Essay Xlri Brand Building Category: Business Autor: anton 03 January 2011 Words: 2557 | Pages: 11 This is a term-paper

on building the brand for a B-school (XLRI SChool of business and human resiurces, Jamshedpur, India) REJUVENATION OF XLRI AS A BRAND These words by probably the best industrial designer ever born accentuate a very important fact: Brand is about promise, about purpose, positioning, personality and perception. It is what you stand for and aspire to be. Your brand resides within the hearts (feelings) and minds (intellect) of your customers and prospects. It is the sum total of their (product, company, service and competitive) experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence and some you cannot. Brand building does not happen only with advertising. Like Salt, advertising should be used in the right proportion. There has to be an integrated brand strategy. Branding matters as it separates you from others, enhances your value and makes you special. A good Brand inspires, creates loyalty, brings you new prospective customers and helps you connect with old ones. In such a scenario a B-school, which offers a highly sought after service of imparting management education needs to create or reinvent a Brand for itself. In increasingly competitive times, business schools in the education market need to communicate the values that make them different. Branding is a fundamental way of doing so. A clearly defined brand can be the difference between a candidate considering a schools programme or dismissing it. Branding of B-School is more about culture and mindset. It should be mission based and believable. B-school brands are often built over time. Recruiters want to hire graduates who are successful at the job. Student want to know they have a good education, but are likely also interested in that the education will help them in their career (including getting a job - so good ratings with recruiters will help the brand image with students). Lots of the growth of the brand would likely come from public relations activities as opposed to traditional marketing activities. Get your professors known as experts in their field, through publishing research, being quoted in articles/by media, etc. Many schools talk about life term value, their heritage, alumni. It also projects the fact that the corporate identity and name suggestions you provide will primarily be an identifier for the school, symbolising its history, dreams, philosophies, and mission. Additionally and more importantly, these factors also help in differentiating from the competition advantageously.

Before we go into the various strategic steps and changes that XLRI, as a leading b-school in India can implement to rejuvenate its brand and be counted as a leading management institution in the world, lets look at some of the concerned factors . CUSTOMER & TARGET SEGMENT : Basically any person who wants a management degree is a customer of XLRI. The various companies that hire MBA graduates are its customers. Also the firms who avail the consulting facilities of the teachers or the students are the customers of XLRI. We can divide the target segment of XLRI into two categories: 1) People who know about Management Degree 2) People who doesnt know about or have less knowledge about management degree People who know well about MBA: Freshers Engineers& IITs (we should target aggressively) NITs & 2nd rung colleges(now targeting) Others Commerce graduates SRCC, St Xaviers, LSRCC, etc Others BBA/Related Work-Ex Less than a year Between 1- 3 yrs Above 3 yrs People who are ill informed about MBA: Science graduates Arts graduates Other technical education

About 2, 00,000 students write CAT while only 70,000 write XAT. Our target segment is these 1, 30,000 prospective candidates. Also we should target the junta who leave XLRI for other institutions like IIM I K L, FMS etc. POSITIONING: Being employed: XLRI positions itself as the best B-School in India after the three big IIMs- A, B, and C. It positions itself as Asias best in Human Resources (Thanks to its flagship PMIR programme) and an innovator in the Marketing field. It positions itself as school which offers a wide degree of electives. IIMA IIMB IIMC XLRI HBS LBS XIMB & INSEAD Low High Global Positioning Intended: It should position itself based on its core strength. We should leverage us as the Best HR institute of the country. Rather than positioning against the IIMs, we should position with the international institute. Also our target should be to go global IIMA IIMB IIMC XLRI HBS LBS XIMB & INSEAD Low High Global Positioning MARKETING MIX:

The intended marketing mix according to the 7Ps (as applied to a services industry like an education institution) is Product: High standard Global Management Education, Total Learning experience, All round Development centre, Place for budding Entrepreneurs Price: Can come up with Innovative scholarship schemes, merit-cum need based Place: Jamshedpur, Indias 2nd planned city, Home to the TATA group, Surrounded by nature Promotion: Through various strategic branding methods People: Quality students, Highly Qualified Faculty Process: Intake of best brains, XL Experience & culture should stand out Physical Ambience: Infrastructure to international standard, promote Green Campus, small is beautiful PRODUCT LINE & PRODUCT MIX: Education Programmes Post-Graduate Business Management(BM) Personnel Management & Industrial Relation(PMIR) Seniors GMP GMP Defence Ex-PGP Distance Satellite International Courses Academic Research FPM Industry experts Academicians Faculty Research Consultancy Services

Research Papers Others Management in Insurance Management Development programme (MDP) BRANDING: "When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps." Confucius So XLRI instead of spurning its efforts on become a leading management institution of the world should actually sit back, introspect and after a thorough and clear planning process should double its efforts to reach its goal. Bill Beattie said The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to thinkrather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men and that exactly where the core competency of XLRI lies. XLRI's core strength lies in its fundamentals of faculty and student quality. XLRI today boasts of a faculty size of twenty in the area of Finance and Economics, which is unrivalled across B-school campuses in India. Some innovative strategic changes I would promote to change XLRI into a leading management institute in the world are: THINK GLOBAL: Now with the world being so small a place, an institute cannot have a regional outlook. It has to broaden and explore all the avenues possible to it... It has forming partnerships and even opened campuses in bustling locations of Dubai & Singapore. But still, it has not yet achieved global brand status. There are a lot of boosters in XLRIs journey toward its goals-India is on the front lines of globalization and is the most important laboratory for global business. Private sector demand for management education is getting voracious. There is strong government support in India for business and technicalbusiness. Private sector demand for management education is getting voracious. There is strong government support in India for business and technical education. Institutions are aggressively competing for a position in the new emerging hierarchy of global elite business schools, through new business models, brand strategies and tactics. XLRI has to aggressively pursue new levels of autonomyas they seek to free themselves to compete on the world-class stage. Also it can do it by adding international topics and experiences to their educational mix. Being a Jesuits Institution it should utilize its large network of Jesuits Fathers & followers to spread its influence. Also rather than being Anti-IIM we can be Pro-IIM. It should not be IIM v/s XL rather IIM & XL. I believe there is enough space in India for world class management

institutions to survive. US have about 5 of the worlds best B-schools and they are thriving as a perfect combination. If this occurs in US then why not in India. Still then if we have to compare, lets compare ourselves with HBS, Stanford & Kelloggs and take them as role institutions to imitate. ADVERSITY??? NAHHHHH..: We should try to portray some of our tribulations as our strength. Here I would like to quote a particular anecdote. The approach road leading to the IIM Ahmadabad was cratered with horrendous potholes from the monsoon. It was in a state of destitute and it was very hard to commute upon it. On being asked about it a senior official commented "You see. IIM A is still the toughest B-school to get into!!! How beautifully did they change their shortcoming into a win-win situation. Location of Jamshedpur has been a perennial problem affecting XLRI. But in spite of the perceived inaccessibility, its placements match the rest of the IIMs in most verticals. Realization is sinking in among the others that XL indeed may be located near "the industry". An alumnus explains the reasons for the institute's popularity: "MBA students want to have a good time, party, travel, socialize and take two years off before they give it all up with Corporate India for the rest of their lives. The prettier and more inaccessible the campus, the better. As you can see, our campus is in Mint condition, very beautiful." XL KI KUDIYAN VERY VERY SMART This song by the Famous Bodhi Tree bad of XL describes about a typical XL gal, her attributes, strengths, and how she is no less than any guy on campus. So when all B-schools are deeply worried about the no of Girl students in the Post Graduate batch( IIM C has only 19 girls in a batch of 320), here is one school with not only a very good proportion of women candidates(60 on 180) but also where the girls are able to nurture their talents to the maximum XLERIENCE XL + Experience: XLERIENCE There should come such a day when people relate MBA to XL Experience. XL is a place for people who can develop Nirma and pan masala, and not for those who can sell it." The strength of XLRI lies in creating leaders who possess the softer skills of management, apart from academic excellence. At XL we focus on the experience, not on the product. The degree is merely an excuse for the overall experience. No one remembers the mathematics class, or even that groundbreaking seminar on Inflation. What we will remember is the ratanjee football game, the "XL utsav" tradition, the wetnites, and the breakfasts at dadus. We at XL believe brand exists in people. No cut-throat competition here. Everyone knows everyone. Small campus with lesser no. of people, therefore, greater interaction among the batch mates as

well as excellent senior-junior interaction. The excessive help obtained from seniors in every activity. Helpful faculty and close student- faculty bonding LEVERAGING ALUMNI Make the past and present students feel an emotional bond with the college. The alumni are the ones who will be recruiting from the college. They know what the quality of education that is provided etc is. If they feel a sense of belonging to your college, they shall keep coming back to hire. Also we can have an alumni come back to the institute with real-life managerial problems which then become weekend projects for students. For instance, a company might want to know why its distribution system is not working well. So the students try and identify the problem, then design and conduct a survey. STUDENT POWER XLers should participate in events of national importance. We should protest where we feel someone is wronged. We can take an active part in the development of rural areas atleast in field of education and self-management. Most visible way. Also successful participation in various fests n events. Organizing events of importance including seminars, CEO talks etc. E-BRANDING Concept of e-branding in the form of a well designed and focused site can actually help. Consistency of logo, applications of logo, colour schemes, content, flavour content, brand message etc. is a must Inspite of a large no on blogs, there is no particular interesting blogs being written. So many blogs create confusion and makes a reader loose his interest. We should have a XL live website. Also there can be a XL travelogue-a yearlong diary as students of XL Make it mandatory for existing every students to write at least one web articles in every trimester for different MBA sites like cool avenues, bizkool, indiainfoline etc. To make the issue serious, there should be certain percentage of CGPA in each trimester, earmarked for such writings. PUBLISHING STRENGTH For any School to be known widely, an institute journal is a must. Encourage your intellectual capital to don thinking caps and hone writing skill. For developing your own brand publishing your own quarterly management journal is of utmost importance. Institute should arrange competition amongst ongoing batches, alumni and faculties for writing in different management categories. Out of that repository, best one will be chosen for the journal .even industrybatches, alumni and faculties for writing in different management categories. Out of that repository, best one will be chosen for the journal .even industry leaders, CEO, MD can contribute their real life management experience in it. There should not be any compromise in quality .Topic should be very relevant one and out of the box thinking should be encouraged Also research papers and achievements by the faculty should be publicised widely. THE NORMAL STUFF

Promote the unique learnings of adventure trip & village trip. trying to position itself as one that services both the corporate and social sectors Stick to one idea. Speak in one voice. Call famous media personalities like Shobha De, Prahalad Kakkar etc to campus. Make them interact with the faculty, directorwhen they see good things here they will write good things about us there. Case studies, working papers should be provided in collaboration of Industry, so that website had niche content regarding industry or similar problems. These case studies or content serve as information which industry may be seeking for and would increase the industry person landing on XL website through random search Highlight the various activities taking place. Have more visibility. IMMEDIATE PLAN: To be able to brand an institute, the administration, alumni, student community need to identify what the institute is really good at. Is that advantage sustainable? If it is, whom are you going to communicate this brand to? How are you going to communicate it? Through whom? How do you measure if it's working? Who's responsible? It needs a well thought-out and sustained PR campaign, both online and offline Do a research about what motivates students when they chose XLRI.D o a ranking of these attributes, and ask the respondent to give a rating of your Business school and its competitors on each of these attributes. 1- Reputation among recruiters 2- Prestige of the professors 3- Scholarship fees 4- Studies length 5- Quality of post-school networking 6- Campus quality 7- etc. Select the attribute where you have a better score than your competitors (if this attribute is very motivating it will be easier but if not selects that one - build on your strengths. use this as your USP: constantly repeat the message to all your prospects. It will take time indeed, but you will end up owning this attribute and people valuing this attribute will select your School... I believe with proper implementation and an enthusiastic & energising zeal we can and we would be able to make XLRI one of the worlds best management institution.