Author: manu prasad

  • More Web 1.0 please

    WATBlog has a post today that gives details on the JuxtConsult India online report. Keeping in mind the ET report that I had quoted from yesterday, which stated that the usage of the internet was evenly spread across SEC categories, it is extremely interesting to note that most internet users have Televisions and Mobiles. Hmm, even SEC categories ain’t what they used to be, though that archaic system of classification is exactly that – archaic.

    The other interesting point is that around 51% of net users are from the corporate salaried class. Also, quoting from the ET article “The democratisation of the net continues, with higher SECs A and B now accounting for just over 50% of all users, down 6% from last year’s figure of 56%. In contrast, lower SEC C, D and E in urban areas now account for around half of all users. It’s same in rural areas too, with the top two rural SECs R1 and R2 accounting for just 41% with the rest coming in from the bottom-of-the-pyramid consumer in SEC R3, R4 and R5.” Figure that out, so much for even distribution across SECs.

    Out of the top 3 uses of the internet, 2 are based on communication. Job search is the only exception. I’ll add one more info from the post before i discuss what I’m getting at. A large number of users have a bank account but only about 1/3rd of those users have a credit card.

    While the general complaint is that internet penetration is just not happening, I’m wondering if the net has given enough reason for the average Indian to go online. Before the advent of web 2.0 (whose users, in an Indian context, i consider advanced) the reason for me to get online was convenience – a faster way to communicate, a better way to gather news, and such uses that gave a tangible value add to my life scenario. Web 2.0 is a bit more involved process, whose tangible gains are yet to be correctly worked out. (at least as far as I am concerned)

    The average Indian, who relies on India Post and maybe courier companies and now the mobile for communication, on brokers for marriages, on real life friends and relatives for social needs, whose news requirements are adequately met by newspapers, an average Indian who really doesnt need the web. The other entities he interacts with say, a state run bank, a local theatre, book or music store, bus services etc may not be bothered enough to help him take the baby steps on to the internet. IRCTC is perhaps an exception in some respects. To state the obvious, the internet speeds up communication, hence thats the most popular usage. Tangible benefit.  See the drift, thats also why only 1/3rd of the banking population has a credit card. They have no use for it.

    And so, we get back to the fact that there has been no ‘killer’ application that would force India to get online. And that perhaps is because most of the production and consumption is restricted to the top of the pyramid. And we adopt the net because it is convenient. I still wouldn’t buy groceries online, or order food online, because to me, there is no reliable and convenient method to do it. (Yes, I know about hungrybangalore) I can imagine the mindset of the lesser priveleged sections of the society. So, I won’t even get into the infrastructure costs here, and at the risk of sounding regressive, all I’ll say is Web 2.0 is cool, but can India have some usable web too?

    until next time, imagine a billion net junkies 🙂

  • India and the Internet

    I read a report by Akamai recently on the state of the internet. Before i start on that, I have to share the wonderful experience I had with Akamai. It didnt start out very well, because i was being sent around in loops of ‘check your email and click the link’. The link asked me to register, and sent me off to my mailbox. i stopped after some 5 attempts, and sent them a mail. Thankfully, got a reponse in an hour’s time, and not a link this time, but the report itself. And this level of service for a free download.

    India doesnt get mentioned in too many places, so the JuxtConsult report seems to be the best source of data. ET had an article on that a few days back. The urban penetration of the net has reached double figures finally. While the metros still account for a large portion of the net users, a staggering majority (70%) prefer to use the net in regional languages.

    As compared to the mass media that currently rule the roost in india, the net is a much more fragmented medium, even including TV, with its regional programming, and some niche channels. Perhaps because while language is one paramenter of segmenting, the net offers segmentation basis interests and has a more long tail view on the content front. That is unlikely to change, since I would think the costs of running a channel, and running a site would differ hugely, which basically means that there is a minimum mass that a channel has to look at – it can’t go too niche, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem with a site.

    Even though internet penetration is still at a relatively nascent stage, does that 70% mentioned above clearly show the trend that the net is going to take in India. If so, India is again poised to change the way things function. I’m sure the global personnel of McDonalds would’ve asked ‘WTF is an aloo tikki and why should we have it in the menu anyway’. I’m also sure, there would be a case study on it by now. The answer is of course, is being implemented.

    While the figures do show tremendous potential, it threw up a few questions for me. One, how soon will the numbers reach a critical mass for the niche players to emerge in large numbers and still be financially viable? Will these new consumers behave like a typical net consumer or a typical Indian customer or will we manage to create a typically new and unique entity? In a well connected India, how will this affect brands and their communication – will the categorisation of brands offline (as niche vs mass) be retained on the net, or will the sheer numbers turn this on its head. Consider a small example – A Tommy Hilfiger can afford to communicate the same way across India, its TG is comfortable with English as a communication langauge. In the offline space, it perhaps is a niche brand, but will the aggregation of users across the country on the net make it a ‘mass’ brand? A mass brand – Vodafone has two kinds of ads that I’ve seen for the ‘Dehradun didi’ – Irfan in Hindi and Prakash Raj in the South. Maybe it doesnt make sense for them to make one for each state now. But given the spectacular growth of mobile users, it might happen soon. Now look at it from an internet communication standpoint, in a later time when the net population is much more, because of the regional usage of the internet, would the (say) Kannada version of Vodafone be a ‘niche’ communication?

    I think it is safe to say that the internet, its dynamics and its economics will get moulded to a uniquely Indian way of functioning. Considering India’s market size, the impact of this in the overall netscape remains to be seen.

    until next time, the elephant and the web

  • Conversations and Noise

    I came across a new tool, a couple of days back. It helps you make an interactive profile card, and is called retaggr. Its got widgets for StumbleUpon, Gtalk, Twitter and many many more, and can be linked to your profiles on del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Blogger and a few dozen others too. In essence, its like a signature that keeps in touch with whatever you’ve been doing in social media – whether its tagging a photo on flickr or commenting on a blog post, and just like a signature, you can use it on the social media to ensure that other people know what you’re upto. Interesting?

    Yes, but it also showed me a glimpse of the expanse of social media. There are conversations happening everywhere, on Facebook, twitter, blogs, Friendfeed ranging from meaningful discussions to trivial chit chat, but all of which are important to users. Is it possible to keep track of all the conversations you’re interested in? More importantly, how much of filtering does one have to do to keep track of only the things that interest him/her?

    I really don’t think its as simple as choosing your friends or followers. Yes, it helps a bit, and in time, some calibration can be done to receive exactly the kind of alerts, tweets etc that you want. But in the end, conversations can go anywhere, and need not be restricted to your circle. Is it really possible to connect all the threads, because in the end, we are dealing with people here. People have conversations, a germ of an idea happens, and they carry the conversation somewhere else and forget about the original conversation.

    People are also not uni dimensional, they have multiple interests. Even after i figure out who i want to be friends with or ‘follow’, not all the stuff they talk about would interest me, and unfortunately it takes time to figure out the conversations that interest you from the ‘noise’.

    Speaking of time, it flies, its been a year since I started this blog. How have i been doing, my dear one and a half readers? 🙂

    until next time, don’t even think of saying GTD

  • Super Bowled

    I asked a colleague what his plans were for the evening. He looked at me quizzically. I reminded him of the fact that the IPL finals had been on Sunday. A look of realisation dawned on his face, and he said “I didn’t think about that. What’ll I go home and do now”.

    And that would best describe the amazing takeover of Indian primetime television by a force bigger than the combined might of saans and bahus. For more than a month and a half, irrespective of whether home teams won or lost, India was glued to SET Max. We’ll not delve into whether this is a dumbing down of cricket and such other weighty matters, we shall restrict ourselves to taking a small brand journey.

    What did we see during primetime other than the five minute intervals of actual cricket? We saw Hyundai and its I’s, we saw Godrej and CEAT and their brand new logos, Hutch and the ‘now on, now off’ pug, we heard Irfan talk of his local sister and the one in Dehradun, later we heard quite a nice tune for the ‘chota credit’, we hoped madhavan would just leave when Vidya balan was asleep, so we would be spared that silly syrupy sweet conversation, we saw the omnipotence of Yum Yus Dhoni, “break or not, there’s no break from me”, mind it!! We heard commentators laying more stress on the DLF than the six, of the fact that it didnt matter if it was a wicket or a winning run, it was a Citi moment of success for someone. We saw a Citi Metro card, a Canon powershot, and yes, I really can’t forget the one name that echoed across india, the one whom several of my friends threatened to kill if they could lay their hands on him, the one who goes by the name of Sanjoooooo!

    But i noticed two other ads that were on only for a day (for one night wonly) – Tulip IT and Avalon Academy. Thank God, they didn’t show it before, is all I’ll say. But they got seen, and how. It would be awesome if someone could do a cost benefit analysis, i.e no: of days ads telecast vs mileage for the brand. I wonder if the incremental benefit that Max New York got by being there forever is proportionate to the money they spent compared to the T20 style knock of Tulip or Avalon.

    I think the IPL has been a learning for not just the BCCL, but also for brands. There were important lessons on frequency of ads, context in which they’re shown, fatigue factor etc. I wonder whether these learnings would get brands to relook their strategy for next year’s IPL. But I definitely think we’re on our way to creating our own Superbowl. Maybe, it also means that we’ll get to see ads specially created for the occasion, ads that would make or break brands, and ads that would get showcased year after year.

    until next time, over

  • Social Media Marketing/ DM 2.0

    There’s a very interesting post I read at WATBlog, interesting because while I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve not been able to put my finger on it correctly. Harshil, in his article has, and while he’s not answered his questions by way of solutions, the issues that have been raised are quite fundamental.

    To summarise, it’s mostly about the ‘abuse’ of social media, by treating the platform as well as the communication on it, as commodities. The current usage, if i read it right, is that a brand manager knows he has got a filtered audience thanks to say, a common interest, but the way he communicates to them, is just another rendition of what he does through say, dm. Which essentially means branded spam. And that doesn’t bode well for social media, definitely not in the long term.

    I agree, wholeheartedly. But I also feel that it speaks a lot about the times we live in. In this age, when attention spans are in a downward spiral, how many brand guys are willing to look at a long term view of brand equity? If buzz is the buzzword, is it a sustainable thing? Or is it seen as something which has to be milked for all its worth?

    Most companies have a very ROI way of looking at marketing. I’m not being judgemental here, in some cases it might be even justified. To simplify lets look at two scenarios – an old product and a new product. In the case of a new product, how many stakeholders would be willing to buy the story of a social media marketing strategy whose tangible returns are in question? In the case of an old product, the immediate question would be why bother with these fads when we have TV, print and Outdoor. Oh, you are digitally passionate? Fine, adapt it for some Orkut Shorkut also.

    The ideal scenario is when Social media marketing, and internet in general, would stop getting treated as another item in the adaptation checklist of a marketing campaign. because its not for campaigns, its for the brand and will span not just many campaigns, but perhaps many stages of its lifecycle also. When you have a group of passionate users (of a generic service, not even a brand) in say the ‘adventure’ space (that was mentioned in the Harshil’s post), the idea should not be to send a one way communication to them. Stop thinking of it as a messaging service, instead get them to share experiences, be a facilitator for their treks, provide free gear, get feedback, improve the product, become an active participating member in the community, figure out the long tails, make customised products for specific interests, make them feel so damn good about the product that they take ownership, become evangelists, and even recommend it to friends of their who may not even have made it to their social media group. Yes, every brand guy should ideally look at tangible gains, but are you willing to let go first, and learn some patience?

    Let me also add an uncomfortable angle to this, the human one. How many brand guys would think of being married to the brand beyond say, 5 years? (and thats optimistic). So, what looks better on the resume? A measurable short term activity that yielded a quantifiable response, or a strategic long term activity thats still in nascent stages?

    until next time, socialising ain’t easy