    Planning Poker is a team building activity for achieving group consensus.

Answers to last week&#39;s quiz (#235)

Business Standard

The turmoil at Kingfisher Airlines brings us to a more fundamental question: How far can you stretch a brand before you actually start hurting it?.

To stretch or not to stretch

Three decades ago Al Ries and Jack Trout warned against the perils of brand extension in Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind. They argued every extension has to alter the core proposition of a brand. As marketers grapple with a slowdown and extensions once again appear more cost effective than launching new brands, the strategist decided to knock on the doors of Al Ries for some answers.

Unless there is an absence of serious competition, extensions never work: Al Ries

Three lakh electric vehicles on the roads by 2020 would mean a reduction of over 16 lakh metric tons of pollution and savings of over Rs 3,700 crore in foreign exchange over the same period.

Is India ready for a green drive?

So what if the global economy is not in the pink of health? India's growth story seems still very credible to global corporations looking to grow beyond their borders. The world's largest hotel chain Best Western International Inc, USA, has down up plans to expand its presence in the country with an investment of Rs 1,600 crore in the hospitality sector. In an exclusive discussion with Rajarshi Bhattacharjee, David T Kong, president and CEO, talks about his confidence in the potential of the Indian market, Best Western's strategic advantages and much more. Edited excerpts.

The focus of tourism globally is shifting towards the East: David Kong

As they say the most successful brand extensions come from companies that really know their customers, even more so that know the limitations of their brand. Our experts discuss extensions that have been successful and those that have the potential to dilute a brand, and what makes some brands more extendible than others.

Brand extension: Good or bad?

Businesses increasingly live with the twin realisation that building brands is both difficult and expensive on one hand and on the other the market equity of many brands seems far greater that the economic value they generate. Brand extension is the natural outcome of these two competing impulses both internal to the corporation and has generally very little to do with realities of the marketplace or consumer mindspace. Brand extensions are seen as a cheaper and less risky way launching new innovations and are not really about creating new brands. While the jury is still out on extensions there is general consensus that they usually fail or are at best moderately successful. Is low risk low return the unwritten future of brand extensions? Clearly seeking permission from the consumers is not working.

Lead, don't seek permission

A comparatively recent entrant to the Indian handset market, HTC is trying to get a strong foothold in the industry with a series of interesting ads.

The world at your fingertips

Over 83 per cent of B-School graduates in India were willing to forego a hefty pay package for a job profile of their preference, said an Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) survey.

83% MBAs prefer job profiles to hefty packages: Assocham 

With the Indian team suffering humiliating losses to Australia, some advertisers are refraining from promoting their brands through cricketers in the immediate future fearing negative sentiments but media planners and players' managers termed it as overreaction.

Flop show down under, fewer ads back home

Press Trust of India

83% MBAs prefer job profile than hefty package

A Rs 2 health insurance scheme for rural India and a project on empowering cooperative banks through effective application of information technology &mdash; ideas that looked at tackling such problems received the thumbs-up from the jury of the Business Standard B-school Award 2012 held here on Tuesday.

Insurance scheme for poor wins Business Standard B-school Project Award 2012

Nokia, Tata retain the top two slots in the most trusted brands list; Reliance slips to 10th position.

Sony outranked by LG, Samsung 

The Marwari community has chosen to portray Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s patent bias against it after the AMRI Hospital fire as unfair persecution. That is correct, inasmuch as only the Marwari directors of the hospital were arrested and the Bengali ones allowed to remain at large. But though the crudely selective manner of the AMRI-related arrests is certainly reprehensible, it is also interesting in what it says about the changing nature of links between business and politics in Bengal.

Kanika Datta: Arresting developments

More than 10 months after the group on fund raising for the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), headed by Hari Bhartia, co-chairman and MD, Jubilant Life Sciences, submitted its recommendations to the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), the IIMs may finally have a fund-raising department in place.

IIMs learn the art of fund raising

Soumitra Dutta, 48, an IIT-Delhi alumnus, will become the 11th dean of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell on July 1. In an emailed interview to Kalpana Pathak, the first Indian-origin head in the institution&rsquo;s 66-year old history says there are several areas of interest that could help differentiate the university from the rest in India. Edited excerpts.

I will strengthen links between India & Johnson: Soumitra Dutta

Flip through the recruitment ad pages of leading newspapers or websites and chances are you would be bored to death unless you are a desperate job-seeker. The desperate are going to read anything, even if it is one more boring job description in a sea of boring job descriptions. But the best you are presumably targeting would be happy to skip the pages.

Shyamal Majumdar: Searching for superman

Kaya, the hair care and skin care services business of Marico (contributing seven per cent to the parent&rsquo;s turnover of Rs 3,128 crore) has just undergone a face-lift. The change has been initiated at several levels. At the most visible level, Kaya will now have a new logo with the tagline &lsquo;love what you see&rsquo;. The new identity, which has been crafted after a period of nine years &mdash; the first since the brand was born &mdash; will span across all marketing efforts. In the second phase, the company will revamp the product packaging and invest in a new retail design.

Kaya goes in for facelift

The DSC Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF 2012), the largest literary gathering in India, has for the first time in its five year history opened up registrations online and partnered with KyaZoonga.com, the country&rsquo;s largest online ticketing company, for the registrations process.

Online registrations zoom at Jaipur Literature Festival 

Walmart Stores Inc on Friday named Rosalind Brewer as president and chief executive of its Sam's Club warehouse retail chain, marking the first time that the world's largest retailer will have a woman and an African-American leading one of its three business units.

Walmart's first: Woman to head a business unit

Reuters 

    An engineer from Siemens India was challenged by his wife to repair an imported electrical appliance manufactured by Braun of Germany. Instead of doing so he designed a new one and founded his own brand. Name the person and the brand.

Page 812 - News

Answers to last week's quiz (#235)