Canon puts Young Guns at the Forefront : By - Rachna Datta Manager – Marketing, Consumer System Products, Canon

Women empowerment has become a very popular cliché. Do we actually know what does it mean? Are they the ones who exhibit her power, knowledge and skill for public recognition and honour? Or, are they the ones who manage to wield power in the society that tries to restrict their freedom or subject to subjugation?

Initially, women were being stigmatized and their creativity was looked down upon with disdain. But now they have resisted the oppressive traditions and regimes. They have broken the shackles of bondages and charted out their own path towards emancipation. Women are now strong enough to determine the course of events. They have originated, founded, governed, prophesied, created great works of art, fought for their rights and also for the people.

These women who were edited out of history, their stories omitted, distorted and replaced with an endless litany of men have regained their position of power yet again and one such example is Rachna Datta, Manager – Marketing, Consumer System Products, Canon India. .

Being a Product Manager at Canon India, she is heading Inkjet Printers, AIOs and Scanners and has been successful in effecting a sea change in the marketing strategy of the company. She has contributed to the increased market share of Canon Inkjet printing technologies. This feat was achieved on the strength of several innovative marketing campaigns, some of which have been the brainchild of this young lady. One of the prominent programmes of all is the Canon Gyaan Yatra in April 2006.

The origin of Canon’s success remains unchanged and it continues using its technologies to benefit people as it pursues its objective of becoming a company that is loved by the people throughout the world. Though it started out as a company with a handful of employees with a burning passion, the company soon became renowned and is now a global multimedia corporation.

Canon presently has over 127 product offerings in India. It has 350 retail stores, 32 Canon Care Centres; over 125 authorized service centres and more than 1,800 Canon Premium Partners across India. The major product that has done exceptionally well under Rachna’s kitty is the

All-in-One printer that has also won several prizes for its expertise. Being a Product Manager, her full focus is on this product as it has seen a stupendous growth of 10–12 per cent last year starting from a mere 1–2 per cent.

She recalls 2006 as the year of “Channel Reinforcement”. This year has seen many changes in terms of company’s strategies and its working module. The CPPs (Canon Premium Partners), CEPs (Canon Empowerment Partners) as well as the end-customers are the main focus areas for canon to grow their business and further penetrate in the market with full throttle.

In its endeavour to expand its loyal customer base, Canon has announced freebies on all the products in its PIXMA Series. The products in these series include a wide range of All-in-One printers and exclusive standalone printers. Rachna said, “This is an excellent scheme for the consumer that endeavours to strike a synergy in terms of the product utility and value offered to the end-users. The company is very confident that this scheme will be met with growing enthusiasm from consumers due to the ever-increasing demand for optical mouse and for the pen drives due to their ubiquitous use in storage and transportation function.”

Canon is planning to target 100 Indian towns for road shows. “The year 2007 is the tenth anniversary year for us in India and the 100-city road show is the key activity planned for this event,” informs Rachna. Starting with the metropolitan cities, the road show will cover a number of classes B, C, D, & E towns, according to Datta who states that the activity will conclude with consumer expo. These road shows started in April and will continue till the end of 2007.

These road shows will focus on two segments and categories – the consumers and the channels – and will promote Canon’s entire consumer imaging and printing portfolio, including the cameras and photo printers. As part of this project, Canon will engage itself in multiple activities. From road shows to that of Canon Van, it has geared itself up to promote consumer products.

“The idea is to reach out to the consumers with the help of our channels, who will act as the front-end partners for these activities,” says Datta. “The project will see an involvement of both the CPPs and the CEPs,” she adds.

For the CPPs and the CEPs, the company has worked upon all the areas from credit facility to back-end to that of support. They have also incorporated E-banking for the channels and have improvised their infrastructure for catering to the growing needs and demands of the channel.

According to Rachna, the Indian market is very price sensitive and has reached a stage where printers are not limited only for official use and their utility is expanding from offices to that of houses.

Rachna says, “The Indian market is maturing for photo printing and it is the right time to introduce such kind of programmes at the early level so that the customers consider printers as a consumer product. Customers are highly enthusiastic for owning digital cameras and this trend opens windows for a large printing market.”

Hence, in the coming summer vacations, school children across the country will get the chance to take a close look at the functioning of printers and learn about their features and usage. This initiative has been taken to educate children about the basics of printers so that the product becomes more consumer-friendly in the digital arena.

Scheduled to begin in April it will continue for few months in A-class schools in Top 15 cities in the country. Canon is aiming to host the program in 200 schools and has selected Kerala as the first state to hold the learning session.

Finally…

Rachna believes that the concept of printing at home is at the growing stage in India and it is very essential to feel the pulse of the customers to understand their demand and nature of printing requirement. While roping in children for the printer-learning program, Canon is aiming to build awareness and educating kids about the latest technology and does not intend to increase sale-through it. With this initiative, Canon aims to create an environment where photo printing is considered as a domestic affair with the expanding market of digital photography.

Her mantra for 2007 is to sustain the growth year-on-year and educate the people about the benefits of Canon while taking care of the customer’s profit.