How not to promote your brand

A number of new ways are being used by people to reach out to the prospects. There are usual ways where people stick posters almost anywhere in a train advertising their services like earn two lacs in a month or loans within five minutes or advice on love, sex and what not and recently they have a found a new place to promote their services: Handles. New locals have transparent plastic handles where it is possible to push in a visiting card. I saw one Insurance advisor's visiting card nicely tucked in 4-5 handles enabling him to reach out to even those who were standing near the door and all this for free. At the same time there are some who have failed in their attempt to advertise even after spending money on it.
You must have noticed a huge poster of some well known Commerce classes just in front of Vidyavihar station’s platform. It is just a few feet above the ground and considering the height at which the passengers stand the poster comes right in front of you if you are standing outside. One may feel at this stage that the particular commerce academy has placed its ad in the right place but it is not the case. As whenever a train comes to the platform you would see people spitting paan on the posters. I had the privilege of seeing one guy spit right on the face of a student who was one of the toppers!! It is almost impossible to recognize the face of the students. Thank god I have never been a topper. Lesson: Make sure you put your posters above and away from people and not in front of them even though you are targeting them!
Even worse thing I observed outside Belapur station where somebody was giving away free copies of one of the respected newspapers. I am not saying giving away things for free is bad for publicity, in fact they are welcome! Problem here was that the person who was giving away newspaper for FREE was standing just two feet away from a newspaper vendor who was SELLING the same thing!! Company should try and avoid this kind of situation; the person should have been instructed about this. This is insult to those who actually pay money for that newspaper and that too just two feet away. Giving things for free may work in case of product launches or magazines like JAM or JLT which target youngsters and give away the copies of last issue (not the current issue) for free and people don't mind as it doesn't contain any current news but this can not be done with newspaper which loses its value the very next day. But this should be avoided with newspapers if possible and even if you are doing something similar to this make sure the ones who are paying for it are unaware of this! The worst part about this thing is that this has been happening for more than a week now. If I have subscribed to that newspaper I won't mind if it is given away for free once or twice. But if this goes on for a longer period of time than it just loses value.

Few more victims of the replacement drive

Okay I agree I have already written about a similar topic earlier but last week I came across a few examples which made me think of it once again. And the peculiar thing about these examples is that all of them involve instances of individuals getting replaced and not the businesses. I'll tell you about these examples in the order in which they occurred. I work in Belapur (yes, the same place where your neighbor would have gone for a one-day picnic last Sunday) and I stay in Ghatkopar (the most happening suburb), so everyday I have to change trains from Ghatkopar-Kurla-Belapur and back. It’s been almost eight months since I have been doing this. Any person who has done the same would agree that I actually deserve a Bharat Ratna award for this! Though traveling from Kurla to Belapur is not that much of a pain but it is the Ghatkopar-Kurla route (distance of only two stations) which squeezes all energy out of me, literally! So I actually plan to write this as one of my achievements on my resume.
It is during the journey from Kurla-Belapur that I get to listen to radio and this is when I came across one of the examples which I wish to mention. Though this has been happening for a long time it struck me just last week. I heard Raju Srivastav radio jockeying on one of the radio stations. I agree we all know this and there is nothing shocking about it but I was just thinking that when he first appeared on some channel he was competing with other stand-up comedians and now suddenly he has replaced some radio jockey! On reaching office I met a friend of mine who was busy making arrangements for an auction to sell secondary products and this is the second example. Earlier the secondary products used to be sold by individuals who would meet the prospective buyers personally but today a system is in place which makes it possible for the prospective buyers to just log in online and start bidding. Again, auction is not a new thing but it's just that it is being used for something which was earlier done by individuals (who were highly paid). What happens now is that only one person (he need not be qualified, so less costly to hire) is required to handle the whole auction and once it starts the person can go out for a coffee as he is also not required to remain there! On coming back home I saw my brother ordering food from a nearby restaurant. When asked, he told me that there was some problem with the LPG stove and that mother had gone to purchase a new stove. Next day a rickshaw wala, who had been sent by the store where my mother had placed the order for a new stove, came with the stove. But no one from the store accompanied him so I assumed somebody would come later on for the installation. But then I saw that the same rickshaw wala started doing the installation. Later he mentioned that he had been trained by the store to do the installation as well so that no other person would have to be employed!
It seems everyone is under threat of being replaced unless you are actually doing something which only you can do as I am doing (writing long and boring blogs about topics nobody is interested in).