What is Blue ocean Strategy?

It is a slang term for the uncontested market space for an unknown industry or innovation. Coined by professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne in their book "Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and the Make Competition Irrelevant" (2005), blue oceans are associated with high potential profits.

In an established industry, companies compete with each other for every piece of available market share. The competition is often so intense that some firms cannot sustain themselves and stop operating. This type of industry describes a red ocean, representing saturated market share, bloodied by competition. 

To avoid costly competition, firms can innovate or expand in the hope of finding a blue ocean. A blue ocean exists where no firms currently operate, leaving the company to expand without competition.

Red Oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody. Hence, the term red oceans.

Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue Ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored.

The corner-stone of Blue Ocean Strategy is 'Value Innovation'. A blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovation that creates value simultaneously for both the buyer and the company. The innovation (in product, service, or delivery) must raise and create value for the market, while simultaneously reducing or eliminating features or services that are less valued by the current or future market. The authors criticize Michael Porter's idea that successful businesses are either low-cost providers or niche-players. Instead, they propose finding value that crosses conventional market segmentation and offering value and lower cost.

What Is Angel Investing?

                                            (Click on the Image to enlarge it)

The term "angel" originally comes from Broadway where it was used to describe wealthy individuals who provided money for theatrical productions. In 1978, William Wetzel, then a professor at the University of New Hampshire and founder of its Center for Venture Research, completed a pioneering study on how entrepreneurs raised seed capital in the USA, and he began using the term "angel" to describe the investors that supported them.

An angel investor or angel (also known as a business angel or informal investor) is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. A small but increasing number of angel investors organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share research and pool their investment capital.

Angels typically invest their own funds, unlike venture capitalists, who manage the pooled money of others in a professionally-managed fund. Although typically reflecting the investment judgment of an individual, the actual entity that provides the funding may be a trust, business, limited liability company, investment fund, etc.

Angel investments bear extremely high risk and are usually subject to dilution from future investment rounds. As such, they require a very high return on investment. Because a large percentage of angel investments are lost completely when early stage companies fail, professional angel investors seek investments that have the potential to return at least 10 or more times their original investment within 5 years, through a defined exit strategy, such as plans for an initial public offering or an acquisition.

Current 'best practices' suggest that angels might do better setting their sights even higher, looking for companies that will have at least the potential to provide a 20x-30x return over a five- to seven-year holding period. After taking into account the need to cover failed investments and the multi-year holding time for even the successful ones, however, the actual effective internal rate of return for a typical successful portfolio of angel investments is, in reality, typically as 'low' as 20-30%.

 While the investor's need for high rates of return on any given investment can thus make angel financing an expensive source of funds, cheaper sources of capital, such as bank financing, are usually not available for most early-stage ventures, which may be too small or young to qualify for traditional loans.

What Is Washroom Marketing?

It sounds weird but it’s true.

As the name suggests, it’s advertising in the washroom, literally. Something like putting the advertisement and pamphlet about a product in the loo.

This is a place our eyes can never miss, 9 out of 10 times its gender specific, and when you are in the loo, you might as well read it.

Most of us have taken newspapers to the loo, which in fact is filled with ads. There have been questions about the privacy issues in the washroom, but one can’t figure out how privacy comes into picture here. There is no camera there in the washroom, unless and until the advertisement is hiding a cam under it.

Just placing something to read there doesn’t lead to invasion of privacy. Moreover it’s a sure shot method of reaching the customer. He/she will read it without any disturbance. And yes for everyone’s information there are companies too for washroom marketing like Positive Media of UK, IN YOUR FACE media corp. and many others. The marketing communication world is getting weirder by the day…

What are PODs and POPs? (Marketing)

(Points Of Parity)
(Points Of Difference)

Points-of-difference (PODs) – Attributes or benefits consumers strongly associate with a brand, positively evaluate and believe they could not find to the same extent with a competing brand i.e. points where you are claiming superiority or exclusiveness over other products in the category.

In a crowded market place, products that stand out and get noticed.

"Point of Difference" = a difference that competitors do not have have in their product or Brand.

The assessment of consumer desirability criteria for PODs should be against:

• Relevance

• Distinctiveness

• Believability

Points-of-parity (POPs) – Associations that are not necessarily unique to the brand but may be shared by other brands i.e. where you can at least match the competitors claimed benefits. While POPs may usually not be the reason to choose a brand, their absence can certainly be a reason to drop a brand.

Whilst when assessing the deliverability criteria for POPs look at their:

• Feasibility

• Communicability

• Sustainability

What Is Bancassurance?

The Bank Insurance Model ('BIM'), also sometimes known as 'Bancassurance', is the term used to describe the partnership or relationship between a bank and an insurance company whereby the insurance company uses the bank sales channel in order to sell insurance products.

BIM allows the insurance company to maintain smaller direct sales teams as their products are sold through the bank to bank customers by bank staff.

Bank staff and tellers, rather than an insurance salesperson, become the point of sale/point of contact for the customer. Bank staff are advised and supported by the insurance company through product information, marketing campaigns and sales training.

Both the bank and insurance company share the commission. Insurance policies are processed and administered by the insurance company.

BIM differs from 'Classic' or Traditional Insurance Model (TIM) in that TIM insurance companies tend to have larger insurance sales teams and generally work with brokers and third party agents.

An additional approach, the Hybrid Insurance Model (HIM), is a mix between BIM and TIM. HIM insurance companies may have a sales force, may use brokers and agents and may have a partnership with a bank.

BIM is extremely popular in European countries such as Spain, France and Austria.

The usage of the term picked up as banks and insurance companies merged and banks sought to provide insurance, especially in markets that have been liberalised recently. It is a controversial idea, and many feel it gives banks too great a control over the financial industry or creates too much competition with existing insurers.

In some countries, bank insurance is still largely prohibited, but it was recently legalized in countries such as the United States, when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed after the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. But revenues have been modest and flat in recent years, and most insurance sales in U.S. banks are for mortgage insurance, life insurance or property insurance related to loans. But China recently allowed banks to buy insurers and vice versa, stimulating the bancassurance product, and some major global insurers in China have seen the bancassurance product greatly expand sales to individuals across several product lines.

Source - Wickipedia.com

Image Source - einsuranceprofessional.com

What Is Volcker Rule?

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The Volcker Rule (also known as the "Volcker Plan") is a proposal by American economist and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments if they are not on behalf of their customers. Volcker has argued that such speculative activity played a key role in the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Volcker was earlier appointed by Obama as the chair of US President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a board created on February 6, 2009.

Basically it is the trading restrictions placed on financial institutions. The Volcker rule separates investment banking, private equity and proprietary trading (hedge fund) sections of financial institutions from their consumer lending arms.

Banks are not allowed to simultaneously enter into an advisory and creditor role with clients, such as with private equity firms. The Volcker rule aims to minimize conflicts of interest between banks and their clients through separating the various types of business practices financial institutions engage in.

The rule was introduced following the recession of 2008, to control the risk associated with the financial sector. Wall Street banks were accused of accumulating an excessive amount of risk and unfair business practices due to the inability of regulators to properly monitor their complex instruments and activities. The Volcker rule aims to protect individuals by creating a more transparent financial framework which can be regulated with greater ease.

Source - Investopedia.com

Image Source - nakedcapitalism.com

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