CELEBRITY ENDOUSMENT Is it the only survival recipe for marketers?

Innovation & creativity are the valuable intangible assets which play a vital role in the transformation of business & society. The emergence of globalization & increasing competition created a threat for the organizations to survive in market and innovation & differentiation became necessity to sustain economic development and competitiveness. Every organisation wants to be more and more innovative. Innovation comes in many forms like product innovation, process innovation, service innovation, business model innovation etc but it is not so easy to become innovative. Many barriers exist in the way of innovation and one of the biggest & powerful hurdles to becoming more innovative is changing the corporate culture to accept and embrace innovation. The prevailing age of cost cutting and focus on process excellence have created in many firms a culture that is focused on the risk avoidance & operational excellence. For including innovation in the culture & to see innovation as one of the corporate objectives, it is required that the culture must change to accommodate the risk of failure and uncertainty along with the focus on innovation. This paper takes a brief look on the different forces & strategies that can help in shaping the culture to drive innovation. The focus is on the idea that how the people of an organisation may become more innovative. Keywords: Innovation, creativity, corporate culture

Today around every company, big or small, new or old, winners or losser is using a celebrity as their brand ambessader. Recently India has opned its market and in very few years it became the witness of an huge competition that its industry never imagined. In the era of such competition every company want to gain value from the market in term of a brand, and for that celebrity endorsment is the most fomous and easy way. Almost every prodect category sope to causmetic, cycle to car, telcom to ready-made, FMCG to five star hotels, everyone wants a celebrity as a ambessador for their brand. In indian market if we take a look we will find almost all the brand ambessadors are either a film star or a cricketer.this is because India produse and consume vast quantities of both. What is Celibrity endorsment ?

Brand Ambassador As word suggested a Brand Ambassador means a Ambassador of a Brand. An ambassoder is a representative of the Brand thad he/she endorses. When i was a kid there was very few brand ambassadors but some of them I can still recall like

Mrinal kulkarni in Vicco, Lata ji in Surf, Shri Devi in Lux, Dhermendra in Rajdoot, Sunil Gawesker in Sunil Suting there would be more but they werent able to leave an impact on our minds but those who did no wonder we always got the same product in our house. Innovation & Risk taking Innovation is also about taking risks. It is required to encourage innovation when an organization is doing well because the last thing which is desired is to gain competitive advantage and for that innovation is required. When we create some new product or services it may be acceptable in the market or not but until we wouldnt take the risk of the failure, we will not achieve the success. One must not afraid of the possibility of failure & of taking risks. For achieving the new heights in the business, it is required to encourage not only product innovation but innovation in every field. One of the misconceptions about innovation is that innovation is about creating the next new product, thats why most of the companies focus on their R&D. But since it is easy for other companies to copy any new product so the return on investment is very less. Hence it is required to encourage innovation in every field such as in customer service, in business models, in networking and so on. For example, DELL innovated the direct sales for computers. Dell did not invent the computer, Dell did not invent direct selling. Dell innovated a new business model selling PCs directly to customers. One can actually spend less and make more money in innovation if he pays attention to the valleys, those places which competitors have overlooked. Innovation Equation: As per the above discussion, innovation is based on creativity as well as risk taking and if we define innovation in the form of an equation then it can be mentioned as: INNOVATION = CREATIVITY * RISK TAKING

Creatrix Model: The Creatrix is an approach to innovation that recognizes the importance of innovative capacity in both the organization and its individuals. the Creatrix is the innovation instrument that focuses on the behaviours required for an organization to become more innovative, rather than just creative technique. Ensuring accessibility to practical innovation for all organizations.

Organisational Culture and Innovation Every organistion has innovators but the key is to create a culture where innovation comes through. Culture is the energy that fuels innovation and it may also be a poision that prevents it so buzz today is to develop a culture which supports innovation. Culture of the organisation is a living, breathing and ever-evolving entity. Corporate culture may be defined as the set of important understandings that people of an organisation share in common. It describes how people expect to work & what the rules are about how the firm is run. Culture is the mix of attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of an organisation.

When a new employee joins a firm he usually adopt the culture of that firm and in some cases the culture is so pervasive that it becomes the identity of firm and this culture sometimes discourage the change & resist the new approaches when it is required. The corporate culture that exists in many of the companies which focusses on cost cutting, outsourcing, quality & process excellence presents a significant hurdle for innovation. Today companies need to tap into and develop the power of individual, team, and organizational creativity and risk taking to accelerate innovation. According to the innovation equation, inovation is the unique blend of creativity & risk taking and it can be activated in a real sense by the drivers of innovation. Drivers of Innovation (Innovation= Creativity* Risk taking) The Seven Drivers of Creativity and Risk Taking: Creativity

and Risk Taking

1. AmbiguityPeople become creative when they face some sort of ambiguity in their work. In order to remove that ambiguity they try to do something new and creative which may be helpful for the organisation. 2. Independence Allowing people to finish their task in their own way also leads to generation of new ideas. If the employees are independent and are having authority to modify the work process then they may find some creative way to accomplish the same task using minimum of resources. 3. Inner-directed Unless the employess are self motivated or directed by their own conscious they will not innovate. So it is required to communicate properly to the employees that innovation is the necessity to survive in the market so that they may understand the value of innovation and their soul itself guide them to create something new. 4. Uniqueness creativity always lead to something that is unique and new. This uniqueness lies in the mind of the people the question is just to motivate the people to use their uniqueness. They should not fear from generating a unique or new idea. It is required to always praise the creative ideas given by the people. 5. Authentic