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2008-04-21T19:46:00.002+05:30

Advertising in Virtual world

2007-10-21T17:42:00.000+05:30

Kids have now become focus of attraction for almost all advertising – starting from Car to loans!
This is not just limited to family products on TV and main media, its escalated its way to virtual world too. There are many gaming sites/communities which attract kids who who spend hours a month playing games and socializing.

Though these may boast of successful experiments with marketing wherein preteens are driving virtual Toyota Scions on sites such as Whyville.net and Gaia Online, and they're wearing the latest digital fashions from DKNY at Stardoll.com. Nickelodeon also talked about coming plans to run "immersive" ads in its 3D environment for kids ages 7 to 14.

In India, the same is seen by bubblegum and other ads in which kids get so involved that each time my neice pops in a gum, she waits for Boomes to come and take her on a joyride!
In India and abroad, as of now kids gaming is a nascent industry with relatively no standards for advertising and media watchdogs.

With 3D worlds, lines between content and product marketing is blurring and kids start to believe all the fantacies they live in are for real. Such games change the equation for brand marketers because a child's interaction and emotional engagement is so high.
So far, the only regulations protecting kids online are through the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998. The legislation stipulates that sites targeting children under the age of 13 must post a detailed privacy policy and obtain permission from parents to collect any personal information about them. However, COPPA doesn't deal directly with advertising. With innocent minds and emotions at stake, advertisers and brand managers need think - Are kids really ready to live in such in virtual worlds?

Brands with a Point of View

2007-09-06T18:15:00.001+05:30

How is it that some brands arrive and others remain followers despite marketing and branding efforts? Is it because they have been early entrants or they really have something that differentiates them from others?

Interestingly, most brand that have strong ‘leadership” traits have mastered “outside – in approach”, which means apart from getting the Brand Image right, they have groomed company talent to internalize externally projected high expectations.

Leadership brands have a reputation of possessing exceptional managers with skill set to fulfill customers and stakeholders’ expectations.

For instance Infosys Technologies Ltd. When one interacts with the company, they expect the managers to bring latest technologies to suits best business advantage to the client. Or when one interacts with Accenture, they expect the excellence at all levels.
Leadership gets embedded in the company culture and internally is seen as top-down and externally is seen as bottom-up!

Internet to help preserve local culture and language

2007-09-06T18:12:00.000+05:30

With increasing popularity of local languages on net and Broadband allowing the use of rich media –audio and video files, Internet can play an additional role in helping preserving local language and culture.

Rich media formats can capture pronunciation and physical movements associated with the languages in details and document the same. For instance, the Tlingit language of the Inuit people in southeast Alaska has been preserved in an online database used by schoolchildren in Glacier Bay.

More places would be seeing the development of indigenous language projects and databases online Though till now English is world’s lingua franca and with world becoming a global village, there was a threat of English becoming so indispensable in communicating that it would displace other languages.

Though until translation technology is perfected and pervasive, people will have to find other ways to communicate as effectively as they can across cultures, but as Thomas Keller, a member of the Registrars Constituency of ICANN rightly says “The net of the future will very likely evolve more into a big assembly of micro webs serving micro communities and their languages.”

MTV’s "Vote for Snoop”… Do we really need SUCH campaigns?

2007-07-11T20:23:00.000+05:30

I was shocked to see how MTV is trying to push the case of Australian Visa for Rapper Snoop Dogg (Real name Calvin Broadus). All coz was to co-host the MTV Australian Video Music Awards.

Earlier, he had been denied VISA from UK. There are various reasons for the same, not to forget that he is a member of Los Angeles gang, that has been involved in murder, robberies and drug dealing in the LA area.

If he has been denied entry, let him fight the legal battle and win/loose. Why involved netizens in this? When social media and people stand for a social cause or for things which mean a lot to the society, it’s understandable, but by doing this, I do not think MTV aims to achieve any of these.

For his fans, he can be viewed on TV/internet/MMS.. then why the big rush???

Media brand equity lies in audience or experience?

2007-07-07T13:17:00.000+05:30

With increasing content distribution and syndication, Media companies will have to decide where their priorities are – in pushing audience to their site by protecting content or pulling them by ensuring a better reading experience and environment.

Both approaches have pros, cons and opportunities linked with them.

Locking content behind registration

The good part of such approach is a surety of captive and loyal audience which visits the sites regularly in search of news and information.

However, incase they are not able to provide “exclusive” information; they might lose the audience to other sites which are distributing same information for free. With content syndication, portals are providing information from various big media groups, hence reducing the need for an individual to go the media site.

Distributed content
This content finds its way to right audience through different means – through portal, RSS feed on the site, other partner network sites.

Drawback is in terms of hit in Ad sales. Since the same content is available on partner sites, it would be difficult to convince advertisers to pay a premium CPM for the site ad units.

However, this can be converted to an advantage by providing an excellent reading environment and experience on the media site. In this ways, content distribution would act as “content promotion” and “pull” audience to visit the media site for a better reading experience.

Yahoo SmartAds: 360 degree effort is needed

2007-07-02T14:31:00.000+05:30

Not just Behaviorally targeted creative : 360 degree effort is needed

Anand, a colleague and friend, told me to checkout the new – SmartAds launched by Yahoo.. and added “Search information for this on Google..!”

SmartAd seems to be an interesting tool for advertisers since it would definitely reduce the spill. It’s always best to target, both contextually and behaviorally.

“Yahoo!’s next generation of online advertising helps you better connect with your audience in a more customized, relevant way. These display ads reach specific users and niche markets based on unique and expressed interests, geography and demographic profiles” – Source Yahoo Advertising center

The only concern which I see here, as an online advertiser, is the volume of search done by my target group on Yahoo as compared to Google. Even for searching the information on Yahoo SmartAds, the recommended engine was Google. I did a comparative search on Yahoo and Google for the same word - yahoo smartads.

The results were:

I agree search results always vary, but as a user, the results which I got from Google were much better and gave me a better understanding.

Though I would like to try and test SmartAds, hope it’s not too much of an experiment.

Is Web2.0 an online phenomenon?

2007-06-27T14:31:00.000+05:30

Reiterating what I said in one of my previous posts - web2.0 is a socially driven phenomenon, facilitated by technology

So is internet necessary for web2.0? Not Really! Web2.0 is not online-dependent.

An interesting parallel is that of mashups. The benefit they offered to users was an integrated experience of viewing things/contents from different sources on the same page – without having to go to multiple sites.

Extending the same idea to offline – read an interesting article on Bnet - Yum Brands, the global fast-food restaurant operator. Interestingly they adopted the similar concept in 1995. Yum began with multibranded units — restaurants that offer two different fast food brands under the one roof.

Such Mashup restaurants/Co-located restaurants offer customers more food choices, which is especially convenient for families.

The core concepts of web2.0, namely, collaboration, syndication (distribution), mashup/aggregation (mix n match) and personalization can be adopted by offline business to give them a winning edge!

Google Gears Vs Microsoft Office

2007-06-15T16:58:00.000+05:30

After feed reader becoming accessible offline, next application to be made accessible offline could be Google docs or spreadsheet. Could this be a threat to Microsoft? Especially for small businesses.

This has definitely been a smart move by Google. It clearly showcases focus on Programmers and a step towards building developer ecosystem with APIs since as compared with Microsoft's developer community, Google's community still has long way to go.

NBC proposed to launch TV show 'widgets'

2007-06-13T16:55:00.000+05:30

Thought an interesting concept, still not too sure if this is the only way to solicit visitors and entice social interaction.

What is that they would offer different from other social networking sites? I agree, NBC video is something they can leverage on, but then why do the run of the mill stuff of providing buddies, personalized profiles, blogs etc.

Though not mentioned in explicit terms, hope they do not just provide blog infrastructure and invite people to create blogs within NBC domain. This can stickiness, but early adopters would, all probability be, those who have profiles on multiple sites. Through this, they can definitely increase pageviews and traffic, but no guarantee of “relevant” and “serious” traffic.

A better approach would be to collaborate with existing social networking sites, allowing people to share and upload videos and photos from NBC and generate discussion.

Social networking on Mobile

2007-06-11T23:04:00.000+05:30

Now that majority of phones come with browsers, video/media player and cameras, its time to enhance interaction on mobile! By creating communities on mobile, companies are empowering consumers to use phones for more than just talking and smsing.

Social networking on Mobile is a growing field and by 2011, the market is expected to be worth $13.1 Billion, as compared to $3.5 Billion in 2206. Asia Pacific is expected to contribute maximum to this – a whooping $6 billion by 2011. Photo and chat services will drive much of this traffic (Source: Projections by Informa Telecoms and Media)

In terms of demographic, as expected young people do more social networking on mobile devices :18-20yrs old, followed by 13-17yrs old (Source M:Metrics)

Recently there have been announcement of partnership by MySpace, eBay, YouTube, and others with mobile network partners like T-Mobile, Sprint, Cingular and Vodafone and creating convergence in the space of web and mobile.

However, the aspect missing as of now is the “Viral element” since not all have right phones service combination. For this, carriers will have to open up and not have proprietary software.

Let’s hope to see this genre open up and boom soon!

Community buzz: On a self-congratulatory path

2007-06-06T14:20:00.000+05:30

Taking the thread from my previous post, though I liked what Toyota did, since it came across as a successful campaign and gave freedom of expression to bloggers.

Unlike Edelman Public Relations, who has been caught twice in unethical and fake Wal-Mart blog (flog) scandals and has been accused of bribing bloggers to write favorable reviews of Microsoft's new Vista operating system.

Though such moves do give an initial push and glorified PR, this definitely does not help in paradigm shift to customer involvement. What is needed are not “self glorified” comments and posts, rather a way to reach-out to the consumers and “Listen”, “respond” and “improve” to ensure you give what they want.

A good example of responding to customers is of Dell Blog - direct2dell.com, though they too took a long time to respond to criticisms and Bloggers. "No comment" is no answer for corporations that have a responsibility to shareholders, clients and consumers.

Even when Jeff Jarvis started blogging about being in "Dell Hell" because of problems with a Dell laptop, the company did not take any action. Eventually, when mainstream media and Wall Street took note of Dell's problems, which led to financial losses, Dell finally agreed to address customer service issues.

Bloggers help sell high value products

2007-06-05T10:48:00.000+05:30

Toyota has carried out an interesting blog marketing campaign in Greece.

For the launch of their new hatchback model, the Auris, Toyota Hellas carried out a digital campaign to actively engage consumers with the brand and to generate leads for "test-drive" requests.

To create a buzz Blogger community was involved and was invited to test-drive the car for a week. Their finding from respective blogs were collected into a central blog, at http://www.aurisblog.gr.

A banner campaign was also run inviting general public to request a test-drive, which could also win them a 4-star hotel weekend in Greece with of course the Auris at their disposal.

The Auris Blog campaign lasted for 10 weeks. There were 85 requests from Greek Bloggers and the car was given to 15 of them. The campaign highlights were:

· 55 different posts, most of them with photos and videos. (A digital camera was given as a gift to the bloggers).

· 175 comments to the posts.

· More than 52,000 visits by 41,000 unique visitors to the Auris Blog.

· Overall response rate of the banner campaign was at 4.75%.

· 2,000 test-drive requests were submitted from this campaign, accounting for 50% of the total test-drive requests received through all channels (phone, in-store, events or promotions).

In January 2006, IAMAI had taken views of few online experts on high usage of Internet as a marketing tool by carmakers - http://www.iamai.in/section.php3?secid=21&press_id=794&mon=1

Decentralize Corporate Blog

2007-05-30T18:42:00.000+05:30

With more and more corporate resorting to Official Blogs, its time to wear thinking hats and plan before taking a plunge in these Web2.0 technologies. Blogs, wikis, and other collaborative technologies need a robust launch and execution plan. These require Investment and commitment.

So do we need a Corporate Blog which is (a) completely moderated (b) promotional (c) monologue of thought leadership?

And the obvious answer is “No”!

We live in an age where Knowledge defines the company and the employees. Collective intelligence and content collaboration act as Decision Support Systems and thus, the control or console need to be decentralized.

According to a recent Harris Interactive poll of Fortune 1000 executives:

77% say they should have corporate policies that address company-sanctioned blogs.
40% say they should have corporate policies regarding blogs unrelated to the company or its activities.
15% say someone in the company is currently writing a blog.
12% say they have taken legal action in response to a blog.

Blogs can act as a tool to enhance the organization's competitive advantage rather than a marcom device that is fully managed and controlled. Many companies have a policy of “internal” or “insider” blogs.

Most of these blogs are published by employees and are insightful and reflect the feelings of range of employees. Allow these to be Public Blogs.

Give the employees control to write and publish under company umbrella blog. These would help humanize the firm more efficiently and more effectively than public relations practitioners can do officially.

Categories: Corporate, Blog,, B2B,, Employee, blog,, internal, blog

Role of “Brand Experience” in B2B marketing

2007-05-23T21:59:00.000+05:30

With new technologies (web2.0 as we call them collectively), the focus has amplified on “Brand experience”.

This might be a newer phenomenon for B2C companies, but for B2B companies, this existed even before new technologies had surfaced. Infact web2.0 is rightly said to be a socially driven phenomenon, facilitated by technology.

B2B saw Brand experience in forms of Events, trade exhibitions, seminars, round table conferences, breakfast meetings etc. So the concept remains the same – engage and interact with the client and prospect to increase favourability.

However, with the new generation which demands more “control” and “interaction” than ever before, traditional branding activities to build brands might not suffice for long.

Need for the hour is “Brand Participation” which goes a step ahead. It’s not only about providing a brand experience, but enabling the audience in participating with the brand and being its stakeholders. This allows them to have an emotional connect with the brand, something that helps brand truly differentiate itself from others.

So are Blogs and user forums the only way for audience participation? In B2B scenario, there are many more things which can be done besides these.

Microsoft, Cisco, Shell, to name a few have done this in a good way. Yes, the way is to associate the brand with an Issue/idea and pass the power to comment/write/educate/discuss to the audience. When they interact closely with the issue or idea, in some way they interact with the brand. The Idea is to make audience evangelists of the issue and grow from Brand engagement to Brand interaction and to Brand participation!

MySpace..Facebook..Yahoo360….. Signs of Social network fatigue?

2007-05-16T10:45:00.000+05:30

Imagine a scenario where people would be using “aggregators” to know about updates and latest happening/posts in “social networks”. With mushrooming online communities and networks, it’s becoming difficult for individuals to keep track of them.

We might see new kind of mashups which would combine favourites/ selected genres and personal profiles across various social networking sites.. depending on whether social networking sites would agree to such collaboration and syndication.

Advertising on Blogs - Should we: should we not!

2007-05-13T20:32:00.000+05:30

Many organizations are doing study on the effectiveness of advertising on UGC. I was going through a study done by blue Lithum Labs and ITToolbox.

The most important question that comes to mind while planning on such UGC sites (Social networking and user generated content sites) is how ethical it is to put “sponsored” content on sites which are meant to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.

I faced the same challenges while planning the campaign on blogs and other social networking sites for the first time.

Campaign performance (gauge by visits of companies on my website by clicking on the banner/link.) on publisher content sites was higher than on UGC. Though in money terms, lower cost of UGC media scored over publisher content site resulting in lower cost per visit.

To my mind, both the channels are imp - content sites for generating more visits from relevant target audience (depending on who they are; for me this works! J) and Blogs and networking sites for not just visits, but “word of mouth” and “buzz” about newer concepts.

Alone in “public place” with “personal network”

2007-05-05T20:10:00.000+05:30

I was reading an interesting article in Forbes - “Can you hear me now” by Sherry Turkle. I was quite moved with the way article went about saying how people have now started sticking to their personal network so much that they have lost the art and enthusiasm of meeting in person.

What the article missed talking about was the opportunity provided by these networks to “meet” , “form friends” and “grow” – both in intellectual and personal space.

With every new technology, there are both benefits and flaws. I agree that life without cellphone/internet/blackberry seems dead, and yes with so much of exposure and media availability, contemporary world has a spilt and reduced attention span.

This brings a challenge and opportunity. Challenge to manage time, to give quality time to things which are important, automate things which are mundane/routine and find time to “think and do what is important” and “urgent”. Opportunity to know much much more in same time, to become faster in grasping things and super than super computer!

“Network effect is expanding the collective intelligence of the human race” (Its All in your Head by Robert M. Metcalfe)

I feel with more media, there is an opportunity of viewing/hearing/watching/reading/creating more information and challenge of choosing and segregate relevant piece from junk.

These are teething problems and this would invariably help us all Evolve, become smarter and most important to remain “connected” with information and world!

Social Media driving Business concepts

2007-05-04T14:15:00.000+05:30

I came across Alain Thys's post on Social Media - Social Media Participation is Not Optional for Brands (http://www.mpdailyfix.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/8149)

Am sure very few people would disagree with this since we do not have a choice, but to agree! have seen the way it impacts product reviews; creates or tarnishes brand image and more importantly helps in giving business concept a much needed critical mass.

Take a look at - People Ready Business from Microsoft, Human Network from Cisco and Search for Better Search from Hakia. The approach is interesting and involving!

Sramana Mitra says : Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)

2007-05-02T19:10:00.000+05:30

Interesting! Formulas are always.. but this one in particular!

Web 3.0 = (Content, Commerce, Community , Context +Personalization +Vertical Search)

But is this not what web2.0 was also suppose to be? Read/Write is good.. but am sure personalization and vertical search (or if i may say content search in right context) is something that should have been taken for granted!

Having said that, i liked the way she created this wonderful formula... of yes success!! :)

Content collaboration is KING

2007-05-01T18:15:00.000+05:30

On my way back from Delhi, I was watching in-flight entertainment on Jet airways and came across an interview of Ajai Chowdhry and Shiv Nadar of HCL.

Ajai Chowdhry said that the future of web is in providing content in multiple languages. I completely agree with this view, but would like to extend the same to say that content collaboration in multiple languages and formats would be the KING.

And by multiple languages, am not just referring to French and Chinese versions. With computers being a daily necessity, OS being made available in different languages and broadband, we are moving into a scenario where these would be made available to even those who are not very proficient in English, but have lots to add to this internet world.

I was surfing net to see if any study has been done to know how many languages (Indian) are needed, but in absence of that, think the language in which Microsoft is making its OS available, would definitely boom.

Imagine India with Blogs/wikis/social networking sites in local languages with a touch button transliteration feature. This would provide a platform for Publication houses to become big and launch their own online production houses!

Content collaboration in multiple language and formats would be the key to success in future!

On-demand media environment

2007-03-19T22:20:00.000+05:30

Creating an On-demand media environment

As a marketer, it sounds interesting and scary.. good to think that people might be interested in reading, knowing, bloging, podcasting about my “company” and scary to think what if they don’t.. what if they are just too busy and are considering ads as frills and turning them into blink spots!

As ipresssroom (http://www.ipressroom.com) mentions in its white paper, blog-powered media rooms allow companies to think beyond the press release and social networking elements like participatory surveys, interactive forums, streaming media, media on-demand, blogs, podcasts, high-resolution image galleries and other online marketing communications elements can help leverage a company’s existing intellectual capital via the web.

I agree and am very happy to see where the next-gen media is moving… but still its difficult at times to sell this concept internally to own PR teams..!

Some Interesting figures regarding Online News readership

Source: comScore Media Metrix, Dec. 2006

So how do we ensure that the concept is sold within the organization?

Understand benchmarks and create realistic SOV estimates.
Pitch online story/press release to bloggers; wire them to new search engines
Measure the Impact

What is ROI? Return on investment or relevance, originality and innovation!

2007-03-18T21:31:00.000+05:30

I was going thru a webcast of Digital marketing conference on iamai.in.

Very interesting things were being discussed and most important being ROI.. something that internet has to show and prove again and again.. and I feel its perfectly fine. This is what distinguishes this medium from others and to helps companies invest money “to start with”.

Mahesh Murthy, Founder & CEO, Pinstorm Technologies Ltd made an interesting comment on ROI.. something which I feel should be open for discussions..

What is ROI? Return on investment or relevance, originality and innovation! Which of the two would help companies win in long run? It is a medium for quick acquisition and reducing operations costs, as mentioned by Tina Singh : Head corporate marketing, ICICI Bank Ltd (http://www.24framesdigital.com/iamai/160307/session1_tina_singh.htm) in her wonderful presentation, or it is much more than that and should be considered as a channel which provides customer experience?

Srinivasan Rajagopal, Head eBiz Special Initiatives, Citibank made an interesting remark of whether internet is a Medium or an Experience. To my mind, it’s BOTH!

It’s a medium for acquisitions; for distribution as well as a channel which can deliver customer experience, depending on what is the end objective!

With so much of options available in the market, Customer has truly emerged as a king and in most cases a King Maker! With social networking, collaboration and experience sharing tools, like I can define target group to choose the customer; the customer can choose me amongst his list of favorites!

Indian Media Market: Online advertising..

2007-02-19T16:18:00.000+05:30

Online advertising currently accounts for only 3% of total spending.. says report from eMarketer.com. This is the senario when

Total internet users by country and share of world users: [Source:Internet World Stats, December 2006]

US: 209,024,921 (19.4% share) [Nielsen//NetRatings, October, 2006]
China: 123,000,000 (11.4%) [CINIC, June, 2006]
Japan: 86,300,000 (8%) [eTForecasts, December, 2005]
Germany: 50,616,207 (4.7%) [Nielsen//NetRatings, August, 2006]
India: 40,000,000 (3.7%) [IWS, November, 2006]
UK: 37,600,000 (3.5%) [ITU, September, 2006]

(source :Internet Statistics Compedium, E-consultancy)

With such numbers, its surprising to see why industry is still trying to prove itself across many parameters and metrics.