Begging and marketing

I was sitting in the car by the roadside when a beggar-girl with a little child in her hands approached.

She uttered a few words when I responded with, "Move away." And she started 'begging' more intensively. It took a few minutes of my ignoring (keeping silent or faking indifference, that is) to make her go away from that place.

My guess is if I hadn't responded in the first place with that 'move away', she would've left sooner. Eliciting response itself is a victory. Positive or negative, it spurs the person trying to get a response into doing a little bit more.

The creepy thing is faking indifference. That kills. Or rather sucks. Now whatever it is you wanna kill, just fake.

Architecture of marketing

Since Mississippi is located in a shopping-center like building and yet has to do a hell lot to get walk-ins, makes me think about the relationship between architecture and marketing.

As you see in the map above, that's where the shop is. Doesn't face the main road closest to the shop. In that, it flouts one of the important principles 'retail is location' (exclude internet retail from this discussion).

We are trying to mitigate the 'lack of impactful location' through advertising and calling and putting up glow-sign which faces the road and so on. I reckon though, nothing beats a great location.

Location's got 2 aspects: the complex of which the shop is a part, and the placement of the shop itself. Was referring to the second point above. Now, a little bit about the first point.

The complex is neat. But that's the impression you'll truly form only once you enter it. From the outside, it is like any other building. A lot of visitors/prospects simply have trouble locating the building coz of its non-descriptiveness.

Now imagine the building modeled by taking inspiration from Qutub Minar! Or may Eiffel Tower. Or perhaps Victoria Terminus. You get it. It would attract attention on its own. And this might rub off positively on the shop owners/tenants in the building.

Architects are busy making maximum use of the space and so are trying to build dry, cubical-conducive buildings. But buildings work and accrue value (apart from the automatic appreciation of value in real estate) coz of their attractiveness, uniqueness and character which are all a result of architecture.

Goddess of English

I just came across this interesting bit. And only now.

A Dalit writer called Chandra Bhan Prasad, along with the dalit community of a village called Banka in UP, has built a temple to worship the Goddess of English!

An excerpt from a write-up on the BBC site:

About two feet tall, the bronze statue of the goddess is modelled after the Statue of Liberty.

"She is the symbol of Dalit renaissance," says Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer who came up with the idea of the Goddess of English

"She holds a pen in her right hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a huge hat - it's a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old traditional dress code.

"In her left hand, she holds a book which is the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the ladder and become free for ever."

Incredible!

It's a sort of socio-cultural development but I gather quite a few marketing tips from this event.

If people are stuck up about religion, seed the change in the religion itself, instead of trying to generate an anti-religious sentiment. Am sure it must have been some work convincing at least some of the dogmatic people in the community.

And if God is the greatest and if God's word is the highest command, then make God command the change.

They've also announced that they'll celebrate Oct 25 every year as English Day. Of course, if you have Ram Navmi, Shivratri, Holi and so on, why not English Day for Goddess of English.

Still early days but this should yield interesting and positive results. Great initiative.

You can go through the BBC article here.

Pic courtesy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/