the masses” creativity of a consultant that spends his time effectively selling stories to the most skeptical players in the business world – journalists –, I’d advise you to go with a PR specialist.
His suits may not be as blue, and his polish not quite as slick.
But after all, you were looking for results, weren’t you?
Monday, 4 June 2007
Pepsi: Repairing A Poisoned Reputation In India
How the soda giant fought charges of tainted products in a country fixated on its polluted water
Indra K. Nooyi says she still feels guilty filling a bathtub with water. It sounds far-fetched coming from the chief executive of a major multinational corporation, until you consider her early years. Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo Inc. (PEP ), didn't get much water growing up during the 1960s in the Indian coastal city of Chennai. Although she describes her family as "very middle class," they still had to rise every morning between three and five—the only hours that the valves to the municipal water supply were turned on—and fill every bucket in the house. Two buckets were set aside for cooking, and two each would go to Nooyi, her older sister, and her younger brother. "You had to think about whether to take a bath," says Nooyi, matter-of-factly. "You learned to live your life off those two buckets."
Nooyi left Chennai, propelled by a dream to build a career in the U.S. She headed to the prestigious Indian Institute of Management and later Yale University before moving into the corporate sphere, eventually settling at PepsiCo in 1994. When she was named CEO in October of last year, India's water again became a focus of her life.This time Nooyi was cast as part of the problem. Villagers charged that PepsiCo—which has named India as a top strategic priority—consumes excessive groundwater in their parched communities. Even worse was the repeated claim that the snack and beverage company, along with rival Coca-Cola Co. (KO ), were allowing pesticide residue from groundwater to get into locally made soda. The charges, first leveled in 2003, emerged again two months before Nooyi took over the top job. Pepsi's soda sales, which fell by double digits in India when the scandal first broke, took another big hit last fall. She braced herself as protestors smashed bottles on the streets while several states in India banned or restricted sales of soft drinks. Nooyi, now 51, was livid. "For somebody to think that Pepsi would jeopardize its brand—its global brand—by doing something stupid in one country is crazy."AN ACTIVIST FAMILYBut Indian politicians and consumers took the charges seriously, in part because they came from Sunita Narain. A well-known activist in New Delhi, Narain, 45, was born into a family of freedom fighters who supported Mahatma Gandhi in the push for India's independence in 1947. She idolized her late father even though he may not always have hewed to Gandhi's creed of nonviolence. "I'm told he even made bombs," she says.In high school Narain took up environmental causes, campaigning to stop developers from cutting down New Delhi trees. Unlike Nooyi, her ambition was not to leave India but to save it from the excesses of industrialization. She skipped college, explaining that she "was very keen to do a degree in environmental issues, but nobody offered it." Instead, in 1981, she fell in with a charismatic activist named Anil Agarwal who had just started the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE). Narain became director of the fledgling advocacy group in 2002 when Agarwal died. Her tone in that role tends toward the-end-is-nigh alarmism; her savvy tactics often draw media attention and have garnered such environmental accolades as the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize. Indians, she declares, are "getting poisoned by pesticides," and CSE tests show Pepsi contributes to this toxic assault.On one level a tale of two strong-minded individuals, Pepsi's ongoing battle over water in India also illustrates an escalating global backlash against the ways multinationals consume natural resources. Foreign companies have long transformed oil, diamonds, and countless other raw materials into profits that flow from developing nations to wealthy ones. Now the playing field is leveling. Activists such as Narain have blogs, e-mail, and other cheap, powerful tools for getting their messages out. Consumers, meanwhile, are more aware of how big players do business abroad and can react by boycotting the fruits of bad behavior, from blood diamonds to sweatshop sneakers.Even as companies begin to take seriously the mantra of social responsibility, they find themselves more vulnerable to politically charged onslaughts. In recent months, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS ) has cut oil production in Nigeria amid violent attacks on its operations. Diamond giant De Beers battled allegations that it played a role in relocating bushmen in Botswana against their will, and Cargill was forced temporarily to shut down its soy processing and shipping plant in Brazil amid public outcry that it was contributing to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.The hostility toward Pepsi in India has been exacerbated by the particular meaning water holds for Indians. Bathing in it can be a sacred act. For many, death is not properly marked until the ashes are scattered in the Ganges. In a global poll last year by consumer research group Henley World, Indians listed drinking water as one of the main things they do to improve their well-being. Americans reported taking supplements; Germans cited sunbathing.Yet Indian water is some of the worst in the world, according to the U.N., because of poor sewage treatment, heavy pesticide use, and industrial pollution. Availability is hampered by overpumping and poor management. Municipalities usually receive a pittance from individual consumers that doesn't cover the cost of delivering water, while large farms and industry essentially pay nothing at all, creating little incentive to conserve. In this setting, a foreign company that diverts scarce water to manufacture a sugary, discretionary product is a ripe target for critics.Nooyi recognizes the delicacy of being so closely associated with water in her native land. But she points out that soft drinks and bottled water account for less than 0.04% of industrial water usage in India. "If we get attention, it's not because of the water we use. It's because of what we represent," she says, pouring herself a glass of PepsiCo's Aquafina water during an interview in her bright, uncluttered office at company headquarters in Purchase, N.Y. Pepsi, a $35 billion corporation, she notes, has gone to such lengths in India as digging village wells, "harvesting" rainwater, and even teaching better techniques for growing rice and tomatoes. She's intensely aware that local perceptions matter. "What we don't want is for people to think that industry is taking out of the ground God-given natural resources and depleting that community of its livelihood or requirements for existence."Pepsi's water clash in India took a dramatic turn after PepsiCo executive Abhiram Seth visited Narain in February, 2003. Seth, a chatty and wry 55-year-old who dabbles in stage acting, serves as Pepsi's chief navigator through the complex regulatory and political channels of his native country. As executive director of exports and external affairs, he also manages the eclectic agricultural projects that may help to improve the company's image. Seth came to Narain's plant-filled New Delhi office just after CSE had tested the country's top 10 bottled-water brands for pesticides and was pressing for tighter government regulation.The issue touched a nerve as government studies had recently reported high pesticide levels in milk, rice, and other staples, raising concerns about toxins seeping into the water supply. Indians rely heavily on groundwater for drinking and agriculture, having drilled an estimated 21 million wells, most unregulated, since 1965. Seth came to Narain, he now explains, "to understand the data and see if we could work together to address the issues."Narain recalls it differently. She claims that Seth bullied her and "gave me a huge lecture about nationalism or some rubbish.... He was clearly trying to get me to back off." With Aquafina scoring near the top in bottled-water quality in the country, she wondered whether there was some broader agenda at work. Narain suspected Pepsi didn't want tougher standards for water because that might require more rigorous treatment of the water going into its sodas. Naturally suspicious of corporate behavior, she thought: "Why don't we check their soft drinks?"Over the next six months, Narain had CSE's scientists test random samples of 12 major soft-drink brands, from Diet Pepsi and Coca-Cola to local favorites like Mirinda and Thums Up. "Before we did this," she insists, "I had no idea that all of them were owned by Pepsi or Coke." Still, with an annual budget of less than $1 million at the time (it grew to $1.2 million last year), Narain knew very well the value of snagging big-name villains to promote her cause. "Looking at soda draws attention to the whole pesticide problem," she says. What CSE found were minute traces of pesticides such as lindane, DDT, malathion, and chlorpyrifos. Although much lower than those CSE had detected in milk, the residue levels exceeded stringent European Economic Commission standards for water. Pepsi was 36 times as high as the standards, in CSE tests, while Coke was 30 times as high. On Aug. 5, 2003, Narain held a press conference in New Delhi, saying that the Indian-made soft drinks were "unfit for human consumption" and could cause cancer and birth defects over the long term. As a further insult to Indian consumers, she says, samples tested from the U.S. contained no such residue, prompting Narain to accuse Pepsi and Coke of pushing products "they wouldn't dare sell" at home.'COMPLETELY SAFE'Pepsi executives were stunned and outraged. "When you're testing in subparts per billion," Seth says, "it's like measuring one second in 320 years." Pepsi's India team immediately got on the phone with Nooyi, then president and chief financial officer, and Michael White, PepsiCo International's CEO. "We took it very seriously," says White, "but we also knew our products were completely safe." Pepsi held a rare joint press conference with Coke in New Delhi, offering data that contradicted CSE's and saying the company followed the same strict standards all around the world.Even Narain didn't quibble with the American companies' argument that the level of pesticides in soda was far lower than what Indians put up with in most other foods. But she contended that fruits, vegetables, and milk offer important nutrition, whereas carbonated sugar drinks don't. As for tap water, she said, most Indians have no choice but to drink it. Moreover, Narain adds, multinationals are "a powerful user of water.... We wanted to draw attention to their impact."She succeeded. Protesters in Mumbai and Kolkata defaced Pepsi and Coke ads and burned placards depicting soda bottles. Several states restricted or banned soda sales. Blasted with e-mail alerts from CSE, journalists and bloggers worldwide leapt on the story, raising the specter of a global consumer reaction just when soda makers were coming under harsh scrutiny for contributing to obesity.Nooyi says that Indians' sensitivity about both water quality and foreign companies made Pepsi an inviting target. But its marketing strategy had made matters worse, she admits. Rather than promote the company's efforts to improve water and crops, Pepsi had run splashy ads bursting with Indian celebrities. It painted titanic versions of its red, white, and blue logo on ancient Himalayan rocks and buildings around the country. "Combine the public seeing the mercenary side of us, along with the fact that this was an American company," she says, and "they didn't see the other things we were doing."SPOOKED AND SKEPTICALNooyi also appreciates the anxiety many Indians feel over rapid change, especially when it comes in the form of a big foreign company. As she puts it: "Parents were scared that their children were consuming things they had never consumed. And now they had a reason to stop it. Pesticides in cola. Nobody stopped to say: What pesticides?' Or, incidentally, your tea and your coffee has many thousand times that.'"Linking Pepsi with pesticides was enough to scare off even sophisticated consumers like advertising executive Manish Sinha. He drank cola almost every day and had even worked on Pepsi promotions at the JWT ad agency a few years earlier. "I was quite passionate about it," says Sinha, now 36 and a vice-president at Bates David Enterprise, an advertising agency in Mumbai. And it was fairly cheap, costing 12 cents to 15 cents a bottle. But the CSE study spooked him. "At a subliminal level, I would rather be safe," says Sinha, who both filters his family's drinking water and boils it to kill pathogens. He has his own memories of past shortages, living off 25-liter containers of bottled water and watching others scrape together money to buy daily supplies from water tankers. He echoes Nooyi's claim that there's a tendency to pick on multinationals, but he thinks the soda makers aren't doing enough to alleviate India's water woes: "I no longer trust the cola companies."The drama that unfolded after Narain's first soda report card in 2003 could hardly have appeased him. The Indian government flip-flopped between dismissing CSE's findings and supporting the group's call for more stringent standards for carbonated drinks. Pepsi executives joined Narain at sometimes contentious meetings over the next two years aimed at helping the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) arrive at guidelines on pesticides, caffeine, and even PH levels in soda. Just when standards were set to be ratified at a meeting in March of last year, Narain says, a cola company executive—she forgets which one—arrived bearing a letter from the Health & Family Welfare Minister to another government official. In it, the minister said the new standards should be deferred because further research was under way.Narain was furious at what she publicly labeled a corporate power play. "It's clear the letter was written for the cola companies," she says. "They managed to get the standards killed by government." Pepsi executives dismiss the notion as ridiculous. Narain countered with her most effective ammunition: another explosive national study that was released in August, 2006. This time, Pepsi was 30 times as high as the unadopted Indian government standards; Coke was 27. The southern state of Kerala banned the manufacture and sale of all Coke and Pepsi products while other states cut soft-drink sales in schools, colleges, and hospitals. "Everyone carried the story, especially on TV," Seth says with a sigh. Protests revved up again, with some demonstrators pouring cola down the throats of donkeys to show that the drink was unfit for humans. Sales dipped as Narain's campaign again played to the conflicted attitude that Indian consumers have toward powerful foreign brands—especially those portrayed as profiting at their expense.Even the beneficiaries of Pepsi's generosity seem ambivalent. In the tiny Kerala village of Chullimada, Pepsi recently funded the construction of a well, pipes, and taps that bring water to about 50 homes. The dusty hamlet, many of whose residents eke out a living as day laborers, is where organizers met to plan an anti-Pepsi march targeting a company plant in nearby Palakkad last October. As a result of Pepsi's improvements, the households have ready access to water where they once had to walk three hours a day to get it.But good deeds can stimulate new demands. When Pepsi managers visited recently, about a dozen women presented the customary flowers of greeting and then got down to business. The local governing council won't pay for the added electricity to pump water, one woman complained. As a result, the pumps run only once a day, forcing residents to hoard. It would help, she suggested, if Pepsi covered the extra costs. Annie Kishen, PepsiCo's director of corporate communications for India and a native of Kerala, smiled and offered sympathetic words. After leaving, she confided that the company isn't eager to pick up villagers' utility bills.In the neighboring palm-fringed village of Ganeshpuram, where Pepsi also installed a well late last year, different complaints surfaced. About a third of the 125 families don't have taps near their homes, an older villager said as Kishen leaned forward with a furrowed brow. All the women used to spend about two hours a day getting water. Now, there are haves and have-nots. What Pepsi needs to do, the local woman insisted, is bring water to every home in the village. Looking a touch embarrassed, Kishen explained later that in Kerala "the people always speak their minds."After Narain's fresh burst of pesticide allegations in August, Pepsi chose to ignore her and go straight to the Indian media. The company met with editorial boards, presented its own data in press conferences, and ran TV commercials featuring its then-president in India, Rajeev Bakshi, walking through a gleaming laboratory.CARTOONS AND STICK FIGURESThe company also stepped up efforts to reduce water usage in its plants, a cause that factory manager Ashwini Singla has embraced with almost religious zeal. His bottling facility, in the city of Panipat, near New Delhi, has reduced water usage to 8.6 liters for every case of two dozen 8-oz. bottles, down from 35 liters at the start of 2005. Workers have organized themselves into teams with names like Golden Lion and Ambition. They post Japanese-inspired kaizens, or suggested improvements, to reduce waste, illustrating the ideas with cartoons and stick figures for added clarity. "We had 1,200 kaizens last year," Singla boasts.Amid all the well-digging, kaizen-posting, and local government lobbying, Nooyi ascended to the Pepsi CEO job last October. One of her first priorities: a trip to India in December, where she spoke widely of Pepsi's initiatives to improve water and the environment, as well as her own fond memories of growing up in the country. One of her main themes: "This is a company with a soul." Indian newspapers and television covered her tour lavishly and with praise. Soda sales improved, although they ended 2006 flat compared with rapid double-digit growth in China. While the worst of the pesticide scandal seems to be behind Pepsi, a cloud remains, as the government still hasn't set contaminant standards.Narain, meanwhile, has noticeably toned down her rhetoric, even though the contents of a bottle of Indian Pepsi remain the same. Some of her softening may relate to a grudging pride over Nooyi's ascension. "I think it's great to have an Indian woman in such a high-profile position," Narain says. Pepsi officials "seem to be doing something serious about water now." But she has turned down an invitation to meet Nooyi and emphasizes that any shift at Pepsi reflects less a change of heart than persistent outside pressure. "American multinationals have forgotten what it's like to be in a democracy," she chides.Looking back, Nooyi turns some of the blame on herself for letting things get out of hand. "One thing I should have done was appear in India three years ago and say: Cut it out. These products are the safest in the world, bar none. And your tests are wrong.'" Still, she realizes that PepsiCo will have to continue to do more than simply be stingy with its own water use. "We have to invest, too, in educating communities in how to farm better, collect water, and then work with industry to retrofit plants and recycle." As long as PepsiCo is in the beverage business in places like India, it will remind potential customers of a resource that's increasingly in short supply.
Indra K. Nooyi says she still feels guilty filling a bathtub with water. It sounds far-fetched coming from the chief executive of a major multinational corporation, until you consider her early years. Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo Inc. (PEP ), didn't get much water growing up during the 1960s in the Indian coastal city of Chennai. Although she describes her family as "very middle class," they still had to rise every morning between three and five—the only hours that the valves to the municipal water supply were turned on—and fill every bucket in the house. Two buckets were set aside for cooking, and two each would go to Nooyi, her older sister, and her younger brother. "You had to think about whether to take a bath," says Nooyi, matter-of-factly. "You learned to live your life off those two buckets."
Nooyi left Chennai, propelled by a dream to build a career in the U.S. She headed to the prestigious Indian Institute of Management and later Yale University before moving into the corporate sphere, eventually settling at PepsiCo in 1994. When she was named CEO in October of last year, India's water again became a focus of her life.This time Nooyi was cast as part of the problem. Villagers charged that PepsiCo—which has named India as a top strategic priority—consumes excessive groundwater in their parched communities. Even worse was the repeated claim that the snack and beverage company, along with rival Coca-Cola Co. (KO ), were allowing pesticide residue from groundwater to get into locally made soda. The charges, first leveled in 2003, emerged again two months before Nooyi took over the top job. Pepsi's soda sales, which fell by double digits in India when the scandal first broke, took another big hit last fall. She braced herself as protestors smashed bottles on the streets while several states in India banned or restricted sales of soft drinks. Nooyi, now 51, was livid. "For somebody to think that Pepsi would jeopardize its brand—its global brand—by doing something stupid in one country is crazy."AN ACTIVIST FAMILYBut Indian politicians and consumers took the charges seriously, in part because they came from Sunita Narain. A well-known activist in New Delhi, Narain, 45, was born into a family of freedom fighters who supported Mahatma Gandhi in the push for India's independence in 1947. She idolized her late father even though he may not always have hewed to Gandhi's creed of nonviolence. "I'm told he even made bombs," she says.In high school Narain took up environmental causes, campaigning to stop developers from cutting down New Delhi trees. Unlike Nooyi, her ambition was not to leave India but to save it from the excesses of industrialization. She skipped college, explaining that she "was very keen to do a degree in environmental issues, but nobody offered it." Instead, in 1981, she fell in with a charismatic activist named Anil Agarwal who had just started the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE). Narain became director of the fledgling advocacy group in 2002 when Agarwal died. Her tone in that role tends toward the-end-is-nigh alarmism; her savvy tactics often draw media attention and have garnered such environmental accolades as the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize. Indians, she declares, are "getting poisoned by pesticides," and CSE tests show Pepsi contributes to this toxic assault.On one level a tale of two strong-minded individuals, Pepsi's ongoing battle over water in India also illustrates an escalating global backlash against the ways multinationals consume natural resources. Foreign companies have long transformed oil, diamonds, and countless other raw materials into profits that flow from developing nations to wealthy ones. Now the playing field is leveling. Activists such as Narain have blogs, e-mail, and other cheap, powerful tools for getting their messages out. Consumers, meanwhile, are more aware of how big players do business abroad and can react by boycotting the fruits of bad behavior, from blood diamonds to sweatshop sneakers.Even as companies begin to take seriously the mantra of social responsibility, they find themselves more vulnerable to politically charged onslaughts. In recent months, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS ) has cut oil production in Nigeria amid violent attacks on its operations. Diamond giant De Beers battled allegations that it played a role in relocating bushmen in Botswana against their will, and Cargill was forced temporarily to shut down its soy processing and shipping plant in Brazil amid public outcry that it was contributing to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.The hostility toward Pepsi in India has been exacerbated by the particular meaning water holds for Indians. Bathing in it can be a sacred act. For many, death is not properly marked until the ashes are scattered in the Ganges. In a global poll last year by consumer research group Henley World, Indians listed drinking water as one of the main things they do to improve their well-being. Americans reported taking supplements; Germans cited sunbathing.Yet Indian water is some of the worst in the world, according to the U.N., because of poor sewage treatment, heavy pesticide use, and industrial pollution. Availability is hampered by overpumping and poor management. Municipalities usually receive a pittance from individual consumers that doesn't cover the cost of delivering water, while large farms and industry essentially pay nothing at all, creating little incentive to conserve. In this setting, a foreign company that diverts scarce water to manufacture a sugary, discretionary product is a ripe target for critics.Nooyi recognizes the delicacy of being so closely associated with water in her native land. But she points out that soft drinks and bottled water account for less than 0.04% of industrial water usage in India. "If we get attention, it's not because of the water we use. It's because of what we represent," she says, pouring herself a glass of PepsiCo's Aquafina water during an interview in her bright, uncluttered office at company headquarters in Purchase, N.Y. Pepsi, a $35 billion corporation, she notes, has gone to such lengths in India as digging village wells, "harvesting" rainwater, and even teaching better techniques for growing rice and tomatoes. She's intensely aware that local perceptions matter. "What we don't want is for people to think that industry is taking out of the ground God-given natural resources and depleting that community of its livelihood or requirements for existence."Pepsi's water clash in India took a dramatic turn after PepsiCo executive Abhiram Seth visited Narain in February, 2003. Seth, a chatty and wry 55-year-old who dabbles in stage acting, serves as Pepsi's chief navigator through the complex regulatory and political channels of his native country. As executive director of exports and external affairs, he also manages the eclectic agricultural projects that may help to improve the company's image. Seth came to Narain's plant-filled New Delhi office just after CSE had tested the country's top 10 bottled-water brands for pesticides and was pressing for tighter government regulation.The issue touched a nerve as government studies had recently reported high pesticide levels in milk, rice, and other staples, raising concerns about toxins seeping into the water supply. Indians rely heavily on groundwater for drinking and agriculture, having drilled an estimated 21 million wells, most unregulated, since 1965. Seth came to Narain, he now explains, "to understand the data and see if we could work together to address the issues."Narain recalls it differently. She claims that Seth bullied her and "gave me a huge lecture about nationalism or some rubbish.... He was clearly trying to get me to back off." With Aquafina scoring near the top in bottled-water quality in the country, she wondered whether there was some broader agenda at work. Narain suspected Pepsi didn't want tougher standards for water because that might require more rigorous treatment of the water going into its sodas. Naturally suspicious of corporate behavior, she thought: "Why don't we check their soft drinks?"Over the next six months, Narain had CSE's scientists test random samples of 12 major soft-drink brands, from Diet Pepsi and Coca-Cola to local favorites like Mirinda and Thums Up. "Before we did this," she insists, "I had no idea that all of them were owned by Pepsi or Coke." Still, with an annual budget of less than $1 million at the time (it grew to $1.2 million last year), Narain knew very well the value of snagging big-name villains to promote her cause. "Looking at soda draws attention to the whole pesticide problem," she says. What CSE found were minute traces of pesticides such as lindane, DDT, malathion, and chlorpyrifos. Although much lower than those CSE had detected in milk, the residue levels exceeded stringent European Economic Commission standards for water. Pepsi was 36 times as high as the standards, in CSE tests, while Coke was 30 times as high. On Aug. 5, 2003, Narain held a press conference in New Delhi, saying that the Indian-made soft drinks were "unfit for human consumption" and could cause cancer and birth defects over the long term. As a further insult to Indian consumers, she says, samples tested from the U.S. contained no such residue, prompting Narain to accuse Pepsi and Coke of pushing products "they wouldn't dare sell" at home.'COMPLETELY SAFE'Pepsi executives were stunned and outraged. "When you're testing in subparts per billion," Seth says, "it's like measuring one second in 320 years." Pepsi's India team immediately got on the phone with Nooyi, then president and chief financial officer, and Michael White, PepsiCo International's CEO. "We took it very seriously," says White, "but we also knew our products were completely safe." Pepsi held a rare joint press conference with Coke in New Delhi, offering data that contradicted CSE's and saying the company followed the same strict standards all around the world.Even Narain didn't quibble with the American companies' argument that the level of pesticides in soda was far lower than what Indians put up with in most other foods. But she contended that fruits, vegetables, and milk offer important nutrition, whereas carbonated sugar drinks don't. As for tap water, she said, most Indians have no choice but to drink it. Moreover, Narain adds, multinationals are "a powerful user of water.... We wanted to draw attention to their impact."She succeeded. Protesters in Mumbai and Kolkata defaced Pepsi and Coke ads and burned placards depicting soda bottles. Several states restricted or banned soda sales. Blasted with e-mail alerts from CSE, journalists and bloggers worldwide leapt on the story, raising the specter of a global consumer reaction just when soda makers were coming under harsh scrutiny for contributing to obesity.Nooyi says that Indians' sensitivity about both water quality and foreign companies made Pepsi an inviting target. But its marketing strategy had made matters worse, she admits. Rather than promote the company's efforts to improve water and crops, Pepsi had run splashy ads bursting with Indian celebrities. It painted titanic versions of its red, white, and blue logo on ancient Himalayan rocks and buildings around the country. "Combine the public seeing the mercenary side of us, along with the fact that this was an American company," she says, and "they didn't see the other things we were doing."SPOOKED AND SKEPTICALNooyi also appreciates the anxiety many Indians feel over rapid change, especially when it comes in the form of a big foreign company. As she puts it: "Parents were scared that their children were consuming things they had never consumed. And now they had a reason to stop it. Pesticides in cola. Nobody stopped to say: What pesticides?' Or, incidentally, your tea and your coffee has many thousand times that.'"Linking Pepsi with pesticides was enough to scare off even sophisticated consumers like advertising executive Manish Sinha. He drank cola almost every day and had even worked on Pepsi promotions at the JWT ad agency a few years earlier. "I was quite passionate about it," says Sinha, now 36 and a vice-president at Bates David Enterprise, an advertising agency in Mumbai. And it was fairly cheap, costing 12 cents to 15 cents a bottle. But the CSE study spooked him. "At a subliminal level, I would rather be safe," says Sinha, who both filters his family's drinking water and boils it to kill pathogens. He has his own memories of past shortages, living off 25-liter containers of bottled water and watching others scrape together money to buy daily supplies from water tankers. He echoes Nooyi's claim that there's a tendency to pick on multinationals, but he thinks the soda makers aren't doing enough to alleviate India's water woes: "I no longer trust the cola companies."The drama that unfolded after Narain's first soda report card in 2003 could hardly have appeased him. The Indian government flip-flopped between dismissing CSE's findings and supporting the group's call for more stringent standards for carbonated drinks. Pepsi executives joined Narain at sometimes contentious meetings over the next two years aimed at helping the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) arrive at guidelines on pesticides, caffeine, and even PH levels in soda. Just when standards were set to be ratified at a meeting in March of last year, Narain says, a cola company executive—she forgets which one—arrived bearing a letter from the Health & Family Welfare Minister to another government official. In it, the minister said the new standards should be deferred because further research was under way.Narain was furious at what she publicly labeled a corporate power play. "It's clear the letter was written for the cola companies," she says. "They managed to get the standards killed by government." Pepsi executives dismiss the notion as ridiculous. Narain countered with her most effective ammunition: another explosive national study that was released in August, 2006. This time, Pepsi was 30 times as high as the unadopted Indian government standards; Coke was 27. The southern state of Kerala banned the manufacture and sale of all Coke and Pepsi products while other states cut soft-drink sales in schools, colleges, and hospitals. "Everyone carried the story, especially on TV," Seth says with a sigh. Protests revved up again, with some demonstrators pouring cola down the throats of donkeys to show that the drink was unfit for humans. Sales dipped as Narain's campaign again played to the conflicted attitude that Indian consumers have toward powerful foreign brands—especially those portrayed as profiting at their expense.Even the beneficiaries of Pepsi's generosity seem ambivalent. In the tiny Kerala village of Chullimada, Pepsi recently funded the construction of a well, pipes, and taps that bring water to about 50 homes. The dusty hamlet, many of whose residents eke out a living as day laborers, is where organizers met to plan an anti-Pepsi march targeting a company plant in nearby Palakkad last October. As a result of Pepsi's improvements, the households have ready access to water where they once had to walk three hours a day to get it.But good deeds can stimulate new demands. When Pepsi managers visited recently, about a dozen women presented the customary flowers of greeting and then got down to business. The local governing council won't pay for the added electricity to pump water, one woman complained. As a result, the pumps run only once a day, forcing residents to hoard. It would help, she suggested, if Pepsi covered the extra costs. Annie Kishen, PepsiCo's director of corporate communications for India and a native of Kerala, smiled and offered sympathetic words. After leaving, she confided that the company isn't eager to pick up villagers' utility bills.In the neighboring palm-fringed village of Ganeshpuram, where Pepsi also installed a well late last year, different complaints surfaced. About a third of the 125 families don't have taps near their homes, an older villager said as Kishen leaned forward with a furrowed brow. All the women used to spend about two hours a day getting water. Now, there are haves and have-nots. What Pepsi needs to do, the local woman insisted, is bring water to every home in the village. Looking a touch embarrassed, Kishen explained later that in Kerala "the people always speak their minds."After Narain's fresh burst of pesticide allegations in August, Pepsi chose to ignore her and go straight to the Indian media. The company met with editorial boards, presented its own data in press conferences, and ran TV commercials featuring its then-president in India, Rajeev Bakshi, walking through a gleaming laboratory.CARTOONS AND STICK FIGURESThe company also stepped up efforts to reduce water usage in its plants, a cause that factory manager Ashwini Singla has embraced with almost religious zeal. His bottling facility, in the city of Panipat, near New Delhi, has reduced water usage to 8.6 liters for every case of two dozen 8-oz. bottles, down from 35 liters at the start of 2005. Workers have organized themselves into teams with names like Golden Lion and Ambition. They post Japanese-inspired kaizens, or suggested improvements, to reduce waste, illustrating the ideas with cartoons and stick figures for added clarity. "We had 1,200 kaizens last year," Singla boasts.Amid all the well-digging, kaizen-posting, and local government lobbying, Nooyi ascended to the Pepsi CEO job last October. One of her first priorities: a trip to India in December, where she spoke widely of Pepsi's initiatives to improve water and the environment, as well as her own fond memories of growing up in the country. One of her main themes: "This is a company with a soul." Indian newspapers and television covered her tour lavishly and with praise. Soda sales improved, although they ended 2006 flat compared with rapid double-digit growth in China. While the worst of the pesticide scandal seems to be behind Pepsi, a cloud remains, as the government still hasn't set contaminant standards.Narain, meanwhile, has noticeably toned down her rhetoric, even though the contents of a bottle of Indian Pepsi remain the same. Some of her softening may relate to a grudging pride over Nooyi's ascension. "I think it's great to have an Indian woman in such a high-profile position," Narain says. Pepsi officials "seem to be doing something serious about water now." But she has turned down an invitation to meet Nooyi and emphasizes that any shift at Pepsi reflects less a change of heart than persistent outside pressure. "American multinationals have forgotten what it's like to be in a democracy," she chides.Looking back, Nooyi turns some of the blame on herself for letting things get out of hand. "One thing I should have done was appear in India three years ago and say: Cut it out. These products are the safest in the world, bar none. And your tests are wrong.'" Still, she realizes that PepsiCo will have to continue to do more than simply be stingy with its own water use. "We have to invest, too, in educating communities in how to farm better, collect water, and then work with industry to retrofit plants and recycle." As long as PepsiCo is in the beverage business in places like India, it will remind potential customers of a resource that's increasingly in short supply.
Taken From Business Week
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