Daily Jottings
Saturday
I’m in Sargodha now. I reached here yesterday night. We would not have got delayed on our plans, if I had left the college at time, and not have spent time on tea with my senior friends. We came back to their hostel (whereas I live in my home in Lahore), after attending a talk-cum-presentation on “Coke vs. Pepsi”, at least that was the topic chosen earlier; but later (during the presentation) we found out that since one student was absent of the two, the presentation will focus sharply on Coca Cola, so to say a partisan view of the latter, whereas a comparison between the two, however, will be carried out. The moderator of the talk praised generously the tenacity of the one presenting team member, who despite being singled-out, carried on and presented almost a 1-hr discussion, not to mention again, singlulary.
The primary concern of the presentation, however, was two-fold, with varying degree of focus. The first being, in terms of order of presentation, to present a brief history of the firm as start-up; its start-up idea; and the evolution of the company till this day, the way we know it now. And, secondly, first in importance though, the “marketing strategy” of the firm through-out its career that spans over more than a century.
Presentation was structured accurately, unidirectional, even though the presenter was to present from two different perspectives – i.e. its start-up story and its marketing strategy through-out its career – the two perspectives seem to be now integrated, thus we enjoyed it. And, because the two perspectives found a common focal point, since they’re well merged, the audience didn’t feel tattered between the two.
The only thing I am critical of the presentation/talk, irrelevant of its content, was its being called a talk, although it may never have been claimed to be, but at F.E.A. we only talk about “talks”. This was not a talk in the strict sense of the word. Nay, only the flavour of it was missing. If only it was more open, natural and playful the way a talk is, it would have been a talk, not to emphasize whether a talk is superior to a presentation.
3 comments:
Whether you call it a talk or presentation, the purpose was fulfilled. We learned about the success story or in other sense "what made coke succesful". I think that is the best part of our learning about entrepreneurship. On more thing, that is we might fall into myopia by defining our purpose too narrowly. For example, why did cinemas failed? because they defined themselves as a movie showing business rather than defining themselves as an entertainment business. If they would have defined their business as an entertainment business then they would have predicted the competition faced by entertainment companies like disney, pixar and dreamworks etc. That is, I believe, the main reason why many businesses fail. One more example, is when ptcl (before it was privatized) restricted themselves by defining themselves as a telephonic business, if they would have defined themselves more broadly like by defining themselves as a telecommunication business then could have been pioneers of introducing broadband in Pakistan, even before worldcall. So umer I think we should not limit our purpose. Arguments plz.
Yes Osama you are right. This is what we should think like. We just need to think outside the box, rather than just exploring the things within it. This is what our sir Mannan had taught us in our marketing course. Browsing through the net i came over a quotation of some philosopher that nations who just do what they are told to don't progress. We should be doing more than we are capable of.
If a movie of this presentation was made plz upload it on the blog
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