Author: manu prasad

  • AdBag

    Eco friendly bags that also doubles up as an advertising medium, that’s AdBag. In conversation with founder Rohit Mukherjee

     
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  • Consistency and cohesion

    Google’s Search Plus your World once again made me think about consistency, (in terms of a brand’s voice) a subject that finds frequent mentions here.

    Consistency in branding has been a golden rule for a long time. But by now, brands would be used to seeing their messages layered with the contexts and perspectives added by users on social networks. Considering the transient nature of the feed and search capabilities, and despite their inherently ‘viral nature, brands could still console themselves a bit about reach.

    After all, despite the march of the social networks, Google was (and is) still easily dominant when it comes to specific search, and brands could still play a few SEO/M games. But now, Google is accelerating its social fusion into search; the layering will happen here too, and the incumbent search gaming tools would start getting blunted.

    In this context, I wondered if brands should probably move from consistency to cohesion. Consistency was a good tool in a mass media era when one way distribution and a linear flow of information ruled. In this era of collaborative media, cohesion factors in context  – time/place/person etc to the brand’s message. It lends flexibility to the brand’s voice, qualifies it, and helps empower internal and external customers. So, rather than getting an OCD over exact phrases, colours etc, the brand custodians could work on how best to package the brand’s core DNA in different settings. Then, even if consumers don’t share as-is, at least the brand’s perspective would be context relevant. Your thoughts?

    until next time, consistently cohesive

    PS: My guest post on afaqs last year lists some advantages of this approach under “What happened after the TVC ended?”

  • Weekly Top 5

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  • QuadMo

    QuadMo aims to provide an end-to-end mobile and online gift voucher solution for retailers, consumers and corporates. In conversation with co-founder Rohit Rawal.

    [scribd id=78157835 key=key-29s1wwhow240sug6s4wm mode=list]

  • Good cop, bad cop

    Identity in era of social media proliferation was something I brought up in last week’s post. Since then, my office has shifted, and I have to travel a little more to get to the new place. Instead of going below the elevated highway, I take a shorter route that gives me elevated views every 5 minutes thanks to ‘amateur’ humps. But the traffic is better. Traffic and violations – that’s the connection.

    A few months back, a video on the Facebook page of the Bangalore Traffic Police made headlines. The cops asked for help in finding the errant car driver. (I’m not sure if they did nab him) Since then, I’ve seen increased participation on the page, with users adding photos of traffic violations, ad campaigns on safety and questions being answered by the cops themselves, though that’s occasional. In many cases, numbers of vehicles are clearly visible and I’ve seen one in which the cops have noted a violation by a fellow officer, uploaded by a user. This, and the brouhaha over the London cops naming and shaming those involved in the UK riots last year made me think about individual identities beyond virtual social and in to real social.

    Though we are still at a stage where even a person’s social, let alone all online activities cannot be comprehensively tracked and measured, technology on that front is rapidly catching up. In the near future, real world tracking technologies will probably catch up too. We’re already seeing signs of the worlds colliding. It is then possible that the social identity of a person would include his real-life actions too and a ‘Klout’ would probably have a holistic ranking of an individual, one that includes traffic violations and philanthropy and so on. 🙂

    This is probably one area where brands will then have a head start, because naming and shaming them is something many of us already do via social platforms. I wonder if we will be more lenient towards them after we get a dose of identity warfare.

    until next time, coping with cops