Marketers must innovate ideas to excite consumers in times of recession, says Virgin Mobile CMO Prasad Narsimhan

The seminar was held to address the reasons and consequences of the economic recession in the field of marketing. While speaking at seminar on the theme Marketing in the time of Recession, Mr Prasad Narsimhan, Chief Marketing Officer of Virgin Mobile, said, The marketing industry needs innovative thinking and fresh ideas to tackle the current economic crisis. Marketers are required to change their linear approach and think in newer and broader perspective in terms of developing marketing strategies.Mr Narsimhan further said, There is a need of discontinuity, seeing the current marketing trend, in the perception of marketers in spotting the needs of consumers. Marketers should not continue with the applied and tested strategies every time. There is no guarantee that the strategies that have worked earlier will succeed again. So there is a need to break the sequence somewhere to extract something new and innovative. However, he accepted that it required a lot of courage to implement new formulas but then he said the current crisis is new so the solution must come through innovations. While speaking on consumer behaviour in the time of economic recession, Mr Narsimhan said, The marketers must stop telling about their product and companies profile to consumers, and instead the product should give reasons to the consumers so that they can differentiate the product and companies on their own. MBAUniverse.com was the Official Management Portal of this knowledge event.