The DM idea for Hutch is outstanding <font face="Verdana" size="1"><b><font color="#FF0033"><u>Cannes Special!</u></font></b></font>

Once again, it was a great day for India - and the Indian DM industry - at this year's Cannes Festival. A brilliant piece of DM work from OgilvyOne, Chennai, made it to the Lions Direct shortlist. The entry was for Hutch Telecom, Chennai. It consisted of a personalized newspaper ad (taken out in the Chennai edition of The Economic Times) delivered to a select and pre-identified target audience. Each ad carried the name of the high-value individual it addressed (that was the extent of the personalization), which meant that the right ad/newspaper had to be delivered to the right individual for the work to have the desired impact.

Even before I left for Cannes, I had put this piece of DM work amongst the best that I saw in India last year. I personally think this deserves to be right on top in tomorrow's DM awards. Kudos to the Ogilvy team! The other two entries nominated from India are both from O&M, Delhi. Of the two, the Businessworld mailer is extremely good. But once again, the idea for Hutch is outstanding.

I am personally disappointed that iContract has not been able to make the grade this year, although I felt that our work on Shoppers' Stop, Carbon and PSI was good, especially when compared to some of the other shortlisted work that I saw. But looking at the positive side, this will act as a benchmark for our team to do better every year, both in terms of ideas and execution.

CRM is Dead. Long Live CRM!

This was the premise that Ms Pamela Maphis Larrick, chairman and CEO, MRM Partners Worldwide, laid before us in the course of a presentation on what went wrong with CRM, how do we get it right and how to leverage its power.

Larrick rightly pointed out that CRM had a technology focus, and hence it failed. She said relationships are all about trust. And that has to be at the heart of CRM. Hence, CRM must place business strategy at its core, much before technology. Larrick also argued that CRM must be insight and customer need-driven, before technology can take over. That is really where agencies have to start playing a role, and bridge the lack of customer understanding in CRM implementation, for this is where most CRM activities have failed across the world. CRM touches the entire organization, and hence, it has to play a role in enhancing the "entire buying experience" across the company.

Larrick presented a model with customers at different stages - Passive Shoppers, Active Shoppers, at Purchase/Repurchase Stage, Up-Sell Cross-Sell stage and Retention Stage - and spoke about how one needs to make CRM relevant at each and every stage. To strengthen her case, she used global examples of how Durex and Nestle are successfully implementing this aspect of CRM.

The ultimate objective of CRM is moving from the old paradigm of ‘Moments of truth' to a new paradigm of ‘Moments of trust', she explained. However, it must be added that one would have ideally liked to see more examples, techniques and how-to-do tips from this session. Those, and also learnings from past mistakes. © 2003 agencyfaqs!