Category: Digital

  • Social Ambassadors

    Yes, it is the age of conversation, but in India it is also the age of brand ambassadors. And not just the average Joe Ambassador, but ones who blog. I, for one, subscribe to Big B’s blog, because, from his posts, i think he is a natural. And even if this is true, he’s doing justice to the job.

    Anyway, after blogging for a while, it was quite understandable that with his hectic schedule, Big Adda should make his life easier by giving him a mo blog. And now he’s having a blast with microblogging @160 characters. Updating multiple times a day and speaking his mind.

    The entire activity set me thinking. So, what happens when the transparency of social media meets brand ambassadors?  How would, for example, the Big B (as brand ambassador) react, if God forbid, a pesticide (Pepsi) or a worm (Cadburys) issue erupted again? What role would he play? Blogger or Brand Ambassador or a boring diplomat? Assuming that he uses the products he endorses (okay, stop laughing!!) would he sometimes play the dissatisfied customer?

    I got a glimpse of perhaps what lies in store, thanks to this entry of his. A tale that most bloggers would be familiar with. Sit and write an entire blog post and the server conks out without saving!! In this case, he was blogging on Big Adda. Bad publicity, I would think. Thankfully, someone there was smart enough, and pretty soon we had another entry, this time thanking a Big Adda official. Wonder if they’d do that for mere mortals though 😉

    But back to the point, in an era of instant communication and celebrity bloggers, would brand ambassadors  now have revised contractual obligations that draw a clear line on transparency? One that would bring brands back to the familiar comfortable opaque territory that they have been operating in? Or will the celebrity be true to the spirit of blogging? (read the poetry – header on Big B’s blog) 🙂

    until next time, brand bloggers 🙂

  • Opacity

    Read two interesting posts, seemingly not very connected, but actually so. The first one was here, (don’t miss the article it has linked to either) and it talks about brands including an RTI clause in their charter, and anyone from a stakeholder (thats including consumers) to competition being able to demand answers from the company/brand and more importantly, being able to get it. I wonder though, how an RTI clause could co-exist with competitive advantage (brand strategies).

    The second post talks about Friendfeed being a great tool for brands since it aggregates the contents from blogs, microblogging platforms, photo sharing services, social bookmarking sites and most possible social media. The snag though is that a Facebook or an Orkut are not accommodated there, yet, and the crowds frequenting the two kinds of sites are not exactly duplicated.

    But yes, the connection between the two posts is transparency, and i feel that in india, we have a long way to go before we reach that state. That’s because more than a certain set of processes, we are talking about a philosophy here. In the first digital (mini) wave and its aftermath, when blogs became a corporate mantra, how many companies/brands took it seriously and how many have persisted? For a transparent system to get established and flourish, it needs to start with a strategy thats consumer centric, a strong rationale for why x strategy was chosen over y to achieve a certain strategic objective, the wisdom to understand that we are human, and plans can go wrong, inspite of having backup plans running from b to z, and most importantly the maturity to listen to feedback, accept responsibility and take criticism, but learn from it, fix it and get better.

    When i hear people ask for changes in communication strategy based on very subjective likes and dislikes (sorry, its not always purely subjective, i have also heard ‘my wife likes pink’ for a campaign theme color), and when i get this response from them when asked about consumer preferences, and when, on hearing that I blog, I am asked to write good about the brands I work with, irrespective of reality, and when FYI (F*** You Instead – courtesy ‘One Night at the Call centre) responsibility strategies are given more importance than the brand’s performance, and many many more such occurrences, it gives me enough reason to believe that transparency is a long way off.

    On an aside, I read here that apparently the blogosphere was abuzz today with the Vodafone ad for iPhone. Interestingly, I saw three tweets today basically asking why the Vodafone customer service couldn’t be manned by people who knew about iPhone. 🙂

    until next time, mind set

  • The Middle Path

    Lamenting about the state of the internet in india is second and sometimes even first nature for this blog. This was the last major rant. It usually surprises me that even with India’s growth story and the obvious uses of the internet, our internet penetration is languishing in single digits. Yes, we have infrastructural issues, and relatively high broadband costs, but is that the only reason? I had started this thread in the post linked above, and I have a little more now to say on it.

    There are a large set of users who are still happy with the basic uses of the net (mail, a bit of chat, news etc), a subset who use it for jobs and other classifieds. There’s another bunch who are constantly experimenting with blogging, microblogging, and keeping up with a Flock or FF3 browser. There’s a third set that is above the first, but their interests end with orkut and Facebook. I think there is a huge divide between sets 1 and 2. Does that mean that the number of people who are working on the next set of useful products/services for India might be a minority, or worse still, not exist at all? Dangerous!

    So it was refreshing to come across two websites yesterday – the first through a mail inviting me to the premiere of Meri Dhun.  The second one, from here, to a site called Yo Macha. Completely unrelated, because Meri Dhun allows you to personalise songs by changing the lyrics. Their studio will then compose, record it and send it to you in a ringtone/MP3 format. And Yo Macha which claims to be, rather pretentiously, India’s top destination, allows users to rate photos, blogs, and an assortment of things from colleges to social networking sites and anything and everything in between. As an aside, while their revenue model is now restricted to SMS revenue sharing, banner ads and generating traffic for CPC?CPM ads, maybe, when they get enough registered users, they could provide corporate services like dipsticks for brand communication within the desired TG?

    I digress!! While they are completely unrelated, but for one small connection – they are not based out of the uber cool Tier 1 cities. The first is from Indore, the second from Jaipur, and both are based on little everyday things that people do in India. I am not even getting into evaluating business models, scope etc, but a thought crossed my mind. Perhaps there is no big killer application that’ll kickstart the net revolution in India, perhaps there are only these smaller drops which will make a bigger drop and perhaps something even bigger in the large indian media ocean. Maybe thats the way the Internet is going to take off here.

    The in between space in india, bridging the gap between the web 1.0 users and the people who are moving beyond web2.0, by building stuff that interests and/or provides value to the great Indian internet middle class.

    until next time, net gains, thats all that matters

  • Local Portals

    I came across this today – a local site for Kolkata – I Love Kolkata.com, powered by the ABP group. The site for Kolkata Mirror had been launched a while back, though the paper itself has not been launched in the market. The first two pages of a google search threw up only one other contender for a complete city portal – that was Calcutta Web.

    As far as design goes, ILK is quite ahead of the other two. I also liked the ILK usage, which also means ‘people of a specific kind’, in addition to being an acronym for ‘I Love Kolkata’. The site has the regular news coverage, and blogs as well as city info. In comparison, the KM site does look a bit haphazard, but as per the WAT article, this is only a ‘primitive avatar’. The Calcutta Web site is way down on the design parameter, and is an aggregator of news from all the city’s newspapers and has city info.

    But wait, this is not about design. What i want to discuss is the content. While its a given that a newspaper site should have the news stories it carries in its print edition, does it always have to try to be a city portal and a blog platform. In its print version, the newspaper is a one stop shop for most readers and their first source of info on most things to do with the city. For the newspaper too, classifieds are a big source of revenue. But, will a net user rely or expect the news site to carry information like say listings or dine out options, or will he rely on a vertical like eventsbangalore or burrp for that? Yes, it does dependent on the maturity level of the user, but thats a dynamic thing.

    User generated content. Will only discuss blogs for now. Will an existing blogger switch to a newspaper blogging platform? Will the new user stick on to it after he discovers that there are platforms for whom constant improvement of services is a competency, unlike newspaper sites that lets you create blogs. The other point to note before taking a decision on this is an informal but very informative research done here. While the figures are the result of a lot of mashups, and may not be spot on, the fundamental logic is right. According to this, the percentage of creators is a dismal 4%. India seems to be a country of spectators. At this stage of the internet in India, is is wise to waste pixel space on a non core competency?

    Yes, in evolved internet landscapes, it is possible to have excellent user blogs like this, on a newspaper based site, or even something as ‘adventurous’ as this. But in india, is it better for media websites to stick to a CNN IBN model? That would give some exclusive content, with a built in quality control. Once the net evolves, UGC can be scaled up accordingly. For now, isn’t it better to use the web as a base to build solid equity and credibility on a digital platform and figure out ways to use the interactivity factor that the net provides to showcase different perspectives on existing content?

    Now, you might say that in a news overloaded internet space, why would anyone want to visit a newspaper site for news. I guess, traditional media still rides on a credibility factor.

    until next time, click to print, no its the other way 🙂

    PS. Saw another local portal in the making for Bangalore – mybangalore.com

  • Mobilisation

    For those in India who look forward to the internet taking a major stake in ad spends, this (via PluggdIn) cannot be music to your ears. While the internet spend has grown by over 90% in 2007, as far as absolutes go, its a mere 2% in the overall media spend. And with the total figures increasing for all media, its a case of the rich getting richer, and the poor getting much lesser than what they deserve. Ironically, The Times Group finds a place among the top spenders on the net.

    In this report, mobile has been included under digital which has internet, search and mobile. I think its only a matter of time before it becomes a separate category altogether. Like i have written earlier, the mobile is poised to become the internet’s saviour in India. Which is one of the reasons why I’d consider this news very significant – Yahoo has announced a tie up with Idea and MTNL for mobile advertising as well as One search. The SMS search was launched late last year. And if we go by the interesting stuff that Yahoo has been doing globally, the space is bound to throw up some fun stuff considering that Yahoo can leverage all its content from mail to messenger to social media on this platform. (Remember the Reliance-Yahoo Messenger ad?)

    Meanwhile, their friends at Google have not been idle either. Their SMS search was launched just before Yahoo. Their deal with Airtel was also well hyped and they have also launched a voice based local search earlier this year. (while on that, this one – Ubona is an interesting service in Bangalore)

    Also, its not just the web giants who are fighting for the mobile advertising pie. One example would be Nokia’s acquisition of Enpocket, which already services a few clients in India. And in this context, one cannot afford to ignore the major happening in october (hopefully) and the impact it would have on internet access via mobile.

    until next time, net losses