Month: July 2008

  • Train of Thought

    Social media enthusiasts are often quizzed on the ROI that it delivers, and in many cases,  ‘conversation with customers’ is met with a lot of skepticism. which led me to wonder about the kind of ROI this activity would generate.

    “Max New York Life Insurance has signed a Public Private Partnership (PPP) pact with the Indian Railways. From July 8, Chennai, Bangalore and Trivandrum Rajdhanis will sport Max New York Life advertising on its exterior.” It would provide upgraded services like high quality flooring, soap dispensers, tissue paper dispensers…. and so on. Great, I have always wanted that in those Harappan age railway compartments, though I always had a feeling Max was into insurance.

    I can understand SBI having a co-branded card with IRCTC, Citi having a card for Delhi Metro etc, but the revenue/communication model that this venture of Max falls in, I fail to understand. Unless of course, Max will send an insurance advisor in the compartment. The ‘potential customer’ is trapped with him for the entire journey, and might buy a policy just to get rid of him.

    Meanwhile, a couple of thoughts came to me when I read this post on Mumbai’s local trains. Every now and then, there is a horror story of how a gruesome accident occured in one of these trains. Doesn’t it make a lot of sense for an insurance company to do some contextual communication here? How about tapping this entire community which is so prone to such occurences?

    The other thought that came to me was from a conversation on twitter on how religion is one massive social network. Unlike schools and colleges, which have a real life basis for networking, religion is spread across geographies with most users unaware of each other, and even has user generated versions springing up every now and then. Even the local trains in Mumbai offer a platform for a social network (no pun intended). I guess there are vertical networks like that all around, the only trick is to satisfy a set of needs and then be able to monetise it.

    until next time, maximising social media

  • You have a message

    … and the song that was playing on TV when i switched on the comp to check the feeds happened to be Joan Osborne’s ‘One of Us‘, a personal favourite, mostly because of the lyrics. And one of the feeds that popped up first linked to this, a mail from God.
    Now its very rarely that I have posts that links to things that make a good forward but there are times when that cool line from The Matrix Reloaded, which i keep mouthing regularly, is made believable – “We have not come here by chance. I do not believe in chance. …….. I do not see coincidence, I see providence. I see purpose. I believe it our fate to be here. It is our destiny.” And so, I thought i should do my bit by spreading the message.
    The reason I like that mail is because it keeps things simple, and brings up a point that I’ve increasingly come to believe in – the overbearing influence of money, on society.
    Before you write it off as a pro-socialism tirade, I do believe that as a tool, money has immense amount of benefits, but when the accumulation of money becomes a purpose in itself, we become the tool, and that’s what’s increasingly happening.
    Meanwhile, on a sidenote, the message also perhaps answers austere’s recent question. Death is quite possibly God’s way of saying ‘long time, no see’

    until next time, counting my blessings

  • More than Paranthas

    A review at burrp informed me that there’d be no point in trying to reserve a table after 7.30, so we walked in at around 7.45 and got a table easily. Ah, but before that, this is a new outlet in Koramangala 80 ft road. If you’re coming from the Indiranagar side on the intermediate ring road, take a right at the Sony World junction ( in the direction of National games Village) and you’ll find it on the left (opposite Dal Roti). I thought I saw valet parking and for two wheelers, they have ample basement parking. (steep slope though!)

    Ok, flashback over, so, we got a good window side table, quite comfortable though the sofa could have been a bit higher, because your partner will seem to be looking down on you. Ahem! The ambience was good, but what could’ve been avoided is that red lighting, which gives it a bit of a dingy bar look. We ordered a Murg Galiana Shorba (by two), meanwhile, they have a separate menu card for soup, starters, drinks, mocktails, and its quite exhaustive, though priced a bit on the higher side.

    For the main course, we had another menu card from which we ordered a Rara Murg Punjabi, a Magaz Masala, a Mirchi Mushroom Masala, and a Bharwan Aloo parantha. You noticed the first bread? Hatke, right? And thats the specialty of this place, there are a few pages of parathas to choose from. The disclaimer on the price remains. We were told that the Magaz masala would be dry. Okay, noted.

    When the first soup bowl was kept on the table, I blinked. It was as a big as a full portion. When the second bowl was kept, I blinked again, it was empty. Apparently the kitchen does not serve by twos, so they brought us an extra bowl!! The Murg Galiana shorba is a thin soup flavoured with herbs, coriander and boiled rice. It was quite good, though a bit salty.

    The Rara Murg is chicken cooked with Kheema in Punjabi style, and the magaz masala is goat’s brain cooked on a tawa with ginger garlic paste, spices, and topped with coriander. The guy who took the order obviously forgot to tell the chef that the latter was a dry dish, because we got a gravy, albeit a thick one. The chicken dish was done well, but the magaz masala would actually have been better off dry. They really meant business with the Mirchi Mushroom Parantha, and the Aloo Parantha was also on the spicy side.

    We ordered an additional Naan as soon as they served the main course, and there started the nightmare. They took more than 25 minutes to bring the naan, inspite of my rude reminder (after about 15 minutes) that we’d like to have it as part of the dinner, and not the next day’s breakfast. The service can also be gauged by the fact that on noticing that we were sitting idle with half filled plates (after the paranthas got over) about 4 different people asked us what we’d like to order, and after being told that we’d already ordered a Naan which we’d been waiting for, for quite sometime, each of them promised to check it out, never to be seen again. No, sorry, after about 20 minutes, one person came to tell us that the rice we ordered was on its way. ??!!! The air conditioning works. No, its not out of context, we noticed it from the state of the dishes when the Naan finally arrived!!!

    Since we’d noticed the people at the next table waiting for the same time (25 mins) for the bill, we asked for the finger bowl and bill as soon as the naan came.  All of the above cost us a bit over Rs.1150, thats including a 10% service charge (not tax) and taxes. They would have known no one would leave a tip for the service. Surprisingly the bill came on time, with an apology regarding the naan affair. They learn fast, or so we thought. After we gave the card, we waited for another 15 minutes, and since there were ‘Sale’s happening all around, I was worried sick that someone might have gone shopping with my card!!!

    More than Paranthas, but definitely less than decent service. But the wife says its a great place to visit………. if you feel like fighting.

    No:610, 6th block, 80 ft Road, Koramangala, bangalore-95. Ph: 41724630

    Menu at Zomato

  • Better..Best..Bested

    A long time ago, during those heady MBA days, a few of us had put together a theme for the batch – kaizen, a Japanese philosophy for constant improvement. I think it still holds a lot of relevance with regards to the way brands treat themselves. Google, while not the web’s knight in shining armor it used to be, still teaches a lot of lessons, and I remembered them when i read this article on how, perhaps the first killer app on the net – email is now being challenged by things like micro-blogging platforms.

    Remembered them because, even though they were late entrants into the arena, the ‘invite’ marketing really worked for GMail, and though competitors matched or improved their storage space factor, GMail was so good, that I have never felt the need to consider an option. Thats also because while most other players stopped after they matched the space and minor additions, GMail kept improving, and still does – check this and this. And the counter on the GMail homepage continues to increase. Constant improvement.

    Meanwhile, the proposed competitor to email, micro blogging, and more specifically Twitter also seems to be on a constant improvement mode. After being heavily criticised for their downtime, they seem to be getting that under control and now the rumour mills are abuzz with their proposed purchase of Summize.

    On the flip side, I saw a video sharing site – Viddler.com, with some pretty cool features, like being able to add tags and comments right within the timeline. So when a scene appears, the comment appears right then. I haven’t seen too many innovations from YouTube recently. I also read a nice article recently, on how del.icio.us had perhaps lost the chance to become Friendfeed. Intriguing, right? Perhaps, Yahoo may be getting the message, and hence this radical move in the search space, where lots of new players like Yoozilla, Gloofi, Evri and possibly a dozen others are cropping up and doing amazing things that Google is perhaps missing out on. And while Google ups the ante in virtual worlds with the launch of Lively, there is Vivaty, which is ‘virtual world meets social networking’

    So, is improvement a function of current size? When a player gets beyond a certain size (in terms of products, sales, manpower and so on) is it then tougher for them to improve constantly.? Does the growth curve plateau and newer, smallers start taking the shine off from the once nimble large player? If we stretch that and step back a bit, is that the reason why say, a traditional set of players like newspapers are having problems adjusting to the web (generalising here) while new entities like Instablogs or possibly soon, a Topix (a potentially cool site, you must take a look) increase in popularity and relevance?

    In the future, will this constant improvement create a scenario where services will, in short time frames , change so rapidly, that they will bear only a slight resemblance to what they started out as, with only the brand name being a constant, a brand that stands for the cutting edge in that service category?

    until next time, zen and the art of constant improvement

  • $ocial Media

    This is why I love the conversational web. It provides an excellent means to connect ideas, and er, write a post. I saw a tweet from @jowyang which was about a company looking for community managers. No, it wasn’t the job per se that interested me, but more the fact that companies are finally getting into conversations and hiring community managers. Before you harangue me about web companies having had community managers for ages, this one is a grocery review community. Well, at least happens in the US. 😐

    And then, I also happened to read a post that spoke about a wiki for brands that is created and maintained by the users. Thats already happening a bit on the Facebook fan pages, but I’m guessing the brand would have to have its official spokesperson acting as a moderator at least in the initial stages, that’s like a community manager.

    And lastly, i read a post by Chris Brogan that talked about social media not being a replacement for marketing strategy. (I wholeheartedly agree) The takeaways he has mentioned towards the end not only provide a direction on how social media can finally pull its weight in getting revenue (possibly a beginning to answering this, a thought on everyone’s mind), but also roughly defines what a community manager’s role would be. It would not only be the basic answering of community queries and using conversations with them to evolve the product/service, it would also include identifying evangelists, nurturing them, helping a sales team to categorise potential customers. I am sure there are a lot of add ons possible to these brand communities.

    Meanwhile, it might also help social media tools like twitter to figure out revenue models. For at the very base of it all, a Twitter is perhaps like a Hotmail, the difference being in community and the speed of conversations, but in essence a tool for communication. And like email, there are usages to be figured out – for example, what role they play in the brand communities discussed above. These usages will drive revenue models. And hopefully, that’ll make one happy world… until the next revolution. 😉

    until next time, tweet dreams