Month: January 2009

  • The Nitpicker presents…

    It gets pretty cold in Bangalore around this time. In anticipation, I started shopping in October for a jacket. But after scouring more than a dozen outlets, I still haven’t found one I liked. I’ve become adept at finding faults, much to D’s chagrin. In homage to that exercise, and D’s patience, I dedicate Knitpicking.

    until next time, cold vibes

  • A brand is a …….. the search is on

    A few days back, Manish had an extremely interesting post titled ‘Image vs Algorithm’. It questions the relevance of ‘brand image’ in a scenario where people just ‘do a google’ when they need information about a product or brand.Yes, I know that you don’t google when you want to buy a razor or a soap, such brands would still need some good old marketing communication and POP to help swing the purchase decision in their favor (though adverse information, and the net’s ability to disperse this information would still affect them), but how about the considered purchases, where Google does its share of the work in giving information to consumers? More importantly, what does this mean for all those brands that complete their entire revenue model online?

    Wikipedia defines brand as a “a collection of symbols, experiences and associations connected with a product, a service, a person or any other artefact or entity.” (for some interesting branding quotes, drop in here, courtesy @shefaly). Earlier there was a large degree of control that the brand had on all three parameters. The internet, however, made the experiences of consumers shareable, and that has now started shaping associations – forcing official brand custodians out of the control seat, because a search for the brand throws up not just their official communication, but blogs, microblogs, images, videos, and what consumers have to say about them and competitors.

    Most of the brand lessons and theories we have evolved are from an age when communication from the brand and consumers’ individual experiences were the only parameters of judging a brand – which perhaps meant that brands like Coke took decades to become a super brand. With the advent of the net, and social media, the brand’s consumers are taking to each other. I’d touched upon this topic a while back, and mentioned the paradigm shift presented by Saatchi’s Lovemarks concept-  from “You->Your Brand->Consumer” to “You->Consumer->Their Brand”, which perhaps explains the success of internet brands like Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. These brands have had evangelists almost right from the time they started, and the best type- consumer evangelists.

    In many ways, the 4 P’s of marketing are still relevant – the net allows very little room for ‘fluff’ around brands. WYSIWYG is a better way to be for brands, which means the product has to be fundamentally strong, and solve a problem/satisfy a need. Price comparisons are a click away, so a brand’s selling price has to be in sync with the value being offered to the consumer. The ‘place’ can be viewed from a digital perspective too – making sure the information about the brand is available easily to access and share, and if a sale can be made online, ensure that it taps into all possible sales avenues online. While the original intended meaning of ‘promotion’ still holds, perhaps its also time to ‘promote’ the evangelist consumers of the brand, helping them to share their experiences, and giving them the recognition they’d appreciate. And i’ll be a bit presumptuous, and add a lil P of my own – Pertinence (which is quite connected to ‘Place’) , “Relevance by virtue of being applicable to the matter at hand”, because we are already quite into the ‘real time web’, and heading towards the semantic web rapidly. It also means that marketers would do well to acknowledge the fluid nature that this gives their brands – in terms of what a search result (and we’re  getting social on search too) would throw up, as well as the changes that would entail in the associations formed in the consumer’s mind.

    until next time,  here’s to a piece of the consumer’s mind, and for peace of the marketer’s mind 🙂

    PS. Building a brand vs building a business. A good read.

  • The India concept

    Ok, so maybe its not a concept to be questioned, but what’s the point in having a blog if i cant discuss what i want. Considering the effect it had on a couple of friends, I am expecting much angst.

    To begin with, let me make it clear that the idea of India still finds much appeal in my emotional side. I like the vastness and uniqueness of it all, and the fact that we have a shared history. But unfortunately, it doesn’t find favor these days in my logical side. I feel that we have created an entity that has become way too  large to handle for anyone. The events in Mumbai and a federal agency having to enter the fray added to this belief. No, the resignation of two ministers at the state level doesn’t quite capture the responsibility that the state/city administration should’ve taken on.

    Even though I keep in mind the fact that I dont need a passport or a visa to go to Goa or Rohtang, everything from the fuss over the TN number plates in Bangalore, to the language barriers, from the fact that my Kerala voter’s id is of no use in Bangalore, to the ‘Madrasi’ caricature in Bollywood, gives me the feeling that we’re just a forced conglomerate of states. And then we elect a couple of houses of MPs, from these states, so that the Communists, who can barely form the government in 2 states, play spoilsport to a nuclear deal. We form a central government which helps the state governments say that just about nothing is their responsibility. Once upon a time, we’d everything from shared memories to Doordarshan to give us a semblance of common identity. Do we have that now? And that’s when i ask, whether the gains from the concept of India are really more than the losses.

    If each state had more responsibility than a Central government, a mandate of taking care of itself – security, finance, infrastructure and so on, wouldn’t we have more accountability to governance, an accountability which can then be better put to use at local levels. My friend said that this has nothing to do with scale, but I think that by just being such a vast entity, we are actually laying ourselves open to divisions. Like the SMS forward I saw ‘Politicians divide us, terrorists unite us’. And meanwhile, Mumbai perhaps has a few more weeks before it gets into the archives sections, with hardly any retaliation or concrete action to be shown for the trauma.

    I agree that a discussion here won’t change anything, but humour me, what do you think?

    until next time, state your view

  • Authority doesn’t figure

    The measurement of social media, or rather the lack of it, is a topic that promises to be carried over to 2009 too. I shared this article last week on Twitter, because i felt it voiced most of what I felt on ‘authority’ in social media. Coincidentally, I was also checking out Twitority – an ‘authority based Twitter search’ engine, at the same time. The first article lead me to Chris Baskind’s post on the same topic. Though I’m sorely tempted, I’m going to refrain from using block quotes from that post, because its an excellent read and you should make the effort of clicking the link and reading it all yourself. 🙂

    The new search engine has used the number of followers as a measure to decide authority. TechCrunch promptly suggested the number of RTs (ReTweet) as a better indicator. But while it does place more importance to the tweet than the tweeter, I agree that the number of RTs is just a function of the number of followers. IMHO, we’re barking up the wrong tree – popularity instead of authority. Are they connected? Yes. Are they the same? No.

    If they were the same, Twitter users should still be cheering newspapers and television and all those thingies which we call mass/traditional/heritage media, because they obviously have more ‘followers’ than the aggregate of all Twitter users. But yes, you noticed that Twitter did add a bit of value during the Mumbai events (most recently). So there’s something that’s different about this social mechanism. There’s a uniquely customised experience that we build for ourselves on social media over a period of time. Like Chris Baskind says so wonderfully in his closing  “the ad hoc nature of social media atomizes traditional concepts of authority. We may establish trusted networks, but it’s the relevance of information which really matters.”

    Shefaly threw a good pointer when she replied to my article share with a link to a post of her own. Among other things, she discusses the ‘quality of interactions’, and a four point selection criterion that she uses to ‘follow’ people, but the most important part of the article to me, was the reference to the strategic intent behind what we do on social media. (I’d argue with her on the finer points she raises on this, primarily because of the geography independence that separates virtuality from reality, but I’d completely agree that intent should drive everything else)

    A personalised, trusted network that gives me contextually relevant info (among other things) is what I get out of social media, and to me, ‘authority’ somehow just doesnt capture the way I feel about this very human network. And its not just the term. It makes me feel that maybe we are guilty of taking the term ‘follower’ a tad too literally. In trying to be ‘thought leaders’ and such, the human ego is perhaps trying to thrust upon social media a set of metrics which don’t belong. Authority reminds me of circulation, readership, listenership, viewership, and so on. Maybe its just me, but haven’t we walked that path before? Lets try a different path please.

    until next time, desperate measures?

    PS. Check ‘Mumbai’ on Twitority and you might get a clue on where ‘authority search’ will lead us

    PPS. 2009 (for now) will see this blog with an altered content strategy. The 3 posts per week are being cut down to 2 – one each on Monday and Thursday, but I shall try to post a few interesting links in addition to this. Please don’t sulk 🙂

  • Flame of Tandoor

    That name and the description – ‘a contemporary cuisine restaurant’, in a paper insert that said “Get greeted by an Italian host, experience western ambience, place your order for a continental dish with a chinese attendat (sic) to be cooked by a flame chef” meant that I really had to take a look myself, even though (for some strange reason) I had the same feeling I did when i bought tickets for Himesh’s Karzzz, this, despite it being a part of the Azad Group (the same that owns Tandoor)

    To get there, (when coming from the Indiranagar side), after the Sony World junction, take a right turn on to the road that has William Penn, Barista etc, and then a left towards Jyoti Nivas college. The place is after the Apollo clinic, and before the Qwiky’s outlet.(both roads are one ways)

    I’d begin with saying that whoever decided the name should take a long hard look at the menu card. My professional experience (brand) tells me that higher powers must have insisted on having ‘Tandoor’ in the name for some strange synergy only they can perceive. The menu is a mix of continental, oriental and a few north indian items. The issue is that there is very limited ‘depth’ in each category, with the continental part being slightly better off. For me, the very fact that a restuarant with such a name has Tabasco and HP sauce on the table jarred. Though the seating is quite comfortable, the ambience is also like the menu – lacks any specific theme. They play “9x music”. 😐

    Anyway, considering that there were only a couple of choices in chicken gravies, and we’d rather go to a specialised Oriental cuisine place if we wanted that, we decided to go Continental, and started with a Mushroom Cappuccino soup, which is “white wine and thyme flavoured cream of mushroom”. D asked for chicken in it too, and got it. Must admit that the soup was pretty good. They also gave us some bread with some special butter, which seemed to be mustard based.

    For the main course, we ordered a Flame’s mix grill – “a combination of chicken, lamb, fried egg served with potato roesti and grilled tomato”, and Lasagna alla pollo – “baked layer of pasta with chicken bolognaise, parmesan and cheese sauce”. The mixed grill was strictly okay, i really have had better stuff – in terms of quality and quantity(at Indijoe, for example). The Lasagna was definitely better though the garlic flavor was a bit too much, but the quantity was quite sufficient.There were a few dessert options, including a rice kheer+strawberry ice cream combination, but we really didn’t feel adventurous enough.

    Wallet wise, it set us back by a little less than Rs.700. The service is pretty decent, though  after every course, two people ask you how the food was.That gets irritating after a point. The pricing means that the target crowd is definitely not the JNC kids, who have way too many options around anyway. I really wish they’d concentrate on one kind of cuisine though, this spread really didn’t appeal to me.

    Flame of Tandoor, #63, Near Jyothi Nivas College, Koramangala Industrial Layout. Ph: 41104337

    PS. Okay, I admit, maybe I was just disappointed that the chef didn’t turn out to be one of the Fantastic 4. In my defence, ‘Flame chef’ is very misleading. The Italian host was missing too. Okay, I’ll stop nitpicking!!

    Menu at Zomato