Digital Marketing Strategy

 I taught a class (one session) on the subject after a long time. Two authors who I recommend on the subject are Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. I used the book e-Marketing by Rob Stokes when I was teaching this as a full course at IIM Indore a few years ago. I also taught a Doctoral Seminar based on Journal papers on this subject. Some pics from the latest outing at Austin Tower campus of JIS University. 

Last pic- looking out from a campus window..

Students at Work- Digital Marketing

In the Digital Marketing course, 2019 edition, students at work.. on a class assignment.

A Class Act

This is about some typical students in a typical class of MBA students. They could be from any place or Pradesh. (Cluster analysis was not used and no students were hurt during writing of this post).

Sugar and Spice: Sweet when it suits them, and hot and spicy when it doesn't.

The Advisors: Full of advice (for you), not knowing it's a vice.

The Budweisers: Well, you get the picture. No advice.

The jargon-throwers: Flame-throwers are passe. They know the latest.

The Mobile Set: They think being on the mobile makes them upwardly-mobile even before the first job.

The Hands-up Fraternity: As if there's a mugger in a dark alley trying to mug them, their hands are always up, for anything and nothing.

The Performance-watchers. Passive audience, as if in a play or a movie. Might applaud a good piece of theatrics, but won't talk.

The Questioning, the hurt, the sleepy, the eager-to-get-out and do more interesting stuff-the look says it all. The worst of all-the Killer Look!

Singapore, Architecture and More

 Waiting for a university shuttle.

 Metro station

 University Food court- Steven Riady Centre

 Ventilation at the food court. Notice the angled glass windows.

Two above 1. Another view of the University..Nice, modern architecture. 2. Marina Bay Hotel, with the boat-shaped top.

Below, a hotel frontage in Little India and large classroom with video-conferencing.

Learning in Singapore

Just a short reminder to myself that it's nice to be on the other side of a class. It builds empathy for poor students that we subject to so much in a day..in a Quantitative Text Analysis course in the National University of Singapore, or NUS..the prof. (Inaki) is from Texas Tech, Lubbock..I also got reminded of how much I hate programming and love packages of software. We are using R, a programmable software out here. I am with a group of students from the US, Germany, and Singapore, and they are mostly half my age..the class itself has more from other nationalities/places and speakers of languages from there. Many are doing a doctorate in political science, economics, etc.

Large masses of text can be analysed using the methods we are learning. Political speeches, press releases, tweets, Facebook posts/comments, and what not, can be analysed in different ways, for word frequencies, co-occurrence of words, and even sentiment behind the words in some ways.

Amazing what a dumb computer is capable of, if intelligent humans can get it to work..now, if I can just get that program going..

Ek Shaam Mastani

There are few things that can beat an evening out with friends. There were seven of us, almost a 100% turnout of the regulars from my IIMB batch. The venue chosen was different, called the Foreign Correspondents Club, though we did not spot any foreign correspondents that day. I suppose they have other watering holes.

I met Himanshu Manglik after many many years. Both of us had started post-MBA life in the same organisation, Living Media publishers, in 1984 in Delhi. We had the pleasure of being joined by the redoubtable Dr. JD Singh, who taught us marketing basics at IIMB in 1982. Being a marketing academic myself, I have been meeting him on and off, and he is just as jolly as we remembered him from then. There were jokes, and banter about everything under the sun. We had a quiet corner on the terrace, and so we did not disturb anyone. There was another marketing prof., Harish from IIT Delhi, and others from the corporate and bureaucratic walks of life. Those whose wives were tracking them had to periodically report on their status. We called this Reporting to Homeland Security.

There was a new theory of living that was proposed by one of the guys- the 4S theory. That comes from the people of Sierra Leone, and stands for Slow Slow, Small, Small. Do everything slowly, don't rush, take it easy.

In summary, I was reminded of the song that gave the blog its name- Yeh shaam mastaani, madhosh kiye jaaye..