Forget good or bad, just plain ugly

I recently got this in my mail. This should be put up there as the epitome of ugly advertizing:



This is the latest pop-up kind of advertizing. The portal promises that the advertiser gains because this latest method of pop-up advertizing "just jumps out and grabs attention" and that the brand "just cannot be ignored". I'm sorry but when did advertizing become this annoying. can you imagine how this pop up ad would massacre the surfing experience of a person? world over people are moving towards non intrusive advertzing platforms because there is a big realization that advertizing that is annoying does not transalte into ROI. It may grab attention but also creates an ill feeling about the brand in the minds of the consumer.

The reason why Google's SEO based text advertizinng was a runaway success was because it was simple, direct and clean. It didn't take away from the surfing experience but ingact complemented it. Facebook too, while contemplating and Ad platform took pains to ensure that the advertizing didn't detract from the user experience. Companies like Facebook have to be particularly careful because user experience is what makes or breaks social interactive sites. That's why this portal's latest venture is puzzling and frankly a bit annoying. This also sends a wrong message to your most valuable asset, your website's subscriber. By pissing them off, by putting annoying pop up advertizing, you are turning them away from your website!

Another side of ugly is the latest Yahoo Search Ad in India. The Ad shows a skydiver with a stutter failing to count from 1-10 in time (due to his stutter) and then eventually crashing to death, with the tagline going "Sometimes every second counts". I don't see how this Ad is even remotely funny. Its in extremely poor taste. As a marketer the rule of thumb is you do not make fun of people disabilities. Simply because, marketing is a very powerful tool. It has an incredible power to influence huge masses of people and must be used to promote positive ideas. I truly believe this. A brand that infuses or reinforces positive ideas will also be looked upon in the same light. When a brand tries to ridicule a group no matter what their ethncity will always end up leaving a bad taste and that's a risk a top notch brand like Yahoo should not take.

E-commerce e-rrupts in India

(Apologies for not posting regularly, work's been a little busy. Below is an article of mine on the growth of E-commerce in India that was published. Citation of this in any reproduction would be appreciated)

You know things have come full circle when your mom tells you to check the internet for better prices before buying a TV. Unbeknownst to me my mom, who I thought was rather vary of the internet as a medium to buy/sell things, had been actively browsing the net, buying travel tickets, perusing ebay and other property sites and even indulging in online stock trading ! That’s when two things hit me. E-commerce is a reality in India and that my mom is officially more net savvy than me. Considering that I actively cover the digital space looking for the next big trend, this fact is greatly embarrassing.

But on a more serious note, the E-commerce trend in India requires a serious look considering that more and more people in India are using the net not just to chat or to look for more information but also to buy and sell commodities. That’s why the Consumer E-Commerce Market in India 2006-2007 Report released by the Internet and Mobile Association in India (IAMAI) is particularly useful as it offers insights on the size and drivers of the E-commerce Market in India.

According the report compiled by IMRB, the B2C E-commerce industry for the year 2006-07 was computed to be around Rs. 7080 crores. Further more, the market is set to grow at a whopping rate of 30% and is expected to be worth Rs. 9210 crores by the end of 2007-08. To fully understand the implications of the report it is important to understand E-commerce and what it consists of

E-Commerce
E-Commerce is generally defined as the buying & selling of products & services over the internet or other internet based computer networks. A vast array of commerce is conducted in this way through activities such as electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

Traditional commerce, which consisted of a physical market place, with physical products and physical payment methods was forced to evolve with the advent of the internet. The physical products were displayed on the virtual world and were thus available electronically. The online payment system through credit and debit cards also ensured that even the transaction was purely electronic

E-commerce in India

The E-commerce market in India has been largely spurred on by the huge upsurge in the online travel industry due to the entry of low cost carriers. The IAMAI Report, based on feedback from key players in the e-commerce industry, divides the E-commerce sector into the following verticals

1. Travel, comprising Travel aggregators, Tour Operators, Hotels and Railways
2. E-tailing, comprising Online Retailers and Online Auctions
3. Classifieds, comprising Online Jobs, Online Matrimony, Online Property, Online
Automobile and General Classifieds
4. Paid Content Subscription, comprising research, articles, exclusive videos, etc
5. Digital downloads, from Internet to Mobiles and internet

As mentioned earlier, The total market size of B2C and C2C E-Commerce industry in India is around Rs. 7080 crores at the end of 2006-07. It is expected to rise to Rs. 9210 crores by the end of 2007-08.

Following is the break up for B2C and C2C E-Commerce Industry in India for the year 2006-07 and 2007-08:

The above figures show that along with online travel, the digital downloads segment is
expected to be one of the main contributors to the Online Non-Travel Industry in future due to an increase in mobile subscribers across the country.

E-commerce Usage in India
The adoption of E-commerce in the country correlates directly with rise in the internet usage in the country. According to I Cube 2007 Internet in India Report, the internet base in India grew by 40% to reach 46 million

As the base of internet users gain more awareness and exposure, it is expected that they will spend more time on the internet and graduate from basic internet applications like email & chat to using the net for advanced applications like finding information and making transactions online.

As shown by the above chart, E-commerce activities has risen to being 5% of the overall internet activities in the country. Although the bulk of the internet activities is still Email, E commerce is projected to grow as online transaction norms and other entry barrier ease over time

Facilitators and Barriers For The E-Commerce Market in India

As a marketer, it is important to understand the reasons behind the growth of the E-Commerce industry in India inorder to come to a decision on if your product is ready for the e-commerce route.

According to the I Cube 2006 Report, the top 6 reasons for buying online are:

Clearly consumers favour transacting online when time is a constraint. Another major reason is the convenience afforded by shopping from home. One of the biggest advantages of having a virtual store is that a wide variety of products can be displayed as space/retail rent is not a major constraint

For E-commerce to make rapid strides in the country, we also need to look at the barriers that are impeding consumer activities in this arena

As seen above, the biggest concern still remains product quality and the absence of the touch-feel experience afforded by physical products. Online payment transaction security is also a major concern given the spate of credit card frauds and phishing related incidents

E- commerce is undoubtedly the future of shopping in India, although, as shopping in this country is an experience in itself, it is unlikely to supplant the traditional mode of shopping. For this sector to grow robustly concerns regarding online payment has to be
addressed at the earliest. Internet users have to be educated about transacting online & their apprehensions in revealing credit card details must be allayed. Inorder to compete with the traditional store fronts, more customization and variety has to be incorporated.

An interesting way forward would be to supplement traditional store fronts with an online portal to service customers who are bogged down by long queues, who have little to spend on shopping and who are looking for more variety. A great example of this would be trying out a dress in a traditional store and on not finding the exact colour or size, going online and ordering it off the store’s online portal.

I would definitely recommend all those working in the digital media to check out the various internet and mobile telephony based reports available on the IAMAI website - http://www.iamai.in/, especially the “Internet in India 2007” report. These reports offer an invaluable insight, one that may save marketers a lot of money from that cash strapped marketing budget.

iPhoney

So the big news of recent times was the launch of the Apple iPhone 3G in India less than 11 weeks after its glonal launch and the big shocker was the price point - 31,000 for the 8GB model and 36,100 for the 16 GB model - roughly 4 times the US price.

Frankly speaking they got it wrong. India is an extremely price sensitive market. People here no matter how affluent will always look for value for money and will not splurge good money on things like design. Its in our DNA. Let me state that its not the question of price for the indian consumer but if the price is justified at all. Thats the moot point. Once we are convinced that its worth the price, only then we'll go for it. Thats why all the companies around the world have a special strategy for India because we are firm about things and what they are supposed to cost.

Thats why the iPhone strategy is baffling. Are they really asking the Indian consumer to pay 4 times the price of what consumers pay in the US after not being able to avail the 3G facilities because (this is classic) 3G is not functional yet in India. Are these people for real? The folks at Vodaphone are defending their strategy by saying that they wanted to position this product as an aspirational product rather than as a mass product. When did mass become a bad thing anyhow?? and how does a product which does not have facilities to forward an SMS become an aspirational product??

Apple doesn't have cult status in India. They don't have frenzied fanboys who'll wait in freezing cold for a midnight launch. They can afford to be arrogant in the US because they have managed to cultivate a loyal legion who'll lap up whatever Apple offers and be its evangelists. Not in India. They don't even have an India office. What they needed to do was create that loyal base in India to ensure that they had some presence in the fastest growing telecom market in the world. Granted in the US, AT &T heavily subsidizes the price of the phone by keeping the user locked to the service for 2 years but I hear in India too its on similar lines. One needs to pay activation charges and the sim is locked to the phone.

The telecom operators could have played it in a smarter manner. I'm sure if the price was attractive enough, people would not have minded sticking on with the same service provider. They've lost a brilliant opportunity to control a captive market. The ones who are gaining in this mess are Nokia and Sony Ericsson. All they have to do is come with a phone which costs half the price and double the features and they can pretty much kick IPhone's butt. They really don't get the indian consumer do they??

Long tales and other good reads

So things have been good. Been reading a lot of good reads lately. Few of the really good ones for your perusal & consumption below:

Chris Anderson's Book - The Long Tail
I know, I know i'm behind the curve on this one. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006) by Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-chief of wired magazine (the favourite read of this blog) is a stellar book and must be read by everyone who is remotely interested in economics. Yes Economics and not just the internet. Anderson in this book talks about the remarkable manner in which the internet has re-written traditional retail that focussed solely on "hits" due to the constraints of supply chain and inventory costs. The main focus is on how, due to the internet, the market is moving towards the "non hits" as people are moving from mass consumer products to more customized niche products.

I knew about the Long Tail theory pretty much when the book released but this book has given me an insight on Search Engines that I never noticed before. The sieving quality of search engines to negotiate all the clutter on the net.That, methinks, is the saviour of the long tail. Yes there is significant choice out there thanks to the internet and the availability of information. But choice is useless unless you can get to it. Search Engines sift through the internet to get you what you want. That's why a Search Engine on the web portal is crucial.

Most companies do not pay attention to the search engines on their own web portal because they think their own portal is a small universe and people will get to the content any way. But regardless, navigating any portal can sometimes be overwhelming. I personally hate it when search queries within a site don't work and give out odd results. Especially when its at odds with Google. The big takeway for me personally from this book was that marketing to the long tail because of its niche drive preference is going to be difficult and sometimes not feasible but if one has an elaborate website, investing in good search engine technology and a recommendation alogorithm will ease things up significantly.

One of my favourite lines in the book tho, is when he describes Fiona Apple as "Delightfully Unhinged". I'd like to wear a T-shirt that says that! More on the book here. Also read the Long Tail blog here

There's a blogging exchange of words going on in Harvard Business Review between Chris Anderson and Anita Elberse, a harvard prof. Elberse is arguing on if one should take the long tail seriously and invest in it. Its an extremely good read and besides its greatly stimulating to see two intellectuals argue. Register on the HBR site and you'll get access to it. Can't link to it unfortunately :(

More shameless Wired Plug Alert
Yes well, what can I say I'm like a wired groupie these days. Wired is celebrating its 15th anniverssary this year and because of that one is able to access a lot of past gems. I chanced upon a wired article on the landmark US Vs Microsoft anitrust case. Th article, all of 45 pages, was published after the judgement to break up Microsoft was delivered in 1998. The article brilliantly narrates the events leading up to the case and gives inside scoop on all the players involved especially the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Microsoft.

The article reads like a salacious saga and is completely absorbing. Besides that it gives one valuable insights on US anti trust laws. By the end of this article, one gets to know the Sherman Act better than one's right hand. You also get know the ugly side of Microsoft. I'm not sure if the article was particularly biased against Microsoft but its not flaterring in anyway. I don't really get why people in tech hate microsoft so much. It may be vehemently dominating and they may not make the best of products but hey nobody out there has an OS that matches Microsoft. I use MS products evryday and I don't think I should crib particularly when I have not seen a better product to rival it. Read the article here

This made me wonder if India has Antitrust laws? Anyone know? Also I don't particularly think its a good idea, not right now any way. We've just become a free economy, what we don't need right now is a regulatory law. Besides, the ambanis and tatas of this country would never allow it

*end shameless plug*

More bounty
The Economic times recently had a great article on Leadership. In an article called "Four fundamental laws for CEOs racing against time" the author, with good examples, illustrates the 4 guiding principles that CEOs, who are pressed for immediate results, should adopt.

Another article in ET talks about the importance of customer advocacy. The author makes the case about why one should always invest in building a loyal community of users as the latter could come to the rescue during bad times. Read the Article here

Cat got the cream

I was reading today on afaqs on the success of Meow FM, which is apparently a "womens only radio station" and the first niche radio station in the country. I have, on travels to delhi, heard Meow FM and the one thing that struck me was that it was extremely chatty. More prone to talk than to music. Ofcourse the talk centred on steoreotypical topics usually associated with women - relationships, clothes shopping etc. But what works for this radio station is pure differenciation

Differentiate or die. I feel I should create a T shirt and embrace this slogan. Its especially true in market which is overcrowded and the opportunities for differentiation is small. Thats the story of the Indian radio scenario where all stations pretty much play the same music and sound the same. Yes there are myriad types of music but if you consider the Indian milieu, if you're not playing bollywood music you might as well die. Some channels do play english music as a point of differentiation but the audience for that is still very small even in urban cities. The issue for radio stations is to cater to a mass audience and still be different. World space kind of attempted this by catering to various music like southern music, classical music and more but again the critical mass of all these channels, I feel, weren't significant. Meow's differencitation of catering only to women has apparently worked. According the article, Meow enjoys "a share of 3 per cent in Delhi; in Mumbai, the share is 2 per cent. In Kolkata, however, where it was launched recently, the share is 8 per cent".

In the name of differentiation, one might end up catering to a niche and that might be a risky proposition but as the Meow FM scenario shows, it might also work to an advantage especially with advertizers. As the channel is so niche, advertizers, for whom women are a major target audience, prefer to advertize on this channel as the effectiveness of advertizing increases. So more buck for your money because your audience is being appropriately targetted. Meow attracts advertisers who are interested in women’s products and women consumers, such as the FMCG brands, retail brands and educational institutes. "You won’t see too much property, banking and financial brands on our station," Meow's Chief operating officer, Anil Srivatsa asserts.

Meow in fact has gone one step further. The article goes on to say that because their channel is so niche, "Meow has a dedicated team called Meow Research, which conducts research on women, lifestyle choices, product preferences and the various aspects of a woman's buying pattern or behavioural pattern. This data is churned out every two weeks and will soon be made available to anybody – advertisers or media agencies – who wants to use it ". Who said advertising was the only way to make money?

Another interesting feature is that Meow has started a social networking site called merimeow.com which not only enables them to connect with their audience over web 2.0 but also, as most Social Networking sites require sign ups and profile entries, these guys get valuable profile information on their target audience. They get to know which dempgraphic listens to meow the most, what's hot, what's happening, what the buzz is and more!! Jeez these guys ARE smart! Infact on checking the site out, I was reminded of another brand that used web 2.0 very very smartly - Sunsilk's Gang Of Girls website.The Meow website has a virtual bazaar that no doubt markets women's products. Soon there will be tie ups with third party companies that cater to cosmetics, soaps etc and meow will end up creating another revenue stream.

A lot of interesting best practices from a radio station that no one took seriously when it first launched and which proved that differentiation is critical for survival. Read the complete article here

Also, I really do not want to say MEOW one more time

Google Killer? Really??

So well, Cuil.com was launched recently amidst much hoopla and was touted by its PR as the "Google Killer" search engine. Well the verdict it out and initial reactions aren't much to go by. I'm being polite, let me say it then, it sucks. But that isn't the point, the point is that it sucks primarily when compared to Google. But, wait a sec, I didn't force the comparison, Cuil itself forced me to do it.When you call your product the killer anything, you are begging people to make comparisons by raising their expectations and if don't particularly meet those expectations and flounder badly, you are going to invite some pretty strong reactions

Well to be honest the tag line caught my fancy and I too tried out the site and the first thing I did was search my name. I was very very disappointed with cuil's results. For a site that claims to index far more sites than google, I was pretty let down with the results. My blog for instance wasn't indexed (and no I'm not berating cuil for that reason). My point is that, this is obviously a big PR snafu. Ofcourse it attracted a lot of people, ofcourse a lot of people searched on it but the upshot of it has been that it has been universally berated. Is the hype worth the negative reaction? The done thing would have been to be slightly discreet, to have gone for a soft launch with rigorous testing of the product without tall claims

The lesson for marketers here is to ensure that there is no disconnect between the marketing hype and the product. Ofcourse we all want our products to sell but nothing is worth the bad press and the public really isn't that forgiving. So next time you make tall claims make sure the product live upto it

More about cuil here

Twitter - Fail Whale Brand Strategy

I like twitter a lot. Its so uncomplicated. If you haven't heard of twitter yet, duuuuuude better catch up! Twitter is essentially a micro-blogging service where people input text to keep their friends or "followers" updated on what's been happening in their lives. Twitter has a character limit of 14o, so its sorta like a MSN/Gtalk status message only with more character limit and which people online can follow

Twitter is cool but more often than not the site seems to be down, particularly when there is heavy usage during an event like Mac world expo etc. Although the site suffers from technical glitches, it still has extremely loyal followers and its popularity is growing day by day. So question, how come web surfers like us who have no patience with technical glitches, still continue to patronise twitter? Answer: Twitter has come across as a community product. Twitter communicates the site unavailibity through a Fail whale graphic and is extremely open about site outages and failures. This honesty is endearing and comes across as genuine. The Fail whale graphic greatly helps in this cause. The image now has a huge fan following online and there's even a mechandize line based on the fail whale image.

The fail whale image above, was created by Yiying Lu and apparently symbolizes a Beluga Whale in distress. A beluga whale is known to utter high pitched twitters. The image of a whale in distress being resucued by birds seems like a quirky, open, honest & endearing way of communicating a problem and this is what I guess, keeps people loyal to twitter, although if the glitches continue unfixed, the user patience might run out.

The message here is to maintain a dialogue with the users about a genuine problem and this in a way fosters transparency and trust in a brand. This is also a great example of how building a community around your brand can help during bad times.

Rolling with the times

As a marketer it is very important to have a pulse on the mood & sentiments of the market. A message becomes all the more powerful when it comes in context of some mood and hence is all the more powerful. A good example of this is when brands start associating themselves with the festive season. I'm not talking about consumer durables promoting special festive season offers, but of a more powerful variety of messaging such as say Cadburys and Diwali, Coca Cola and Christmas etc. The message is apt because it resonates with the audience completely.

When a product or brand adapts itself to the prevailing mood or sentiment the connection between the brand and the consumer is strengthened. Take for example, the special Date Frappuccino®, that starbucks introduced last Ramazan in the middle east. The date is the fruit of the season during Ramazan in the middle east and when a company comes out with a special edition coffee to commemorate a special festival, the market instantly connects to it and the association with the brand becomes all the more stronger. I mentioned in my last post about MacDonalds giving out Daandiyas with their combos during Navaratra last year. That was more than an instant hit. Acts such as these make the brand less global and more local and helps in building a local level loyalty

But these are annual seasonal trends- these festivities happen every year and one has ample time to incorporate it into the grand master plan for the year, but what unforseen trends? like the oil crisis? or inflation or the energy efficiency drive? all these are macro economic trends that happen suddenly but need to be incorporated into the messaging to reassure the consumer. I'm facing this particular dilemma at work. Thanks to the current macro economic trends ,I'm talking to my audience more in terms of asset utilization and energy efficiency.I didn't expect Oil to breach the $140 mark at the beginning of the year and so didn't plan for it. But inorder to keep up with the times and to send out a more reassuring message, the communication focuses on such aspects and strongly resonates with the current mood. And it works. People react to it more than they would to a more normal sort of messaging.

Take for example the topic of energy efficiency. If your product is remotely energy efficient, now is the time to shout about it from the mountain top because people will pay attention. As purse strings get tighter, the new buzz word is "cost saving". Having such words incorporated in the communication makes it more effective and current.

So anybody else having to restructure communication plans because of the economy?

McIdea

I'm often amazed at how McDonalds has this uncanny knack of making me buy what it wants me to buy. As a marketer, in my book, thats a bloody coup. Marketers are generally wont to begin with the matching the cutsomer's expectations. This is what you want, this is how we'll match the need - very rarely do we go on the path of telling the customer what he should have instead, because in our world, the customer is king. But MacDonalds has the gall to tell you what you should have. I'll tell you how

I generally go to MacDonalds to have a quick bite when I'm in a hurry or if I'm not too hungry. I have a set preference - Chicken Mexican Wrap. Always. Unless MacDonalds is running some special offer and then my world goes topsy turvy. The special offers on combo are generally the high priced combos and with them you get a free something that's really attractive and tempting. Right now there's a Fear Factor offer going on and one gets a penknife free with every combo. Now do the math please. Initially I was going to spend Rs 65 but because of the combo offer - Burger+Fries+Coke I pay Rs 117. Thats Rs 52 more than I intend to spend. Now consider that MacDonalds buys these penknifes (If they do that at all!) on large volume discounts from its supplier, so its fair to assume that each costs Rs 10. But since a joint promo is paid for by the company doing the promo - in this case - fear factor, we can negate the Rs 10 that Macdonalds had to shell out. Plus the extra food might be considered at Rs 25 extra. So net profit for MacDonalds from this offer - Rs 27. and thats just me. Multiply this by millions and you know why they call it the Golden Arches.

Sheesh! these buggers (or burgers?) are geniuses. Instead of looking down on cheap fast food. We should be genuflecting in front of these people. I have learnt a big lesson today.MacDonalds has learnt succesfully to tap into the culture of the mileu they operate in. They have low price entry barriers, playing very well in the Indian Psyche of low prices and then they upsell through the combos. The upselling usually takes advantage of the mood of the market. During Diwali, MacDs had a combo offer where they were giving out Daandiyas!!. And these things were literally flying off from the shelves. People were falling over themselves to get one of these. And again I'm sure the profit per person must have been something close to Rs 40. MacDs has been successful because they've adapted themselves to the Indian Psyche. No just talking the language but reflecting the culture in the menu too - Tikki, Tikkas and what not. I hear the they even have an all vegetarian outlet in Ahmedabad. Thats the one lesson MNCs need to learn from MacDs. Adapting the brand to the local culture but yet maintaining the brand identity. Who knows once we perfect this we may we even develop the gall to do what MacDonalds does - Change the customer's mind. I'm sure then we'll be lovin it too!

Top 8 Tips For Marketing Your Blog

Its finally happened!! Google has started indexing my blog!! yaaay! *passes out imaginary glasses of champagne* Well jokes aside, as I had chronicled before, I was finding it increasingly difficult to get my blog indexed - it was not showing up in any searches of my name and this continued for upto 5 months. I checked out Google's Site Analyzer and found that I needed to apply basic optimization tecniques like adding more links. So I made it a policy to add links in any post I write. I guess the links need to be relevant. Other than that I didn't do anything much except update the website on a regular basis. I guess both the above techniques are key to getting the blog indexed, because after I implemented these two things in a month or so my blog got indexed.

Now that my blog has been indexed, the question arises on how one should market the blog. I've tried out some of the methods and they have worked fairly decently in increasing traffic. Then there are others that I've not yet tried but are sounds techniques nonetheless that surely would garner more traffic, so here they are, in no particular order:

1. Publicize Publicize Publicize - If we are really desperate for traffic then the Blog URL must be ubiquitous and visible in all our communication - Things like email signatures, Status messages in Gtalk, MSN & Yahoo, on facebook, linked in & orkut profile or even custom T shirts! (I kid about the T shirts thing, but you can implement if one is really desperate ). Email signature at work is a bit risky but its a sure fire way to ensure that your colleagues visit your blog

2. Blog Directories - Registering with numerous Blog directories really work. Some of the blog directories are free and simply request for a link back in return for a listing

3. Search Phrase Analysis - Analyzing Search Phrases & focusing on the kind of people coming to the blog will definitely help in ensuring that they come back again. I mean if you find that one particular post is attracting a lot of traffic, it makes sense to write more on that particular topic

4. Regular Updates - Regular updating of the blog always always sees an increase in traffic. It gives people a chance to check out the blog on a regular basis. This also means that there is more of your content out there for google to index and more content means more search traffic

5. Social Bookmarking - This one especially worked for me. Social bookmarking blog posts means that traffic from social bookmarking sites such as Digg. Del.ici.ous, stumbleupon etc will come to your site. This also helps in raising the page rank due to the link back from these sites

6. Make the blog interactive: Write stuff in a way that solicits comments, views & opinions and make sure that those comments are responded to. People who write comments always come to the post to see if their comment has been answered *I wouldn't know about this particular point because nobody comments :( *

7. Visit other such blogs & comment: This is the easiest way to attract traffic to ones blog. Pick 4-5 high traffic blogs about your area of interest or on what your blog is based on. Comment, comment, comment regularly on it so that you start attracting some of that high traffic on to your own blog. Oh you can also email the blog owners discreetly and beg and plead that they include you on their Blogroll

8. Email Subscription or Plain Prostituting - Inform & email everyone you know that you updated your blog and ask everyone to go check it out. Doing it 2-3 times in the initial stages should be fine. This will atleast register in everyone's mind that you have a blog atleast. Doing it regularly makes one look need. Setting up an email subscription app on the blog once traffic has reached certain critical mass will also help in getting those regular readers back. Setting up RSS feeds is also a good idea

I'll definitely update this list as my own blog grows *hopefully* till then read this absolutely awesome article for more great tips on blog marketing. I suggest this link be added to your favourites list and also my blog hehehe

Publishing Assembly Line

I Continue to be amazed by Futures Group, India's Retail Giant, owned by the Retail King, Kishore Biyani. Now we all know that Depot is a future's group retail foray into books, music, stationary and gifts. But what you didn't probably know (atleast I didn't!) is that it is also involved in something known as "Self Publishing"

Now Self-Publishing means that Depot provides end to end solutions in publishing for a price. So Basically if you've always harboured notions of becoming an author but thought that you were prolly not the prize catch of the big publishing houses, then depot comes to your rescue by charging a small fee for publishing your book!! whoah! So if you decide you want to write a 200 page book with roughly 40,000 words in it, depot charges you for the cover design, proofing, editing, lay-outing, and printing. It calculated that it would cost me 2.5 lakhs to publish my book if I took all their services. Now the best part is that they also promise you a snazzy "book launch" through their retail platform and if it has a potential to be a hit, they'll even retail it for you!

Wow, so now writing a book is like a business investment. I invest 2.5 lakhs, price it competitively and if it sells like hot cakes, I rake in the moolah? and all this without the disappointment of rejection letters from publishing house and without agency cut and tiresome editors. Sounds too good to be true, but I wonder if this will work. There's too much of an aspiration element here, but considering it is coming from Biyani, I'm sure he's thought this true.

What do you think? would you invest to publish your book? I don't know actually. The old fashioned way of being cherry picked by publishing houses has more credibility to it. But this new method has to it the very agressive retail arm backing it. So if your book has potential you can be sure Depot will aggressively market it in their stores.

Read more at http://www.depotindia.in/self_publish.php

My Raison D'Etre

Things on the work front have been quite good. I got the 2nd Highest Individual Award from my company for my work in developing the marcom activities for my business. It feels great to be recognized but more importantly its a sign that the management views marcom as a strategic function important for generating revenues instead of just some random department making brochures.

I love what I do, I wake up in the morning everyday in love with the world simply because I love what I do *touch wood* . I know I don't have the age, wisdom or experience to give advice but please please PLEASE, don't waste a single minute of your life not doing what you love doing.

Go find your bliss!

Hard Bounce - Soft Bounce Dilemma

As a marketer, nothing gives me more pain than cleaning up my email lists. Deleting email addresses that has taken months togather after searching high and low. But clean we must inorder to be efficient and to save money.

Cleaning of email lists generally begins with the email bounces list provided by the emailing software. The bounce list as people aware of such technology will know, usually consists of 2 lists - a Hard Bounce List and a Soft Bounce List. Now herein lies the confusion. The definition of what constitutes a Hard bounce or soft bounce varies over various over Recepients and ISP.

Some email clients consider a Full Email Inbox has a Hard Bounce whereas some consider it a soft bounce and multiple attempts is made by the mailing software to ensure deliverability.So it is pretty difficult to clean lists based solely on Hard-Soft bounce reports as perfectly good email addresses might get deleted if only hard bounces are considered or bad email addresses might remain on the list if soft bounces are considered clean

This article by Derek Harding provides a decent overview on tackling the dilemma. Its worth a read if you are in the same spot as me. My two cents of advice on dealing with the issue:

1. Bounce is bounce so something must be amiss, so its better to take them all from the main mailing list inorder to ensure better efficiency
2. Bounce email Ids to be black listed or flagged seperately
3. Seperate mailing activity to be done only on the flagged email ids.
4. If email Ids consistently feature in the bounced list 3 consecutive times spread over a decent timeline like 3 months then it is wise to delete the email Id completely

what say?

Web Analytics

(One of my published articles. Anyone interested in referring to this is most welcome although a citation or a link back would be greatly appreciated)

One of my favourite books on marketing is “End of Marketing as We Know It” by Sergio Zyman, the legendary, former Chief Marketing Officer of the Coca Cola Company. The basic tenet of this book was that Marketing was more science than art. No more was marketing all about that genius creative or ad campaign. Marketing, instead, as he viewed it was all about delivering results. How many units of coke did that Ad sell? Did the sales grow after launching that campaign? Did we profit from the direct mail campaign? Marketing was less Ad agency voodoo and more about measurable outcomes.

Yes, I’ll repeat it again “Measurable Outcomes”. As a young marketer, learning the ropes, this book opened my eyes to the raison d’etre for any marketer – Metrics. Marketing exists not to create beautiful Ad campaigns or killer direct mails. The sole duty of marketing is to generate demand. I truly believe that for any marketing activity to be truly successful, it should necessarily be metrics driven and ultimately be tied to the goal of the company. The outcome must be ..(don’t kill me for saying this) measured. So it is with great glee that I write about Web Analytics. For a data driven person like me, Web Analytics and Web analytics tools are like panacea to my soul.

What is Web Analytics?

Web Analytics is basically the study of traffic to a particular website – where it’s coming from and its subsequent behaviour on the website. Wikipedia defines Web Analytics as “the study of the behaviour of website visitors. In a commercial context, web analytics especially refers to the use of data collected from a web site to determine which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives; for example, which Landing Pages encourage people to make a purchase”

Web Analytics provides insights on a range of traffic related questions like:

1. How many people are visiting your site?
2. Where are they coming from?
3. What is their activity on the site?
4. Which page are they viewing most often?
5. Which page are they dropping off from?
6. What keywords did they use to visit the page?

The analysis of website traffic began in the early 90’s through the scrutiny of Logfiles. Logfiles are files maintained by web servers, consisting of all transactions that take place on a website. It wasn’t long before, these file were being used to provide insight on the amount activity that was taking place on a website.

In the early years, Web Analytics primarily consisted of counting the number of “Hits” or the number of requests made to the web server. This method was fairly representational of the site’s popularity as web pages in those days were pretty basic and consisted of a single HTML file with no images, animations, videos or downloads

As the late 1990s saw the emergence of Search Engines which brought with them their spiders and their bots, it became more and more difficult to identify unique human visitors through Logfile analysis alone. The uses of Web Caches also posed a problem as subsequent visits of a person to a website could not be tracked through Logfiles

In order to address issues thrown up by Logfile analysis, a new method called page tagging evolved, which used JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser. This not only solved the issue of caching and search engine bots but also enabled web analytics to be outsourced to a web analytics company as Page tagging could now be performed by companies who did not run their own web servers.

Importance of Web Analytics

Web Analytics is not about merely analyzing website data. It’s about understanding what drives people to the site and what features effect their subsequent activity on the site. Most importantly, from a business perspective, Web Analytics gives you an insight on if your site is meeting its intended objective.

As we mentioned earlier, put simply, web analytics helps us measure how many people visited a site, how they got there and what they did subsequently. Measuring and monitoring these data parameters helps us understand the individual user behaviour. The valuable insights provided by this data helps us analyze how people came to a particular site, what keyword or phrases they used to get there– whether these keywords are relevant or not, what they did subsequently on landing, what were the most frequently visited pages, what were the least frequently visited pages, which page saw a high drop off and most importantly, if the user ultimately did what the site wanted him to do. For example if it’s an E-commerce site, did all the user activity ultimately lead to a transaction? Or if it’s a social networking site did the user creat a new profile?

Web Analytics provides us the data to makes tweaks and enhance the ROI or conversions from a website. To quantify the advantages in simplistic terms, Web Analytics helps improve :


1. A site’s Search engine Rankings so that one is able to attract more & relevant traffic
2. A site’s usability and helps it become more user friendly so that people are able to navigate better
3. Conversions or sales transactions – What ever is the ultimate objective of the site

Basic Metrics

Ok, so now we know what Web Analytics is, we have gone into the history and we even know why it’s important, so great, how do we start off? Analyzing a whole bunch of website data can be clearly overwhelming, more so if one is not familiar with the basic web metrics and their definitions. Most web analytics softwares offer the following web metrics that one can track to start off with.

Hits: This metric is frequently cited to indicate site popularity but infact very misleading. In most web analytics discussions a ‘hit’ is defined as a single request for any item on your website. This can include images, animations, audio, video, downloads, PDF or Word documents or anything else that you allow visitors to access. When a web browser loads a page, it also loads all the above components referenced by that page. Thus, a single page load can result in many hits.

Visits: This is most basic of all web metrics and indicates the number of visits (unique and otherwise) a site receives. It provides a quick indicator of how effectively a site is being promoted.

Pageviews: This is the total number of pages viewed on a site and is a general measure of how much a site is used. This report also provides an insight on what pages are being viewed the most and hence give an idea on what’s working on a site and what’s not.

Pages/Visit: Average Pageviews is a good way of measuring visit quality. A high Average Pageviews number suggests that visitors are interacting extensively with a site. A high Average Pageviews results from one or both of the following factors: (1) Appropriately targeted traffic (i.e. visitors who are interested in what a site offers and (2) High quality content effectively presented on the site. Conversely, a low Average Pageviews indicates that the traffic coming to the site has not been appropriately targeted to what the site offers or that the site does not deliver what was promised to the visitor.

Bounce Rate: Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left the site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to the site’s visitors.

Avg. Time on Site: Time on Site is one way of measuring visit quality. If visitors spend a long time visiting your site, they may be interacting extensively with it. However, Time on Site can be misleading because visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using a site.

% New Visits: This report lets you analyze the amount of new visitors or return visitors that a site is attracting. A high number of new visitors suggests that one is successful at driving traffic to a site while a high number of return visitors suggests that the site content is engaging enough for visitors to come back.

Traffic Sources: This report gives an insight on where are all the traffic is coming from - If it is Direct traffic or from a referral site or if it’s coming from search engine. This allows one to invest marketing resources on the right channel

Search phrases & keywords: This report gives a detailed list on what keywords or phrases are driving search engine traffic to a website. It helps us understand if the traffic that the site is getting is relevant or not

There are many metrics that are offered by numerous web analytics softwares in the market. Most metrics also offer fascinating insights on the working of the website but the key to understanding metrics is to hone in only on those metrics that have a direct relevance on the objective of your website. For example, bounce rate is a misleading metric for a blog because most people exit a blog after reading the latest post. The ideal metric for a blog would be the number of visits.

Tools & Resources

There are a lot of web analytics softwares in the market and most of them differ in the way they measure metrics. But if one is just starting out with web analytics and if one has some time to play around with data, I would personally recommend, Google’s Web Analytics Software. It is free and can be easily integrated with Google Adwords Campaign and hence helps one get an insight on how ones keywords are performing. It is also easy to integrate Google Analytics with one’s website and just requires one to add a couple of lines of tracking code to the website’s HTML code

Bottom line

Ultimately, what web analytics gives you is the data. What makes web analytics effective is the inference drawn from them and that can only come from within the organization.

An organization I once worked with had an elaborate user profile page that was used internally to capture web based leads. Upon employing web analytics, it was found that this lengthy profile page had an astounding drop-off rate of 85%. This led to a drastic shortening of the page and helped the organization get more people to fill the page and ultimately more leads

Web analytics data only provides insights on what is happening on the site currently. It is up to us on how we use this data to improve the website and ultimately the ROI or the bottom line

Marketing During Political Times

Politics and Marketing make a heady mix and the recent primaries in the US have taken political marketing to a whole new level

We in India are well aware of the political debacle that was the India shinning campaign, but what no one noticed was the succcess of the congress party campaign - congress ka saath, aam aadmi ka saath (Loosely translated: Congress Party's Hand is holding that of the common man) It was successful in striking a chord with the people on issues like riots, price rise etc. Indian Politics is ofcourse still taking baby steps towards being marketing savvy. Leaving print or TV ads, our parties haven't embraced the net like their countreparts in the US. Ofcourse this strategy does make sense when you consider that the bulk of the population lives in rural areas and hardly has access to electricity let alone the internet, but...but... a sizeable urban population has access to the net and they get their information at their finger tips. I feel it makes tonnes of sense in investing in online marketing campaigns for our parties too.

The Obama campaign in particular has re-defined campaign funding and marketing in the US. This Washington Post Article explores the obama online campaign and the findings are mind boggling. Obama through internet ads has succeeded in building a network of $1 million donors!! this in stark contrast to the traditional route of having a small but wealthy pocket of donors. Obama through such tactics managed to raise $91 million in just 2 months thanks largely to this humongous group of small donors. Obama camapign also spent their money wisely - they out spent the clinton campaign by ten times on their online marketing budget.

The online campaign is also interesting in itself, according to the article. The Obama ads didn't take one directly to the donate page but focused on building an online relationship instead. People who signed up with their email Ids first got a welcome message, information about policies, information on the various ways one could volunteer and after building a rapport, only then was one asked to donate. I find this extremely fascinating. This is new age marketing. We'd call this lead nurturing only this is being applied to a political campaign

There have been other instances of the obama campaign being net savvy. A social networking group called ObamaCycle started by an enthisiastic obama supporter, actually ensured that Obama Campaign supplies were reused not wasted. This supplemented a situation where people who ran short of campaign supplies in states which were going to vote in the primaries could communicate whith people in states that had already voted and hence could re-use their campaign supplies!!

The obama campaign has been Web2.0 savvy with widgets and buttons on facebook and myspace etc.

I guess this tactic fits the american mileu but I strongly feel that our parties could easily take a leaf from obama's campaign book and make our political system more interactive, more participatory and more fun

Internet and E-Commerce in India

Being the data junkie that I am, I'm extremely thrilled with the Internet and Mobile Association of India's (IAMAI) reports on the state of Internet in india. It is an exteemely useful website filled with reports and events on the internet and mobile scene in India



As an e-marketer it is important to learn how the internet penetration is unfolding in India. You all all will be happy to know that the internet is growing at a rate of 40%. The internet break up as per the I-Cube 2007: Internet in India report is as follows:








The report also gives more facts and figures for internet penetration in Non metros and the pattern of internet usage.



The Ecommerce report too is pretty fascinating, considering companies in India are struggling to get their E-commerce acts together due to strict funds transfer policy in India. It offers a great insight on industry size, existing barriers for further growth and improvements needed.



Detailed de-brief once i analyze these reports. In the meanwhile, trip on it here

Summer Trainee and the livin ain't easy

(I never thought, I'd twist a Billie Holiday song like that but what do you know...)

Come summer and apart from blistering high temperatures here in Pune, we also get a swarm load of MBA summer trainees or interns. I have 2 this summer interns this year and its the 2nd time that I'm leading interns, but I'm still befuddled by what exactly the purpose is of these internships.

a) is it to learn & imbibe
b) Is it just so that one can submit a document to the college, get marks and be done with it?

It should be the first but as the internship proceeds, generally it becomes about the latter. I think its because of the Indian MBA system. What can one expect out of freshers who are admitted in to MBA courses? They have never worked until then, they don't know how professional organizations function and here they are, thrown in to the middle of what seems like a huge conundrum and no wonder most of them just want to get done.

I really do feel sorry for them. It is alien and sometimes inhospitable and I would sympathize but what does make me angry is that sometimes they don't really care about the internship at all. Because it's all internally evaluated, the outcome is a formality so why bother about this sham at all? I strongly feel colleges should orient freshers about working in organizations and why internships are important.

The most important reason as to why an internship is crucial, is because, it gives you a chance to apply one's business education in the real world and sort of tune in both. Reading about a concept is completely different from implementing it. There are a no of variables that need to be factored in during implementation.

The attitude towards internships is different in people who have worked before because obviously, they've been there etc. But these people view the internship more as an actual simulation of what they certainly hope to do after passing out. The difference, these guys know what they want, the freshers - have no clue and its all one big large experiment.

Another important aspect that is not stressed enough to interns is the reason why the industry is hiring them in the first place. Yes, we get cheap labour for 2 months but one is also spending a considerable time monitoring and guiding them. We take them in, hoping they have fresh perspectives and new ideas on tackling some standard industry issues. We want them to bring in their MBA education and implement best practises or latest trends in their projects.

This dialogue is not happening unfortunately. In India, its still a one way process and I hope the Indian MBA system changes and starts admitting more experienced folks.

Do you really want my business agency?

I sat through another boring agency presentation today. It's boring because they're all the same. slide, after slide of showing off all their "best" work and for no avail because I have already tuned off. Why? because they don't even know what I need from an agency!!

Case in point today, this agency that came in for a pitch, showed me slide after slide of all the best AD creatives they did. YAWN.After slide 7, I told them that I don't even do Ads and that I do a lot of brochures and that I'm really in need of an agency that understands layouts. They looked blankly at each other and scrambled to find something on brochures. They didn't and that's when something snapped inside.

I told them that if they were really wanted my business, they would have first asked me about what my needs were, understood my business and my communication plans beforehand and then would have come with a customized presentation aimed at addressing that very need. I always have a lot of respect for agencies that atleast take the pains to customize their presentations. One agency, knowing that ours was a technology company, put in examples of technology companies. I respect that. I want to do business with companies that respect me as a client too.

I definitely don't want to work with agencies that treat clients, or rather prospective clients with such disdain that they are already painting you with broad, hackneyed strokes. Imagine how they'll treat you once you do become their client!

Best Practices: Marketing by Being Neutral

Lets face it, we all hate a sales pitch. A direct full on, obvious, loud, insensitive sales pitch. It brings to my mind, images of door-to-door sales people selling encyclopedias. Its the worst possible method to sell encylcopedias, because, the person selling it does such bad job of it and it also makes me feel guilty when I slam the door because, really, who buys encyclopedias on opening one's door?

Encyclopedias are not a commodity, so inorder to sell it, the person buying it has to be convinced that she really needs it. Nobody these days bothers with the convincing, they just straight away move to selling their product and that's what makes a sales pitch such a turn off.

BUY MY CREDIT CARD,BUY MY CREDIT CARD!!!



No, the first thing that any sales person must do, is to convince the buyer that she needs another credit card because of whatever reasons. Once a strong need has been created, the sales person can then swoop in and sell her the credit card.


The first step of creating a need in the buyer's mind is very important because it builds trust with the buyer. To the buyer you're like a third party neutral observer giving advise and most importantly there is no agenda in what you're saying. For, in a full on sales pitch, you'd hardly believe a word of what is being said because you are aware all along that the sales person has an agenda and that he's out to get you.


That's why behaving like you have no agenda can sometimes be the best marketing tool. Take for example, this page I landed on: http://www.lsfnetwork.com/importance-web-analytics.html
when I was doing some research on a web analytics article.


LSFnetwork is a internet based marketing agency. they do everything from media planning to search engine marketing and more. But look how they "sell" their products and services on this webpage for search engine marketing: http://www.lsfnetwork.com/sem-services.html






They first give solid statistics. Make a claim about web users and then provide third party articles on the right side bar. These articles give tips, elucidate web concepts and even provide strategies on marketing. Anybody who has a business would be interested in learning about all these. In all these articles, the LSFnetwork pitch comes only in the last paragraph but the thing is, the moment I come to the last paragraph, I'm convinced that LSFnetwork knows what its talking about, knows the internet better than I do and so I'm convinced that they can do the job.


All they did was appear neutral by putting in relevant resources. These resources project them as a company that understands the medium thoroughly and ergo built trust with me. Then when they sell me their stuff, I'm more receptive to their pitch and it does not sound like hollow sales talk.



I think its a brilliant strategy!



I think this strategy is pertinent to tech companies especially because tech products need the most amount of convincing. Technology is a difficult place to market products in, especially when its changing so rapidly. Customers will buy only when they are convinced about the product and no amount of sales talk is going to do it.



And customers will be convinced only when they see a product that meets their need and they see a product coming from a company that understand that technology thoroughly and seems confident about it. That's why "Thought Leadership" image is so important to tech companies these days. Customers will buy only from a company that truly seems like its an expert in a domain because it gives confidence to the customer. That's why I think its very important to be neutral sometimes in marketing technology products

IPL: Hype or is it here to stay?

I haven't been able to figure out the Indian Premier League (IPL) yet. On the face it, IPL and its basis is pure marketing hype. The fanfare of its auctions, the bollywood influence all of it is meant to attract eyeballs but I don't know what is it that IPL has, that will make it a lasting phenomenon.

The IPL has been compared to the EPL on several occassions but what makes EPL so different is that these clubs enjoy tremendous support and that the loyalties have been developed over a century. The loyalty has come in due to stark differenciation between teams. For Eg: a Manchester United Team is distinctly different from an Arsenal Team and this stark division in turn builds loyalties and hence creates rivalries, which, I feel is most important in such a format.

But the big question is does IPL have the power to create such loyalties? Given that its the first season, on the face of it, I say NO, simply because the IPL model is rather superfluous when it comes to loyalties

Take for example the 6 teams in the fray. The stark division in this league is supposed to be based on city but what about the Mumbai Indians is Mumbai oriented? Considering that they have robin uthappa, shaun pollock, Dwayne bravo and only 4 mumbai players (including sachin), does one really expect all the mumbaikars to cheer for the team? The likely hood of the team changing completely next season for profit reasons also makes it likely that regional bias will not be given top priority. The Chennai Super Kings have only 4 Tamil Nadu Players out of a squad of 25 players!! The EPL on the other hand is dedicated to developing home grown talent. David Beckham and Wayne Rooney have come off the Man U and everton academies respectively. These clubs have the loyalties of their fans precisely because they are dedicated to the local community. The La Liga in Spain mandates that about 50% of the team must contain spanish players or local boys. This naturally ensures that regional identity is reinforced through the team.

My opinion is that the management needs to work keenly on honing loyalties and creating rivalries. That needs to be of top most priority in order for the league to work. Instant gratification is short lived and hopefully IPL won't pander to that.

An interesting article on the economic times examines just that. I completely agree with the article in that "Sustaining the excitement around the format depends squarely on the ability of various teams to build loyal fan bases". The article is also spot on about the marketing of all the teams. Its wholly undifferentiated and one really can't tell them apart from the others. Like what makes the Mumbai Indians different from the Deccan Chargers? the author rightly points out that "For eventually, a team is more than a motley collection of individuals; it must represent a point of view, a style of playing the game."

The article also has an interesting perspective in that the IPL might evolve into a unique format of its own and incorporate elements of reality television like innovation, surprises, twists and high drama

Read the Article Here

Only to come running back again

Just when I thought that the internet had just gotten entertaining with the delicious prospect of MicroHOO!, balmer, the original Monkey Man(watch this if you don't believe me) has gone and pulled the rug under Yahoo. Not surprisingly the latter's share price dropped an amazing 14% after the pull out. Well most people think its a ploy to put pressure on Yahoo! through its shareholders. That's the general view anyway, that Microsoft will eventually bid again but at a lower price. Well that's how his letter to Jerry Yang looks. Well here below, the letter in all its awesomeness.(I'm kidding ofcourse, about the awesomeness I mean, I prefer his inspirational speeches anyday, Balmer not Jerry Yang)

Dear Jerry:
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!'s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal...

I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62 percent premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.

In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.

Also, after giving this week's conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a " hostile" bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:
First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!'s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.

Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo!.

Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.

Now to learn what he really meant in his letter, read this hilarious take

Site It!

(Another of my published articles. If anybody wants to reference this, I would appreciate a citation or a link back.thanks)

I read a review once of a book (I forget which) where the reviewer said, “I liked it so much, I wanted to run out into the street and tell everyone I knew”. I can totally empathize with that feeling because we as humans have this irresistible urge to recommend. We particularly tend to do that when we have enjoyed a product or service. A friend of mine made it a point to tell everyone of the great service she was getting from her broadband provider and I must admit, I did give them a call to see if I could switch over to theirs. A friend’s recommendation is unarguably more powerful than all the marketing tactics put together, as it is coming from a person who is implicitly trusted. This same implicit trust is being put to use on a phenomenon called Social Bookmarking

According to Wikipedia, Social Bookmarking is defined as “a method for internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata”. Social Bookmarking combines the practice of bookmarking a site (which is conventionally done by adding the link to our “favorites” tab present in our browser) and tagging it under specific keywords. It is analogous to filing documents in folders albeit with a Web 2.0 twist! To get started on Social Bookmarking, one has to usually register with Social Bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumbleupon etc and then start saving the web pages that one wants to store or share onto these sites. The sites are usually “tagged” based on various criteria and can be made either public (to viewed by all) or private (to be viewed by the user only). Although, the phenomenon of saving bookmarks online is more than a decade old, the emphasis is now on the “tagged” information and how it can be distributed through a social network. The mantra of social bookmarking sites is not only storing bookmarks but also sharing it with our network and also inturn, discovering the bookmarks of our network.

Social Bookmarking is a radical new way of organizing & categorizing the information on the web. The most significant aspect of Social Bookmarking is the creation of “Tags”. A tag refers to a label that classifies the information on a page. These tags can then be made publicly accessible, thus enabling us to connect with other users of similar interests. Indeed, Social Bookmarking sites are often heralded as the new wave after search engines as the facility of tags makes it easy for anyone to search for any information relating to that tag. Another advantage of tags is that the classification is done by humans who understand the content as opposed to search engines, which determine the content of a page based on an algorithm.

Social Bookmarking also allows for another interesting phenomenon. As sites get bookmarked, tagged and shared, the site that gets bookmarked more is obviously perceived as more relevant than the others. This inturn results in an organic ranking system that enables users to search for the right content more effectively. For example, a site under the tag of “Social Bookmarking” that is bookmarked by over 100 people would logically seem a better a choice than a site that is bookmarked by only 5 people.

Social Bookmarking is not only advantageous to researchers but to businesses as well. Social Bookmarking sites offer high visibility. These sites attract a lot of traffic from people who are looking for something. Through tags and the inorganic ranking system, they offer a better positioning to any site. Additionally when a particular site is bookmarked on a social bookmarking site it creates a backlink to that site. The more it is bookmarked and the more backlinks that are created, the more it is valued by search engines, as backlinks are a clear indication of popularity. Social Bookmarking can be an effective tool in marketing a website by ensuring that it is tagged on as many social bookmarking sites as possible. Additionally, by adding social bookmarking sites’ icons on a website, one must encourage visitors to tag the page inorder to increase the number of bookmarks. This why most news articles these days offer icons of Del.icio.us, Digg etc to bookmark the pages

As with any evolving technology, there are certain downsides to Social Bookmarking as well. As the most important aspect of these sites are the tags, the efficacy depends on the accuracy with which these tags are created and as there is currently no standard on how tags should be created, various errors relating to meaning, spelling, structure etc often creep up. Secondly, as social bookmarking is driven solely by people, there is a risk of presenting a skewed view of a particular topic and also interpreting it in a certain manner.

Tagging information through keywords could radically change the way we store, share & discover information. More importantly, it has the potential to create a system that understands the human rationale of classifying information as opposed to search engines and their complex algorithms.

Book Review: All Marketers Are Liars By Seth Godin

If you are a marketer and you are about to implode on reading the title of Seth Godin’s book, don’t worry, his book is not about maligning marketers at all. Infact, quite the opposite, Godin believes that “Marketers have the leverage to generate huge impact in less time and with less money than ever before”. This book, instead should have been titled, “All Marketers Are Story Tellers” but then would such a bland title make it stand apart from the hordes of other books on marketing?

That is exactly the premise of this book. Consumers are bombarded with information and data like never before. In order to deal with this influx of information we tend to ignore the ordinary and pay attention to the remarkable. According to Godin, because we are so overwhelmed with all data around us, we tend to tell ourselves “Stories” (in other words, form perceptions). These stories or lies enable us to deal to with all the complexity of the world. Stories make it easier to understand the world around us. Godin argues that only those marketers who tell stories that resonate with consumers will be successful rather than those harping on purely facts or benefits.

When considering how consumers actually make purchasing decisions, this argument is quite compelling. For example, when buying sneakers rarely do people make the purchase based on whether it can absorb shocks, or if its sole is made from X grade rubber. The decision is more often made based on the mental image formed in the mind of the person buying it. Do I look cool or hip when wearing it? What will my friends think? etc. It is precisely this kind of story that needs to be told inorder to “sell” the product to the consumer. A story that consumer wants to believe.

Godin says that a story works when it’s accurate and consistent and more importantly, matches the worldview of the audience being told the story. These early adopters are convinced by the story and they in turn tell their friends. Thus, a small niche market, turns into a trend and then finally into a mass market. In this era of rapid globalization, it is no longer enough that a product is cheaper, faster and better. Anybody can manufacture such a commodity. There is very little differenciation and even if there is, it will soon be replicated. This is where the power of the story comes in. Marketers succeed when they tell a story that fits the worldview of the consumer, a story that is intuitively embraced and then shared with friends.

Another reason why authentic stories need to be told, according to the author, is because we live in an age of choices and unbelievable customization. The mantra of one-size-fits-all type television advertising no longer works. The media like the internet has made it possible for marketers to tailor messages for a niche audience. In order to tell the story more effectively and in order for it to be believable, Marketers need to live the story through various experiential outlets

Godin also adds a caveat on the thin line between fibs and fraud. Fibs are stories that are exaggerating the truth but a fraud is when a story is intended to deceive the customer. The power and responsibility of marketers is amply demonstrated in an example in the book of how a prominent multinational company marketed a powdered formula to mothers in developing countries. The company weaved a story of how a powdered formula was better than breastfeeding. According to a UNICEF report this kind of deceitful marketing led to the death of millions of babies in developing countries.

The book is a quick and fun read with the language being rather breezy. It almost feels like you’re having an informal chat with the author. Many of the insights offered are backed up numerous examples. But the constant repetition and belaboring of points could have been avoided and the content could have been organized in a better fashion instead of seeming like random jottings. Another drawback of the book is that all the examples listed in the book is US centric and as a result, it is hard to ascertain if it such strategies will work in emerging markets where internet penetration is not high and television is still the sole medium of advertising.

Overall I felt that this book provided valuable insights on marketing psychology and on a new trend emerging in marketing. This book would be very useful for startups or small businesses who want to get a toe-hold in the market and grow fast. I’m not entirely convinced that this strategy would work for big and established brands.

Update: All Marketers Are Liars is even a blog. Check it out

MicroHOO! update - Microsoft Very Quiet, but Something Is Happening

A superb article on Wired.com on the Microsoft -Yahoo merger. The industry has appropriately termed it the MicroHOO! affair. Well this article looks at the future scenarios that could pan out and methinks this is an excellent insightful review on the pains of M & A between two industry giants with such an acrimonious history. Surely, this is a business school case study in the making (hehehe)

The various case scenarious have been aptly analyzed - what if a higher offer is made or a hostile takeover is done or if Microsoft walwaks away altogether and finally if Microsoft sticks to its half cash, half stock bid. the winners, losers and what would happen next have neatly analyzed.

My two cents on this whole issue:

1. Its going to be very painful. 2 big monoliths have never merged successfully and there are going to be tonnes of integration problems not to mention the basic cultural issue - silicon valley start up (Almost) meeting seatle software big daddy. ouch, it feels painful

2. The big winner in all this is going to be Google. Ironically, the big G is the reason why Microsoft made the offer

3. M & A's are successful only when there is very little overlap between the businneses of overlapping companies. MicroHOO! has way too much overlap and this could also pose a lot of painful issues on what products need to be jettisoned, thus leading to alot of internal strife. I wouldn't want to be in on a meeting between the product heads of MSN and Yahoo Messenger. Actually I would.

4. Microsoft has no choice but to go ahead with this merger if it ever hopes to steal a march from google and Yahoo has been in a limbo due to various internal issues. The basic issue - both Microsoft and Yahoo need each other but really cannot stand each other. If they merged, it would make for an entertaining Marriage.

5. And oh, lets not forget Microsoft's Anti-trust issues. With both of MicroHOO!'s instant messaging systems, email services, web portals, I bet the Justice department is rubbing its palms in glee (being egged on oh so subtly by Google) oh what fun!

6. Like I said before, The only person gaining out of this hooplah is Google. They'll get all the great, creative Yahoo folks due to mass exodus and all they had to do was stand on the sidelines!
I read somewhere, that inorder to stir things up a bit and raise Microsoft's hackles, Eric schmidt gave yahoo a call on how..er..may be they could work together on things. lol

Another good article on what makes for good M & A's here. M & A's work, as the article says, when both companies have unique but complimentary products on offer. That way the integration can be smooth and there is greater consolidation

What's da Number?

Oh well, more dope on the new vodafone customer care AD. Well we all were surprised that the trademark pug came back. I was sure that after transitioning to Vodafone, the brand managers would use the pug sparingly inorder to reinforce the new brand into everybody's consciousness. But they've resorted to using it after just 7 months of the transition it seems

According to this article on agencyfaqs, The pug was used in a specific service based ad instead of a thematic brand AD, because according to Mr.Harit Nagpal, chief marketing officer, Vodafone India, "Customer care is the face of our brand, so in a sense, this aspect of Vodafone encompasses the entire brand.” Therefore, the pug

Ahhh, they were trying to remind everybody of what lousy service they offered when they were Hutch. Also did anyone notice that there was no number given? As in which number to call when somebody wants to avail their excellent service? I think thats a major flaw in execution because although everyone is now aware of their supposed service offerings, I'm sure Vodafone customers would have also like to know the service call numbers. And also this campaign would have inspired more trust had they given their numbers out.

I mean Airtel's 121 is pretty famous for customer care and this is one of the major features of why most people I know chose Airtel - their customer service. Service branding methinks is a word of mouth thing. You can make people aware that it exists but the consumer confidence only comes in after it is experienced and spoken about. This works only if more people experience customer service, and if its good, then recommend it to their friends. Its hard to sell a service, more so, customer care. I guess people will be skeptical till they actually try it. So vodafone lost a major opportunity, methinks, in converting a few people into believers and ergo into evangelists.
I can think of why they didn't advertize the number - inorder not to put more strain on the infrastructure I guess. But really it still puzzles me as to why they didn't put the number out there..

un-creepy crawlies

I ran a search for this blog and unfortunately it seems that Google hasn't indexed my blog yet :(
So in an effort to understand why the Googlebot didn't pick me, I trawled through some posts on the Official Google Blog and found that Google has a support tool to analyze why your site is not being indexed.

The Google Webmaster Tools analyzes a site and verifies whether a site has been indexed by the googlebot and also provides tonnes of stats and diagnostic tools. There are also links for the crisis ridden folks like us who are agonizing as to why the Googlebot is so ingnoring us. I really have to research SEO its fascinating!

I found this link very useful - How do I add my site to Google's search results? . One lesson to ensure that the site has multiple outgoing links and incoming links. You can already see that I'm employing that strategy already. this post has 3 links to it :)

But it's also very annoying that Google search algorithm is so hush hush and they don't really tell you why you're not featuring in searches. I read on Wired sometime back that companies who paid google for Adwords also saw their natural search results getting featured higher hmmm

I said "Sit Down!"

Well, apart from marketing and writing, we have another obsession - Shopping. Yes, My name is Ashanka and I'm a shopoholic. I love the shopping experience, I love being in a mall. It's such a crazy weird world. Trippy with all the music, in-store activities, perfume scent wafting across mixing with the food court aromas. Yes being in mall warms the cockles of my heart but sometimes I'm amazed that Mall designers miss out on the basics

The basic metric for any mall is footfall correct? but I think one needs to measure two other metrics to determine total success. One is time spent and the exit rate. Time spent is difficult because visitors to a mall are not Id'ed seperately but I'm sure exit rates can be measured if you have seperate entrances. So I guess going by the above points the paramount importance for any mall is to keep all the people that it attracts within the mall for as long as possible. Because, duh, the more time they spend the more they are likely to spend.

So, going by this rather obvious logic, I fail to understand why most malls have few to none seating arrangements inside the mall. Seats are vital to a mall's success methinks because shopping, as most people will agree is a tiring activity. The constant activity wears out the legs and after a point you want to quit and go home. I see this all the time, when my mom/aunts/friends shop. Everybody I know becomes impatient after a while because their legs are killing them and they'll sooner drag you out than let you try out the awesome looking dress. This is such a common occurence that I'm surprised that nobody thought of putting seating whever possible because that is what will keep people inside the mall. I'm convinced that malls are designed by men who have no idea about shopping.

Yesterday I was at Central and I spent a good two hours there and my feet were killing me. And surprise, surprise no seating whatsoever, except at the foodcourt which does not really count because you gotta make a purchase there and you can't really sit and relax. People also forget that women, the most prolific of shoppers, often shop in shoes that are less than comfortable like heels, platforms etc. Isn't is logical to make your prolific, high spending shopper comfortable?

But, there's a rub in providing seating in some kind of stores like book stores for example. If I was a store manager at a book store I wouldn't provide any seating whatsoever, simply because, seating gives a reader ample time to savour and read atleast 4-5 chapters of the book. I believe that the more time you give a person to decide on something, the more they're gonna narrow things down. Like say, somebody wanted to by 6 books but on reading a bit most likely than out they'll pick 3. I don't have logic to prove this but this I say by experience. Besides I knwo tons of people who visit bookstores on multiple occasions and finish a book piecmeal. But this logic again flies in the face of conventional wisdom because as we all know book stores are rife with seats, couches, cushions, coffee and what not!

Somebody please explain it to these guys! Please!

Book Review: It Happened In India - The story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and the great Indian consumer

Think of Indian malls and the first mental image to come to mind is frenzy. Of frenzied buying and frenetic consumption by hordes of masses that just don’t seem to be satiated. Think a little more and you’ll see images of things flying from the shelves; you’ll even start to hear the mad whirr of credit card machines working overtime. Yet, funnily enough, it wasn’t quite so crazy even in the late nineties. What has changed is India. The booming economy has ushered in an era of confidence and of course unprecedented consumption.

On first glance, “It Happened in India”, by Kishore Biyani, Managing Director, Future Group, seems to be nothing but an amalgamation of milestones of this self confessed “maverick” entrepreneur – On how he rose from selling stone washed fabrics to being the czar of Indian retail. But this book is not about rags-to-riches, it is about vision. This book is about a man who had the gall to envision a confident India and his foresight in ensuring that when this India consumed, it consumed from him.

The book fittingly begins with Biyani’s recollection of the first ever Sabse Sasta Din or Maha Savings Day at Big Bazaar on 26th January 2006. The deals were apparently so good that not only did it attract the masses in droves, but also riot police had to be called in various cities to control the chaos. What is revealing about this chapter is Biyani’s assessment of this response:

“But more than the quantum of sales, what seemed significant to me was that this incident marked the arrival of a new set of customers into the modern retail stores in India”.

Biyani, goes on to categorize the Indian consuming into India one and India two segments. India one constituted the upper and lower middle class, while India two constituted the serving class – the drivers, household helps etc, a class that was vary of modern retail stores and perceived them as “expensive and exclusive”. In Biyani’s own words,

“What was exceptional about 26th January 2006 at Big Bazaar was that for the first time it had attracted India Two and that too in very large numbers.”

There in lies the vision - The vision of not being exclusivist but catering instead to the masses with dirt cheap prices as a result of which their inhibitions are overcome.

A major aspect of the book is that the narrative is not solely of Biyani’s. The narrative is peppered by anecdotal incidents of people who have been closely associated with Biyani in his journey to the top. These include former colleagues, family members, friends and academicians. Although the constant shift in the narrative takes some getting used to, these anecdotes provide a wholesome picture of the man that is Biyani.

The book traces Biyani’s early years as a rebellious youngster growing up in Mumbai’s Malabar Hills. Biyani’s rebellion manifests itself in not only opposing the family’s social customs but in also the way it did business. Frustrated by the inward thinking of his family’s business and its penchant for maintaining the status quo, Biyani sets off on his own entrepreneurial journey by selling stone washed fabrics. After attaining moderate success selling fabric, Biyani decided to go one step ahead and set up a shop that sold ready made trousers called patloon, the Urdu word for trousers. This became the precursor to what would lead to Pantaloon Shoppes and ultimately to Pantaloon Retail

Apart from Biyani’s own meteoric journey, the book is also an interesting factoid of Indian retail in its early years. Apparently Mumbai’s first shopping mall only allowed visitors who had a credit card or a mobile phone! Another interesting fact was that the inspiration for Big Bazaar was not a foreign mall but instead was a 25 year old family owned retail chain called Sarvana, located in Chennai. Biyani’s team would meticulously study the Sarvana store for days and months before arriving at the format for Big Bazaar. Rajan Malhotra, Head Big Bazaar, has this to say about that:

“People may say that we are inspired by the Wal-Marts of the world, but it was at Sarvana that Big Bazaar was born. Everyone who joined the company during those days had to visit Chennai, seek homage at Sarvana and then start working”

What comes out through this book, from every page literally, is Biyani’s obsession with the Indian consumer. Biyani admits to manically studying consumers wherever he goes. Having conquered the Indian retail market, his sights are on to bigger things – That of conquering the entire consumption space. From selling insurance to dabbling in financial services, health & fitness and even stationery – Biyani seems to be after everything that the consumer spends her money on. Infact Biyani has even produced two Bollywood movies in order to extend the Pantaloon brand.

Although the triumphs and successes are well articulated, sadly the failures are not. This is a serious drawback and makes the book seem (sometimes) like one big ode to Biyani’s vision and charisma. But that’s minor nitpicking. This book should be read by all would be entrepreneurs and all those interested in the Indian Retail phenomenon. True to Biyani’s bias towards thrift, this book is economically priced at Rs. 99, making this a really good deal. Value for money indeed!