Year: 2013

  • Project Lead

    My earlier post on media consumption fragmentation also made me think of the other side – the creation perspective. Despite the hubbub of “integrated campaigns”, some platform, more often than not, plays the lead. In earlier eras, choices were easier – until televisions came into the picture, it was limited to newspapers, events, radio; even after TV made its inroads, things like objectives, costs, geographical reach of the brand etc could be used to make decisions. In general, I’ve seen TV trumping print more and more as time passes, taking on the role of project lead.

    After the advent of social, and despite the low internet penetration, the above parameters have increasingly started working in favour of social ‘media’. Of course, there’s always the beginning of the curve when everyone wants in because of the shiny new object syndrome, but I do believe we are crossing that stage now. I still see “let’s do this on social media too” (after the entire campaign has been conceived and produced) or the single slide on social rampant, but that’s also part of the learning curve. As always, some brands are moving faster than others.

    We already have brands, internationally, that are experimenting (and successfully) with ideas that are inherently social, and using traditional media for say, additional reach. Just as TV took over from newspapers, it is possible that social will take the seat at the head of the table at some point. It is also possible that it would go the way of digital – relegated to performance campaigns, and belying its potential. That is even more so if social is measured in the same ways as the media before it. However, I think this time the story would be played out differently. But then again, I also think there will be a fragmentation of the brand story, understanding each platform’s nuances, using its inherent strengths, making frameworks that have tailored measurement indices, and in the process, providing a cohesive perspective to the consumer, and cohesive metrics for the brand.

    until next time, leaderboards 😉

  • Lovestrong

    Slightly dated in the context of real time, but I thought this was a pertinent read in the Armstrong era. It’s titled “Honesty of the long-distance runner” and is about a Spanish runner Iván Fernández Anaya. He was running second in a race he had no chance of winning when he saw race leader Abel Mutai pull up about 10 meters before the finish, thinking he had already crossed the line. Instead of exploiting the situation, he let the Kenyan win using gestures to communicate. He thought it was the fair thing to do. He also candidly said that if a Eur/World medal was at stake, he’d probably have done things differently.

    I saw this poster at gaping void, related to  purpose, but twisted it a bit in this context. It isn’t as though there aren’t things we love to do. As we move further in life, we learn more about the way life works. Sometimes these things we love make business sense, sometimes they don’t or requires either stellar talent or more hard work than we are willing to put in. Some of us work at it, some of us lock the love away and some of us decide to find an easy way out. And thus it is that even things which involve love and passion – sports and arts – have been converted into competitions and ruthless economically viable phenomena. So really, where does the corruption begin?

    until next time, strong-armed

  • The Oriental Kitchen

    When we read about The Oriental Kitchen on the web, and saw the address, we thought it would make it the fifth restaurant in that building – the one that houses The Great Indian Thali, Barbeque Factory and An Elegant Elephant. But turned out that El Tablao had shut down and Spain had been replaced by Chinese-Thai. Ah well, the Buddha has always been clear about the transient nature of it all, so he wouldn’t have had any qualms about replacing the Spanish paraphernalia that made up the earlier ambiance. The chandeliers remain though, and thankfully so does the view. We were the only group when we reached, and were asked if we had a reservation. After an awkward silence during which we scanned the rows of empty tables and chairs, we got exactly the table we wanted. 🙂

    Since Zomato had the menu, we roughly knew what we wanted, and asked for a Tom Kha Chicken soup. Before that arrived, we got a little complimentary amuse-bouche made of darsaan and peanuts. Sweet and spicy it was, and did its job very well. The soup arrived soon after and though we would have liked it to be thicker and wished for the coconut milk to have a stronger presence, its flavours were quite good. Not the best we’ve had, but passable. We had also asked for a Banana Leaf Wrapped Grilled Chicken. That turned out to be really good – spicy with a hint of sweetness and a sauce that complemented it very well! Great presentation too.

     

    For the main course, we asked for a Thai Chilli Garlic Noodle with Chicken and though we wanted a Tsinghoi Chicken, the person who took the order recommended a “Slice Chicken with Corriander and Fresh Red Chilli.” (sic) Both the dishes were good (and spicy) though the red chilli was replaced by a green version.

     

    The service was friendly and helpful. All of the above cost us just over Rs.1230. I’m guessing Oriental cuisine will definitely have takers in this part of town despite competition around.

    The Oriental Kitchen, 612/1 Lotus Building, 4th Block , 80 Feet Road, Near Sony World Signal, 4th Block, Koramangala. Ph: 40906789

  • Scripbox

    Stop thinking. Start investing, is scripbox’s message as it tries to simplify the process of investing for consumers. In conversation with co-founder Sanjiv Singhal.

    [scribd id=125730790 key=key-1nna9enw2hvpf69l44pp mode=scroll]

  • Confessions of a ‘social worker’

    It’s raining discounts and practically everything is on ‘Sale’, except probably Trivortex bangles! At Myntra, we’ve been having an ‘I Love Sale’ campaign running since January. While we have been tweeting about it since then, last week we decided to take the relationship to the next level. The #ReplaceMovieTitlesWithSale turned out to be a huge success for us, and I’ve chronicled the details on our corporate blog.

    Since there were many interesting answers, I even tweeted about it from my personal account, a rare occurrence. I was asked by a couple of people why we chose the cliched hashtag, and I thought this would be a good time to convey my version beyond a few multiples of 140 characters.

    I’ve always been a staunch believer of figuring out intent before anything else and it driving everything else. In that sense, I still stick to my earlier stance on hashtags, but it’s more nuanced now, because I begin to understand the kind of roles it can play in a brand’s framework. As the perfect example, in this case, our objective was simple – create a buzz around the sale at Myntra. We could have tried a more ‘critically acclaimed’ hashtag, like #bachpanstyle, but our intent was reach, and the more ‘banal’ it was, the higher its chances of usage. And boy, it worked – generated more than 7000 tweets in 3 hours, and not only was it a #1 trending topic in India, it also touched a worldwide #2. Mission pretty much accomplished.

    Zooming outward a bit. I like to think that I’m a social purist, to the extent that I request people not to use social and media as though they are doomed to be married to each other. There are so many things that are social and not media, at least yet! However, social media is a reality, or rather, social is also media. In fact, this is what marketers can instinctively relate to, because it can be viewed in the same paradigms of reference that they have been used to in traditional media. It can also, unfortunately be ‘bought’ – from Promoted Tweets/Followers to Promoted Stories and Page Like Ads. The purist in me lives by not doing this.

    However, if I approached all of my assignment as a purist and argued that this is only a long term game and numbers don’t really matter, I’d probably be raised to sainthood in future, but my job would have died long before that! In essence, I need to be pragmatic, and run the sprint and the marathon. My intent decides what I should be running and when. It’s a balance, and one that needs to be worked at every day. If I asked you about the 100m sprint record holder, you’d probably do the pose in a second, but if I asked you the same about marathons…. In general, that holds true for social activities as well. After all, it’s real time, and is a nascent domain in which we have seen very few marathons. 🙂

    In summation, the whole world is on sale, and another sale is not really a news maker. But the sprint can help, by adding a layer that helps this sale stand out. Thanks afaqs and Lighthouse Insights. 🙂

    until next time, now running