Xlri Brand Building
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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
A lady, sitting next to Raymond Loewy, the man who gave the world the coke bottle, at dinner, struck up a conversation.
“Why”, she asked “did you put two Xs in Exxon?”
“Why ask?” Loewy asked
“Because”, she said,” I couldnt help noticing?”
“Well”, he responded, “thats the answer.”
These words by probably the best industrial designer ever born accentuate a very important fact: Products are made in the factory, but BRANDS are created in the mind.
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:
People who know about Management Degree
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.
INSEAD
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.