Early Morning Lecture
After the previous day’s relaxed focus on culture and sightseeing, it was time to get back to business. We started the day with a lecture in IIMB, where we were given an overview of doing business in India. A variety of issues were discussed, including the challenge businesses face in acquiring land. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for landowners in India to find that the person who sold them land may not have had the right to sell it in the first place, resulting in decades of legal spats. Yikes. A variety of other issues were discussed and Mick in particular had plenty of questions for our guest lecturer. It was an interesting talk that helped contextualise much of what we had seen so far.
Learning about business in India
“Unlearning” at Christ University
Moving on from IIMB, it was time to head to our host for the day, Christ University. In case you’re wondering, the name originates from the fact that the university was founded by Carmelite priests in 1969. Nowadays, it’s one of India’s leading universities. We arrived there around midday and as you can see below, our lecturer Seán had his suitcase in tow. This was Seán’s last day with us on the trip, as he had plans to ditch us and go skiing. What a jet-setter!
Niall is super-excited to be arriving at Christ University
Once inside, we were greeted by the dean for the Institute of Management, Dr Suniti Phadke. She enquired about DCU Business School, and told us about Christ University’s reputation and popularity within India. The university receives tens of thousands of applications every year and requires a large staff to process them. During this meeting, we were kindly served with coffee and a fascinating sandwich with a fluorescent pink filling. I have no idea what this pink substance was, but I was extremely hungry so I wolfed mine down without hesitation. I think only two or three of us dared sample the sandwiches, so most of them remained untouched. I’m telling you, people missed out…my sandwich was delicious (whatever it was).
Soon after our brief chat, it was time to move on to the main event. Christ University had teamed up with Bangalore’s Web Marketing Academy to run a digital marketing event featuring a panel of digital marketing experts, including staff and students from the DCU Business School. Theo, Seán (D), Seán (M) and Ieva volunteered for the panel. The event was rather bizarrely titled “Unlearn Digital Marketing”, which presumably aimed to communicate the idea of reevaluating previously held beliefs…but I think some of the nuances of Indian English were lost on me. The talk commenced with a warm-up quiz from an MC, which I was happy to say I knew almost all the answers to. That said, the bar was not particularly high, with questions such as “what does CPM stand for?” The event was geared towards a diverse audience, including not just students, but also business owners who lacked experience with digital marketing.
Myself and Mimi were unable to stay for the first hour of the event, as we were conducting interviews with digital marketers backstage and hearing about their personal experiences in India. It was great to hear these personal stories and perspectives. We’ll be posting some excerpts from these interviews in a video next month, so keep your eyes peeled.
After conducting the interviews, we reentered the room to watch the rest of the discussion. There were several heated discussions that took place, covering a broad range of issues. I was surprised to hear how many times Google+ came up in the conversation, as it’s widely considered to be as dead as the dodo in Ireland. One woman even asked if she should bother with a website at all, seeing as she could just use Google+. So, apparently Google+ is a thing in India…just like the now defunct Orkut used to be.
Suresh Babu from the Web Marketing Academy takes the mic
Theo had a nice moment when he upgraded Seth Godin’s “purple cow” to a “saffron cow”. We had spotted and photographed such a cow during our travels on the previous day. The point this “saffron cow” helped illustrate was that creative advertising needs to stand out as remarkable in order to get noticed. The saffron cow we saw was so remarkable to us that it stood out from all the other cows on the road, which had already become practically invisible to us. Seth Godin probably never saw a purple cow, but the saffron cow we saw was the real deal.
The Saffron Cow
Some Agency Adventure
We were pretty exhausted and hungry by the time we were finished at Christ University, and we were running late, but we still had agency visits planned. We first dropped by a digital marketing agency where we had a quick Q&A session. They told us about an outstanding SMS campaign that had been run by their competitor. It was like a reverse pitch.
Chillin’ at an agency
We were really fading, so we figured we’d cut off our next visit and head straight to dinner. We thought that we had communicated this to our tuk-tuk drivers, yet somehow all but two of us ended up being dropped off at the next destination, The Web Marketing Academy. The Web Marketing Academy and its founder Suresh Babu were the people behind much of the day’s events, and they had prepared some delicious Indian delicacies for us, such as onion bhajis. We had an interesting Q&A session in their modern offices and we were then presented with individual plaques, which really took us by surprise. The plaques had a variety of phrases on them from different inspirational figures. Given the intensity of the digital marketing course in DCU, I really took mine to heart.
Web Marketing Academy
My plaque
Dinner & Drinks
Niall getting into a debate about video SEO
We ended the day with some much needed dinner and drinks, where we got the opportunity to network with some of the individuals we had encountered throughout the day. The food was western-style, for a change. We had a great time mingling, talking digital and joking around. One of the young panelists from earlier in the day appeared to be extremely interested in the course we were doing in DCU, and told us that he was considering applying. It was rather bizarre that the expert panelist we had watched just felt that he might need to brush up on his skills. Ah yes, digital marketing…the learning never stops.
Claire learning about Tesco’s digital strategy
DCU Business School India Trip 2015 