Everything is Ready for Jamagra Next Symposium on 23rd March, 2010

With the overwhelming response we received for our last Jamagra session on "Social Media Marketing", we have decided to do a second consecutive Jamagra Symposium on the same subject. This time it's all open for your questions, and for sharing of experience.

Come &Join us in the Roundtable on 23rd March 2010, at The NCC Club - Maitland Crescent - Col 07. Session starts sharp at 6.00pm, and will go on untill about 9.30pm, after breaking for dinner at 8.30pm.

Participation strictly for Japura Marketing Graduates.

Confirm your participation on or before 22nd March 2010, by contacting Sakunthala on 0773 524 804 or email to saku_lanka@yahoo.com

(Limited seats available, to be allocated on first come first served basis)

Marketing 2.0 - A Recipe to Add Social Media to your Marketing Mix

This is the Slideshow of the presentation delivered by Amitha Amarasinghe, at the Jamagra February 2010 Symposium.

Social Media Marketing

View more presentations from Ami Sampath.
Download the File

JAMAGRA February 2010 Symposium. A Great Success!

February 2010, symposium of Jamagra was recently held at NCC Club, Maintland Place on 24th February. This was the second symposium held, after the reactivation of Jamagra in last January.

This time the session covered the innovative topic of “Social Media Marketing”, and how it changes the landscape of traditional approaches to marketing. Topic was warmly welcomed by the participants and there were fruitful contributions from all participants, throughout the session. By popular demand of the day’s participants, it was decided to dedicate the next symposium of Jamagra for another interactive session on Social Media Marketing.

A date for next symposium will soon be announced. Those Japura Marketing Graduates, who are interested to be present at the next symposium, are encouraged to contact the coordinators and get more information.

Coordinators for Next Session:
Indika Jayapala – indika@ribelz.com
Amitha Amarasinghe – amisampath@gmail.com

Delighting the Customer is Not Just Enough

I recently watched this YouTube tube video, of a workshop session held in Singapore by Ron Kaufman. As typical for Ron Kaufman, the video is full of energy, entertainment, and action! But, beside everything else, he makes a valuable point about how to win and retain customers for life.

According to Ron Kaufman, a company’s offer to its customers has three main facets.

1) Product
2) Service & Delivery Systems
3) Mindset

All three facets are equally important for a company, to satisfy its customers. In today’s competitive business environment, without an outstanding product you can’t go to the market place. Even if you have the best product in offer, a simple failure in delivery system will result in a total loss of customer faith in company’s brand. More importantly, even if you have the best product and delivery systems in place, what happen if your workforce does not posses the right mind set to serve your customers? Mind set is all about people. It involves culture. In order to have the right mindset among your employees, you should first ensure your company is having a customer oriented culture within the company.


All three facets pass through five stages of customer experience levels. A customer’s experience with a product may be, Basic, Expected, Desired, Surprising, or Unbelievable. Same five levels of customer experience apply for the other two facets.

With a basic product, a company would not survive at least in the short run. Most average companies would at least offer their customers an “expected product” or a “desired product”. But, those outstanding companies will always offer their customers a “surprising experience” or may be sometimes an “unbelievable experience” with their product. Every time a company offers a “surprising” or “unbelievable” experience to it’s customers, with either of above three facets; the company earns a certain level of customer loyalty towards their brand.

But, with the product and delivery systems facets, a company faces the challenge of keeping up the pace with competition. A product feature deemed as “unbelievable” today, would be seen as “expected” or even “basic” in few month’s time. As a result, a company has to keep innovating their products, and delivery systems all the time, to keep up the pace with competition.

The difference with mindset is, you don’t have to deliver “surprising” or “unbelievable” experiences every day, to earn the customer loyalty. One instance of “unbelievable” experience of mindset, will earn you life long loyal customers. And, that experience can never be copied by the competition.

The entire video is uploaded as nine parts, into Youtube. Click here to watch all the videos.

Wait a minute! What the hell is happening? I'm clueless!

I was on vacation leave for 7 days, and came back to work only yesterday. I spent the 2 days in Kandy, visiting my sister and few friends and the rest 5 days in Matara. It was a vacation completely "disconnected" from internet and work!

And now, look what I have when arriving back at work on Wednesday. The entire industry has leaped forward, leaving me a one week lagging in the trend. Every one around me talk in an alien language to me. FaceBook Beacon, Google Open Social, Social ads, Sprite Sips, are some of the words frequently used by the people around me.

I felt like "missed out in action a lot". Hey, it was only a one week before that I too used to be in the latest industry trend! How come in a one week the whole thing changes so fast? A week before, we were talking about Facebook applications, Flyers, groups, sponsored groups and things like that. But, coming back to work after one week, all those stuff are obsolete.

This opened my eyes to an "undeniable truth" about the field of online marketing and e-commerce. If you miss the tempo even for a one day, you are out of business!

Luckily for me, the rest of my office colleagues were so helpful. I quickly got on to the train again, and here I am! Moving forward...

My first challenge was to understanding the new Facebook advertising solution, launched on 6th November. I've got most of it now, and just written to them to seek chances of advertising our company, with them. Next, I'm suppose to get updated about the "open social Vs Facebook API" debate. Now what the hell is going on there?