Best of Marketing Brands 2015 : Modi & Yellen

Brand Modi  : Micro Modi makes a Macro India campaign.

Modi made the India campaign look aspirational. The Chinese and the Japanese compete to invest. He dashed from Melbourne to London to  Silcon Valley trying to sell 'Product India', repackaging a hitherto sloth brand.  He made IMF sit up and take notice of India being a ray of hope in a declining global scenario.    He built bridges with all leading economies and Africa. He had FDI come in.

He brought need for modernism to the fore with ideas like digital India and bullet trains. He established a direct contact with the youth and old alike through his social media and radio communication.  He borrowed tried concepts  and reworked them successfully(radio , forays to neighborhood).  He made the average Indian feel that development is more important than caste and religion and that it should be above partisan politics. He managed to  get the  focus shift from narrow sectarianism to one on development. He emphasized on revitalizing gestation lagged projects, harnessing skills and digitalizing India. He blended the old and the new in his Clean India Campaign. His make in India harped on quality and attempted to veer consumers away from a distrust of local manufacturers. His financial inclusion campaign earned quite a bit of low cost deposits for banks. He did the unconventional marketing tactic in diplomacy by having breakfast in Kabul, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Delhi . Scandals galore but none seemed to inhibit him.  

Only time will tell whether his efforts succeed but he has captured some minds at home and abroad and carved out a niche brand for hitherto sluggish India.

Brand Yellen:Subtly  assertive: Why Yellen is the best Central Banker

She displayed she was in command yet she was market oriented. The Fed chief ascribed market research to the heart of her policy deliverables. There was market evidence in everything she did. She evened out volatility over the year and was successful  in a quiet year end hike. She raised expectations of her Fed brand; then displayed rare risk mitigation skills. There was no tumult in the market, and there was all round relief to the customer. She made us feel at home.She made emerging economies feel guilty that she had given such a long lead time. She reinforced the Fed brand. There was repeated recall. 

Model for quiet efficiency. 

A tale of 2 Central banker speeches

Is it that the advanced economy's central bankers are deliberately sending contrarian signals in a  subtle tactic with the following objectives:
 (a) keep emerging markets in an unstable equilibrium from  a competitor point of view; (a hit and run technique to weaken the potential opponent)
(b) have the hot money flows back to home turf so as to keep wealth values on the move up in home countries; 
(c) a modern day drain of wealth theory where foreign investors sell in hordes at market peaks and exit for home in anticipation of such rate hikes;
(d) avoid an excessive rise of home currency...

At Brighton, Kristin Forbes. of the Bank of England said quite a few things that seemed to suggest that she may join in for an interest rate hike:

• the widespread pessimism (in the global markets) is overstated.'
• China  is responsible for over one-third of global GDP growth since 2011, and is still expected to drive about 35% of global growth this year. India is on track as per IMF.
• Ukraine, Russia, Brazil, Belarus, and Ecuador are the only emerging markets that are in recession (defined as two quarters of negative quarterly GDP growth). 
•  Emerging economies will continue to face  challenges related to its debt overhang, financial system, and demographics...
• .. much of the current gloomy discussion appears to be overblown.  

Source Bank of England

At Amherst- Janet Yellen 

"The labor market has achieved considerable progress over the past several years. Even so, further improvement in labor market conditions would be welcome because we are probably not yet all the way back to full employment. Although the unemployment rate may now be close to its longer-run normal level--which most FOMC participants now estimate is around 4.9 percent--this traditional metric of resource utilization almost certainly understates the actual amount of slack that currently exists: ..."

"judgments imply that the real interest rate consistent with achieving and then maintaining full employment in the medium run should rise gradually over time. This expectation, coupled with inherent lags in the response of real activity and inflation to changes in monetary policy, are the key reasons that most of my colleagues and I anticipate that it will likely be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate sometime later this year "

Source FRB

The views expressed here arewithout any risk or responsibility. 

Janet Yellen defines a statistical path...

Chair Janet L. Yellen

At the City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio

July 10, 2015

Recent Developments and the Outlook for the Economy

"Some portion of the greater share of workers who are part time for economic reasons may reflect structural rather than cyclical factors. For example, the ongoing shift in employment away from manufacturing and toward services, a sector which historically relied more heavily on part-time workers, may be boosting the share of part-time jobs.  

"We expect the drag on domestic economic activity from these factors to ease over the course of this year, as the value of the dollar and crude oil prices stabilize, and I anticipate moderate economic growth, on balance, for this year as a whole.

 "Based on my outlook, I expect that it will be appropriate at some point later this year to take the first step to raise the federal funds rate and thus begin normalizing monetary policy.

I currently anticipate that the appropriate pace of normalization will be gradual, and that monetary policy will need to be highly supportive of economic activity for quite some time. 

"We will be watching carefully to see if there is continued improvement in labor market conditions, and we will need to be reasonably confident that inflation will move back to 2 percent in the next few year."

(http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/yellen20150710a.htm)

Our view is that the US looks set for good growth.  It is data and not IMF that Fed will heed to. 


Without risk or responsibility