Author: manu prasad

  • Weekly Top 5

    This week's updates include iPhone's 4 years of existence, Skype's announcement of an iPad app, Fring's video chat on iPad, Apple suing Samsung; Twitter's Promoted Tweets in the stream, Twitter for Newsrooms, the Obvious Corporation; Facebook's growth, Winklevoss d

    isputes, new designs and ad formats, LivingSocial's acquisitions, market share and IPO, Yelp's new features, Facebook Deals rollout; Google's Transparency Report, wdyl, Swiffy, Google+, Google Health and PowerMeter shutdown, and the roll out of +1.
    [scribd id=59098367 key=key-iblblh8x1kp4k0k6xp3 mode=list]

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  • A Brief for Agencies

    Will.i.am, musician at Black Eyed Peas, and Director of Creative Innovation at Intel, speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Advertising Creativity (to be noted), said, “Ad agencies are yesterday. But ad agencies that can turn consumers into agents that add value to community and life, that’s what it’s about right now.” (via)

    A couple of weeks back, I had remarked on the role of agencies in future in the context of brands and curation. I found this post titled ' Why Ad Agencies Should Act More Like Tech Startups' very interesting. The contention was that in these dynamic times, with new services appearing/disappearing faster than ever, the definition of the 'idea' needs to go beyond the traditional creative domains and start looking at technology as a major player, 'leveraging it in creative ways'. Mashable had a post couple of days back on how the advertising industry is preparing for a digital future.

    Despite the slice-and-dice that marketing functions have gone through, I still have quite some affection for full service agencies especially if they adapt to changing scenarios and pick up specialised skills and knowledge that would help them tell brand stories better. But I'd agree that understanding not just specific technology, but the landscape itself is indeed something agencies should look at as a priority.

    And then I happened to read another post on a blog that I have recently discovered, but is one of my favourites now. The post, titled 50 Secrets Of Blissful Relationships.

    .digitaltonto.com/2011/3-blind-marketers” target=”_blank”>3 Blind Marketers, (based on the blind men-elephant tale) is on the subject of marketing shifting from the earlier dichotomies of ATL/BTL and analog/digital to the paid, owned and earned media model, and is essentially about how specialists corresponding to each 'silo' have few perspectives outside of it. Later in the article, he makes a case for the full service agency, as succinctly as “When you’re trying to make sense of an elephant in the dark, it helps to have extra hands around.”

    I think that the biggest advantage that incumbent agencies can have with a client is trust, and the reason why many clients seem to bring aboard new specialist agencies is because they are losing the trust in their agencies to deliver on those fronts. But what that also means is that if agencies can build and leverage their understanding of the client's brand figure out a platform/domain agnostic process to generate ideas, and find the best ways to execute them from the diverse options that this dynamic era provides, they can still be of much value to the client.

    until next time, a case for briefs, but that's a different post 🙂

    Bonus Reads: David Ogilvy on Creating The Ideal Agency Culture

    and The future of Advertising Technology (via) (click on image to enlarge)

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  • Pawaa Software

    Can you control an attachment that you sent to someone by email, stop them from printing it or ensure that the attachment is only used by the inten

    ded recipient?  pawaaDOCS helps you do all of this. In conversation with Pawaa Software founder, Prakash Baskaran.

    [scribd id=58815540 key=key-2e6nuyo7pktbvn93feac mode=list]

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  • Weekly Top 5

    This week's top news include LinkedIn's growth, integration with Slideshare, Zynga's 'Empires and Allies', Cityville's mobile release, their lawsuit against Vostu, Angry Birds updates, Windows' new SDK, move to HTML5, the new

    Nokia Windows Phone, Yahoo's new search tools, potential Hulu acquisition, Google's online reputation management tools, search updates, and adding communication abilities to Chrome.

    [scribd id=58606157 key=key-2iqoa67djclx467gba3l mode=list]

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  • Cause and Effect

    My fandom relationship with the Pepsi Refresh Project has resulted in a few interesting conversations on this blog, this CSR one being the pick. As Surekha's comment says, this is the longest disagreement we've had. 🙂  That being said, I do agree with Surekha's point of sustainability, but my conundrum remains on another front. Aligning social responsibility with existing strategy/processes will make it sustainable and give it context, but would it create a perception that is not fair to its (assumed) good intent?

    I was reminded of this last week when the news of Snapdeal's adoption of a village hit Twitter. Snapdeal was trending for 2 days of twitter on account of it. None of the comments on my timeline were flattering. I am guilty of contributing a couple myself, one of which was gamely retweeted by Rohith Awasthi, Head – User & Communities at Snapdeal.com. (as I have said on Twitter on an earlier occasion, the intelligence and maturity he displays when dealing with 'crowds' is something I respect)

    Snapdeal has also written about their intent behind this exercise on their blog, and it is heartening indeed to see that it also happens to be the village that one of their employees belong to, and that the entire idea started there. I also have to wonder why that never made it to the PR machinery. Meanwhile, as their blog says, their commitment is something that time will show. Ef

    ficacy is another thing about which time will have an opinion.

    I thought about this from the perspective of the earlier post – sustainability, alignment with strategy etc. Even if this were a marketing gimmick, I'm fine because the village gains. As Snapdeal says, maybe other companies will follow suit too. Now, if good intent is the only thing at work here, how is it measured with regards to their strategic objectives? As I've repeatedly said, it's the deal that drives my relationship with the brand, anything else is of little consequence, including this effort.

    On the other hand, what if Snapdeal had tied up their CSR with their deals? It could have happened in many ways – a bottom up approach, polling people on what they should do as CSR and taking the story further, or perhaps a commitment based on the number/value of deals sold, or promising a certain part of the revenue towards a CSR initiative (both of which can use a wiki like meter to show transparency), or a matching grant scheme for a cause (you pay Rs.x, we put in an equal amount). All arguably aligned to strategy, helps build community, and can be counted as CSR. But as a user, I wonder if I would then have said they are doing it to increase their deal counter. Note that even for a seemingly unrelated deed like adopting the village, some of the reactions were pretty nasty.

    So, dead if you do, killed if you don't, and that's my conundrum. Am I missing something here? If not, perhaps the only way is to organically grow a community that supports you, communicate clearly with them and show them through actions over time – not just in terms of CSR, but overall strategy as well,  that in  the commitment to a larger cause, you mean business. In a future era, when social business hopefully becomes more mainstream, and people see brands whose purpose ties in with the larger context of their lives, this won't be as difficult as it seems now.

    until next time, cause tick or Groupgaon? 😉

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