Whom to learn marketing from

Freebies and Tchotchke continue to be great marketing strategies in the world. There is no doubt that it is common in the corporate world, these strategies seem to work even better with the general public during elections. This is not surprising but, what is that a family has been using these to establish control over public's thought(less) process by using media as the tool. This is new as far as I know since media has always been another industry and obviously, with profit objective. The freebies offered to their now popular magazine seem to be endless and their relaunched newspaper seems to be successful on the same lines. Should I call it corporatisation of politics? Don't know!

If you had the slightest of exposure to social (read as political) happenings in TamilNadu or India, in general you should have guessed by now. If not, here is a clue:

Forbes quoted this mastermind as

"Politician's son dabbled in family's modest publishing business before launching Sun TV when India's satellite television market opened up in the 1990s. Sun now owns 14 channels, 4 radio stations, newspapers and magazines. Group's April listing made M... , who owns 90%, a billionaire. Brother ... minister for communications and IT."

and listed in him the India's richest 40 list last year.

So, next time when you get a freebie, trace that back to the objective behind and for more on the power of freebies, check out this old, yet relevant article from CNN Money.

Until next post, happy guessing :)