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What should be the key message of Guru.

com’s communication
campaign and which media should they use? Why?

Case analysed by
• Amit Dharamsi-Roll No:

• Ghungroo Shrivastava- Roll No: 34

• Palash Sahoo- Roll No:

• Rupesh Namdev-Roll No:75

• Soma Maitra – Roll No .92

• Vivek Singh- Roll No:115


Case Background:

About Guru.com :

• Guru.com was launched in Dec 1999, after a 5 month preview, with 40


employees, 35000 registered gurus and 2500 registered hiring companies.
• Guru.com directly connected businesses with professionals who
specialized in various professional categories. Employers seeking
professional expertise would post their projects or contract work on
Guru.com and professionals seeking work would be matched.
• The company also offered back-office support like time tracking and
billing, online store offered products and services such as Health
Insurance.
• Guru.com’s distribution partners included Fast Company, Industry
Standard, Web Hire, Dev X, Macromedia.

Guru.com: Competitors:

Guru’s competitors were Freeagent.com, Monster.com’s Talent Market and


host of others who launched around the same time and more were expected to
launch.

Freeagent.com

• Offered project matching and also provided additional back office support
such as office equipment.
• Had ads which were edgy and irrelevant and poked fun at traditional
Corporate America.
• Had a target to have 150,000 registered users by July 2000.

Talent Market used auction approach. However,

(a) The approach made IPs feel like commodities


(b) The models were criticized for their over emphasis on price.

Guru .com had a goal

(a) To achieve 400,000 gurus registered by end of 2000 from 105000 by


Feb 2000. For that they target

• IPs who have not yet registered


• Professionals who are currently working with Corporates but may
aspire to become IP.
(b) Focus on the increase of usage of other parts of the site, such as back
office support services and store,by the IPs
(c) To connect with both the hirers and the IPs
(d) To lauch the brand as a seller of awareness

To achieve the same ,the management of Guru.com wants to launch a 12 Million


USD brand campaign

Following points needed attention:

• The business of outsourcing was growing with companies expected to


spend up to 81 billion in 2003 from a figure of 51 billion five years back.
• Number of outsourced projects expected to increase from 20million to 50
million.
• Ranks of contractors were set to increase from 21% of US workforce to
41% in 2010.
• All IPs are not very confident about the online sites as they were not sure
whether they are very reliable.

• The jobs offered were not relevant or up to their expectation

• Employers have expressed the views that the quality of the IPs registered
on freelance sites is lower than the University interns.
• While the young generation are internet savvy, the elder
generation( about 34% of the IP population) are least likely to search
projects online.
• Based on the study by Guru.com, it was observed that about 73% of
hirers had rated their experience with the site
as excellent or good. This proved that Guru.com provided quality
service to customers, as majority of the customers were satisfied, and in
turn became referrals by spreading positive word-of-mouth.

• Events and Public Relations had been the bulk of Guru.com’s offline
marketing. As part of their offline event strategy, the company had
launched the First Guru Awards, which give it exposure and proved to be a
low-cost way to get customers.
• Their other PR exercises which included coverage in various
magazines and significant media attention had been very successful
as well.

• The data presented shows that Information Technology category attracts


maximum IPs (gurus) and has maximum projects.

• Some categories like creative/ media,Technology management/strategy ,


training/advice are having especially less number of projects as compared
to the registered gurus.

Key message should be as follows:


Guru .com provides awareness about the work culture

(i) amongst the Independent professionals and provides support to the short
term project execution . They will support all activities right from project
searching, back office support in tracking, billing, health Insurance coverage
etc.

(ii) Amongst the employers who will give work to the IPs and keep them
registered .

(iii) Amongst the specialists who aspire to work as an individual


professional but are worried about the difficulties that he/she needs to face
in running a solo business .

Note: Although the website aims to get 400,000 registrations by end of 2000,
there should be equal endeavour to assign meaningful projects to the IPs .
Vide this only, the IPs will continue to be registered with them.

So we do not agree with Cassayre that the sole emphasis should be on Gurus
and if there is talent , they will get hirers. What is most important is to “Match
the right IP to the right project.” Then only the sustenance of the huge number
of IPs will be possible.

Which Media to Use:

• They should use a mix of print medium, television, radio, Internet


to attract the various categories of IPs and employers having different
types of preference

This is because:

(i) While the young generation are internet savvy, the elder generation
( about 34% of the IP population) are least likely to search projects
online.
(ii) Print media is always a more authentic source of information till
date
(iii)As the younger generation of IPs are Internet savvy and as
Guru.com have various programmes running through internet, they
should also target campaign through Internet.
• The campaign should happen when the media is most viewed by the
professionals although

the cost may be premium.

(i) Existing IPs watch television in a scattered manner during the day
at the time of breaks.
(ii) The other professionals are more likely to watch the television in
the early morning and late evening.

(iii)Also there are certain shows which are particularly popular amongst
the IPs. Those shows should be targeted.

• As the number of projects are maximum in the Information category,


emphasis should be given to the magazines which have the relevance
say Adweek’s technology , PC Week etc. Focus should be given on the
areas like Creative/Media as mentioned above as the number of
projects are very less as compared to the number of registered IPs.

• Finally to attract prospective IPs, they need to advertise in other


magazines which have high readers/copy say Wired, Utne readers,
Vanity fair etc.

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