MAM
Business coach Mike Jay integrates values to track buying motives
MUMBAI: The business leadership coach Mike Jay on 1 March in a workshop organised by the Ad Club addressed advertising professionals on the importance of values while communicating a message to their TG.
Jay demonstrated how to identify values as buying motives and thereby combine and predict consumers buying behaviour. He stated that values dictated what people pay attention to, what resources they will use to get what they want and how they will buy and when.
Citing International and Indian examples, Jay applied a principle titled ValuSync to principles of advertising and displayed how his methods can be applied to real markets.
Some key points made by Jay were the fact that everyone of us have a desire profile and are multifaceted in our desire profiles. People behave to express their values and values in turn are motives. So, the emphasis was to understand people’s values and in turn get a grip on consumer motives.
Analysing the Aquafina poster ad, Jay pointed out that although the ad was trying to look very upmarket and was playing on ‘status’, the message was confused as it also was offering some free with the product. Another example was Carlton London which is an elite show store which has a tag line called ‘ An open invitation to style your feet’ and just below that was 50 per cent off. Here again, there seems to be conflicting values with one targeting high society and the other degrading that exclusivity.
He stated dimensionalising one’s copy in terms of the content and the context was crucial. Motives are like investments and can be instrumented just like a musical score so as to product effect.
He concluded the session by saying just like identifying demographics and psychographics, valuegraphics ( a word coined by him) is essential to track to map buying behaviour. Further, mapping the territory and creating alignment will help enhance one’s understanding of consumers and in turn create more impactful advertising.
Mike R Jay is a former athlete and a decorated US Marine.
The ‘Master Brands’ chosen by the consumers were as follows. A business coach and consultant over 35 years, he founded the global virtual foundation of the Leadership University which focusses on the leadership development system.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
