Put Your Heart Into It...

... is what you would see at the entrance of MakeMyTrip office; a hearty thought. There is something special about my former employer, MakeMyTrip, a start-up and the pioneer of travel distribution in India.

My folks would ask twice (on an average), when I told them where I work and what I do there (Mak-My Trip, Make Me Trip some bizarre versions).... E-commerce was new (well in 2004, not that new, as people bought books and cds on Indiatimes), and internet was buzzing. The bunch MakeMyTrip reflected this enthusiasm. Here's my recollection of the spirit, in pictures and worth 1000 words ( roughly 500 words for amateurs photographer such as I)...

1. Productions (Modern Ramayan would certainly feature): A general feature at the makemytrip offsites. We would normally run out of scripts and would finally resort to the good old "Modern Ramayan". The one in picture was staged in the serene locations of Malaysia, and one of our better productions. (featured in the picture from left to right is Deepender Rawat, Jasmeet Singh, Jitu, Mayur Oberoi, Amit Saberwal, Swapnil Gupta & Sidharth Grover).

2. Offsites: At least twice in a year. The best part of the offsites were the interesting stories after offsites...





3. Visiting Cards: People could find our names (Oh I see your email ID, but where is your name) and didn't read the personalised interests. This would be one of the best B-Cards that I have seen till date...


4. "Trip with us" Wall Collage: is right at the entrance (I'm placed in Ethiopia)...


5. Meeting Rooms: Nicely adorned with the sign "Trip in Progress", where we "aimed" and "shot down" our competitors.


6. Festival celebrations: Colorful and full of zest. Not to forget the fountain in front of the office which was used extensively for Holi.


7. Painting and Wall Hangings: Some of these done by us at MakeMyTrip (the one on the LHS)...


8. "365 Days to Visit when you are alive" Notebook: True to it's name, took almost 365 days to finally print, but worth the effort. Each page had esoteric destination. Featured in the photograph is the Co-founder and CMO, Sachin Bhatia...


The only thing more important than the bottomline at makemytrip was celebration. It was a good trip!

Cheers!
Dushyant

I'm Your Friendly Neighborhood- TravelWebsite

The genesis is interesting. During one a gyan loaded knowledge session with an agency, I realised that some of the points are worth considering. And so did I, after 3 days, started thinking on social media, community, travel application et al and collected some of these threads (at the fear of loosing them).

First some usual stuff about the social marketing buzz. It is fashionable to be on Facebook (the no of fans decides the success) and twitter ("how many followers you have dude"). Undoubtably, Social media marketing is the most potent jargon to get attention in seminars these days. Truly, there isn't a dearth of social media evangelists.

Also some and fact (as a marketer)- there are handful of successful case study on the subject of social marketing. Social Media does gives an opportunity to interact and engage with the consumers (for the first time in history of marketing real time) but will you as a marketer consider as an arsenal to drive your campaign. How much time is required, is the next question and "no" is decisive answer for this question as well. And the performance benchmark? Social Media doesn't have all the answers as of now.

Evangelist would differ, and are hopeful, they would say (Starbucks has 3.7 mln & Coca Cola has 3.5 mln & Facebook 4.4 mln fans on Facebook as we speak). Is the number of Fan the only performance benchmark?

Well all that is ok, but where does social media feature in online travel, where the bread and butter (for majority of vc funded travel site) is traffic acquisition and its performance. Online traffic needs to have a healthy ROI. Each channel is measured. So, where does the social media fit in with limited credentials as a case study and with no estimate of time and resources.

So coming to core of my thoughts. If I were to have an objective for social media plan around travel what will it be? To be on facebook and get million fans, to be on twitter and get million follower or to start a blog and get zillions of people to recommend...

Nice start, but not enough. The objective should be derieved out of the service offering, business goal and brand gene/goal. It may sound simple, however difficult to execute. Starting conversations is not easy.

At the cost of being repetitive, the idea should be to get the social media flywheel going (Dave Evan's). This is the magic of social media, where for the first time marketers can actualy work in complete circle. Unlike earlier, as in tradional marketing, the cycle doesn't stop with campaign and stimulus. The responsiblity of marketing goes overlaps with operations, encourages recommendations by the users and in process creates brand advocates. The vetran social media strategist Chris Bogan, calls them as trust agents. His mantra is to use web to create influence, improve reputation and earn trust.

Travel is no different from this global approach. Ideally, if the brand can convert more and more people into ambassadors, the brand will witness positive effect on conversions. There has been some activity around this...

1. MakeMyTrip.com: has Offisial atyachar.com (http://offisialatyachaar.com/, holiday promotion platform) with a fan page and makemytrip on twitter

(http://twitter.com/makemytripdeals). Check out the Anthem on offisialatyachaar.com; it's a complete riot! Some work in the category.

2. Cleatrip: Innovative in social marketing sphere. Quite active on twitter and facebook. The Kiruba incidence has put their recognition right there.

3. Travelocity: is driving the social media through "The Roaming Gnome". (He was in San Diago yesterday with an interesting video)

4. Expedia: Some presence here and there, but the focus is not as pointed as cleartrip or travelocity.

There is also example of Cleatrip is clearly the thought leader in the travel vertical and is doing a commendable job from marketing perspective. Right from the corporate blog, to twitter presence and the interacting with the fans, Cleatrip has it act in place. The updates are regular, informative and entertaining. Cleartrip is setting a great precidence and creating a web of social interactions through conversations, leading to relationships.

Maybe a lot of thinking and now a time for to act!

Cheers!

PS; Check out Fan page of Lord Ganesha on the Facebook

Here's a great list of travel twitter apps from PhocusWright blog.

Building The Brand "You" Online

My colleague Rajat, told me about a bizzare incident that set me thinking. Rajat's friend, a teacher, came rushing to Rajat one night and needed help; someone had written negatives comments about him on wikimapia. He was speachless because his reputation was being tarnished.

This set me thinking if it were to happen to us. The most important brand is "You", which requires as much effort as it would required for a multimillion brand.

People search and background checks are common ways to find out about the reputation. With Google at your fingertips, doing this has become easier (know more here). Not just your name, Google will show all such instances where you have been mentioned. Good or bad, Google is a reputation engine, and it does it work by bring you the most relevant result.

Protecting this area will become as important as getting good recommendations for your job/college course. Good news is that there is already a number of social networking sites, which help you with things to start with.

I'm listing simple points that you should keep in mind...

1. Go with your complete name: Make it as extensive as possible. e.g in linkedin, choose a linkedin page with your name e.g

www.linkedin.com/pub/dushyant-prakash is better than www.linkedin.com/pub/9876188.

www.facebook.com/dushyant.prakash is better than www.facebook.com/dush8725

2. Create a blog/microblog: If you don't have time to extensively blog, join twitter, which people call mindcasting. There are number of ways in which you can connect them with other folks and tell them about stuff you like of don't like.

3. Be Transparent: DON'T EVER FAKE your identity on the net. Sooner or later your lie will be unearthed. Article on Fake Nandan Nilekani is a great read on this.

This also goes with your promises, weigh your words before you send them out, there is nothing like "off the record". It is not surprising to find that your words start appearing on the blogs/quotes etc.

4. Create a impactful online impression: Good photograph with a complete profile are necessary. Inlcude links, comments from other people who know you. Make the profile complete with contacts. If possible make this profile sharable. Google Reader has a great way to share your subscriptions along with your profile. Better still if you can have a podcast/Video of your

introduction.

5. Monitor Your Online Reputation: You can do a simple search of search engines such as Google/Yahoo/Bing and get to know the mentions. For more popular entities (such as Mr. President Obama) Twitter is a much better source. The number of follower determine the popularity and reputation.

Final piece of advice, put some effort and start investing in your reputation now and before
the-shit-hit-the-roof kind of situation.

Margaret Mitchell rightly said...

"Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was"

Cheers!

What does Malcolm Gladwell has in common with Spaghetti Sauce

It is this great talk of his that I came across on TED! Mr. Gladwell draws a parallel between Data Analysis and the Spaghetti Sauce Food Category.

"Blink" was the first book that I read written by Mr.Gladwell, and immediately after that I borrowed "Tipping Point" which I finished within 3 days. Mr. Gladwell has always explored the usual territories but gave a completely new perspective. A few crucial twists backed up by data and yet surprisingly simple explanation. His TED talk is no different. Watch Mr.Gladwell's presentation on Spaghetti Sauce...

Personally, I have watched this video now for over 10 times, an "Outlier(s)"....



Cheers!

Dave Evan's Social Media Marketing Seminar

Another article on the latest fad. Social media and what not!

And on twitter, which is growing by 1444% (nearly 19 Mln users)

I was at Dave Evans seminar organised by 2020 Media (#2020media on twitter) on 22nd June 2009. Quite good things at the event and unlike ones organised by IAMAI. The participation was from traditional marketing teams such as Pepsico, PR agencies and Traditional Agencies. Good turn-out to start with, but didn't get to meet active guys at the twitter forum, except Gaurav Misra (@gauravnomics).

Maybe I need to be more active on Twitter.

So what is in for a service oriented e-commerce enabled travel intermediary, focused on providing lowest airfares to its visitor in social media. True to it's performance DNA, measures ROI and benchmarks conversion and uses state of the art optimisers, tools. More over e-commerce as a category is one of the largest spenders on Google and has liaisons with other ad networks which gives it close to 20% reach in the digital world.

Life is good. Product managers are making the user experience better.

Not just loads of academic social media MARKETING concept at the event, there were few sparks of implementable solutions.

Two of these I found blog-able...

1. The Social Flywheel

Traditional Purchase cycle ends at conversion. Look at this cycle...

Acquisition ----> Consideration ----> Purchase/conversion

Marketers work at every stage of this funnel and a traditional business would "optimise" every step. Conversion once done, the retention cycle (classic CRM) takes over. Customer repeat rate or satisfaction index would be a measure of the marketing efficiency. This is our traditional marketing cycle.

Dave has extended this cycle, and in the realm of new media opportunity, this becomes...

Acquisition ----> Consideration ----> Purchase/Conversion -----> Product Trial ----> Word of Mouth/Recommendation -----> Purchase/Conversion

The last part of this funnel, Daves calls as the "Social Flywheel", and has a positive impact on the conversions. The social media plan works on this flywheel and keeps it going to better the conversion. Not just acquisitions but also post purchase word of mouth is the key to strong competitive.

2. Marketing and Operations don't work in silos, they have areas in common.

Marketing doesn't end once the costumers has purchased the product, it is only the start of the experience. More true in service category where the product is not tangible. Traditional Marketing companies have embraced this fact and are first to realise the customer needs and wants. Pay a huge emphasis on customer needs and wants and listens to customer conversations.

Service companies, relies on the CRM and after sales support for the same objective. Here, marketing can't wash it's hands off and needs to equally connect with customer so that it positively influences the purchase cycle.

Take for example a typical case of flight ticket purchase from a typical website. The onus of marketing wouldn't just finish after the new customer acquisition; it would need to put a similar effort to resolve any issues related to date change, refunds upon flight cancellation to create a great word of mouth. Else the customer would get a sense of being fleeced.

Two great actionable points and worth trying out, I thought.. Like a complete strategy. To start with, I'm active on Facebook.

It is all about conversations!

Cheers!

To my adorable Tweet!

There were emails sometime ago.
... And then I entered the world of Tweets. And have been on Twitter since then, through my mobile, tweetdeck and twitter itself. The count says 427 followers as of today, but the sheer pleasure has nothing to do with the numbers.

They call it Microblogging or Mindcasting.

Nonetheless, it feel good to be back to good old blogging days.

Cheers!

Follow me on http://twitter.com/dushver

BJP’s Cyber Strategy- An Audacity of Hope?

With election just round the corner, there is hardly any buzz in media. There seems to be no “India Shining” or a “High-decibel-clash-between-national-party” media campaigns.

However such is not the case on internet. One of the most prominent faces that you might see on these days on net is that of Mr. LK Advani. In addition to his ubiquitous banner advertising across different websites and search campaign, he is promoting his personal website lkadvani.in. A few words on this website- it is neat and progressive in its vision. The welcome note- "Welcome to my website..." is engaging. Currently, the website has two language option (Hindi and English) and also promotes the other BJP websites- Mr.Narendra Modi, Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan. The home page is updated and follows Advaniji's latest happening (he met the family of 7 that attempted collective suicide). The website also has other 2.0 features; it lets you subscribe Advaniji’s latest blogpost (through rss feed & email), has a number of discussion forums, and enables you to leave comments (You can read my comments on his blog here...). Completing the chain is the presence on Youtube, Orkut and Facebook.

Pretty much everything what a digital medium has to offer (well they missed out twitter!). The strategy seems robust considering what this project is set out to do- engage with 100 Mln new voter, who are primarily young and embrace digital media. BJP is following the footprints of US election, and aims to get more number of new generation folks (the so called IT generation) involved with the elections.

If so, this election might be hailed as the first “Digital Election”. Blogger, Gaurav Mishra has created the first comprehensive coverage of this action in his blog and wiki site (hats off!). He writes…

"Shaken by the 11/26 Mumbai terrorist attack, and inspired by Barack Obama’s success in the US elections, the young urban Indian is likely to step out to vote for the first time in India’s recent electoral history. As a result, both BJP and Congress are targeting young, urban voters like never before. BJP and Congress, however, have adopted different tactic to appeal to this audience. While Congress is banking on the youthful appeal of Rahul Gandhi, the 39 year of scion of the Gandhi family, BJP has embarked on an aggressive 360 degree campaign, inspired by the Obama campaign (Chicago Tribune/ AFP/ Indian Express/ TOI/ Reuters). " Read full article here

Gaurav Mishra's wiki site, which also has insightful articles by other bloggers of repute (If social media interests you, you will find Sampad Swains article stimulating...). The 2009 elections is also exciting for us digital marketing folks, because it may deliver another success, thus enhancing the credentials of digital media coming as mainstream marketing. Mr.President Barack Obama showed the way in Nov 2008, a strategy that brought out possibly the maximum voters in US history, 67%, most of them young (some interesting statistics on Sampad Swain's blog.

The question is whether a similar campaign will bring out the 100 Mln new Indian Voters and give BJP the first mover advantage in this space? Will this campaign encourage new voters to come out and vote? My guess is that it won't.

My hunch lies the unique things about us, Indians. We don't express ourselves, come forward and contribute and that our opinions count. We leave this job it to a few folks, whom we deem corrupt, self centered, and pro-minority politicians. In India, Facebook and Orkut would still be popular, because we are very social by nature and love to interact, discussion and debate (as infamous "Argumentative Indian"). We also may express our negative experiences in mouthshut.com or indiamike.com, but going out of home and voting is a different story. Can internet influence us to change?

Why I think that digital media will stand short of influencing, is also due to our media usage. Our media consumption for opinion depends largely on press and sensation Hindi news TV news coverage. The TV coverage is similar to a Bollywood action movie and entertainment is too much big an influence in shaping up our views. Digital media is different. We depend on reader, and point of view. Given a total of 45 Mln internet users, this seems small compared to over electoral base. Even in this small segment, a large majority would love to read blogs, but won’t even leave the comment behind. We are not conditioned to take that extra step. And this is why I think, digital medium used in this election will be short of pushing people that extra mile. However, will be a great marketing case study, academically. Influencing people to take decisive action is a difficult thing.

But there is silver lining. Efforts are being consistently on getting the urban middle realise the importance of their participation- Tata Tea's "Jaagore.com", is a great thought provoking commercial, which based on a great insight on our lazy educated urban middle class. Other campaign, such as Times of India's "Lead India", is also a stimulating step in a positive direction. If fortune favors the brave, we might see emergence of a new media during this election.

My intention in no way is to undermine the efforts behind the project. Hindi website, which connects to larger section of population, is a great step. This might be the precursor to language content inflexion point, which we have been waiting for a longtime and will catalyse the internet adoption on the country. This also might help to take social media off internet into more realistic ground level activity (efforts such as friends of BJP and its local chapters, which help activate the issues). The success of this campaign will also mean an large behavior change in our outlook as Indians. A great news for marketers, who are interested in new opinion forming vehicles. In fact, the more party follow this suit, the better it is for the media, which will help internet connect to deeper into tier2 towns. But alas, only if our other politicians had a vision for new India!

With my Voter-id card done, I'm ready to cast my mandate in this election and pray that new India also has the audacity to contribute to this "change" and "hope".

Cheers!

The Rule of 70-20-10

According to Milward Brown, the ranking of Most Valuable Brand in 2008 is as under.

1. Google.... 86,057 Mln$
2. GE (General Electric)... 71,379 Mln$
3. Microsoft... 70,887 Mln$
4. Coca Cola... 58,208 Mln$
5. China Mobile... 57,225 MLn$
6. IBM... 55,335 Mln$
7. Apple... 55,206 Mln$
8. McDonalds... 49,499 Mln$
9. Nokia... 43,975 Mln$
10. Marlboro... 37,324 Mln$

(Courtesy Milward Brown Optimor Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Brands Ranking 2008)

It is indeed surprising to find Google at the top, a brand with almost 0$ advertising. One other striking things about the world's most valuable brand is that very few of them are FMCGs, which dominate the traditional mass media and advertising, known as the most potent way to create brands. The inclusions in this list are Coca Cola, McDs & Marlboro. Differences aside, Google is still on top, with a growth of 30% over last year.

Google's promise to adhere to the promise of "providing world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" is uncompromising. Google's growth was led by word of mouth and recommendation. In a research, 44 percent of internet users bonded with Google and 73% agreed that it returned the most relevant information. In comparison to Yahoo, which was recommended by 21% , Google was recommended by 43% to others. What is again more interesting is that the growth was contributed by almost 0$ advertising. Google's young, innovative and playful image is it's most cutting edge advantage over competition. So, you might be thinking that this is another article on Google story and accolades and blah blah.

Well, that was not the idea of this article, but to introduce the concept of Kaizen, the Japanese word which connotes continuous improvement in work place. In the fast paced world of bottomlines and quarter ends, such concepts are hard to find. However, Google incidentally has been always been able to push the limits by continuous and consistently improved products and innovative new products. In addition to providing relevant and more accurate search results, Google has introduced e-mail, Piccasa (Photo-sharing application), online documents and other tools. Google in incidentally world's no.4 in the list of best places to work.

It comes to the point again that the company culture is the first step to create a long term brand equity and word of mouth.

So, you might say sounds interesting and is a technology or a R&D concept. And there is also the fear that only one in 10 new products are a success. It has always been a great challenge for Marketers, where should one focus their energies.

In addition to the customary answer, "It depends..." there is a science to go about it, which I first came across in the book- What Sticks by Briggs and Stuart, and is called 70-20-10 solution. In his talk to MSN, Eric Schmidt shared the classic Silicon valley mix 70-20-10 and therefore its implication for marketers...

70% of budget/resources should go into marketing strategy that are proven to work and you know will work, supporting existing the product/line of business

20% of their time in extending their existing product for "sustaining" innovation. That is, figure out whether there are opportunities to better the ROIs.

10% on "wild skunk-work" ideas for new products or disruptive innovation.

Well, it is this 20+10 percent that will give an edge with the competition. Doesn't require huge energies, but consistent effort and persistent vision. Some said- Common sense is not that common. In our effort to streamline bottomline and target pressure, we tend to forget the obvious.

Business battle is not fought in the design labs but the market place and consumer's mind. Those marketers who are able to learn and innovate, learn faster and deploy the intelligence more effectively have more chances to win. Devote, say one week in a month for disruptive innovation, to get under the skin of the consumer. Cajole him/her, tickle them; drive engagement. Or the other choice is to cross your finger and wait for the miracle to happen.

I think, the former is a better bet.

Cheers!

How Long Does a CMO Live?

The Book, What Sticks, Why most of the Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours succeeds by Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart, says that a CMO tenure is getting shorter every year. His career, not due to stress from business, as a Chief Marketing Officer, is an average of 2 years.

Not a good thought for aspiring marketing professionals.

Increasingly, CFO and CEO are professionals with Finance background, and therefore the approach towards marketing has changed. Marketing needs to be more accountable (read predictable) and linked to balance sheet to forecast figures to the shareholders. Marketing effectiveness or Marketing ROI is the buzzword, each dollar spends needs to be accountable and marketing more scientific and metrics driven.

Hmm so there is an important question does a good Marketing ROI bring Marketing Effectiveness? Does linking Marketing to finance create the robust marketing environment, on which CMOs can jump to be CEO and be business drivers? The answer doesn't lie so much in semantics and formula equation. It requires the understanding of what does what.

I was reading an article- "Marketing Effectiveness. It's more than ROI" by Gordon Wyner, EVP Milward Brown. Great article which helps to define Marketing effectiveness. He states the following as the limitations of ROI...

1. ROI has two important components "R", and "I", Investments. Both should have proper definition and we know that the reality is otherwise. And even when "R" & "I" can be pinned down precisely, there would still be some decision that will have to be made, such as strategic decisions, macro environment impact.

2. Segmentations is one of the three pillar of marketing. The segmentation decision is extremely important and should be financially driven. However, measures of current use, purchase, revenue, and profit can always predict the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer.

3. It is very difficult to predict the consumer behavior change, new trends and extract the financial implication.

4. Product Designs can defy ROI calculations for several reasons. And as such only manufacturing cost can be determined.

Even if we best approximate the ROI, one won't be able to deduce the whys was the ROI bad. An ROI analysis that focuses only on the end result would report a financial failure, but will not shed light on why it happened.

The concept of ROI is straight forward. Whether expresses as a percentage of investment or as NPV (Net Present Value) of cash flows overtime, ROI is an important component of the overall process of linking marketing to Finance. But it is not a substitute for a great understanding of how marketing works to achieve business objectives.

Financial Results is not what you see on the Balance sheet/Powerpoint presentation but in the field and it is that moment of truth that decides the result.

Maybe more CMOs need to go out in the war zone, where the real battle of share is and not just appreciate a good presentation in his swank cabin. Maybe this moment of truth will help them fight the battle harder!

Cheers!

Where the suckers moon!

Fortune lies not in the deep

But in the shallows

Where the suckers moon.
These are opening lines from Randall Rothenberg's epic on traditional advertising agency. The great book is aptly titled- The life and death of an advertising campaign.

While you ponder over the opening lines of the book (WTSM is about Wieden & Kennady's account- Subaru), let me bring you to the moot point- how will does one evaluate a digital marketing agency.?

Traditional marketing agency's performance could be linked to market share, volume growth, top of mind recall; the point is it can be tracked to the business performance matrix. How does one link digital marketing agency to business? Why would you one digital marketing agency the other?

Lets take a traditional agency for example. A typical pitch will provide following range of services...
1. Brand Planning or Account Planning: high level strategy to connect macro environment to consumers and business reality.
2. Communication development/Campaign creation: Theme based TV Films, Press ads, Outdoor etc
3. Competitive and consumer information (Hmm, too much to ask for the retainer?)
4. Media Planning and Buying
5. Below the line expertise
The agency is marketing extension to translate the strategy into effective communication and get the message across the consumer. Traditional agency is the brand custodian, creates cutting edge brands. Hence the performance of such agencies in very good FMCG companies will be linked to market share, volume growth and consumer related recall. There can be a science to choose a traditional advertising agency.

What about a digital agency. What I quickly did a random poll on linked to find out how should one measure the performance. I received many answers, but only to confirm my suspicion that there is no formula to evaluate a digital agency. But here are some salient pointers from the poll (there are only execution led)

1. The digital agency must have both capabilities- marketing and technology

2. Should be good with numbers (read analytical). If there is a proprietary tool, it is great as it will help to align and measure objectives.

3. The agency should be able to deliver some good-looking work.

4. Passion for digital.: there is other school of thought as well. I have seen a number of guys coming into this field due to the tendency to try "something new".

5. Media Buying

These are few good pointers to start with for a digital agency, and this is it. Believe me there won't be other parameter. Maybe CTRs, media value ads etc.

However, since there are no great case studies on effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns and lasting impact of creatives, digital looks likely to remain at the bottom of the priority chain. What digital agencies lack is the planning approach like the traditional agencies. This would mean integrating consumers, measuring impact of the communication and coming up with traditional media and digital media synergies.

What could make a bigger impact is the utilisation of research (such as dynamiclogics, which I spoke about in my earlier post), real consumer trend mapping (such as twitter) and measuring the buzz. Go beyond the CTRs and ROIs, and measure consumer opinion (social media marketing).

Maybe, we would also need clients who can support and appreciate the digital marketing efforts. I guess a wishful thinking!

Till then we will only keep things simple- where the suckers moon !

Cheers!

One Billion Users Now!

An encouraging trend, which I noted on eMarketer article; these are the actual quotes from the article (Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst)...

“China has taken the lead in the number of Internet users worldwide, and today only about 20% of its residents are online. While China will continue to lead the world in Internet users, look for India to eventually overtake the US, Japan and Germany.”

The second billion will come from India :)

Cheers!

And The Award For The Most Intrusive Ad Format Goes To...

In the times of Oscar Fever, I wanted to talk about an entity, which is equally exciting and I got to know few days ago. Courtesy my wife, Priya, who recently went to Millward Brown conference.

Dynamic Logic (DL) is one of the lesser known services of Millward Brown. DL focuses on ad measuring effectiveness in this ever complex world of online and offline media. You may recall, MB is a leader in Brand Measurement Studies, Brand performance monitoring and marketing accountability.

Dynamic Logic, has three specific products to help the Internet marketer's brand prerogatives...

1. AdIndex: Test and Analyse digital marketing campaigns


2. Cross Media Research: Evaluate Multimedia Campaign (TV, Print, Internet etc)

3. LinkSelect For Digital: copy-testing solutions.

The best part about DL the cross-media behaviors and the resultant brand impact. As such, there would be very few research agencies, which can put this as specialisation in the service list.
I read a few insights from their book and found them extremely interesting. I would like to share one such report, an extract of Dynamic Logic's Beyond the Click Study done in April 2008 on the subject of Consumer's perception of Ad Formats (and across different Medium).

The study found the following ad which respondents rated as the most negative ....

Telemarketing (72%)

Non-opt-in Emails (46%)

Ads on Mobile Service (37%)

Direct Mail (17%)

Opt-in Email Ads (14%)

Cinema Ads (14%)

Online Ads (13%)

Online Search Ads (13%)

Product Placement (13%)

Radio Ads (7%)

Outdoors/Billboards (8%)

TV Ads (6%)

Magazine Ads (5%)

Newspaper Ads (4%)

(Basis Dynamic Logic's Adreaction Survey, n=933, US, respondents fielded 2007)

The most intrusive formats (not very surprising!) are the Telemarketing and ads on mobile services (72% & 46%, respectively). Whereas, Newspaper, Magazine and TV ads are the ad formats with least negativity (4%, 5% and 6% in that order). What is surprising is that the online banner ads and online Search ads have similar negativity associated with it (7% each). One would have expected Search to be more acceptable format (maybe indicating the impact that the medium would deliver the brand association), however that not the case. Online ads are perceived more intrusive than the Radio and Outdoor Billboard ads.

This was a surprise to me, as we are in the world of web 2.0. The control of the web is with the browser, but the current perception is far from this fantasy. Maybe Online publishers efforts to deliver more inventory to the advertisers are now showing its effect. Do you remember the days of pop-ups and blinking fake-HTML like banners? Irritating and bad it was. However, what this seems to have done is to limit the engagement of the online brand with its consumers and therefore its impact on its overall imagery.

This also has bearing for all of us internet marketers, to be as engaging with the browser as possible, not to focus on click through rates (CTR) and optimise the creative to deliver the best ROI. Maybe also the usage of formats which enhance the engagement such as rich media, gadgets and viral marketing. Maybe start measuring the performance through new matrix such as engagement per click (an aggregation of referrals, time spent, roll overs and clicks).

Maybe, digital marketing still has to go a long way till it starts impacting the consumer consideration set.

Cheers!

S T P (?)

I came across this inspiring note by Norm Rose, the 26 years travel industry veteran. His blog is compendium of interesting articles on travel technology, emerging trends and latest happenings. In this particular article, Mr Norm has covered Expedia's new approach (basis Dara Khosrowshahi's address at PhocusWright conference, Nov 2007). This might not sound rocket science but pretty much what we have always been discussing about. Though written in Nov 2007, but is still valid..

Expedia has 3 focus areas...

> Email: Make it more focused and targeted. Email has tremendous potential of upsell opportunity

> Segmentation: content based segmentation. Premium groups, no cancellation/change fees or other services

> Search Experience/Personalisation: New algorithm will send people to a specific hotel property, therefore increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Thus Expedia's leap from being impersonal to a more personalised interaction. I saw lot of Amazon in their approach, emailing, algorithm, personalisation etc. You can read his full article here.

As an emarketer, I'm sure most of us have always been smitten with the Google bug, Search Optimisation Search Engine Marketing other display related communication to reach out to our target consumer (talk about segmentation, targeting and positioning). I'm also sure that very few of us would have looked internally, at our own database, our own consumers and found effective ways of marketing.

Banking folks are a great example and market according to clusters lifetime value etc (alas, they might be around for long). However, the other service industry players such as travel and retail e commerce still have to long way to go.

Truly, in the context of e-Marketing, the three pillars of marketing strategy- Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP, as we call it) has a new P- Personalisation. Practicing this formula on Search (whether SEO or SEM) is relatively easy. All we need to do is to marry the keyword (read as search intent) to the product offering. But, what Expedia is talking about is the next level. This will marry the customer level data (from CRM) to the content to enhance conversion. And we don't have to look elsewhere, but our own data and integrate this to deliver the lasting consumer engagement. I'm reminded of a scene from minority report, where Tom Cruise, while walking in a mall is offered a proposition basis his Retina scan.

Sounds very simple, eh! But who cares, as long as, we have Google :)

Cheers!

Nielsen Audience Measurement

Finally, Nielsen is here. And we have another choice of getting the audience data in addition to comScore. I'm keeping these links handy in case you want to explore the details...

AgencyFaqs: http://digital.afaqs.com/perl/digital/news/index.html?sid=23283

Alootechie: http://www.alootechie.com/content/nielsen-online-enters-india-karthik-nagarajan-head-its-india-operations

The big daddy's of audience measurement have put India on the map and have announced their online venture in India. TAM, Television Audience Measurement, is also a Nielsen Tool, and is used extensively by the Television folks to get meaningful business insights and innovate to better engagement. However, barring a few top online publishers, I haven't seen any instances of such research being utilised to its fullest. I say this, because a an internet marketer, I never get to hear the comScore/Nielsen data as a support for for any media presentation.

But things may change soon.

Before we get more optimistic, one other entity associated with audience measurement is a usually an impartial industry-wide central body. They are important from the view of the authority, auditing and impartial validation and hence the universal usage of Data. These are bodies such as ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) for print media, IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) for US, IBS (India Broadcasting Society for television) is equally important to initiate the approach. I'm sure IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India) is taking a note of this as they have a job at their hand in educating a number of us on this subject.

Cheers!

Are you on Facebook, eh!

It was 26th January, the date I started to recieve a number of B'day wishes. I got about calls, each of these callers had a common source- Facebook. I'm not a very active facebook user (as I have mentioned in my other posts), but I would have been one of the first guys to register on Facebook.com. Since it was a new site, I registered with a dummy date of birthday (26 Jan). I guess my non-sociable attitude, laziness and unmanageable application are the root cause for this paranormal behavior. However, the other folks feel otherwise.

Facebook, though a very popular website, in India is behind Orkut by a big margin, 12.6 Mln (Orkut) Vs 4 Mln (Facebook). The difference is even more stark when one compares the audience duplication between the two sites. The duplication between Orkut & Facebook is to the tune of 3 Mln (therefore, it means facebook has only about 1 Mln unique visitors compared to 9.7 Mln of Orkut. However, the growth of Facebook is impressive about 150% growth in Dec'08 when compared to Dec'08 (which means Facebook is only next to Blogspot now).

The numbers might be small, but Facebook has a huge impact on the friends community. Recently, during my younger brother's wedding, I was asked by a 50 year old Auntie- when will you put up the pictures on Facebook? Impressive indeed, Facebook has a great word of mouth. Thanks to the folks at comScore for the data!

Just stumbled upon this link on HindustanTimes.com.

Not trying to prove a point :)

Cheers!

What is your Knol?

A bad question to start the post for an interesting product :). The though came after a good question (rather answer) was popped during an internal quiz- "What is the unit of knowledge?"

An avid follower of Google myself, I couldn't even attempt the question (though my able colleague did). And thus started my pursuit of KNOL, a unit of knowledge.

For the late starter, such as I, Knol is an article written by experts. Just as the information on Wikipedia. These are authoritative articles written by experts. An interesting starting point is this article in Google blog which says- 100,000th knol published (wow, I didn't know that it was that big?).

Knol has been dubbed as the "Wikipedia killer" (Actually one of the polls on the web that I came across deems it otherwise. There is a huge loyality for Wikipedia). Now, coming back to Knol, the author who creates the knol, can accept or reject the edits made by the person writing the review. Sometimes it is also compared to Squidoo, which is also created by specialists (read authorities) and be rewarded for it. However, it has to go a long way when you compare it to 2.7 Mln content pages on wikipedia.

You can log onto knol.google.com and get a first hand experience yourself!

Go get yourself a knol :)

Cheers!

Slumdog Millionaire!

"Slumdog Millionaire" won 4 oscars (I saw the downloadable version of movie recently)...

Screenplay: Outstanding is the word, and also does the work of putting India on the world map. We have some great guys in this field (Anurag Kashyap, loved his No Smoking)

Picture: A westerners image of India- poor & hungry people. The movie has timed well with Arvind Adiga's "The white tiger", which is also about the poor destitute India. Maybe here we would want a richer picture of India, demonstrating our progress.

Director: Hats off to Danny Boyle for the film. Super camera and shots. I have seen "Trainspotting", and that is a brilliant film as well.

The last one was for Music. It was great to see AR Rahman, SRK and Anil Kapoor on the stage, a proud moment for India (I'm sure Gandhi would be similarly exciting, but I wasn't around). I hope that it wins at least 4 Oscar from here. Man, you should have seen Anil Kapoor on the stage, he was so pumped up!.

So, why is a movie description featuring in DIgital Marketing blog? I was driving today and while I was reminiscing of these proud moments for India, I also remembered one discussion with an international professional. "Indians don't blog; don't express their opinion", he said, "And that is
the reason why though in the west social media is the new buzzword, in India it has a long way to go."

Consider this...

1. I searched for Slumdog millionaire (from India) a few hours ago, I found only 15k results on Google

2. Blog search in Hindi was more dismal- only 7 results.

3. The reach as a media vehicle (comScore calls these as the conversational media) for blogs is good- Orkut.co.in (12.5 Mln Unique Visitors & 40% reach), Bloggers (8 Mln Unique visitors & 26% reach), wordpress (3.5 Mln Unique visitors & 11% reach). However, actual blogger community is still very small; a rough estimate would be about 50k active bloggers. An old article but you might get some information here...

We might be world's largest democracy, however it seems very few of us have opinions to share. In US elections, Barack Obama was able to move a number of youths through his social media influence. Compare this to our Indian politicians, who don't even have a website to their name. I did find Lal Krishna Advani's blog on the net, http://blog.lkadvani.in/ (it wasn't working that's another story). The sad reality is none of us believe in expressing ourselves and that this opinion will make a difference (come on!)

However, there is a silver lining, blogging is becoming big. Aamir Khan (http://www.aamirkhan.com/) has a blog. I had heard that even Amitabh Bacchan had started blogging, however even after 10 minutes of persistent search I couldn't find it. Akshay Kumar also seems to have a blog (http://akshaykumarblogs.blogspot.com/2007/11/akshay-kumar.html), but doesn't look genuine.

Blogging has started in some way, but has sto still reach the tipping point (borrowed from Malcolm Gladwel :). We still have to go a long way beyond clicks and click through rates and ROIs. Blooging, I believe is the true word of mouth marketing.

FYI, here are some interesting feature on "Slumdog Millionaire"

J Ramanand:
http://passionforcinema.com/arrahman-not-just-madras-bombay-or-dilli/

Rk: http://passionforcinema.com/slumdog-millionaire-kamaal-ki-story/

BomBay Bitch (she does a great job of hammering down our own industry): http://www.bombaybitch.com/site/and_the_award_goes_to___/

Pray with me for Slumdog's oscar win!! But before that please watch the movie; it is releasing on Jan 23rd 2009.

BTW, have you seen the Google's new favicon (small icon in your browser), it's great.

Cheers!

Asia Digital Marketing Yearbook 2008

The other day someone sent me Asia Digital Marketing Association (ADMA) Yearbook, the second in the series. The association collects data from all the digital sources- Mobile, portals, e-Commerce sites. agencies, technology solution providers etc. The report gives a general picture of the region, with specifics of online population, their activity, marketer's budgets and also illustrates trends. It is pretty comprehensive (don't hesitate to email me at dushyant.prakash@gmail.com if you need the copy).

The generals excerpts (India)...

- 5.3% of India has access to Internet

- Overall internet users 46 Mln with 32 million active users (Dec 2007 figures). Compare this to China(210Mln), Indonesia (25Mln), Australia (15.5Mln), Malaysia (13.5 Mln).

- Amount of time Indian Internet users spend online is still low (14.8Hrs/Month), compared to regional average (21.2 Hrs/month) and global (26.2Hrs/Month)

- Google (18.6Mln Unique Visitors) and Yahoo (17.7Mln Unique visitors) are the top two sites in terms of site visitors. Among the home grown sites, Rediff (8.4Mln Unique Visitors) is at 4th position, Times Internet (6.3 Unique Visitors) at 5th and Naukri (4.1MLn visitors) is at 9th. (comScore, March 2008 Data, Age 15+ and work computers)

- More than half of all Indian active online users (51%) mainly use the internet to send mails. 20% of the users search for information and 13% for entertainment (which is grown from 8% previously)

The report does a good work to compare the statistics across the region. The report however doesn't consider the other essential facts about India, such growing E-Commerce activity in all respects- Travel, banking and retail. Also has no information on online advertising in India. Maybe the next report will be more impressive (to highlight India's achievements)

Cheers!