THE Y-AXIS by Rajesh Kumar

A snapshot of a picture seen on Expressindia.com. See the caption and match it with picture.

In the last ten days or so, we have seen a spate of ads, on TV, Billboards etc announcing the rebranding of Indian Telecom operator Hutch to Vodafone. Newspapers have been talking about the huge sums that has been marked for this transformation. This NDTV report event mentions about a sum of 300 crore being earmarked for this brand makeover.The entire campaign, including creative is very tasteful and simple.The blitz appears so pervasive. However, there is branding in nooks and crannies, which is still to be done. Look at the network signature of a visitor who visited this space last night from a handheld device on Hutch network.The network is still identified as Hutch. Don't blame the brand managers though, this is one space that they may not think much about(or know about). Don't blame the network guys either, they are not incharge of the brand. It just goes onto show that such mammoth brand makeovers have more dimensions than a brand manager can possibly think about.

It is indeed amazing that Yuvraj Singh became the first batsman to hit six sixes in an over in nascent Twenty 20 format. But what is more amazing is the way internet has made it possible for people to see the magical moment as and when possible, at a time of your choice, and as many times.Not only did I receive an email containing a clip of this Yuvraj packing off Stuart Broad of England at Kingsmead, Durban as an attachment and folks also forwarded multiple links on various video sites. Not sure where these sites stand on the issue of Copyright violation in such cases, but at this point it is all up for folks to see. Whoever knows the impact of today's new and emerging communication media such as Video and Blogs?

I was at BlogCamp in September last year, and became a big fan of guys who were behind it. There is another event coming up coming October and this one sounds very promising too. SearchCamp is all about SEMs and SEOs, terms that are widely spoken about, but in my frank opinion, understood much lesser. SearchCamp on 6th & 7th October, (again an Unconference , wow ) and promises to bridge that gap. I look forward to it, and hope to see you there. No, Google is not distributing PR 9 as complimentary gifts here! See you there!!

Few months back, a friend of mine sought to transfer some money from his ICICI Bank account to to my ICICI Bank account. We choose the most convenient route, which was an online transfer. Was it that that convenient indeed?. Read on. It so appeared that the account number I sent by mail to my friend was wrong by exactly one digit. A real costly mistake indeed. My unsuspecting friend promptly executed two transfers and the money, a sum of few thousand rupees, landed in a third account, which wasn't his intention. As soon as we learnt of the error, we reported to ICICI Bank, and surprising enough, this completely wired bank decided that this cannot be reported to the call center. One has to visit the branch. So be it we said, and dutifully filed a written report at the ICICI Branch where my friend has his account. We were advised, that the Bank would seek to reach out the third account holder, and after his/her permission , reverse the transaction. Not so simple. For months, my frien...