Mr. Vijay and Mr. Rajesh of 141Sercon, a WPP Company, delivered a flawless and highly engrossing session on Retail and Experiential Marketing at IIM Lucknow on the 6th of February. Speaking to a packed room of over 100 participants, they walked the students through a whole new world of marketing communications. By opening up new channels of thought in Social Media and how it is changing the face of marketing communications, the highly learned duo, disabused multiple fallacies and passé understanding of marketing communication. The workshop also touched up solutions that 141Sercon has executed for its clients and delved deep into some of the most popular case studies in the world of experiential and retail marketing.The session proved to be highly interactive with multiple questions on the relevance of social media, the cluttering of the web, the relevance to the Indian context, indices for measuring the results of below the line advertising taking precedence. An interesting anecdote involved a student questioning the relevance of social media in the context of the usage of Facebook in B2B contexts and the presenters breaking the common myth that social media revolved around social networks and Facebook.
Amit Haralalka, a first year student and a marketing enthusiast felt that the session was an eye opener for marketing students, thanks to the numerous case studies on Burger King, Ikea, WHO et al which helped relate to the content easily. IIC, which coordinated the workshop, was inundated with requests for another session on digital marketing by the company the next year around. Vijay and Rajesh were more than happy to come back to IIM Lucknow and termed the student participation as well-informed and precise. On the whole, a highly engaging afternoon and time well spent.