CRICKETING LESSONS FOR PERSONAL BRANDING

MI Muhammed Rizard, BBA (HONS) Spl in Mktg (SEUSL), ACIM (UK), AMSLIM (SL)

Personal branding of great players in the legacy of Cricket

Cricket has a potent legend behind its name. In good old days, the players were seen as well talented and played for creating a great momentum in terms of tactful strikes, tricky play for winning the game with the counter part. We could remember from start of cricket, Sir Don Bradman played an excellent cricket, for a century he has been recognized as a one and only man for entire cricket. Even some other players from various countries expressed a good cricket from good platform for the perfection. Their personal inspiration helped to the success majorly.

Breakthrough in Cricket

Cricket still becomes as a dominant factor in business especially when the cricketing icons are retained as a brand ambassador for the companies’ brands.  The consumers love brands that are endorsed by the famous cricketing icons. When an advertisement is going on, they look cricketing icons in different perspective; a sudden change on the mindset of them from cricket to advertisement, even more focused on their acting, reactions, expressions, glamour, jargon, maturity, etc so that the cricketers become so popular with the etiquette of cricket. Another paradigm it was created in the history of Cricket is Indian Premier League (IPL).  The players were sold for a million rupees and auctions and fighting between IPL’s teams were still going on to get the right players for the right team. In the IPL season, T20 matches are so hot among the cricket advocates. Very big multinational companies invested as strategic partners and some of them were sponsors behind this massive festival. What the main objective to invest behind this game is to get the profit margin for the teams, but in the viewpoint of sponsors and strategic partners, they want a good reputation for their brands and companies. Consequently, this cricket gives a greater income for the players. Some of the emerging authors, and consultancy firms agreed that Cricket became as a business for the players and recognized it as a Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).

Lessons from Cricket for personal development

Lesson 01: Team spirit

Individual members from various backgrounds of family, ethnicity, culture and morale get together in a cricket team and work as a unit or team with a distinctive performance. In a team of cricket, if one bowler losses his strengths or steadiness by giving huge sixes and fours, another one will come and safe his falls by taking a wicket or making a maiden over. In many times like this manner, the players have shown their degree of team spirits, and courage.   In the case of an organization, if anyone who is supposed to work under a team, whether that be operation, marketing, project and finance, he has to first understand what his position is and what he wants to do in a team environment, then look for others’ capabilities, positions, roles, and expectation and finally he has to take a concern where the team is to be driven or taken towards. Sharing your experience and taking care of others’ dues are appraisable and will lead to success.

Lesson 02: Focus on target

In the cricket, if the team wants to achieve a target, they have to move gradually by starting with singles, twos and even boundaries. Over one or two shots they can not achieve big scores. The players on the pitch will have to think for an each over what scores they should attain. Likewise, as an individual in our life has to set a target which is a long-term achievement. Step by step we have to move towards it with the start of small things. In the middle if they stuck, they should not change the target but the strategies that were pursuing can be changed.

Lesson 03: Hard-working and Commitment

Hard-working and commitment in the work are the utmost characteristics for a successful achiever. In cricket, there we could see a lot of hard-working efforts and great commitments of players on the fielding and batting.  On the boundary fielding, the players dive and stop the ball not to reach the boundary. That piece of working shows the commitment of players on the cricket. If a batting player, who wants 50 runs off 18 balls for instance, strikes away the balls over the boundaries, that piece of working would give a credit to the hard-working of that batsman. Likewise, in the personal life, we should have hard-working and dedication on our activities. We have always to remind ourselves that we are moving towards a goal. Well planned initiatives with continuous efforts and dedication would ensure the success in the personal life.

Lesson 04: Perform in pressurized time

We often see this sort of situation in cricket, when the match gets tough in the end. There are players who can play extremely well even in the under pressure times. The people who are performing in the pressurized times are enthusiastic and adventurous and will possess multi-tasking capabilities. As we are human beings, we have to do many works in a limited time scale. If the deadline comes closer for the certain tasks while engaged in different works or else many deadlines come closer in a short period, we would be extremely in trouble in finishing those with perfection. In that sort time, anyone who has engaged in under pressure should plan their times allocating to each task or project and execute on time, if any uncertainty comes in the mean time, contingency plan works effectively to tackle those.  

Lesson 05: Obey under the leadership

This is one of the characteristics of the effective people. In Cricket, the skipper takes all the privileges in managing a team towards victory. He changes strategies, and behavior of all individual players in the ground and team players abide by to the words of captain in the ground. Likewise, in a team environment, a person who is working for an organization should listen to the leader’s command and shape his movements accordingly. A leader knows very well, where the team’s objective should reach to.

Lesson 06: Learn from Failure

Many of us failed to get the lessons from failure. If a victory comes, we celebrate successfully, on the other hand if a failure comes; we walk off to be squeezed. Our mentality once getting failure impulses the negative sides of us and route to failure again because we did not learn from factors we fell on. In cricket, if a captain of a team failed in a last game, he would think whose mistakes made failure, what mistakes as a captain I did, and formulate strategies to resolve this sort of errors happened in the next game and lead to victory rather than being reactive. In a personal life also, we engaged for a number of works and expect good results. Some write exams. Once they failed on that exam, they think that is the end of life. The reason for failing on exam may be not studying the subjects, and being a good entertainer during the exam period. In this sort of failure situation, we have to be proactive in learning from the failure and make sure the mistakes again not to happen in the next initiative.

Lesson 07: Sustaining on the reputation

In cricket, a reputation lead to win obviously, or rather it would help get the winning in the match. Take an Australian team as an example, opposite team would fear for their reputation of attacking bowlers, stunning fielding and team spirits and loose the steadiness of cricket. This kind of reputation as an individual in our personal life should be built. Have a look on at Bill Gates from Microsoft, Sir Richard Brandson from Virgin, and Steve Job from Apple. They are the people who innovated the business and made breakthrough in it and built a strong reputation behind their names. Likewise, we have also to build a good reputation behind our name and work on hard for a successful career.

Lesson 08: Pre match practice

In cricket, the players practice in a net prior to the match. This practice is a good learning for us. Whatever we do, before implementation we should practice three or four times rehearsals, which will fine-tune the particular work in a good mode and perfection.

Lesson 09: Stick to the time

In Cricket, a tournament is planned on a time scale. They execute the matches on time and finish it as well. In our personal life, we should have a “To Do” list for a day in which all activities are written that are to be done in that particular day, and the time allocation to do the works scheduled. This is a good practice for time management and also the famous author Stephen R Covey stated on his book “7 habits of highly effective people” that a matrix for time management as shown below is useful for managing your times even in a busy work schedule. The “To Do” list could be applied to this model established based on its priorities.

                                                                                                               

Urgent I ACTIVITIES: Crises Pressing Problems Deadline- Driven projects	Not Urgent II ACTIVITIES                           Important                         Prevention, PC activities Relationship Building Recognizing new opportunities Planning, Recreation
III ACTIVITIES: Interruptions, some calls Some mails, Some reports Some Meetings Proximate, presenting matters Popular activities	IV ACTIVITIES:                    Not Important Football, pleasant activities Some mails Some phone calls

                                

Source: Stephen, RC, 2004

Lesson 10: Celebrating the success

The players are awarded at the event of post-match presentation in Cricket. The player of the match and winner of the match are given trophies. Once we have got the success in our life for certain works, or achieved some attainments, we have to share it with our friends, family and relations. That will definitely inspire again for another innovation in our life. Facebook is the most appropriate tool to celebrate our success which will motivate from the comments of friends.

In concluding this, there are several thoughts from Cricket that a person has to learn. But the key factors were notified in this article.  In the momentum of a human’s life, every minute will give some learning from the past. It is very rare to find a person who got all the times winnings. The great achievers in the world, like scientists, business tycoons and entrepreneurs got failure in the first attempt. Learning from their failure inspired the success to them. So being as continuous learner will shape up our lives always into success with qualities as depicted from the lessons of Cricket.

Sri Lanka's MoU with Iran for tea export

Iran has agreed to revise and study the inclusion of the preferential tariff quota on annual basis for the Sri Lanka tea sector in the export division. The MoU was shared between two parties, as the Cabinet was granted on this agreement. This revision of quota partially  by Iran to be used for the packaging of tea in the free trade zone in Iran by Sri Lankan companies or the joint ventures formed with Iranian and Sri Lankan companies.

The ninth Session of the Joint Commission for Economic Co-operation between Sri Lanka and Iran concluded in September 2010 in Colombo. Iran is Sri Lanka’s 6th largest trading partner, recording a total value of two-way trade of nearly US $992 million in 2009.

Google Grows, and Works to Retain Nimble Minds

When a product manager at Google told his bosses this year that he was quitting to take a job at Facebook, they offered him a large raise. When he said it was not about the money, they told him he could have a promotion, work in a different area or even start his own company inside Google.

He turned down all the inducements and joined Google’s newest rival.

“Google’s gotten to be a lot bigger and slower-moving of a company,” said the former manager, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity to protect business relationships. “At Facebook, I could see how quickly I could get things done compared to Google.”

Google, which only 12 years ago was a scrappy start-up in a garage, now finds itself viewed in Silicon Valley as the big, lumbering incumbent. Inside the company some of its best engineers are chafing under the growing bureaucracy and are leaving to start or work at smaller, nimbler companies.

Recent departures include low-level engineers, product managers and prominent managers like Lars Rasmussen, who helped create Google Maps and Wave before he left for Facebook, and Omar Hamoui, the founder of AdMob who was vice president for mobile ads at Google and is now looking for his next project. At least 142 of Facebook’s employees came from Google.

Corporate sclerosis is a problem for all companies as they grow. But a hardening of the bureaucracy and a slower pace of work is even more perceptible in Silicon Valley, where companies grow at Internet speed and pride themselves on constant innovation — and where the most talented people are often those with the most entrepreneurial drive.

Much of Silicon Valley’s innovation comes about as engineers leave companies to start their own. For Google, which in five years has grown to 23,000 employees from 5,000 and to $23.7 billion in revenue from $3.2 billion, the risk is that it will miss the best people and the next great idea.

“It’s a short step from scale to sclerosis,” said Daniel H. Pink, an author and analyst on the workplace. “It becomes a more acute problem in Silicon Valley, where in a couple years, you could have some competitor in a garage ready to put you out entirely.”

Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, says that people who think Google faces brain drain are “fundamentally wrong.” The company’s attrition rate for people it wished would stay has been constant for seven years, he said.

Nevertheless, Google’s maturation worries him. “There was a time when three people at Google could build a world-class product and deliver it, and it is gone,” Mr. Schmidt said. “So I think it’s absolutely harder to get things out the door. That’s probably our biggest strategic issue.”

As a result, Google is taking aggressive steps to retain employees, particularly those with start-up ambitions. Google has given several engineers who said they were leaving to start new companies the chance to start them within Google. They work independently and can recruit other engineers and use Google’s resources, like its code base and servers, according to half a dozen employees.

Google Wave, a way for people to work together online, was one example. The engineering team, based in Sydney, Australia, worked independently and got equity in the project, according to three people briefed on the agreement. But Google shut down Wave this year, and Mr. Rasmussen, who led the project, quit for Facebook soon after.

Google is considering opening a start-up incubator inside the company, according to two people briefed on the plans.

Other big companies have made similar attempts with varying success. Cisco Systems’s program has given birth to new businesses like TelePresence, a videoconferencing service, but Yahoo’s incubator was shut down in 2008, a year and a half after it started.

From the beginning, Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have tried to prevent atrophy. That is one reason Google gives everyone time — called 20 percent time at the company — to work on their own projects. The company tries to limit groups of engineers working on projects to 10.

But in reality, engineering groups quickly swell to 20 or even 40, several Google product managers said. And new products created during 20 percent time are less likely to get anywhere these days.

The Value of Corporate Social Responsibility in enhancing Brand Equity; a strategic evaluation through Triple Bottom Line for the companies in Sri Lanka

Corporate Social Responsibility is the buzzword for the companies that keep the business to be sustainable in achieving the competitive advantage in the marketplace. As Corporate Social Responsibility stands for CSR, could be defined in the perspective of World Bank as “the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development, working with employees, their families and local communities”. Many of the authors and researchers agreed the definition and its consequences of CSR since it satisfies mutually the needs of communities as well as companies that want to be sustainable in the market. The top many companies inclusive of multinationals, large enterprises and even a few of the SMEs  in Sri Lanka undertake CSR initiatives to show how well they are associated and concerned about the community of public and they bring them as a part of the organization. Unilever’s Saubhagya, Coca-Cola’s Cricket Pathway, for instance as CSR initiatives. At the same time, those companies are competing with rivalries to increase the brand value and the brand equity as well at the end of the financial year to position the company in the top ranking while giving more focus on CSR initiatives.

These two concepts such as CSR and Brand Equity generally have a negative correlation in the perspective of shareholders because in practice, many of the shareholders are more frustrated with the colossal amount of investments that are pumped on CSR Initiatives which would affect drastically to the Brand Equity of the organizations in Sri Lanka. Consequently, what the companies need to do is the heavily investment jeopardize their profitability, thereby failing their shareholders; likewise to the extend that such companies fail to engage in such social responsible activities at all, or only in superficial ways, may threaten their company’s survival by driving the customers and potential customers away. Therefore, a careful balance of the neoclassical and shareholder approach to doing business in the Sri Lanka market place is required today. Further, the shareholders are confused on CSR initiatives of companies what really they are doing for society. In practice a few of the companies in Sri Lanka take some awareness programs to shareholders and other key stakeholders to explain the impact of CSR initiatives that would bring in the long-term perspective to the companies. It is very essential for the companies to explain the importance of their current CSR activities and they have to be accountability and transparency in their CSR Initiatives particularly to shareholders. It is the fact that in Sri Lanka, many of the companies do not have a proper mechanism to implement and evaluate the social responsible programs.

Triple Bottom Line (TBL) is the latest concept that most of the organizations in international market, practice in the business process that takes their companies’ business into the sustainable marketing. TBL which consists of three dimensions such as Economic, Social and Environment creates a framework for the companies to become sustainable effectively and to implement and evaluate the CSR efforts. In the perspective of Economic, the factors such as future economic development of the company, creating sustainable financial bottom line in terms of increased earning per share (EPS), profits, Return on Capital Employed (ROCE), the reduction of operating costs through systematic management, labor productivity, expenditures on research and development and investments in training and other forms of human capital,  and saving money by reducing energy use that the employees are engaged to practice it in the organizations, are taken in the measurement that provide a valuation for the companies. In the social perspective, the factors such as the CSR initiatives of the organization, fair trading practices through proven with excellent and quality of Standards and awards such ISO, SLS etc, supporting to local suppliers as Cargills Food City does to the local suppliers in Sri Lanka for instance, could be deemed. In the perspective of environmental dimension, the factors like lower pollutant and emission, reduce energy waste, use sustainable packaging, and recycling of the packages are considered.

It is the fact that many of the researchers accept that the TBL has a definite and solid impact on companies’ sustainability which is primarily achieved by CSR in Sri Lanka. Global warming could shrink the world economy by up to 20%. It is no longer acceptable for companies on ignoring their responsibilities for a sustainable future for everyone- businesses included. The business case in Sri Lanka for sustainability rests primarily on the consequences for corporate reputation of not being sustainable. By implementing Triple Bottom Line concepts, companies take steps to avoid the risk of boycotts and negative publicity that can be extremely damaging. The number of people who say they have boycotted a company because its products damage the environment now stands at 51%. Recent research commissioned by The Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK) indicates that more than 75% of marketers believe that a company’s sustainability practices will increasingly affect consumers’ buying decisions. Therefore, with integration of TBL, the companies need to think on which TBL’s measures would imply on their capabilities and they should be able to evaluate the achieved outcomes on their investment for CSR initiatives, but in Sri Lanka the implication of TBL in organizations is generally less. It is a good opportunity for well-established companies to practice Triple Bottom Line to become sustainable business in achieving competitive advantage.

Despite increased awareness of sustainability issues in recent years, many financial directors and managers still argue that it is not their place to consider sustainability issues, but they came to the concept that “the business of business is business”. But, as the customers play a pivotal role in the market oriented companies and they look the brands of which the companies’ social responsible approach is put on society. Then they purchase those brands. Subsequently, this behavior of customer perception on CSR initiatives impacts the brand equity of the companies. Thus, brand equity has been described as the added value endowed by the brand to the product that consists of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand associations, and perceived quality. In the real practice of organizations, they take various efforts to increase the brand value throughout the business and marketing process. From innovative research of products to consumers decision making regard to the purchase of the brand, there are a lot assets and brand building thoughts included, such as advertising campaigns, promotional campaigns, PR campaigns, direct marketing, companies physical evidence, organizational culture, superior customer value through customer care program etc.

In Sri Lanka, the CSR is measured in a practical manner with the level of brand equity increased, the number of people who were benefitted from the initiatives, the amount of cost saving to the organization in the long-term perspective. At the same time, many of the companies in Sri Lanka measure the brand equity based on the factors such as increased brand image, increased sales, increased brand awareness level, and the level of the customers’ perception that become as an advocate for the brands.

Perhaps nobody will disagree to the statement that CSR enhances brand image, brand reputation, customer loyalty and sales. In an online poll conducted by The Economic Times on 5-6 January 2007, 75 percent of the respondents opined that CSR activities increase the brand equity of a company. Branding of products, more particularly of consumer products, gets an immense boost through social messages. With increasing competition and little differentiation in product features, creating and sustaining is a challenge. Spending on visible CSR activities is a cost effective means of achieving and sustaining a brand image. Good brand image leads to customer loyalty. We shall see that emotional binding is one of the factors contributing to brand image and customer loyalty, and CSR is tool for achieving that. Consumers not only want good and safe products but would also like to know that what they buy was produced in socially and environmentally friendly way, and are sometimes even willing to pay more for products that are produced in a socially and environmentally responsible manner. In the practice of companies in Sri Lanka, the CSR initiatives are understood in the upper market that was taken through with urban consumer behavior and customer life style. In the lower market, there is a gap in the involvement between companies and society which represent customers. The CSR is not understood properly by them.

It is recommended for the companies in Sri Lanka, the proper message from CSR initiatives should be communicated to the stakeholders such as shareholders, customers or beneficiaries and employees in order to have an effective results and outcomes from the efforts. Before implementing CSR, there should be a proper awareness programs, community link programs and word of mouth campaign by the companies that engage the CSR initiatives particularly in the rural market.  Further, companies need to think of CSR initiatives that support to the majority of the society or customers, matching to their internal strengths, an excellent example is Unilever’s Suabhagya CSR initiative targeting the women in order to provide the supports and resources in enhancing their career, education and enterprise. But in this case, Unilever’s strategy was most appropriate because their primary target segment is women for their most of the brands and through the initiatives they were able to make women as advocates for the brands which would help increase the value and equity of the brand.

Therefore, it is on the strategy of the organizations on how they would induce the value corporate social responsibility to enhance the brand equity with the strategic integration of triple bottom line by doing various analyses. In Sri Lanka, there is a great potential to build their brands for companies throughout the CSR strategy.

About the Author

Muhammed Rizard Ismail is a final year student of Bachelor of Business Administration (specialization in marketing), Faculty of Management and Commerce, South Eastern University of Sri Lanka and a creative researcher in the area of consumer marketing, branding, personal selling and retail marketing with the three years experience in the marketing organization. He also is an Associate Member of The Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK).