Mind share

I recently happened to meet one of my school mates. Since we were meeting after a long time (nearly 7 yrs), we had to update each of us about our graduation and employment details. I work in the IT sector and he works in the chemical industry. When I asked him which company he is working for, he replied as ‘I work for abcd n co. Since you are working in IT sector, you might not know it’. I made a quick reply mentioning that I know that company and I also told him how the logo of the company looked like. He was surprised and asked me how do I know. I couldn’t recollect it. After that, we walked off. But the thought of how do I know this company was running in mind. I was thinking hard to recollect…

After sometime I realized how the name of this company had the ‘Top of the mind’ share in my mind. The company operates transport facility for it’s employees and the buses are white with name of the company written on it. While I commute for my work, I have seen these buses almost everyday and that’s how it was at the top of the mind. This made me think how even the buses could create the ‘Top of the mind’ share for a company. From that day, I started observing many of the employer run buses. Some of the buses carried lines about,

* About the awards received by the organization
* Promos of their soon-to-be launched products
* Some significant milestone (like ‘we are 1 million’) recently reached

I came to know about another IT Company also through their buses. What an advertisement mediums these company operated buses are. Hmm…Nice learnings! I will employ these techniques when I need to create a mind share among prospective employees and general public,

* The buses should be clean and tidy because the first impression matters right!
* Park the buses for the night at prominent places. Preferably – near restaurants frequented by youth, near schools (to attract young parents), near colleges, near the other companies of your industry, malls
* Run the bus through the arterial roads of the city during the morning & evening peak hours
* Carry information about significant milestones, recognitions/accolades received, vision, what kind of people are recruited
* Have the company logo on the bus

~ by soms on August 3, 2008.