The uninitiated traditional (offline) brand managers ;-)

Indian website owners and brand custodians are still far from realising that there is life beyond regular branding exercises and a whole new world is waiting to be discovered, that of online branding. I recently put together a PR pitch presentation for one of the major exporter of apparels and online branding was an integral part of the same. It was, perhaps, the most uninitiated prospect in my career, who just wasn't ready to even hear about it. All that he wanted to know was how my agency can help him catch the attention of importers from abroad, in short, how many exposures or column centimeters in the foriegn media. I had to spend a good half day going through details with this gentleman's son and numerous demo searches on google and yahoo to make him understand how they work and they could be of immense help to his company to develop prospects. Obviously, he would have to hire professionals, us, to handle it for him ;-) But alas! Try as I might, I couldn't breach the man's defenses and we didn't get the business. To tell you all the truth, I was willing to take on the challenge for just enough dough to cover my expenses and not make any profit, just to get to prove to them that it CAN help them develop business at just a fraction of cost they would would incur to hire an agency and put out Ads in foreign press or through traditional PR. But it wasn't to happen. I am hopeful that soon enough the brand managers in India will wake up to the fact that a well thought out and professionally executed online branding campaign can bring them astounding results. Till then, my search is on...