The Brand Lingers on!!

AT&T - the company is no more. With California approving its acquisition by SBC Corporation, the final nail in the coffin of the creator of the telephone industry has been hammered in. But the brand lives on as SBC renames itself as AT&T.

Brand Managers of the world need to look back at what created a brand so strong that it survives beyond the demise of the company that created it. AT&T as a brand was not built by legions of MBAs "strategically managing" its growth. Actually the brand lost a lot of its sheen in the era where brand managers as a group were on an upswing.

So what created the AT&T brand and what can others learn from it? I would hazard to say - nothing very fancy. Rather - it seems to be more a reaffirmation of the basics:

1. Meet needs by offering something that people want - not just once - but consistently evolve as needs change
   
2. Clearly articulate your offering - and build an organization to support the articulated offering
   
3. Communicate far and wide about your offering - set expectation about what, where, when, why and how to expect - internally as well as externally
4. Build trust - internally and externally by consistently meeting promises

SBC has come a long way from being the smallest of the Baby Bells way back in 1984 to being the largest telecom service company in the US. While it will certainly benefit from the AT&T brand value, it will remain to be seen if the AT&T brand is enhanced or diminished under the new AT&T!!!

Bangalore - End of a Dream Run?

Imagine an idylic city in India - where the climate is moderate, there is lush greenery all around, where it takes 30-minutes to drive from one end to the other, where the people are well mannered, intelligent, accommodating and cosmopolitan in their outlook.

Now start adding more people to the city, start building more houeses, start growing educational/ engineering institutes in and around the city to churn out thousands of engineers. But don't yet start on expanding the infrastructure - electricity, roads, sewage, drainage. Worse still start building and expanding the city haphazardly, without any evaluation of the impact on the roads, traffic, pollution. Assume that these problems will somehow solve themselves.

What will you have? Something like what Bangalore has become today. While it is still the capital city of Indian IT, a lack of planning and foresight by the city's administrators has brought the city to a situation where everyone is disappointed and frustrated.

The companies are disappointed that the Bangalore that they were promised (or marketed) is not the same as the Bangalore that exists on the ground today. The migrants into the Bangalore realize that this is very different from the promised land that they had the dreams of. And to top-it off, the local populace who been painfully seeing the deterioration of the city, have started blaming the outsiders for this situation.

All these put together can create a very potent mix - of choked infrastructure, stymied growth and increased regionalism (reduced cosmopolitan nature). This can turn tide away from Bangalore (like increased parochialism did Calcutta in after the 60s).

Is this a real possibility? I would think that the chances are remote, but it surely has the chance of happening.

As citizens and well wishers of Bangalore, let us ensure that we do not lose focus of the real problem - lack of investment in infrastructure and most importantly - a lack of foresight and planning.

What you get is in proportion to what you aim for

It is kind of perfunctory to state it, but I have just experienced it and can relate to it much better than I ever did so far.

My project had a scope increase and everyone was very clear that we were not going to hit the deadline. However, I and the leadership team above me persisted in pushing us towards meeting the deadline. A week before the release, we were in deep trouble, with system testing issues all over the place. With just a week to go before the release, everyone was about to throw in the towel and resign to a delay.

My boss still persisted that we had to go on as per the deadline. We worked hard, late and over the weekend after that to ensure that we get in better shape. Our efforts paid off and we are now in a position to go in for the release.

Looking back, I think about the what our behavior would have been if the leadership team would have agreed to us and our deadline would have been deferred. We would have not stretched hard and even though it might have been possible, we would have most certainly not met the deadline. It is the aim that drove us to perform as much as we could and achieve our goals. A lax target would have relaxed us, and even though the release might have been possible we would have most certainly not made it.