Brand Building

Brand Building @IMI

Today I was part of student delegation that had a session with Mr Abhinav, Freelance PR consultant. I was representing the placement committee. The issue that was at hand was “Is IMI receiving the kind of the visibility it deserves? And if not what can we do about it?

 

The student side were represented by the members of 13 odd clubs/committees at IMI.We had about 2 hours of discussion on the same. There were a lot of topics and ideas that were discussed and we finally decided to focus on integrating the working of the prominent clubs with the help of the other clubs. Sounds like a successful meeting hah? Well No... I would say

 

Brand Building should be done in two different ways-

 

1. Improving the brand image of IMI in front of the corporate and
2. Improving the visibility in front of the prospective students.

 

For the first one, we should try to target those medium which the corporate honchos frequent. for e.g.: Economic Times, Business World etc.

 

To be specific, Sections like B school page at Business Standard (Monday Edition), B School blogs at Business World, Debate Section in ET, and Mentor in Business Line etc. The articles may be contributed by students or by faculty.

 

The consultant should tap his resources in media field such that more and more of references pointing to IMI comes up in the frequently read pages. He should talk to his contacts and then talk to faculty / students to contribute articles on burning issues

 

For eg: please refer to the article given below (Debate@ET) which talks about Telecom Regulations in India. The contributors are MDI faculties.

 telecom regulation

The following link is by a IIFT faculty

 Liquidity Crunch 

Supposedly if Mr. Sunil Bharthi Mittal happens to read the first article, the name MDI will be in his top of the mind. The same applies if Mr Mohan Das Pai reads an article about the future of Indian IT sector written by IMI Faculty/Students in any renowned magazines. This helps in a lot of ways – For placements, For Corporate Sponsorships et all.

 

So the argument that I am putting forward is, if corporate brand building through media is our aim, then it has to be through proper channels. There is no point publishing a 3”*3” article in TOI page 5 about a “very successful” XYZ event at IMI and how it attracted students from 30 odd b schools and stuffs similar to it. It won’t meet our aim. Our aim is not to increase the visibility of IMI among the general public but only among top notch professionals from the industry.

Regarding improving visibility among prospective students, only one thing matter the most:- Placement Figures. Bring an excellant figure onto the table and you will automatically get good visibility.  So 2008 batch placements will affect 2011 batch admissions. So my point is 9L plus average is the reason for 250% increase in admission forms selling which other wise indicates visibility among students.

B SCHOOL RANKINGS

Recently some of the big business media houses came up with B school surveys.

• IMI has been ranked 5th best private B school in India by Wall street Journal!!

• AIMA has included IMI in A+ category
• Eduuniversal has also given top rating for IMI
• Outlook ranks IMI as 6th best pvt Bschool in India
  

some useful links

MINT

AIMA

EDUNIVERSAL

OUTLOOK

IMI going Citius, Altius, Fortius.......
ps: B school rankings should always be taken with a pinch of salt

TERM 1 @ IMI

Ahem ahem... its been 2 months since i have made an entry. Anyways past is past and i would be more regular.
So as of yesterday I am officially 1/6th MBA .This term has been of gr8 significance in my life. Its just 3 months into Bschool, but i feel a lot matured.




In this 3 month life I got a good intro about Bschool life

• became a JPC
• Decided between Marketing/Finance
• Understood that I can never be a batch topper
• will always be a the frustrated Mech Engg ( hope u have got i meant)
• became a student of two of the best faculties i have seen in my life (Dr. Singhvi, Prof Kathuria)
  

The biggest incident in this 3 month would undoubtedly be being selected into the

Placement Committee@IMI .

The story:-
Senior Placement committee had given a presentation and asked students who are interested to be JPC members to send a resume and an SOP. They stressed on the positives like what u can get and wat u r gonna lose ( clubbing, partying, mauja-hi-mauja ying etc)by being part of placement committee. I very much liked their sincerety in conveying people that being placecom isnt that glamorous as one is thinnking and u have to work hard to earn a "name".I had made a killer SOP and sent it along with my resume. Some 60/180 students had applied

The intial round was a written one. Out of the two topics given, I had selected "write a letter to XYZ company requesting them to come for summers". Probably I am the only one who asked for an additional sheet; I personally felt that I had written an excellent letter.

They did a shortlisting and the second round was an extempore round with diff topics for each candidate. My topic was "Your style"

The next was an Individual task to find out the googling ability of students. We were given a list of 20 companies and was asked to find out details like board line number, HR contacts etc.

By this round, the crowd had reduced from 60 to 20 odd; so kind of creme de le creme of the college.

We were then divided into groups of 5 and were asked to prepare a presentation on "How to conduct the summer process". My team comprised of Aditya, Nithin,Haribaksh,Gaurav and myself. it was quite a hot shot team considering the fact that 4 out of 5 eventually became the Junior Placement Committee members of IMI. We had lengthy discussions on the topics and finally came up with the ppt. We had made a good presentation and answered all the questions. There were 5 other teams as well.

Even after having close to 2 years of work ex , I will consider this group activity my "first experience" in working in a "real" group; if you understand what I mean!!!. All of them were topnotch in all of the laid of skills and I enjoyed the fact that I had to 'fight' and be really assertive to put forward a point and to get it accepted in the group. Also it helped to face a new facet of communication skills - arguing in english with a person who is talking in his vernacular

The two things that stood out were the fact that Seniors really applauded our performance and told everyone that this was how things should be done. The second fact that there wasn't even a milli liter of bad blood during our task. Some of other group's members even before results started cribbing about "Politics" "Favoritism" "Sexism" et all. The result came and all 5 of us selected into the penultimate round which comprised interviews for 12 candidates to select the final 9 who will be facing the batch for a final showdown.

Interview round was relatively easy for me. Meenakshi, Nirmalya, Abhinav, Prince were in my panel . As a part of my data collection regarding IMI vs NMIMS, I had mailed quite a few Placecom guys and they thus knew me. Others had around 30 minutes where as I had around 10 minutes. They asked about my commitment level and other related things. Probably one thing that helped me ( which helped me in all of the past Bschool interviews as well) was that I was true about my goals. I always go to an interview by accepting the fact that I have seen some 10 interviewers in my life whre as the person sitting on other side of the table will have seen 1000's of Prajiths. So dont try to be smart Ass and strictly no Bull shitting.

The results came and finally 9 out of 53 applicants were selected to face the 120 strong PGDM crowd for the election process.

The election process.

All of the 120 students were assembled and all 9 of us started giving their views on what they are going to do once they became a JPC. I didnt give any promises and was quite frank. The only thing i promised was that I will be working to increase reputation of our college and 96%tile batch needs better placements.

The voting was conducted and the results were as follows

IMI 2008-2010 Junior Placement Committee members

Haribaksh Singh 101 votes

Sachin Aggarwal 92 votes

90 votes

Nithin mehra 84 votes

Aditya B Shah 76 votes

Soumil Joshi 69 votes

probably the thing that could have helped me to be a JPC are that "people perceived me to be Sincere" which when interpreted means that dont Bull shit to some one smarter than You and if it is to a 96 % tile crowd.. well never......
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next term is going to be tougher with 2 Fin and 1 mar core papers. i have to be more active in classes and should complete say 70 % ....(what the hell at least 20%) of my studies through lectures itself.
So in short what have I learnt other than MBA concepts from 3 months of 7 lakh MBA life( = Rs 1000/day)???
well here it goes

1. Think before you talk
2.Managing your ego is a bigger task than managing team mates ego
3. Not every smiling face is your friend and not every scary face is your enemy
4. The lesser you crib, the better your life will be

ciao,

DAY 2 @ IMI

Hi,

After quite an eventful first day, I am jotting down my day 2 experience.

The session started with a program on Life Goals,Career Plan,Student Concerns in a B school. It was a nice session. Dr. CS Venkitratnam was the chief co ordinator. He tried to instill a good thought in students that "Dont right now count the salary you are going to get. Be practical and enjoy things. Accept things as they come. "
Quite a nice session indeed.

Then came the mostly awaited one: Interaction with the Placement Committee. by Mr Amrish Sharma. He detailed on the placement procedure, summer internship programmes, about the 3120 strong IMI alumni etc. Again by keeping the IMI tradition he wasnt boasting about the college and reported the facts as facts. He stresses on the need for better visibility for IMI to carry forward the tradition of IMI. One another salient point he discussed was the need for showing ethics in ones life and career. He detailed the story of a IMI 2008 passout guy who had got into HUL, but joined fritolays without informing them.

After that we had a session on Campus Living overview by Registrar Prof Balasubramaniam

Prof PC mehra introduced us towards Case study Analysis. His method of teaching was quite unique which was evident from the student participation that was witnessed.

After wards there was a LAPTOP demo show by Apple and HP. The apple guys ppt was good; but the price wasnt :)..
" check out our MAC AIR....."
"sir, does it have a cd drive "
"no.. but seriously how often do we use a cd drive..hah??" ( WTF??..how often are we using a cd drive??..he should be from XLRI or IIM..was bullshitting too much...but anyways mac Air looks cool. )
"sir, about compatability??"
"Hey who wants compatability?.. in US Apple is having 60% market share amongst users with age between 20-30 and who are having a wife and no job and blah blah blah....

The other products offered Mac and mac pro looks good and performs nice.. but it isnt upto the mark.

HP guy just tried to focus on the fact that

"You can use this laptop even when you are taking bath with ur girl friend :) cos even if water spills on it its perfectly ok".

"When u r at bus stop if u arenot getting a seat, you can even stand/sit on it...its so rugged yaar"
and he demonstrated it also. it was like telebrands show.

He explained about the configuration only after someone pointing about it.

WTF???... did I wait for 3 months for this stupid deals??

Then it was a session with Achievers, the Alumni association of IMI. Its a vibrant organisation with about 3120 members.The eminent people who had come for the discussion were

Mr.Rajiv Dawan(Batch of 88)
President Alumni Association
Head, Belgian bank

Mr.HAriharan
NAtional Vice President, ITC ltd( Batch of 86)

Ms. Saline George( Batch of 88)
HR Head,

The session got over at9 pm. and we had session with seniors till 2 AM. pretty hectic day :)


So that was the account for Day2

MY FIRST DAY @ IMI

Hi all,

After 5 years of dreams and nightmares, after 3 years hardwork and toil, today i officially became part of the great "Global Manager" fraternity . To cut the crap, today was (officially) my first day at IMI DELHI.

Yesterday we had a 'chat session' with seniors till 2:30 AM. I reached hostel and jumped on my bed. I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, had the morning chores, got dressed in an formal attire and went to college.

I had made a pledge to myself that when I am entering my college for the first time, i will be in a 'devotional mood'. When i had got out of auto and had stepped inside the college ( I had intentionally put my right leg first, just like hindu brides :-) ) . I went to canteen, had some food and went to RPG Auditorium.

I had to complete the registeration formalities at first. I filled up the form, put the necessary signature n stuffand returned the form. I had selected SPANISH as my language choice. If u ask me why, my B school interview answer would be "Because of booming south american economy and spanish economy and Real Madrid rocks blah blah blah".... but actually the reason is different :-):-)

I had filled up the form and gave it back. In return i was given a bag( cool one yaar...can be used as a laptop bag). The bag contained 6 books. - My gateway towards Bschool lingo
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.MICROSOFT EXCEL by Microsoft


Afterwards as i had some time to kill, i came back to hostel, had a nap, became fresh, had lunch and went back to college for noon session. There starts the crux of this post...

The session started with Program Overview by V Chandra, Program Director .
I would be lying to myself if i tell you that i wasnot scared after her session. Anyway i did like her genuiness. Her session dealt with mainly details on credit system, attendnace system, the chnages that they have brought in the rules stc.

Afterwards there was a session on IMI-Academics by Prof Himadri das.
He gave session on the need for continous evaluation, its pattern, transparency at IMI, exchange programs etc. He wound up by saying that " The better the B school is, more rigorous your life will be"

Afterwards there were lectures from Prof Arindam Banik who detailed on Economics papers and Prof PC Mehra who detailed on Marketing papers. He also introduced other proffessors like Deepak Chawla, Neena Sondhi, Arvind Chathurvedi, Somaygjulu, BalaSubramaniam and Singhvi. Quite a gr8 list hah!!! We are having 15electives from Marketing this year.

Prof Ahuja started the sessions on Finance. We had somewhat fundaas on profiles of company who had visited IMI last year. Then we had an interactive session with the faculty over tea.

Finally the day ended with the session by Dr. C S Venkatratnam , Director . He introduced fellow HR proffessors like Dr Mamta and Dr Richa . He started the session by welcoming us to IMI . He then talked in detail about the greates strength of IMI. its faculty. He spoke on how they are retaining the faculty, how the faculty have come here after 20-30 years of work ex etc.

He wound up his session by quoting a story by Azim Premji. The crux of the story was it doesnt matter where you start, what matters is how you react to that. Quite an inspiring story.


Hmm.. that was all about my first day. So far so good. But one thing that i didnt like was the student ratio. guys : gals is far too less yaar. Where have all gone?.. And the sad fact that in HR its close to 1:1....

The best thing I liked about the entire session is the geniuneness of IMI faculty. The would like to call A spade as a spade ( I sincerely dont know who created this proverb. Why should one call a spade as a claver?????...)

I was expecting the session to start with "

Welcome to one of the top Bschools in India
or
Welcome to one of the top 15 Bschools in India, as per Businessworld survey dated 12/06/2006
or
Welcome to the 7th best private Bschool in India as per Economic Times dated .....

etc etc.

But none of the proffesors tried to boast. It was like "Whatever IMI is , its right infront of you. I wont say it is better than X or Y or Z college. Every college has its own plus and minuses. So bear with it and enjoy it. Bear the minuses and enjoy the pluses..but not the other way round."

RAT RACE

A RAT RACE STARTED!

19th would be my first day as a prospective future manager. That day it will be my intro session at IMI( International Management Institute, New Delhi). I had written most exams of 2007 season and had a decent performance. Well, I have compiled a story on "All I wanted to speak about CAT " here. Do check it.

I had final converted calls from MDI Gurgaon -HR , IMT-Ghaziabad, IMI-Delhi PGDM and PGDM HR , NMIMS Mumbai, GIM Goa, TAPMI Manipal, KJ Sommaya. i think it would make a nice story to post on how I zeroed in on IMI Delhi..

okie.. enough of self appraisals... back to business..

At present I am having my Remedial sessions at IMI on topics such as Accounting, Micro Economics, Linear Functions etc . The 7 day session will end on 18th evening

I would very much try to be regular on being a B school blogger.

For more Bschool related info u can also try checking out my alter ego at pagalguy- chekidu.
feel free to be in touch

ciao,

Hobbes and Calvin

Hobbesdsfdff