Digital Fortress

"Taking Knowledge Less Seriously"

2011-11-22T06:04:00.001+05:30

Malcolm Gladwell in his book "What the dog ate" has a chapter on a very different kind of stock trader, a risk averse trader. This is where I first read about Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is now the Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts.

I was so intrigued by Mr Gladwell's description, that immediately ordered for both of Taleb's books- Fooled by Randomness (The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in Markets) and The Black Swan. I don't invest in stock market actively and the intention of reading the book was not to gain tips and trick to make a quick killing. I found these books to change some of the my notions and stereotypes. The book "Fooled by Randomness" was selected by Fortune as one of the smartest books of all times

In the preface to his book, Fooled by Randomness, Mr Taleb writes- "The principal asset that I need to protect and cultivate is my deep-seated intellectual insecurity. My motto is "my principal activity is to tease those who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously". He points out- "We underestimate the share of randomness in about everything and applied probability is almost nonexistent." The book is idiosyncratic and will compel you to think and see life from a different perspective.

"Black Swan" is the second book and continues to stir the thoughts and an extension to "Fooled by Randomness" philosophy. Mr Taleb defines "Black Swan" as an unexpected large impact random event. Till very long the swans were white because almost on all observation (statistical) one would spot swans which were white, hence swans were white. However, this changed with just one observation of 'Black Swans" in Australia. Mr Taleb urges us to be vary of such randomness and events.

Only word of caution, you need to read this book with an open mind, this is not one of the self help books which will give you 10 mantra's for success. His writing style is very conversational and full of mentions of philosophers, mathematical concepts and theories.

Apple TV, Smart TV

2011-11-10T06:56:00.011+05:30

It was a great big shift was us in 2011.

1. We moved into our new premises in Gurgaon
2. Dhriti started day care
3. I bought a Samsung Series 8 TV (The TV had a number of applications)
4. I bought Apple V, ( First Apple device)
5. I bought the first HDMI Cable (and loving it)

I was quite excited to buy the TV, as all this while I had a small LG 21 inch TV, which wasn't bad. What impressed me was that with the Samsung TV, the applications that came in-built (at least at the showroom it did). Internet@TV had YouTube, Picassa, Facebook, among other application. The Samsung app world is small as of now, but the company is building it's base. However, the demonstration at the time of installation was a complete let down. Typing the password through remote was very crappy. In addition I had to buy a dongle to enable wifi in the TV. I decided not to do so. We were ok watching TV. Till sometime.

All this while, including October, my Apple TV that I had bought from the Australia trip for $125 was kept packed in my media console. People would ask question and I would give them half baked answers. Finally, on Diwali, I got it out and plugged it to TV with the HDMI cable. I was fed up of showing Youtube videos to Dhriti on iPhone. Apple TV is not bad at all, We watch Youtube videos, for a considerable time on Apple TV. Not just that, the other day during a get together, I streamed music from one of the internet radio channels and was amazed with the quality and library of music.

I'm not putting the pictures for the Movies section, as we can't access movies yet from the section (Apple doesn't have the movie distribution rights in India). It has a large library of HD movies ( I was amazed to see all Stanley Kubrick collection and latest TV series). I can access the previews and they are excellent. Additionally, with the new iOS5 you can stream your pictures, iTune Videos and Movies through Apple TV.

These maybe just small snippets of the innovations that is happening at this point in time and of the future . Did hear the news that the next big thing that apple is working on is a television device ? I'm already waiting for it.

Cheers
Dushyant

Communication Workshop 26-27th October 2010

2010-10-28T07:41:00.004+05:30

This was the most interesting communication sessions that I had attended.

- No handouts
- No theory
- No powerpoint
- No movie clips
- Only discussion and interactive sessions

I didn't come out of the workshop "Empowered" with a new theory but with self-realisation of my potential strengths.

In the age of digital technology and flashy powerpoints, this was a new discovery...

- 93% of the communication is personality driven. People make decisions (within first 30 secs) about you

- 7% is the content, which needs to be meaningful. The listener shouldn't decide whether he/she wants to listen to you or no. The communication should be compelling enough.

- Silence has immense power. Helps to elicit response and exercise control over delivery. The use of effective silence was another great discovery.

- Use of notes, though maybe old fashioned, but is always recommended. It is a great way to gather content and self confidence.

I didn't know it was all that easy! All you have to do is not to use powerpoint as the communication medium :)

To my dear Petroleum Minister- Ideas on How to Book LPG Cylinders Online!

2010-06-18T06:12:00.005+05:30

Dear Petroleum Minister,

I hope you are doing well.

I realized yesterday that the LPG cylinder booking in Delhi is automated and can be done only through IVRS or through an SMS. Let me first thank you on the initiative as I found the system to be very novel and convenient. The process requires one to register the phone number (the one that you will be making the calls from) and input a bunch of other information such as ones distributor's phone number and customer id.

The very next day I had a cylinder delivered to my home. No more of following up with the gas distributor.

Phone may work well with the masses and I have no doubts about that. I have a request to this system online. Internet has many advantages and will help you win few more accolades...

1. email based registration: Phone numbers may change, however, the email id does change that much. Other information can be also be stored on the server such as customer id, dealer etc.

2. usage summary: The interface can also have how many times have you ordered the refill. You will know intuitively where all can you optimise.

3. request a refill: fill in the required fields such as your dealer id and your customer id to order a refill. Advanced systems can show whether the dealers have sufficient stock. If now, when is the dealer likely to get the stocks.

4. register complaints and satisfaction ratings: the channel can become an interface with customers, which you don't have now. You will also get ideas how to better the service.

5. changes dealer: if not satisfied with the current vendor one can look for a better one with better customer rating.

6. order refills online: enable payment through a debit card/credit card.

7. gprs based phone application (some day soon): so that you need not always sit in front of a machine to order the refill.

I hope you find this idea engaging and thank you for listening. Will look forward to hear from you soon!

Yours Sincerely
Dushyant

CommonWealth Games 2010, Book Your Tickets Online Now!

2010-06-06T10:17:00.006+05:30

It is good to see governments belief in utilising Internet for distribution of Commonwealth Games tickets (expects to sell 17 Lakh tickets with 60-70 crores). IRCTC, India's largest e-commerce site is the official channel for distribution.

The tickets will also be available on phone (1800 2001294) and retail outlets. Hence ensuring that the fulfillment is multimodal and therefore a wider reach.

It remains to be seen what the activity does to India Internet Space in general.

Be careful while searching, as the space is full of domain sqatters & clones on Google.

www.cwgindia.org/tickets-for-commonwealth-games-2010/
www.2010cwg.com/2010-commonwealth-games-tickets.html
2010commonwealthgamesindia.blogspot.com/
www.thecgf.com/

The search on Bing is much better, which has wikipedia page as the second link.

Cheers!

Dilbert Application for Mobile

2010-06-01T14:35:00.004+05:30

One of the most addictive applications, that i have downloaded is the Dilbert's Mobile application (should be available in App world if you use a blackberry). Bookmarking is a cool feature!

Check this one as well!

Cheers!

The Brand is Dead, Long Live The Brand!

2010-05-16T15:08:00.015+05:30

It was late on Saturday night and I was in the middle of an intense discussion with my friend, Sujith, who heads Account planning for FCB Ulka, Delhi. Sujith was pessimistic about advertising, "There are not many good people joining advertising these days", he said. More importantly, taking about campaigns, we could count only handful which could be called "Creative" so to speak (Vodaphone "ZouZous" and Fevicol were the ones that came to my mind).

It was a different situation 10 years back. I was an account executive with Lowe; being in advertising was coveted, fueled by passion. As an AE (in advertising parlance) would look forward to ads by Pepsodent, ICICI Prudential, Hamara Bajaj. Brand Marketing was sure fun then and I believe that it may still be for another 4-5 years. Brand will be soon be dead or at best, a niche, limited to categories which are very sensory oriented, say soaps, shampoos, deodorants etc and time such as IPL.

I have my reasons...

The first glimpse of such transition was during my US trip last year. When I saw ads in TV i was bored to death during the breaks- "Come buy from us because we give you 20% discount. 5% additional if you quote this number". "Limited period offer log on to the website for more deals". Promotions & discount ruled the scene, benefit related and very "tactical" contrary to what we see here (Mr. Reeves would have been happy to see this set of communication). Recall my agency days, I would hardly recommend this route to my clients. Promotion was a separate brief. Discount is short term, used to propel the sagging sales; diminishes the "Brand".

Hmm. i guess those were good days. Mass media also needs to be accountable now, and needs to add to the balance sheet; not just move the consumer confidence index.

As marketing gets more scientific, matrices become more traceable (not just through pre and post researches), we would tend to see more rational coming into marketing. One of the better definitions on marketing that I have come across is "Marketing takes care of all those items which are not present in balance sheet, such as brand, customer creation, demand creation etc.". I'm sure that this definition will change soon.

Social media has potential to measure the response within a quick span of time, influence brand and word of mouth.
Search engine marketing and affiliate are being used as viable sales channel. Coupons are being used effectively to sell.
Lifetime customer value is becoming increasingly more important.

Marketing is changing at a very fast pace, CMO's job will be more measurable now. The gap between the gut and rational is increasingly becoming thinner. Brand will now be supported with more rational and measurable thinking and manage the quarter end pressures.

Marketing will no longer be dominated by brand, but by communication. The new marketing landscape will keep innovating with new technology integration, making it more accountable, increase consumer control and thereby increase it's effectiveness.

Brand will be dead soon, Long Live Marketing ROI!

Cheers!

Read related article>
Rule of 70:20:10
How long does a CMO live?

When will we move over to Online Insurance?

2010-05-13T14:06:00.007+05:30

About two years ago, I received a number of job offer requests from "Insurance" sector. I thought is was interesting, as no other category has been able to move online, other than travel. The believers argued that Insurance was in a similar of evolution as travel and the portal will help consumers "compare" travel policies. The idea was to create a direct channel, that will help eliminate high cost of DSA. I guess the idea was ahead of its time in 2007, interesting model nonetheless.

I'm a non-believer and I still don't know how many people actually compare insurance policies before buying one. Or we buy policies only to invest. Until I saw my colleague demonstrate an example. My colleague wanted to buy a term policy for his home loan and used one of the comparison sites. Only HDFC StandardLife responded to his query and won his business.

Motor insurance, Health, Travel Insurance and Policy repayment are the easy catchment areas for Insurance category and would be the first ones to migrate (I pay my policy dues online and use the website for contact information).

Complex products are difficult for move completely online. Life Insurance, Endowment etc are best left as features on the website to be compared and most likely to generate a contact and should be followed up by sales representative for demonstration and explanation (this should reduce the irritating calls by the contact center executives)

When I run a search on Google, I get a handful of sites. Importantly, most of these sites, that i come across, are for the first time, hence i don't know how many people will trust this space. ICICILombard is the only know player and has been putting effort in getting people online (heard their jingle on radio today). Even a 2-3% of the overall marketing spends in the right digital initiative should help build this slow preference and will have gains in the long run.

I guess a trust of digital as a viable business model needs to be firmed up for the senior management and case studies that will help more experimentation.

In the meantime we will have to entertain the annoying calls from the executives, sad!

Cheers!

In those lonely hours...

2010-04-29T14:56:00.016+05:30

Of late, and after moving up in life, we decided to keep a driver. I realised that life was much more lonely and there was more free time at hand. Now on my way to office, I could work, browse and talk with the fear of being caught. These are the days when I got most "pal-ly" with my BB (6 months back got the latest 8520 curve).

Out of sheer ennui (of only boring office mails), also started using the mobile browsers and fiddled around the phone more. Tried a couple of browser (inspired from blogs)... Opera Mini, Mozilla and Blackberry browser. After using Opera mini a couple of times, I stuck to the good old BB browser. The experience was no way near using an iPhone, however good none the less in those lonely hours.

My life changed and for the first time I felt like a geek and i realised i was more social with a mobile than otherwise. Thanks to these applications and sites...

1. UberTwitter: Even after the launch of "Twitter for Blackberry" I have continued using Ubertwitter application, as Uber is very addictive for Twitter freaks.

+ves: Intuitive UI, fast and doesn't eat too much of space. One can clear cache periodically. The photo twit is fantastic. Just shoot with your mobile and tweet

-ves: The location function doesn't work properly (I guess more to do with our chaotic IP management than the application's). Also doesn't let you update the Facebook and other social applications simultaneously.

2. Facebook: I have never been a Facebook addict, till i got hooked on to the mobile application. This application like UberTwitter is fast and addictive.

+ves: Facebook is best left at a free time, when one doesn't have much to do ( so that one doesn't have to waste productive hours at home or in office.) And this application lets you do that. One big positive is that the application is a simplified version of complicated website and yet one doesn't have to compromise on the functions. Very simple UI.

-ves: Takes a long time to update feeds and is very slow. The chat function is missing, which I feel is a great plus with FB. Moreover, if you get hooked, toying around with your phone in the night might send wrong signals to your wife.

3. gTalk: For people like me, who don't have much to say, one/two letter chatting is a great option to catch up with people.

+ves: As simple and as fast as the orginal application. The notification as an email is a great feature.

-ves: Ensure that you log off each session, else you may get messages late in the night and might cause animosity with friends for not chatting. Also, there is no option to check GMAIL through the gTalk application.

4. BlackBerry Messenger: BB Messenger is a super option to save money. Best use is in case of international travel, where you could use the tool to connect with your professional friends (however, please ensure that you don't use the such as twitter/facebook which use huge amount of data.

+ves: Reduces sms charges and is pretty fast.

-ves: Adding people as contact is difficult. Best way to do that is by using PIN (rather than eMail).

5. Hindustan Times mPaper Application:I'm a HindustanTimes reader and therefore the bias for this application and also has section to read blogs of HT columnists- Indrajeet Hazra, Vinod Sharma, Vir Sanghvi among others, which in my opinion is HT's edge over any other news site.

+ves: Reader friendly, simple font and minimalistic design

-ves: Limited content, at times repitatitive between sections

6. Wap Sites: Following are the sites which I visit regularly...

a. Yahoo: I like the UI and is the best in the category. The font size is very decent and page is vibrant. I used it a lot during the IPL. One can also check mails and log into messenger from here. Almost like being on Yahoo. The site is unmatched.

b. Rediff: Very extensive coverage and minimalistic design (unlike Yahoo). Content is limited but updated, but is not as engaging as Yahoo.

c. LiveMint.com: Great site for financial news. Updated content and generally good reading for a non financial folk. I quite like the content under "Life" section. Font however is small and you can't read for long.

d. TimesOf India & Eco Times: Only if you have missed the morning edition of TOI. You will get pretty much what the Newspaper has to offer. Small font and not very reader friendly.

e. Moneycontrol.com, & In.com: The only drawback with this mobile moneycontrol is that the portfolio section may not work at times. On the other hand in.com has very regular content, the only section worth visiting is the IBNLIVE news section.

f. NDTV Mobile: Very rudimentary design, but updated content. Worth checking out the site.

Life has changed and not that bad. It's a new world. I still miss my driving and make up for it on the weekends. (I guess one has to discover "work-life balance" in his/her own way.) I'm enjoying it nonetheless.

Can't wait to read reviews of Iron Man-2! Would love to preview on YouTube, however the speed on mobile sucks, big time.

Cheers!

Supporting Earth Hour Day 2010

2010-03-22T12:59:00.001+05:30

Supporting Earth Hour Day 2010: "

Power cuts are pretty common in this part of the world especially during summers so most days are like an Earth Hour Day for a lot of people here. However, for the rest of us, power cuts don’t really affect work as we are lucky enough to have alternate arrangements in the form of battery inverters and diesel generators.

If you are in the latter category of lucky people, and I am sure you do, please support the Earth Hour day on March 27, 2010 (next week, Saturday).

All you have to do is switch off all the lights at your place for one hour starting 8:30 pm (your local time). That’s it!

Earth Hour 2010 is a WWF initiative and is expected to be the largest climate event in history – let’s make this one a huge success and you’ll feel good about it for sure.

Earth Hour Video

Supporting Earth Hour Day 2010

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

The IPL Top 5 & Flop 5 TV Adverts

2010-03-20T09:55:00.010+05:30

Today newspaper have mention on Anil Kumble's Book "Wide angle", Kumble's display of his s alternative career. The timing is right, as the IPL is hot right now and Deccan Challengers doing really well (The game against Rajasthan Royals was a complete stunner, great strategy and execution).

Amidst Excitement are these small ad breaks; I have no choice but to look at them. Here's my list of Top 5 and Flop 5 of The IPL Ad Campaigns.

Top 5 (in no order of preference)

Idea Cellular
In a category which has Airtel and Vodaphone, it is difficult to create another entertaining commercial. The standards itself are so high. In this ad, Abhishek Bachchan with a sidekick and a hot secy invites the viewers to "Ungli Cricket". Quite funny, esp the side kick is hilarious esp the one on drinks. The sidekick gets high and starts slurring.

Airtel
"Baat Karne Se Hi Baat Banati Hai". Great script, but could have been complete without Sharman Joshi in it.

Coke
Finesse defines this commercial, has no story, but a memorable track and Kalki Koechlin appeal. Imran Khan sizzles. Superb execution!

Havel's
This time the "Shock Laga" makes the whole family twist. The other ads are also in a similar league- "Uparwala Bachaye Na Bachaye, Havell Fans will save 40% electricity".

Vodaphone
Some of the ads in the series are interesting- the one on Gaming. Masterpiece is created only once. I wonder for how long can they sustain this campaign.

Flop 5 (in the order of preference)

Pepsi
Ranbir Kapur is completely wasted. Have no other words. It's long, complicated and the edit version doesn't make any sense. The more I see the more i get convinced of my opinion.

Samsung
The one that I'm taking about doesn't have Amir Khan. It has two doors and some arbit action
between the two doors. Fast and absolutely incomprehensible! Luckily Samsung does have that
version on the net!

Max New York Life
The Kid has brilliant expressions, however still haven't understood the relevance of Shiksha Plan in the whole scheme of things.

Thumbs Up
Death defying commercial, I wish Akshay Kumar did that. In this new commercial, he is being chased by a woman. Must be a client driven initiative (something on the lines of get woman to drink Thumbs up, or a universal appeal blah blah). I guess the woman folks liked Thumbs up and until this commercial. The track also a drag...

Mountain Dew
"Dar ke Age jeet hai" doesn't make a connect (guess the edit version is too rushed). The thrill of adventure and being on the edge is not there in the commercial.

Slice is the only good commercial from Pepsi's stable.

Hope someone's listening!

Cheers!

Put Your Heart Into It...

2009-10-27T15:06:00.024+05:30

... 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

2009-08-14T21:42:00.001+05:30

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

2009-07-17T15:28:00.007+05:30

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

2009-07-08T20:06:00.006+05:30

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

2009-06-27T19:03:00.009+05:30

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!

2009-05-29T13:03:00.009+05:30

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?

2009-03-23T23:22:00.011+05:30

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

2009-03-15T10:42:00.010+05:30

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?

2009-02-28T09:46:00.008+05:30

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!

2009-02-26T21:26:00.009+05:30

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!

2009-02-17T12:46:00.006+05:30

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...

2009-02-16T17:40:00.011+05:30

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 (?)

2009-02-11T17:39:00.012+05:30

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

2009-02-10T15:47:00.006+05:30

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-nagar ajan-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!

2009-02-04T16:10:00.015+05:30

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?

2009-01-20T16:49:00.005+05:30

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!

2009-01-13T15:12:00.009+05:30

"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

2009-01-09T14:38:00.006+05:30

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!

Gadgets Ads et al...

2009-01-08T11:58:00.008+05:30

It has been a while that I have put a new article on my blog. Pretty much, last few months everything was happening, and unfortunately was regular work which took lot of time. The realisation dawned upon me when I was going through the LinkedIn profile; now you can add tools to stay connected (You see I'm not that proficient user of Facebook). I found it a great way to stay connected.

That brings me the to the discussion of Content Vs The Gadget. How does one get access to a thousand of browsers out there- through content (traditional) or gadget/tool (Hmmm...)

Computers are getting personal and so are the the website. The scope of customising the websites to your taste and preference; There is a huge scope of customisation.(Though I belong to the old generation, who use the website as it is, but I'm sure the techies and the young new generation is adept at this art). I have seen my nephew customising his Google and Yahoo home page and close friend using Google reader to get himself updated with the latest happening. Small little gadgets does a save that extra effort that you might otherwise require to source the content.No wonder Google is promoting these dinky units in a big way. These can be rendered in multiple formats- HTML/Flash, can have live data feeds and can be placed on any web page, including iGoogle.

So for marketers, we might not yet bid Goodbye to the old world of CTR optimied, Geo and IP targeted ad units, but we would want to utilise the Gadget ads in a ever increasing way. comScore, the leading third party digital Media audit agency has reported and increase in popularity of this new offering.

This is a list of interesting gadgets/applications...

Coke bubble application
Fidelity instruments Market monitor
Southwest Airlines- Ding (my favourite :))
Target- The widget allows you to search Target products from your desktop
Acuvue- wink application

Here's another great article that I came across on iMedia- Creative Primer on Power of Brand Widgets.

Cheers!

FICCI-PricewaterhouseCoopers Entertainment and Media Report

2008-04-08T10:39:00.008+05:30

The reports has good news for folks Media Sales&Marketing. More than anything, it gives a general trend of popular mediums consumed.

Following are the top level figures...
2006... Rs.438 Bln (Rs.43,800 Crs)
2007... Rs.513 Bln (Rs.51,300 Crs)
2012... Rs.1.157 Tln (Rs.115,700 Crs)

This means, 17% growth in 2007 over 2006 and every year after that will grow by 18%, making entertainment and Media Industry outperform a number of sectors. Television, film, print continue to dominate the media space together accounting for more than 90% of the total size of the industry. Following were other highlights...

1. Television attracted more interest among investors than any other medium. The industry has also seen venturing into online and mobile portals to distribute content.
2. Mobile Music is gaining popularity.
3. In print domain, adopted another platform, through internet (e-paper) and mobile (m-paper) to reach out to newer audience.
4. Digital Cinema is gaining popularity, and is becoming widespread with online Movie Ticket Booking and Mobile Booking.

Advertising was a significant part of this pie, and contributed 38%. Last four years (2004-07) the industry has displayed 20% growth rate, which is impressive by any standards.
2006... 161 Bln (16,000 Crs)
2007... 196 Bln (19,600 Crs)

The industry is experiencing a paradigm shift with digital platforms enabling to reach the critical masses. Digital interactive mediums are slowly becoming the advertising mainstream. Internet advertising will reach Rs. 4.2 Bln (Rs. 420 Crs) and 11 Bln by 2012 (Rs.1,100 Crs), which would only represent 2% of the whole adverting projected for 2012 (and assuming 40% advertising contribution). The growth is however very impressive at 32%. The current estimate for the Internet Media Industry is 230 Crs (Rs.2.3 Bln).

Lets look at television industry in the meantime, which is estimated to be Rs.226 Bln (22,600 Crs). By 2012, it is poised to grow to Rs.600 Bln (60,000 Crs) and CAGR of 22%, which would mean that it will still command over 60% to the total advertising pie.

Print Industry size is Rs.149 Bln (Rs. 14,900 Crs) Industry today, is poised to grow to Rs.281 Bln (28,100 Crs) by 2012. By size it would be almost half of TV industry and would contribute 30% to ad revenues. The growth is however low at the rate 14% pa.

Radio will be bigger than Internet industry, with Rs.18 Bln (1,800 Crs) with a CAGR of 24%. The current size is Rs.6.2 Bln (Rs.620 Crs).

More and more content will be digitised and this migration mirrors the global trend. Distribution of entertainment and media content will over digital and mobile platforms like online digital streaming, digital movie/TV downloads, video-on-demand, music downloaded from the Internet, music downloaded to wireless phones, online advertising, online video games, wireless video games, and online gaming, increasingly gain pace in next five years.

Read the full report here ...

Cheers!

Every Click Counts...

2008-03-26T17:41:00.007+05:30

The other day I read one good Mediapost article on Metric. You won't be surprised that there are quite a few of them- Buzz Metrics, Engagement Metrics etc. And there is also our old traditional media currency- GRPs or Gross rating points. (Simply put, GRP is reach x frequency) The more you have, the richer would be the brand. However, as we see more and more new media evolve ( internet and mobile), the ground rules have changed. The communication flow is not just one way but it is interactive and more importantly, measurable (this is at the cost of being labeled as cliche).

So, what would be the traditional measure of success in the interactive internet universe. Is it only going to be mere GRPs (reach of the media vehicle times the frequency of exposure) or the measurement of interaction? The new line of thought is to quantify this engagement in a number of ways. Not just look at pageview and visitations, but also look at time spent on the site, number of pages viewed during a visit and proportion of single access visits to the total site visits. In a nutshell, all exposures are not equal, some are more engaging than others. In fact, the beauty of this metrics is that it is not precise and needs to be molded as per the site goals. You can find this discussion "the peterson calculation" by a gentleman called Eric Peterson (obviously :)) by clicking on this link.

And as I was reading through this article, I was also forced to think about media creativity. In fact, I initially tried to build this article around a few creative sites and hence how the measurement differs. But alas, there is no reference content available on this subject. Hence I will concentrate on the first step of this conversion journey, which is the click.

In this whole context of buzz, engagement etc how important is a click.? This click which might come from a search engine, a banner, a creative blog (like mine) and PR sources across the net. What is the value of this click? How relevant is it towards brand building? A click is a click and is measured by a CTR or Click Through Rate (clicks/impressions served%). How important is a creative in this context? And how "Creative" is a creative in an online space?

Traditional Media like TV and Radio is easy, we have Ad recall and various studies. And we have presentations and PR on how good a Television creative was. We have various ad forums like Cannes, which tests the creative mettle. A good creative gets awards and ad recall. But what is the measure of an online creative? I had read another great article, which substantiates that the memory on the internet space is limited (and hence the power to influence brands, I would love to hear your comments on this, if you have reached this point). And I can guarantee you that you
won't remember which banner have you clicked on, what colour was it, what was the messaging and call to action. There are very banners which can contradict this statement. So how do you measure the worth of a banner (or any such communication) in the internet space. In our performance marketing jargon we call it CTR, the definition I described before. CTR gives you the return on your media buys, it brings the browser closer to the website and it is the first link towards the conversion.

Someone rightly said every click is a wish. And the website is to fulfill that wish. The creativity lies in driving the CTRs, which means altering few creative elements here and there to optimise the media performance. I have tried to use bright idea through the banners, but they don't deliver CTR (or bring about the conversions on our website). Banners and text links are the lowest hanging fruits of the internet marketing domain, where the interaction starts.

The greatest impact on a brand through a website is through the website. There are a few links which I think is worth a mention, because they have done a lot good to the internet marketing and getting it closer to building brands (and not just limit it to a performance driver). They are the true testimonials to engagement/buzz/interactive marketing (the order is not a reflection of their ranking)....

1. Sunsilk Gang of Girls. They boast a decent traffic with 100K users within 4 months of its launch. Though originally, HLL had to use a lot of media muscle to drive traction, but they has been very persistent on this front. The best part is that the website is updated frequently, and now has a celeb zone with Priyanka Chopra, DJ Pearl, Piya Rai Chodhary, Dippanita sharma as contributors. The wesbite looks good, but the speed of page down load is very slow.

2. Mentoshelpline.com: I love their communication, (have you seen the latest one, which is called "the missing link"?). It is entertaining, engaging and very innovative. Checkout the helpline lady. You will also come across a great list of problems- love, professional etc. The site tickles you and has a huge brand rub-off. It has a new avatar called Mentosfriendsline.com . If you have any problem, just share.

3. MakeMyTrip.com: Some innovative viral, which is a buzz in the internet circle. I have seen a few guys using this link to define their personality.

There are a few more on these lines, developed by the same agency, Webchutney.

4. Bingo:, A good site, but as great as the communication.

The brand advertisers are definitely getting excited about the medium, pepsibluebillion.com, meethamoments.com (from Cadburys) are a good step in this direction which builds brands through engagement. None of the brand advertisers have a decent website, which interacts and engages the prospective consumer. In today's scenario, web needs to treated as a touchpoint and a medium that can't be ignored. Net is a medium that is designed and built to allow people to do things and get results from those actions.

Simplicity is the name of the game. The only thing that's unreasonable is the use of interactive technology simply to interact. More often than not, you end up with something that's overly complex. And although it may be creative, it doesn't match up with the desires (the wishes) of the consumer. Buzz and engagement is secondary.

Cheers!

Confessions of a Web Analytics Manager

2008-03-17T18:27:00.008+05:30

1. Its a mess out here.
2. Numbers don't add up and therefore the numbers are not accurate
3. Where do I belong? I'm having an identity crisis, I don't know if I 'm in marketing or technology
4. What is a visit & a pageview.? How is this different from a unique visitor?
5. How important is a click?
6. Why do I have to make the same reports again and again
7. What is my contribution to the business?
8. Am I a cost center or a profit center?
9. Should I switch over to a new Web Analytic vendor, i think the existing one is not good?
10.Should I pay or get free Web Analytic software?

There are many unanswered question for an budding webanalytics manager. The usual problems in his life will center around The server logs not matching the web analytic
results. He would frequently have to encounter Tech complains that the web analytic
codes are increasing the pagedownload time (There may be javascript error due to these measurement codes). And best of all, the support center may follow US timings and resolution is at least 24 hours away! What ever may be the reason, the position is not very easy, answer lies in the cliche- persistence and determination.

Simply put, a Web Analytics is a set of measurement software tools or hosted online service that records and measures the actions of visitors to a website. The existence of this tool lies in the fact that if you can measure, you can therefore improve. It emanates from the fact that since internet is highly measurable, so there should be a tool. And there is also the flaw- since there are no standard definitions and hence there are multiple interpretations. Case in point, the online publisher might give you a set of numbers affecting your marketing campaign, however, the web analytic tool might give you another picture and these numbers won't be necessarily same. The server side logs will indicate figures for a download, which might be 25% in sync with the Pageview report from the web analytic solution. This is not just the end of woes, there are hardly any marketing matrix available that can provide benchmarks eg how many pageviews are required to increase the visitations of the website by 10%. The Web Analytics manager will swing betweeen the Yin and Yang and discover the true dualities of this existential world.

The truth and lets be honest- most of us don't understand Web Analytics and it is still to be ingrained in the planning process in India at least. I have hardly come across people who judicious use this platform to define goal and not just for number reporting and diagnostics.

The origin of Web Analytics, dates a few years back, when the server side logs were used to identify the call made (and hence the relative popularity) to the server, which is called the log file analysis. This coined the word 'Hits' or the number of times call was made to the server. However of you had 4 images, stored on the server, you will get 4 hits on the website (and hence not accurate)which will be equivalent to a page download in the current context. An improvement on that was the server side web analyser, a good number of these tools is available on the net. One had to run these logs as a batch file in the analyser and you would get the relevant details. There is huge amount of data in these logs and has to be analysed periodically to check the web analytics data accuracy. The only limitation of these logs is that, you can conclusively track an event (defined as a goal) and study the possible cause for this event. There is also proxy/caching inaccuracies.

The method which is gaining popularity is the client side data collection systems, which involves coding each page on the site, which is usually a single snippet (tag) of the code referencing a separate JavaScript file. This is cookie based and data is collected from visitors web browsers. There are tins of advantages in using this method...

1. More accurate session tracking
2. More accurate information of the browser (what type, screen resolution, javascript version, windows platform etc)
3. Can track events (say payment and its entry page along with acquisition source) and hence a great tool for eCommerce
4. Real Time data, no procession of the information required.

The limitations is due to the cookie and its privacy (first party/third party). Most of the popular Web Analytic tool, like Omniture, Corematrics, Webtrends & Websidestory (now a part of Omniture) use this method. Omniture is far superior tool, but is cost effective only for large websites. Webtrends is great for content sites and Hitbox (a product of Websidestory and now a part of Omniture stable) is great for eCommerce business.

By and large the features offered are the same. The criterion that you should use for choosing a web analytic tool should be
1. Cost per event (you buy a block of events)
2. Service agreements, it is very critical, as all the support system is sitting in US.
3. Education and consultancy. You should make this a part of the contract, as it will a good platform for the management and stakeholders who sample the report
4. Implementation, 80% of the success of WA tool rests on thorough implementation and
testing.

The cost should range from 4-6 cents CPM (please negotiate hard before finalising the true Indian way with the firangies). Before anything, you should be ready with the standard Webanalytic definitions. WAA, has a a document which is available at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org. It is a great site with a number of articles, but few chosen articles are only for paid member subscription.

There are a number of Web Analytics Solutions available in the market place today.

1. Omniture: (Clearly the leader in the market place). They have recently acquired Websidestory. In India, Futurebazaar is using the flagship product- Site Catalyst.

2. Corematrics: Have JC penny and circuitcity.com as one of their clients.

3. Webtrends: Though their site mentions Microsoft as one of of their clients, I still have to come across widespread use of Webtrends. It is a great product and is quite popular.

4. Visual Sciences (erstwhile Websidestory and now a part of Omniture): Airtel, MakeMyTrip and ICICIBank is using the flagship product, Hitbox (which is now Site Catalyst).

5. DC Storm: This is DGM's main technology platform. Please connect with them if you are considering DC Storm.

6. Clicktracs: Tribal Fusion Network and Pioneer use this for Web Analytics.

If you want to check out the web analytics platform for the website you are visiting, you can use this great tool. All you have to do is to submit the url into the browser and it will find the Web Analytic application.

There are other free tool available in the marketplace, the most popular is Google Analytics. It is a great tool, however, the data is not available realtime. There are other few products also...

1. AWstats: awstats.sourceforge.net
2. W3Perl: www.w3perl.com
3. Webalizer: www.mrunix.net/webalizer/

These analyse logs and are processed batchwise to give results.

Web Analytics have to go a long way in India. Though Omniture has opened shops, it is still to get aggressive with business development. The support center sits out of Hongkong and US. Like I said earlier, one critical stumbling block is the implementation and support, which will determine the success of this tool.

This is vast and interesting subject and very new in Indian context. Though we at Makemytrip have been using web analytics in India in some way through PPC and Impression and click tracking, however, the real utility is when Web Analytics will be seen when it is able to establish itself as a strategic tool. I hope I can share more on this subject in the near future ;).

Till then you can always look up Avinash Kaushik's blog. He's an institution on webanalytics and is the writer of Web Analytics an Hour a day. Currently, he's Analytics Evangelist for Google.

Believe me Web analytics is that simple. Just requires an hour a day!!

Cheers!

Affiliate Marketing- The Tip of an Iceberg

2008-03-10T21:22:00.006+05:30

Amazon are the pioneers of Affiliate marketing, and have more than 500K affiliates. Expedia.com and Travelocity spend very little time in acquiring traffic through Google and other expensive online media, they too have a good network of affiliates. In India, the affiliate boom is still to come. Few of us realise that it is the best eCommerce Marketing tool that one can invest in.

Simply put, in affiliate marketing ecosystem there is a merchant along with an affiliate. Affiliate runs program to send traffic to the merchant and if that traffic
converts, merchant compensates the affiliate by paying him an agreed sum. Since in this equation merchant confirms a cost, the net outcome is high and positive ROI. Better still, you don't have to consider affiliate as a marketing arm, but a sales
channel. This channel needs to be nurtured with equal enthusiasm and zest as the
website.

Affiliate marketing requires a huge investment in technology and manpower. You may
decide to develop a program internally, in which case you will have to go in for ready solutions available in the marketplace. This also means you need to have a dedicated technology maintainence team and also an affiliate manager, who is very critical to the success (and on whom we will touch upon later). However, you might want to outsource the whole program and enroll in an affiliate channel, like commission junction or linkshare. In India, this is provided by Deal Group Media or DGM. Here the situation is almost like a Google Marketplace, where the affiliate will enroll in program of only that merchant who will bring profit to affiliates business. None the less effort and dedication is required in both the approaches and the sooner you start the better will it be for the business.

You might ask So why do we need affiliate marketing, my SEO ranking is high, my Google SEM is ROI positive and I'm running a good email marketing program. So why should I invest in technology and infrastructure? The answer lies in the plethora of genre that exists out there.

1. SEO Optimised domains and Pay Per Click Websites
2. Review sites
3. Shopping comparison websites
4. Niche content websites (parenting golfing etc)
5. Personal Websites and Blogs
6. Loyalty websites
7. Emailer websites
8. Unutilised domains

As an e-marketer it will be very difficult to focus exclusively on these websites, run campaign and optimise them. Advertising network do that, but most of them are blind, hence you will never know about the performance. Affiliate marketing enables
management of these websites, where the agreement is to pay on performance. Hence the
optmisation and making money is not the marketer onus, it is the prerogative of the
affiliate website owner. Affiliate marketing ideally can empower every single user on
the website to start earning, and the initial cost can be as low as Rs.5000 (registering fees for a domain). One of our affiliate partners, Shoogloo, which is
started by LD Sharma has 500 domains.

The affiliate program manager is key to such program. He is more like a relationship
manager and looks at different ways and means to increase the traffic and therefore
sales from these channels. One of the most common problems in affiliate marketing is
the wayward means to credit sales wich could be through any of these means

1. Forced click
2. False advertisement
3. URL Masking (where you can see the changing url, with the click
4. Adware
5. Mature and Adult content
6. EMail Spam
7. Brand and Trademark bidding

The affiliate program manager needs to ensure that the liberties extended to the
affiliate is not misused.

Technology is the backbone of a good affiliate program. In short the technology should ensure

1. Ad serving
2. Tracking and Conversion rule: whether it is last click first click or equal distribution of profit across all the clicks.
3. Sales tracking
4. Integration with Finance, so that the sales get validated and payment is ensured to the affiliate
5. Affiliate login, so that he can see the amount that is credited to him. This is the most important aspect of the infrastructure, as there isn't a motivator like money.

Whatever solution that you may decide on, please stick to one platform, as you don't want to pay the same affiliate multiple times over for the same conversion.

Affiliate marketing has to go a long way in India. As there are very few eCommerce players, dominated by Travel. Hence most of the affiliate are structured around this line of business. Also, we haven't seen much genre coming up. It is the same staple English content, news and Social Networking sites. The development of vernacular sites, special content sites, blogs and reviews, will definitely propel this fledgling industry.

Affiliate Marketing is truly the "Performance Marketing".

Cheers!

Permission Marketing

2008-03-04T18:41:00.009+05:30

I always thought that Seth Godin, the well known Internet Marketing pioneer, was great writer. He coined the term a revolutionary concept called "Permission Marketing". The concept severely criticises the traditional advertising method- whether it is TV ads that breaks into the favourite programme, or the telemarketing phone call, it is very intrusive. The goal is to snatch that piece of attention from whatever we are doing, and deliver the message. It might happen when you are watching your favourite movie or even while watching television, interruption is the approach. With the medium becoming increasingly fragmented and limited time, the only way to get through your TG is the noise factor.

The power of Internet as a medium is that extend the onus of decision making to the browser. The medium lets the consumer choose his options. He chooses the sites that he wants to go to, he chooses the content he wants to sample. He chooses the application he wants to downloads. More importantly he interacts and forms a perception. Instead of the interruption marketing, Seth Godin advocates PERMISSION MARKETING, which means that offer consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily. The marketer develops relationship, by getting the consent from his consumer and thereby building long term relationship and trust. Here the consumer is the advocate and the medium and advertising is done through the word of mouth, excellent experience and repeated interaction.

I came across the presentation sent by my one of my dear friends and discovered another facet of Mr Godin. This presentation is about Google and how it utilised permission marketing, spent $0 advertising monies, but still is the fastest growing company. Seth analyses the DNA, and goes through few more viral marketing concept of his. Please go through this in your leisure time, though it says 45 minutes, but once you start, you won't realise the time :) The presentation has an interesting subject- ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS

comScore and Audience Measurement

2008-02-25T13:55:00.007+05:30

One of the most frequently asked question in the net space is what is size the internet universe and how much traffic can I target (share of Traffic). There are a few free resources that we usually look up Alexa, Google Trends (to see the relative popularity of a term on Google search engine) . Though these are free, the idea of bribing our friends who have access to comScore, Neilsen NetRating, Hitwise or any such panel information, might be a good. The information provided by these audience measurement companies is far superior to the Alexa.

Fortunately, since my organisation subscribes to comScore data, we don't have to resort to any unethical favours (I'm infact open to lucrative offers). Jokes apart, comScore data helps to access the growth of our site traffic vs the competition and the universe and is a regular feature at the end of the month / board presentation. There were some occasional, where we had to measure the cross visitation/audience duplication matrics to find out our standing in the net space.

More importantly, my world (read universe) was limited to 26 Mln Indian online population, which is the figure that comScore reports,. All this while I considered it to be a better estimate and ignored IAMAIs and NASSCOM). I also had the notion that based on these numbers penetration of eCommerce was only 10% (roughly 2.6 Mln internet users).

And then, I happen to meet our comScore Account Director last week and had lot of my fancy notion changed. This post is an ode to that meeting and I hope you will find it useful. Please note that comScore is the only source for such rich panel information, as of now...

1. Since comScore uses a panel, and recruits only for household and office usage, 26 Mln number is a representation of this community. This doesn't include cyber cafes (which was 40% in IAMAI 2006 report), Schools & Colleges (6% in 2006) and other sources (which may include net card). This will significantly increase the numbers (and which also suggests that our eCommerce penetration is very low). In some countries, they quantify that the internet usage originates from outside the universe (e.g persons under 15; from public machines (like internet cafe), they do mention that the projections do not reflect this usage. These countries include China, India, Ireland and Mexico.

2. It is not just a traffic estimating tool. It has lot more data to offer. Reach & Frequency Planning (will be a great assets for folks associated with branding), psychographic segmentation, and identification of Heavy/Medium/Low internet users.

3. It has a panel size of 16,000 in India, which is the highest in the region. It is significantly higher than China (8,000) and the next closest panel size is in Australia (15,000) members. Notably, it has a million opt-ins for the application, however most of them are filtered to include Home/Office. Only in US they offer the Office/Home split.

4. comScore collects data for only 15Years+ individual. They identify this through the mouse-use patterns and keyboard usage pattern.

One other objective of this post is to elaborate on the features that comScores provides, which will empower emarketers such as us, to look beyond Alexa and Google trend Data. The idea is look beyond numbers and demographics profiles and get a psychographic rich profile of our site visitors. To some of us who use site analytics, this data might just corroborate the facts. For other, it will define avenues, as all users are not always the same.

comScore's Segment matrix H/M/L serves exactly that purpose. It acknowledges that web behavior varies greatly by segments. Heavy users might have an unequal impact on the overall statictics- they are 20% of the online population, but consumer 2/3 of total online pages and minutes. The light users on the other hand account for only 6%. Using this feature you can understand and take appropriate action points for heavy, Moderate and Light internet user segments. These are key benefits...

1. Behavior analysis: Heavy users are the easiest to target, but light and medium users would be necessary to build the reach. The basis for this is the content they consume. With this report you will be able to get an idea where your consumers go apart from their category (say travel/retail)

2. Reduce waste of online ad spends: comScore Segment matrix H/M/L provides advertisers and agencies the means to identify sites, where advertising delivery is more likely to reach light internet without overreaching heavy users.

3. Get valuable inputs for site development: Publishers can prioritise development of content and features according to different requirements of H/M/L user segment.

4. Increase ad sales/revenue- Publisher can demonstrate the site's ability to reach premium segments. Alternatively a marketer can look at psychographic profile of its site visitor.

comScore has one more good product for search related statistics- qSearch. This tracking provides weekly and monthly views of consumer search activity by search engine, which answers the questions...

1. How large is the search market and how fast is it changing.
2. Which search engine has the greatest reach among all searchers and how is it changing.

qSearch also reports on searches conducted on sites such as eBay, Amazon, Expedia, etc. Furthermore, it also includes search activity from following user activities:

- Searching on Maps and yellow pages
- Search conducted through hosted or affiliate search relationship
- Searches conducted across that various tabs found on most search engine e.g web search -> image search -> Video search. The definition of such fall under
- A user interaction where the user is presented with a search result page
- The search result page allows the user with the ability to refine or change their search parameter
- Search can be initiated from a drop down or clicking a link, as long as first two rules are satisfied.

All push-traffic and non user requested activity is filtered. It reports following searches in addition to all the searches

1. Auto Search: Refers to the search that is conducted by entering a search string into the address box in the browser. DNS error pages are not counted.
2. Toolbar search: Search executed from the Toolbar
3. Affiliate/Hosted search: where the search engine is hosted on an affiliate site.

comScore is at an advantageous position in India with its first mover advantage. Nielsen NetRating is still to start and gain ground. Comparatively Neilsen NetRating has a panel size with lower numbers as compared to comScore. However, they are known for their descipline and method and use the same metered tracking using panels and telephone surveys. Their products are called @plan, which helps in media planning (like H/M/L Segments of comScore). Sooner than later they need to have a foothold on one of the fast developing Internet Markets in India.

Hitwise is another such product, which given share of traffic data. Hitwise studies the browsing pattern at ISP level (in Europe, they have tied up with orange) and has more realistic estimate of share of traffic. Their downside, is on getting the Demographic profile of the audience. They too have to start their services in India.

For any emarketer, Brand assessment, buzz quantification and cross media measurement is a challenging task. Like offline disciplines, the need of the hour is to get used to measurement tools like these, which will help to define and shape up realistic business goals.

Do share your comments.

Cheers!

So, what is Social Bookmarking?

2008-02-18T13:11:00.008+05:30

There were Google "bots" and then came the bookmarks. Probably, 3-4 years down the line we might have this introduction for Social Bookmarking websites Del.ici.ous, Readit.com etc etc. It will take some time to pick up and can be considered as the hottest trend right now. My question on linkedin on "how many of you use social bookmarks and are the results effective?" has only two respondants :(

So, what do the social bookmarking tags/sites do? Very simply put, they help you save bookmarks as tags and share it with the community. Sites like del.ici.ous go a step further and show you interesting results. Sites like dig, show you the most popular stories. Consider this, everytime a person uses the bookmark to search information, he has taken one step further away from Google/Yahoo SERPs, indicating a huge traffic potential in times to come. The only difference being, these results of social bookmarks is the collective effort of readers (read humans) who have tagged/indexed the information. They might have researched on Yahoo/Google (and therefore sourced through a bot/algorithm), however the information is filtered and hence richer. Over a period of time, familiarity will pave way for more frequent usage.

Lets go little deep and explore the "semantics". Social Bookmarking is a term for allowing people to publish, categorise and share their bookmarks. Del.ici.ous uses a non-hierarchical keyword categorisation system, know as folksonomy, where user tag their links with one or more freely chosen keyword. This is like naming method (Taxonomy) but authored by users. Once bookmarks are posted and tagged, the keyword that users give them can be combined and shared in powerful ways. Users can see all the bookmarks on a keyword to learn what others feel is important, and see how many people bookmark a particular item to gauge its popularity.

Stripped down to its core, social bookmarking is a means by which a group can categorise and locate information based on its own evolving taxonomy. In other words, it's very collaborative and a little unstructured. Users "tag" content and the content is "Bookmarked" for all to see based on those tags. That kind of information categorisation is sometimes referred to as "folksonomy", a hybrid word referring to regular "Folks" and "Taxonomy", a method of organisation. The whole process is democratic. Whereas the search engines use top-down approach to sorting and filing data (the program algorithm shows people what it "thinks"), social bookmarking is bottom-up, grassroot system wherein users tell other users what they think and something of consensus usually forms. In true sense it is not the backlinks referral or SEO optimised content, but the popularity by fellow users that determines the ranking. Items favoured by more than one person percolates up in popularity, helping the user to find interesting things to read on subjects.

Social bookmarking sites fill as unique niche by helping organise truly useful information. It's a bit different from news of the day content covered by sites like Digg, although there is some overlap. People tend to bookmark content they found useful enough to consider revisiting at another time. This could be content thats simple longer than they have time to absorb when first discovered. A person could also subscribe to his bookmark feed using a program like bloglines using RSS link near the bottom of the page.

One limitation of social bookmarks (like del.ici.ous) to date is the privacy control. All bookmarks are visible to everyone else in the system, so this may not be an ideal location to bookmark financial reports of acquisition candidates, the MySpace profiles of prospective employees or other things that may raise an eyebrow. Yahoo has a similar product called MyWeb that does offer the ability to mark bookmarks private, shared with friends, or public, but hasn't taken off like del.ici.ous. Though Yahoo acquired del.ici.ous last year, but hasn't done much to integrate.

Social bookmarking will soon evolve beyond its techie tool avatar. Sooner than later, and as more people use it, netizens will realise that it is not just a web based access to bookmark. It is driven more by a form of implied reciprocation where bookmarkers contribute what they found interesting with the understanding that others will the same, leading to a community which is source of good content; the classic "collaborate and grow" netiquette.

Do you use social bookmarking? If you don't, it is always a good time to start and begin contributing and lend that 'Human touch" to search results.

Cheers!

The Nielsen Global Online Survey

2008-02-12T19:43:00.001+05:30

I was generally surfing for articles on general trends and direction on eCommerce and how is it shaping up in India. The good news is that the picture is rosy, which is no different to what you would have heard elsewhere. Its not a new news. Consider this, Indian internet space is real hot, has 37 Mln users, which is a good number (compare this to China with over 100 Mln and US 150 Mln). A robust Indian financial system makes it lucrative for eCommerce growth.

Our central body for internet and mobile- IAMAI B2C reports that eCommerce is expected to cross Rs.9000 crores (USD 2,250 Mln), a 30% growth over last years figures. Travel is the biggest driver of eCommerce and accounts for Rs.5,500 Crores (USD 1372 Mln). OTAs (like Makemytrip.com & Yatra), Tour Operators, Hotels and Railways, form this category. It is needless to say that travel as a category renders itself to online medium seemlessly. The next biggest contributor is online eTailing, where the total size is 850 crores (USD 212 Mln). Online classifieds contributes 540 crores (USD 135 Mln) and online subscription making up the rest of 20 crores (USD 5 Mln).

Rosy picture indeed, when you consider that our huge base of middle class spending
population of 300-450 Mln is still untapped.

Neilson Global Online Survey corroborates this fact. According to the report that it
released on 28th Jan, 2008, over 875 Million Consumers Have Shopped Online -- The Number of Internet Shoppers Up 40% in Two Years. Clothes/Shoes were the fastest growing Internet buys and “Visa” was the Most Popular Credit Card Payment Method. Read the full report here.

Another extract from the report is the following- among Internet users, the highest
percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97%), Germany (97%), Japan (97%) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 percent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 percent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76%) and Switzerland (67%) with the U.S. at 57 percent.

Credit card is the most preferred mode of payment ( more pronounced in Asia and Latin countries). Turkish online shoppers (who represent the economic elite in that country) topped global rankings for credit card usage (91%) for online purchases followed by 86 percent of Irish online shoppers and 84 percent of Indian and UAE online shoppers. The report further says, “Shopping on the Internet with the ease of a credit card is especially appealing to consumers in emerging markets who simply cannot find or buy items they want in their retail trade. The Internet has opened up a whole new world of shopping for these consumers". There is a list of online shopping sites covered in the study.

How much ever good we might feel reading the numbers, the fact remains that internet penetration has plateaued. The total eCommerce relevant TG will be 5 Mln, which is only 10%. The month on month growth is dismal. Broadband coverage is not increasing as expected. Moreover, the language websites is not taking off in a big way. Till the next wave comes, we will witness only organic growth.

Do let me know your thoughts and comments on this subject.

Cheers!!

Marketing and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence

2008-02-07T11:10:00.002+05:30

As I was driving back home today and cruising through the chain of thoughts, I was reminded of a few regular comments in my organisation, which my marketing folks will not find irregular- Where are the numbers? Marketing can never get their numbers right? Marketing never backs up data. etc etc.

The war between between sales and marketing lingers on; numbers and leads and conversion. These are eternal debates and has been a discussion point for many research papers and conferences.

However the truth is and the fact remains that at the end of the day and the quarter and the year end, sales is the only factor which has a direct impact on the organisation's bottomline and it is these numbers that builds CFO's confidence (and therefore CEOs). Marketing on the other hand, and till this point this would be still contesting and justifying, which gets me thinking- Is marketing an exact science?

Let me elaborate a little on what I'm talking about. I happen to attend a session on ROI marketing organised by ZenithOptimedia, where panel included Mr.Santosh Desai (Future Brands), Mr.Sachin Bhatia (MakeMyTrip.com) and a gentleman from new Walmart team. Mr Desai's thought were very provoking, he said- Numbers are handled very loosely and sometimes we measure for the sake of measuring. Remember, when we made graphs for science lab test. The line in the graph would come first and then would the figures. Results and targets would come first, then the numbers. All of us would have encountered this situation.

Now, consider marketing, where the greatest tool/invention is the concept of "Brand". Ironically, it never features in the balance sheet. But it is a brand which drives the consumer mindspace, preferences to use the product and therefore sales and market. Organisations spend huge time and money to build a strong brand. An ideal stage would be something like Google, where one doesn't have to spend any money, but before one gets to this situation, one has to do a lot of board meetings and meet quarter end sales pressures.

And if I were to ask, how big the brand should be, what is the measure of a big brand and how can it drive business goals, to what extent does it effect the bottomline and will shareholders buy it? Well, it is very debatable, but surely, it is not as easy as to have a future projection for sales. It is like defining the "Quality", which might empirically precedes any intellectual constructions. Deriving formula for numbers and projection is easy, but creating a brand isn't. Sales is easy, Marketing isn't. Thats why there are few marketing guys and very few of them become CEOs :)

Let me elaborate a little more and dwell on the realm of philosophy. World's fastest growing company, Google didn't know what it would become when it launched "Adwords". Best of the discoveries were not planned. It happened with a mixture of conscious effort and magic (call it hands of god, stoke of luck, belief etc). Robert R Prisig's book "Lila" (he also wrote "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainence") has a very insightful story. P wanted to reach Newfoundland, and prepared well for it. He trained himself as a sailor, gained proficiency in reading stars and maps. And so one day, he started on his journey to Newfoundland. There was a terrible storm and he lost his map, but then his inspiration kept him going. He used his instincts to guide him towards coast. He saw an island and he remembered that newfoundland was 10 kms to the right. Though he could not measure 10 km, he went further and saw some people. In order to ensure that his calculation was right, he asked these people how far was newfoundland. To his surprise he found that he was in Newfoundland!

In the process to get the right numbers, right target, right stretch target we seem to suppress our instincts and loose the feel for numbers (read business) and can't look beyond. If we can't differentiate between business goals and targets, the numbers become useless to reach goals. We loose the bigger picture. We measure for the sake of measuring and we make numbers to defend our options and resort to precision and more precision. The qualification of success would be how precise we are. And so would be the bonuses!

Marketing is philanthropic in its construction and all about hopes, dreams and aspiration and philosophy, which may not follow a polynomial regression equation and extends beyond the number business. Marketing is an inexact science and a creative profession. It is laidback, but performs, we should try to force fit its statistic correlation with bottomline.

Or shall we? I would love to hear from you :)

Cheers!

Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!

2008-02-05T15:59:00.002+05:30

$45 Billion is the figure. Steve Ballmer's offer, a "bear hug" in M&A parlance, was the first step. The letter ended with a mix of conviviality and veiled threat that suggests what might come next. "My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience," he writes. "Depending upon the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure Yahoo shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal."

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay wrote in a research note that "the Microsoft bid of $31 is very astute" because it puts pressure on Yahoo management to take actions that could unlock the underlying value of Yahoo assets, which he estimates are worth upward of $39-$45 a share.

If the Yahoo board digs in its heels, reject Microsoft's offer, and resorts to its "poison pill"—an anti-takeover maneuver to dilute the value of a hostile bidder's stake in the company—Microsoft's next shot would be to file a tender offer and nominate a new slate of independent directors. This is otherwise known as throwing the bums out.

Under Yahoo's bylaws, the notice for such a proposal and new slate of directors must be issued by March 13—enough time for the Yahoo directors to consider Microsoft's offer, while each side burns through some very high-priced legal advice, and Microsoft heads toward a possible proxy fight.

Google Lawyers have been blogging about the antitrust, with Microsoft's bid. Will they succeed? There are lot of action in this space. These are few good articles on this news...

The War for the Internet: Why Yahoo! is Microsoft's best chance to "kill Google." is my favourite ;)

Accenture Global Digital Advertising Study 2007

2008-02-04T11:45:00.002+05:30

My friend Anuj Anand shared a very interesting report with me last week and as usual i was about to junk it ;). A better sense prevailed and I didn't regret a bit going through the report.

Though it is called "Accenture Global Digital Advertising Study 2007"and you might think that it pertains only to US (no wonder their local baseball competition is also called World Cup), it does have something for all of us. Coming back to the report, the key takeaways were...

- 79 percent of our survey participants agree that advertising will become more performance-based, as the industry moves towards precise measurement of results, rapidly delivered. This will impose a performance discipline on an industry that has rarely felt this kind of pressure.

- 87 percent agree that analytics will become more accurate and more critical to the business. This shift will drive a decline in the use of traditional success measures — total audience per advertisement — but will enable advertisers to gain increased return
on investment through more accurate targeting of audiences.

- 97 percent agree that advertising relationships with customers will become more interactive, and the other 3 percent say they don’t know, meaning that not a single respondent disagrees. As a result of this greater interactivity, capabilities such as clickthrough buttons on TV will enable a two-way dialogue with the consumer all the way to purchase. These capabilities will also create a more meaningful feedback loop on advertising effectiveness.

- 43 percent of the respondents believe that digital media will become the primary form of programming and advertising content within the next five years, and a further 33 percent say this will happen in between seven and 10 years. The impact of this transition may be
accelerated by the typical pattern that early adaptors tend to be from higher income
demographic groups that are more attractive to advertisers. Traditional advertisers are largely unprepared for the wave of digitally driven change about to engulf them.

- Only 29 percent of executives believe the industry is technologically prepared for the resulting changes in performance measurement. The proportions are even lower in terms
of customer analytics (25 percent), targeted advertising (21 percent) and customer interactivity (13 percent).

- Largely as a result, the highest proportion of respondents (43 percent) believe advertising agencies have the most to lose in the transition to digital advertising, followed by broadcasters with 33 percent.

- Correspondingly, 46 percent believe that online search companies have the most to gain, followed by digital advertising specialists with 19 percent.

- 77 percent agree that advertising will be viewed in an integrated way on three screens — television, computer and wireless handset.

Indian scenario can't be more rosier. Digital agency Zenith Optimedia expects Internet ad spend to double, from 210 crores 2006 to 450 crores in 2007 and can potentially rise to 2,250 crores mark in 2009 (a 10 times increase). As a share of advertising pie, the share will rise to 6.8%, which was 1% last year. There is another interesting report on digital industry.

It just certifies a fact that we already know, that the advertising industry is facing a radical transformation — in terms of its technological and cultural impact. We need to focus strongly on the use technology to offer advanced customer interactivity. Targeting and analytics are gaining real competitive differentiation.

Therefore the implications for us are...

- If you are a new media company — build, partner or buy systems (sales, reporting, delivery) to support products across three screens and to deliver targeted advertising in privacy-compliant ways.
- If you are a marketer — escalate your integrated marketing and advertising initiatives across three screens, keeping a critical eye on performance metrics.
- If you are a technology company — focus on developing front-end and back-end systems specific to each medium’s unique needs.

If you can't locate PDF on the net, do write to me and I'll send you a copy :)

Cheers!

Internet- A Sales Channel or a Branding Medium?

2008-01-31T19:41:00.002+05:30

A food for thought, it didn't strike me even when Google was making a presentation on Branding strategy. Spends more on building brands, as the cost of conversions on a brand keyword would be the least (roughly 5-10 times more than your average conversion). So invest in brand and reap benefits, increase your ROI and lower the cost of conversion. Perfect theory, instantly buyable. Another large part of their presentation was on how the brands will be built online- Content, display ads, RIAs video ads. You name it and it is on the internet. As a marketer and a category leader what would you do? Where would you
put the money and how much.

Lets go a little deeper, and recall the definition of brands (a difficult one and to my mind one of the very misued terms). A brand is a sum total of Product's Physical attributes and its experience and has a name. A strong brand should be able to conjure images and experience (good/bad) in your mind. It is the holy grail of marketing, and in an ideal state, if your brand is big enough, you don't need to advertise and waste monies (but you do that till you get there). All our B-school course, our strategy is around how to build great brands (Mr Arker has written 4 books on this theme and Mr Kotler tome must be in its 11th edition by now). However, we marketers are still pondering over on how to do it. More so, how to do it online. Or should we not?

Lets consider this small example, TV has 70 million households, and more than 500 channels. The black box has been the greatest invention for marketing so far (in my opinion and have no hard feeling with my other online loving folk). Experiments have proven that a communication has a greater impact and lasting impression when sound and Vision are in tandem. And then came the other inventions Computers and Mobiles (also with screens). And so it happened that someone (and followed by a number of whitepapers) announced the birth of second and third screen (please note that the first screen was television). And marketing was to be dominated by this genre.

In US it started about 20 years back and now they have 50% internet penetration, Singapore is 60% and Taiwan is 90%. For India, I only know the number of users and it also varries greatly, 25 Mln as per comScore, 35Mln as per IAMAI and 45 Mln as per NASSCOM. In short, though our sheer number is high, our penetration is very poor (i'll update the penetration figures as soon I get it). In India, internet is still not a mass medium. Please consider the time spend by today's youth on each medium (Source Business World Youth Report 2006, IAMAI 2006)

TV: 124 minutes/day
Newspaper: 30 Minutes/day
Radio: 84 minutes/day
Internet:61 Minutes/day

People do spend time online, where does the communication stick and occupy that little space, which creates a brand. Video ads, Social community, RIA, Viral, Flash Movies and webisodes are the answers. Huge engagement, huge interaction and best of all it is by choice and recommendation (by search engine). But is this good enough to create brands? Good enough to create recall and not to use the search engine to come to the website? Will it be a talking point?

Lot of brands have done it, and have been hugely successful. Google didn't do any advertising (and maximised PR to its advantage). eBay utilised the online community and so did YouTube and MySpace. Orkut is very popular in India and they did it with 0 advertising.

And the most differentiating factor of our medium is the measurability. Internet is one of the few mediums that can define ROI (Direct Marketing is the other). So now we can use it to define goals and plan backwards to derive the ROI. The campaign have set goals and marketers can now be smarter and more accountable. However, this brings us back again to our moot point, can it create brands. At least in India can it replace TV. And will an emarketer choose Internet whole heatedly to drive the strategy to build brands?

CPM/CPC or CPA?

2008-01-28T19:11:00.002+05:30

The other day I had a tough time negotiating with one of the big online publisher. "We sell only on CPMs", the publisher said and were ready to discount the price by 20%. CPM is the usual discussion starter for any media negotiations and vary from publisher to publisher (at times can be as high as Rs.500). CPM stands for Cost Per Million, but in reality is only cost per thousand (CPT). Let me illustrate with an example

If you buy 1 Million impressions on Yahoo at Rs.350 CPM, means that at the end of the campaign you will have to pay Yahoo
1,000,000
_____________x350= 350,000 Rs.
1000

The other way to handle the negotiation is to get a fixed spot in prime real estate, at a fixed cost. e.g if you block the DHTML position (LHS position below the header). You might have to pay Rs.200,000 and would generate say 3 Mln impressions. See the following example to access if effective CPM might be a good idea to take a fixed position.

200,000
___________x1000= Rs.67
3,000,000

Thus indicating that given monies the same, Rediff is a better buy.

Most of the publishers keep revising the rates, depending upon the popularity of that position. internationally, it the third party auditing sources like comScore or Neilson net rating that corroborates this, however in India, it might be decided by the availability of the inventory (which brings us to the second most used term in discussion "Our inventory is sold out" ;). How many come to the website, what is the rightmatrix for measurement, time spent/Pageview, audience profile is a different discussion and Pandora's box. Check this article.

CPM is the starting point of any discussion and can actually multiply into lot of mathematics. The first such matrics is GRP, which brand advertisers will find most relevant. You might recall that (like television)

GRPs= Reach x Frequency

comScore has a special tool in its module that will help you to access the reach and frequency of your campaign. I'm not familiar with Neilson Netrating (as they don't have their services in India), but I'm sure they will also have this standard tool. This matrix will help you to synergise online campaigns with the other mass media component. However, the online world has a different brand dynamics. You might note, the first trigger of an offline campaign results in search for the keyword/website. Please note that this is an inexact science and as of now has no valid data point to corroborate assumption :).

There are other bunch of guys who swear by SEM. It is only by trial and error that you will find the solution to this misery and find that optimum Offline and Online mix.

CPM also brings us to the next big currency- CPC. You might get this standard reply from a big publisher- "We don't sell on CPCs ;)" or "We can lower the CPM". All they mean is that they don't have the right technology to support CPCs. Let me illustrate CPC by example. If you buy 1 Million impression on Yahoo with Rs. 3.5 Lacs as the outlay and a fixed spot on Rediff Home page for Rs.3 lacs, how would you measure the deal.

One way to do this is to use the Media Planner reach and frequency through comScore and come about a GRP number (which a brand guy should).

However, if you happen to be a marketing manager of a website, where traffic is paramount and you need visits to increase the bottomline (with your bottomline at stake), you will consider clicks. Say Yahoo creative has a an average click through rate of 0.6% and Rediff has 0.3%. The number of clicks that you will get from respective Publishers is as under...

Yahoo..... 1,000,000 x 0.6%= 6,000
Rediff.... 3,000,000 x 0.3%= 9,000

CPCs will be as under

Yahoo.... 3,50,000/6,000= Rs.58
Rediff... 3,00,000/9,000= Rs.33

Indicating that Rediff real estate works better and is more cost effective to drive the click traffic (maybe Rediff should sponsor my blog). Please note that the numbers are only indicative and for the sake of discussion.

As a performance advertiser, you would want a real estate that drives traffic and converts, not necessary a property that gets you eyeballs. CPC when used will remove this doubt from a planners mind (a smart marketer will further better this by using a better performing creative and up the CTRs). The benchmark CPCs (and effective CPCs) should be in the range of Rs.3 and upwards depending on the category. If you are jobs, it is easy and becomes tough for a luxury product/service.

In the performance marketing space the "IN THING" is the CPA (cost per acquisition), which a further distilled version on CPCs and effective CPMs. The most expected answer from a Publisher will be- "What is CPA?" and "There is a policy against CPAs". As a smart buyer you will chance upon and start the CPC discussion with the publisher again.

Truth is, CPA deals are a potential source of loss for a publisher, unless he is in a dire need to sell his inventory. By far, Google and Other Search engines will give the Best CPAs, followed by Affiliates (if your price and conversion rates are attrctive). Another fact of the matter is that a publisher would need huge investment to CPAs, MSN has Atlas, Komli has it own technology and so does Yahoo (but they still have to start monetising it). Let me illustrate it with one last example. Suppose Yahoo campaign converts at 0.5% and so does Rediff. The cost per conversion will look as under

Yahoo Total conversions= 6,000 clicks x 0.5%= 30
Total Cost= Rs.3,50,000/30= Rs.11,667

Rediff Total conversions= 9,000 clicks x 0.5%= 45
Total Cost= Rs.3,00,000/30= Rs.6,667

Indicating that Rediff drives much cheaper conversions (Now Rediff should definitely sponsor this blog;). This however depends on a number of factors, but most importantly what a publisher must realise is that most of the conversions is brought about by Non-prime real estate or the remamant inventory. This opens their inventory to a completely new set of clientele and huge potential to monetise their inventory. Check out this mediapost article...

Please do note that the smarter you buy, the better you can justify the value and at the end of the day it your numbers and board meeting that matters!!

First Step (Part 4): Email Marketing

2008-01-07T13:24:00.002+05:30

Email Marketing is not CRM; treat this as the most precise communication weapon that you have in your arsenal. EMails are personal and if used using "Recency" concept can deliver fantastic results. This is a bit of cliche, but studies have shown that personalized attention and getting to know when to connect with the consumer increases attachment and relationship (Marketingsherpa). And therefore EMail Marketing.

The conversion of an EMail campaign to a established base can be as high as 4-5% (and more) depending on the product category, which makes it even better than Search Engine Marketing. There are few other advantages...

1. The media spend spend is 0, you will spend only in technology to maintain the Email Platform and maintaining the response and conversion data.

2. EMail Marketing is also insulated from the bid fluctuation due to competition, and therefore the inconsistencies of the response and expected conversion.

3. The targeting is more precise, as the data is completely yours. Ideally you should have all the information- right from age to location and his buying pattern. Targeting coupled with right product mix would work wonders for the business.

4. Faster turnaround and results. SEM campaign will take 2-3 days to kick off, whereas Email can start getting your responses and conversion from the next day itself.

However, before an eMarketeer would reach this ideal stage (where he exactly knows who is he targeting), there's lot of groundwork to be done. An Email infrastructure requires an immense Technology backbone, coupled with data mining & history of communication plan. The goal should be to create identifiable and profitable clusters. These clusters are the cornerstone of this internet marketing tool, and needs to be studied continuously to determine how much focus should be given to a particular cluster. One of my friends who worked for Citibank direct marketing told me that they had 120 such groups (and is growing everyday). This segmentation is the foundation on which Email marketing works. Though initially traditional parameter like age, education, location, income level etc might dominate, but gradually one should move towards non demographic traits like preferences, tastes, which are more likely to influence the purchase.

The decision on which EMail platforms to go for will torment you for days. Better idea will be to get test account from two-three vendors, before you finally decide one. At MakeMyTrip, we used CATAPULTMAIL, which is the homegrown product of erstwhile Webshatra and now Position2. This is a very basic emailing platform, which helps to broadcast email with nice performance dashboard (# Broadcasted, # Opened, # Links Clicked). There are few advanced ones, notably Dartmail, which has a good relation with all the ISPs and inboxes. The precision and analytics are of very high standard. There are also specialised agencies which deliver this solution, solution integrated. Another late entrant is Epsilon International, which uses Dartmail. They have started an Indian office headquatered in Mumbai.

Before you start sending EMails, you should have a very clear idea of your database profile- total numbers, active base, targeting information like age, location, sex and transaction history (if possible). This should help you to divide the database into few groups and hence target communication. Every campaign that you execute should make you more intelligent about the base, about their preference and about their buying capacity. Here again, I would want to emphasise the need to integrate Web Analytics with the EMail platform, which would help you to measure the response down to the level of conversion. Again, when you use this data to enrich the profile information (in the database) it will make you next campaign stronger.

Though all the above points were in favor of technology and Emailing platform, one shouldn't ever neglect the power of content, the creative and the subject line. Like all the other form of internet marketing, these too should be optimised. An average open rates is 20% (30% in case of super efficient database) and click through rate (on open) is 15%.

Through EMail Marketing, marketing and organisation overall will not only save valuable marketing monies, which it would have spent to acquire the same users and increase conversion, but also make the brand stronger through a relevant interaction. The method encourages the marketeer to segment and thereby gain valuable and psychographic insights about his consumers and business. What could be a better competitive edge?

The First Step (Part 3): Invest time in building an Affiliate network

2008-01-03T15:55:00.002+05:30

The best part about an affiliate is that they work on remuneration. This is a boon for for an ecommerce site, where the ROI is always under pressure and every quarter, the CMO has to justify the spends.

This model started well before SEM, the pioneers were Amazon; where they rewarded every click responsible for a transaction (read the interesting article here). In Europe, Affiliate Network is a very popular Internet Marketing strategy and even preferred over SEM.

Affiliates use a variety of methods to get the clicks- SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Display banners to send traffic to your site; but the best part is that you pay only for a purchase. Review and recommendations are other few ways to get relevant traffic which converts. The remuneration can be basis Pay per Action (read conversion) or revenue sharing (% of profits).

There are a number of advantages in starting your own affiliate network Vs joining an existing one. These are...

1. The relationship with the affiliate is stronger and can work in favour of the merchant (the entity which pays for a conversion)

2. The affiliate can work as a partner and not just as a publisher in the network (where he can switch to another merchant the next day)

3. The payment rules (last click/first click/distribution of revenues as over last three clicks) is
more flexible and hence few performing affiliates can be nurtured and honed.

4. The payment process is smoother and faster (and hence the affiliates will be happier)

5. They can be used for a variety of techniques that will help SEO (link sharing etc).

However, developing an affiliate network require a lot of investment in technology and manpower. You will realise over a period of time that it is the relationship that matters and hence the "Affiliate manager" plays a key role in developing the network and maintaining it.

There are also existing affiliate network that you can join (both as a merchant and as a publisher), if you cannot build your own affiliate platform. In India, DGM is the most promising one. They started about a year back, but the superior technology platform, DC Strom, gives them an edge over the others. They are also quite big in Europe.

Which ever route you choose, start you Affiliate Network asap- the sooner, the better ;).

Happy New Year!!

Digital & Traditional Media Synergy

2007-12-26T09:09:00.002+05:30

Here is an interesting article on Digital Media & Traditional Media synergy on MediaPost. You will find the comment by John Grono of Gap Research full of insight and a thought we must consider as true eMarketeers.

Happy New Year!!

The First Step (Part 2)

2007-12-19T18:09:00.003+05:30

Step 2: Website/Landing Page optimisation

An ideal website is one where the visitor performs an action for which the website was designed for (irctc.com is one such site). The navigation should be free and simple, should be minimal and very simple in design. At times, even the colours add to the page weight, reducing the performance. Therefore before you decide to put that extra monies in your marketing budget, ensure that the website performance is optimal. One such measure would be website conversion (for content site this would differ).

The website should be continuously measured (through webanalytics) and bettered. There are a variety of means available, if one needs to test out
1. Multivariate Testing: here a combination of elements (Images, content etc) is tested. Point to note here is that, there are multiple execution options, and the calculation is not very simple.

2. A/B Testing: This is simpler to execute, as it is comparison test and popular. The one which gives result closer to the goal is chosen.

You MUST serve relevant landing pages for your advertising campaigns, once you have optimised the creatives (by getting the best CTRs). You can use these landing page optimisation (LPOs) techniques, serve a number of pages and use the best converting one finally. If you are using Google Analytics and Adwords, this service comes free. Else conversion and ROI from the paid traffic will be very poor.

Step 3: Invest in Brand, do regular television advertising
Not many businesses are fortunate. They don't have multimillion rupees budget to spend on television. Especially if you are website, where most of the monies will disappear into technology and SEM. The idea to use television can also be risky, considering what had happened in the past with home trade and pets.com. More importantly there are no fixed rules/study unlike FMCG.

Television is the smartest way to build awareness and positive disposition toward a website. The first visible effect is the increase in natural searches, which maybe through directly typing the brand name in the browser or through the search engines (and therefore SEO should have prepared foundation to handle this). The other empirical observation is that Click through rates (clicks/impression %) are higher both on Pay Per Click Advertising and banner displays. If the website is optimised, conversions will also be higher than a non TV period.

One should take care in media planning, as the effect can be measured, not through research, but in real time (and more often than not, CFO and CEO will be standing on your head). The old Krugman's theory of 60% at 3+ reach (& 450 grps/20day activity for sustainence) still applies here. However, there are no fixed rules and considering that media is now so much fragmented, the mix needs to be changed every now and then. This is like SEO, and will not yield immediate results, more than often, the marketing performance sheet will be in red.

The First Step

2007-12-16T14:18:00.002+05:30

What is the first prerogative of an eMarketeer? (Part 1)

A. Online: which includes SEM (which now includes SEO & PPC), Display/Banner advertising, E-Mail Marketing, Affiliate Marketing & Social Media

B. Offline: which includes TV, Print, PR Outdoor and BTL activities.

I belong to a small world of e-commerce, where the business survives on a website. The distribution is through the internet, which is also the first source for reach. Our first point of contact is our website and also it is the final consummation point. The consumers are also limited- a high ticket item, which can be bought only through a credit card (estimated to be 15 Mln in India). We have limited budgets (unlike FMCG/Consumer Durables), and being a start up ROI, every quarter is very important.

So what is the first step toward establishing that revenue generating website? Where should we put the monies, how should we measure the mediums? Please note that this is not a research paper with theta & Deltas, and might not have substantial data points for "Hence proved" formula. These are observations, which can act as handy reference points.

Step 0: Select a good Webanalytic tool
Before you proceed on strategy and define number that you will measure and which will define your ROI, select a measuring tool. You can better your website/campaign only if you can measure it. There are a number of tools available- Websidestory (now takenover by Omniture) is a great tool for eCommerce platforms and offer a wide range of products, right from Site Measurement to marketing performance (to measure SEM, Affiliate and other marketing campaigns). Omniture is a much superior platform, which allows you to measure the Social Media activities (RSS & Blogs) and has very simple dashbaords. They too offer suites for marketing campaigns & SEM, however the price is very steep. One good platform for content platform is Webtrends (we had the trial version of this software and was a good way to start appreciating Web Analytics). All these are real time softwares. There are a number of free tools also available- Google urchin is the most popular (You can use this too and evaluate it against the other platforms). However, the only hindrance is the privacy of data (and more so because I feel Google representatives can access the information. Now that they have vertical specialisation, it becomes even more scary. Clicktracs is another one. DGM also has its analytic tool and claims it to be good called DC Storm. Their affiliate and PPC is through this dashboard, and can be used for site Analytics as well.

Webanalytics will help to...
1. Estimate the daily traffic (and hence the popularity of the site) and the time spent (quite critical parameter for a content site)
2. Estimate the sources of traffic (where are they coming from, which websites) and hence the quality (basis what they do on the site, like on an ecommerce site, conversion is paramount)
3. Understand the navigation (and hence do website optimization)
4. Measure conversion and hence define goals for marketing campaign and site ROIs.

There is tons of data and webanalytics needs to sync in with the business goals if it has to make sense. The implementation of the platform is critical, as before we start relying on its results, we need to be very sure about the numbers that we see on the dashboard. More importantly pick and choose Key Performance Indicators (KPI) which will drive the business. This is not a one time affair, it needs to accessed daily and refined to suit business needs. You might want to check out Avinash Kaushik's "Web Analytics- An Hour a day"

If you want to know how is your website performance ( and need a second reference point) you can look at audience measurement tools like comScore and Nielson Netrating (not available in India as yet). These are panel based data and works on similar logic as TAM (television Audience Measurement). It will you to corroborate WebAnalytic data for your traffic sources and navigation beyond your site. Hitwise is another superior tool, but like other has no services for India.

Step 1: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM might have been confused with Pay Per Click about a year back, but now for all practical purposes includes SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). The above is the image from Eye tracking study which reemphasizes, the focus on natural listing (The first image is for Google, second for Yahoo and last one is MSN's).

SEO is the cornerstone of internet marketing. If your company's ROI depends on your website, this is the first step towards making it a revenue churning machine. For new to this term, SEO relates to left hand side section (minus the top highlighted portion) on Google and other Search Engine interface. The click on this link is free, and there is not one rule to get to the top. Experiment and try, learn and experiment again. Writing Metatags, having site maps and building links through link exchange is not enough, as Google algorithmis never consistent. You would have to consistently look at numbers and take action accordingly.

You would need to invest in resources and have a special team, comprising of content writers, tech, website designs and a SEO specialist. There is no shortcut, and no blackhat SEO technique (read as spam) that will give you results. Best way is to learn this trick yourself, even the result itself take a long time to come (in some cases more than 3 months). One great resource is John Bettelle's book "The Search" and his blog http://battellemedia.com

SEO is basis a simple funda- your (read as site) is worth basis how many recommendations (read as backlinks) that you get. In the sphere of social media, getting the site recommendations will gain precedence over the work done by "Google Bots". Hence if you are looking at SEO, start dirtying you hands with Social Media as well. Gain and nurture well wishers and advocates for your site who will get you that relevant ranking on search engines.

Pay Per Click, is what made Google what it is and changed the way we look at internet marketing. It is measurable, it is very instant and very powerful. Here you can bid the price that you want to pay if a guy clicks on the Google ad, arriving at this price is very scientific and a combination of the part of net return that you can put on table vs your competition and the demand for that product. Invest in identifying these keywords, the moment you start your business. These would almost be like a portfolio of keywords that can act as drivers for your business. If you are regular at this game, you will soon realise how to target the mindset of your TG (by looking at the keyword). But mind you, this is only 20% of the clicks (traffic) rest 80% is free as SEO.

There are good number of agencies which help in Pay Per click campaigns- Webchutney (highly recommended), Quasar and also GroupM (more for brand campaign). If you have crossed 15 lacs as the total spends on Google SEM, you should be looking at an automated solution- Efficient Frontier (highly recommended) and DGM work on these lines. I had also come across on other agency called Net Elixer, which had a similar model. All these platforms have unique optimisation algorithms, which optimise towards a goal. For an ecommerce platform, it is easy, as we are only looking at conversions/products sold. However for a brand advertiser, the goal will be different.

SEO and SEM should work in tandem. Though initially you will have to focus on SEM, as the results come faster and it is fun to see the numbers increase every day. SEO on the other hand will pick up slowly, but very high on conversions (double of what you will get through SEM). SEO and SEM combination works the best. For High conversion keywords, one needs to be present on both natural as well as paid listing. As your SEO campaign starts picking up, you would have to move lower converting SEM keywords into SEO. Over a period of time you will get the best mix which gives the best ROI.