As much as I regretted my decision of doing "Bachelor of IT" years ago, I still do believe I can learn about business informally. I am trying to educate myself in the marketing field by reading as many books as I can do in my leisure times. I do wonder, why on earth I did IT then. I remembered I was a bit lost. I did my foundation and meeting all those friends who wanted to major in IT (majority of 'em doing IT) and some were doing either law or social studies. I wanted to do "Bachelor of Arts" as I love history above all (yeah I am the kind of person who adores history so much that I scored the highest for my O level in history comparing to other subjects and my friends thought it was weird! ;p), but my parents were oppossed to the idea 'cos they thought it might not be a handful degree for the future. I was tad confused, law was out of question, so was business (the fact that I failed my accounting in my secondary day). The only 2 options left were social studies (PR, languages etc) or IT. IT was being the most popular one that year, everybody wanted to do IT 'cos its was a booming topic years ago. I was, too, encouraged by Kay 'cos she saw I designed some websites (which were not fantastic at all!) and she thought I had talent in multimedia. There ya go, because of the persuasions by my friends and a teacher and me being so confident in design field, I finally decided I would do IT for my bachelor degree. Oh boy, how wrong I was to do so! I didn't like it so much that I thought I wouldn't even get the degree by the end of my bachelor days. I didn't understand a bit of everything especially in programming. All I did best was in theory and some multimedia stuffs (I can't say my works were fantastic but they were quite satisfactory). Somehow someway, I managed to get through hell in time. I graduated in the space of 2 years (surprise surprise!) and completed all subjects in 6 semesters without failing any of 'em. Nowdays when I look back to the old days, I didn't know how I managed to pull out from the worst situation. Perhaps it's a nature that we, as humans, manage to survive in any situations.
Anyway, since I educated myself in marketing (I found out my passion is all about marketing now), I purchased this book "Asia's Star Brands", which solemly I talked about in my few previous blogs and I must say, it's quite entertaining and educating in some ways. I am up to chapter 5 now and have been through few study cases. One that caught my eyes by far was the Nissan case. It's very impressive of what Mr. Carlos Ghosn did to the company though he met some drawback still in the end. Here's a bit of summary on the study case:
Brand Renewal : Nissan (rose by 10.8%, 0.3% higher that expected of 10.5%)
President : Mr. Carlos Ghosn.
He was hated by majority people due to the fact that the first time he was appointed as the president of Nissan, he closed 5 plants, reduced workforce by 14%, reduced purchasing cost by 20% as well as reducing number of suppliers by 5%. He's known as "Le Cost Cutter".
His Revival plan:
Design is the key. Not only it defines the first and lasting impression to the customers, it also expresses the identity of the brands
Expanding the product by trying to win new customers through its new products.
Updating the looks globally, more glitz and glamour, including catwalk models and all the marketing skills of showbiz
Established 'New Management Practices' by introducing the 'Nissan Management Way' which is to increase management quality and increase the speed of decision-making which automatically speeds up response to customers.
Understanding the background of Nissan:
Nissan is derived from the words "Nihon Sangyo" means "Japanese Industry". What Nissan tries to deliver is sticking through the "Japanese DNA" as for the concept but having to introduce the Western quality and production platforms.
The very effective brand tagline: "Shift_The Future"
Defining 6 different meaning from the word "Shift" along with six examples of what this means for the consumers, as follows:
SHIFT v. 1. to change. 2. to move to a position that's right for you. 3. to leave the status quo far, far behind.
SHIFT the way you imagine cars to look
SHIFT the way you feel about driving
SHIFT the way you think about the environment
SHIFT the way you expect cars to last
SHIFT the way you stay connected
SHIFT the way you consider safety.
Source : Asia's Star Brands
