4 Minute Mile is a Marketing Solutions company committed to realizing the potential of the "8"th P in the Marketing lexicon - PARTNERSHIPS. The company’s efforts are focused on ensuring that its clients are able to leverage the power of PARTNERSHIPS to the fullest extent possible. Its intention is to bring partnerships to the foreground of every marketer’s decision-making matrix. It follows a belief system that marketers should allocate resources for PARTNERSHIPS and leverage the benefits of working with other brands to deliver expanded results. The vision of the company is to see brands committing monies to partnerships as a viable option similar to Advertising, Social Media Marketing & BTL for obtaining expanded results.
4 Minute Mile traditionally operates and earns revenues though essentially 3 types of offerings.
- Offer Booklets: This is an exclusive product sold by 4 Minute Mile. The booklet would offer discount from multiple brands which would be sold directly to customers through personal selling. A separate team was assigned for this product. The offer booklets were called “Offers ka Tadka”. The offers booklet is the only B2C product by the company. Else it operates in the B2B space. This is the reason why the company has an entirely different sales team to sell the “Offers ka Tadka” booklets. The product is traditionally sold at ₹ 1200. The team is of over 50 sales people currently in Mumbai and Pune. The sale of this product drives customers to partner brands and hence, eases accessing offers from these partner brands for a longer span of time. The product had driven 25,000 customers to Imagica during one of its partnership with 4 Minute Mile.
- Marketing Solutions: This product is specifically aimed at corporate clients like Maruti, Samsung, Panasonic, Nissan etc. The offering here is of helping in customer acquisition, loyalty or gratification. The product could be better explained through the following two examples.
- Absolutely Free Offerings: Absolutely free offerings are again given out through clients to customers as a means of acquisition, loyalty, or gratification. This is done either in conjunction with the marketing solutions or as a stand-alone offering.
- The absolutely free offerings work on an insurance model. The profits of the company depend on the number of people who do not avail the free offer. There are Terms and Conditions that increases the number of people who do not avail the offer and hence, bring in profits for the company. The client companies still purchase these because the perceived value is much higher at a cost which is a fraction of the value.
The role offered at the organisation was of a Business Development Intern. The role was different from a sales role in the manner that Business Development looks into long term relationship building and creating clients based on relationships that helps the business to grow. It helps in increasing number of existing accounts and their management. The role was more of a supportive nature where we were required to facilitate revenue generation for our mentor.
My profound gratitude goes to my project guide Mr. Vinay Chak, Director, 4 Minute Mile, who had always taken out his precious time from his busy schedule to guide me through the course of this project. It was a pleasure working under his guidance. It gives me immense pleasure in acknowledging their sustained dedication, steadfast motivation, and indispensable support during the course of my internship.