A brand is both an image and reality: Walter Vieira

Vieira has been consultant in marketing and training to many of the largest corporations in India - The A V Birla Group (textiles, cement, aluminium); Tatas (IT, cosmetics, consumer, chemicals; Mafatlal (textiles); Levers; BASF; Bayer; Hoechst; Philips et al and organizations in USA, Middle East; Africa, South East Asia. He has covered a broad canvas from Industrial products to FMCG.

Vieira is the only speaker to be invited to address three consecutive World Congress of Management Consultants in Rome, Yokohama and Berlin.

He reveals some interesting insights about marketing in an interview with domain-b.com's Aruna Rathod. Excerpts from the interview.

How effective are the new age marketing tools?
Some time ago, I presented a strategy to one of my clients. We did segmented marketing through SMS. We tried it only in one city, a two-tier town. It worked! The sale price of the product was Rs6,000 and at this price one doesn't buy the product off the rack. But with the SMS campaign, the awareness definitely grew. There were a lot of enquiries and some converted into sales.

It worked because the SMS is a novel medium, but will get cluttered some day. The early bird gets the worm. About online ads. Earlier I used to work on the computer for checking  my mails and browsing. Now I see the various interesting advertisements on the side panel. I am beginning to click on some like hotels or low fares to some places like flight fares to Malaysia, Sri Lanka or some other place. I may not be going next week but I am getting into the
habit of checking. So it is definitely working.

I have begun responding to people who are writing comments on my website. I have always been amazed at Tom Peters, marketing whiz USA and how he manages to respond to all his readers. He may be on the net for more than half the day, and usefully so, because he is building a franchise.

My franchise is the people I meet during my encounters with teaching at various institutions. But now I realise that you cannot match the digital medium - It has tremendous potential and reaches millions.

How does one do effective advertising/branding?
There is a point of overload in every medium. Online will have the same problems like the print and television.