IPL, India- Sri Lanka, Formulae one, WWE,FIFA world cup,……………,Israel Palestine, Ltte-Sri Lankan army, Russia-Georgia-Chechen . All are events. The difference is that the first four are used as communication channels by the companies like Adidas, Nike or RBS – the driving force of the various products & services. The last three are the potential events used by the marketers of the global weapon market. The market of weapons is flourishing day by day. The reason being a structured supply chain management in the market, has polarized into two verticals – The mighty United States & ever challenging Russia. Being the market leader of 41.9% in the global market, The US has always shown its invention to update its unknown weapon line & differentiated from the challenger’s threat.
Apart from the two biggies in the trade, Britain & recently China ,the market followers, are showing their capability to meet the market gap in the supply chain network. Britain came in third, but its arms exports grew only 200 million over 2005 and the overall volume of arms transfer deals stood at just 3.1 billion dollars, less than a fifth of the US total.
The challenger Russia is known for its inbuilt aptitude in heavy engineering. It has deployed its chief marketer President Vladimir Putin who claimed a remarkable $2.2 bn deal from Saudi Arabia for supplying the Mi-35 attack helicopters and transport choppers Mi-17 and Mi-8. Russia is also expecting the Saudis to make a decision on a $1 billion package which includes T-90 tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The target consumers of both the majors are also different. United States tries to capitalize its allies(NATO members) & some of its faithful foreign relations like India & Pakistan. The huge cost involved in maintaining the military supremacy all over the world, US needed a concrete blueprint of marketing its ever changing weapon lines. The Russia has targeted always the nemesis of US like Venezuela, china,Iran, north Korea, Cuba etc. India is always a loyal customer of Russian defence products(recently the Sukhoi fighter jets were updated with the brahmos areal missile system on Russian soil!).
If we see history we shall come to know that the gulf countries are a major potential market for weapon sales. That’s why US has approached several times the area through its famous Marines to promote & demonstrate its advanced defence star products to maintain a brand recall in minds of the surrounding countries. But the promotional huge cost sometimes diminishes the image of the president(Mr. Bush), as he can not justify the proportional success in the marketing audit!
The success of grabbing a reasonable share in the weapon market relies on the R&D capability of a country. As the high cost involved in the process lengthens the break-even, the corporate do not take interest to start weapon business(L&T). India is also trying to market few products like helicopters & missiles developed by DRDO to the lower segment. There seem to a gap in the market – the training of defence professionals in different countries who do not get enough chance to demonstrate its defence capabilities. So India, fighting with terrorism for decade ,can become the “Master Chief” for those nations & can bypass the majors.
We got it at last. Yes it is Oscar. We had to wait for a long time (read for a foreign director's Indian film) to benchmark our film industry. But it is surprise for me, while the excellent films like Lagaan or Rang de basanti could not achieved the status of Oscar, the less attractive film like Slumdog ... won Oscar? I have a crazy logic, those films were worth more than the so called oscar standard.
