THE Y-AXIS by Rajesh Kumar

Very few brands in India really take continual customer engagement seriously, Maggi Noodles is one of them. The idea of a club or engaging customer to constant cues by way of a social networking environment is just the right thing in India right now. Read More...

I noticed a TV ad of a 'snack' featuring Juhi Chawla. This fairly long ad ends with the punchline ' Tedha hai par mera hai' . True, creative ads need not always come from big agencies. or vice versa as in this case. Someone was kind enough to put the ad on YouTube. Yes, deep pocket clients demand,"Give me something out of the world" and advertising agencies oblige. Yes, this ad is quite out-of-the-world as far as I am concerned. Mindblowing (!) too. And quite jarring too. Tedha Hai Par Mera Hai Ad via YouTube I am not buying Kurkure anytime, no I would not. And I would even not take an Airtel connection even if they run the Maddy & Vidya Balan ad five hundred times in three hours.   The creativity of the ad has been killed by the big media budget. They need to pull out some money from the incessant carpet bombing of this ad to creating meaningful ads- more ads with less number of rotations on the TV screen .

While Beijing Olympics are just round the corner, one does not see much advertising around it even now. In fact I remember seeing Lenovo ads around Olympic torch relay about six months back. Suddenly it faded out and no new advertising is noticeable , on web, TV, outdoor or print. Shall we blame it on IPL or am I expecting the Olympics based advertising too early in India? Or, is it the violent run of the Olympic torch that has made advertisers wary? Just wondering aloud. As a matter of fact, the list of sponsors for the Olympics is really impressive. The usual big time Olympic sponsors Coke (remember the Atlanta Olympics were dubbed as Coke Olympics ) is there, along with GE, Atos Origin, Kodak , Visa, Samsung and of course, Lenovo. Plus a plethora of Chinese companies as one would expect. Where are the ads and the Olympic themed promos though? PS: Sara , I am back!

I was reading with great amazement the stats revealed by the MD of Nokia India on India's mobile revolution. But before I go to the statement, it ought to be noted that the MD of a mobile phone company was speaking at Goafest which is all about advertising, marketing and media planning. Read Saurabh Garg's or Rajiv Dhingra for more . So what's the relation between advertising and mobile phones? The connection is content, as well as new emergent channel of 3G services of mobile, which allow content to be captured and shared with much ease. And when there is content and a channel, advertising cannot be far behind. Now look at the slightly hyperbolic statement from D Shivakumar, MD of Nokia India. “If YouTube is big, 3G services here will redefine the space. YouTube will pale into insignificance in the next few years with India user-generated content” If you wish to point out that YouTube does not enable content creation, only dissemination, your point is taken. He ...

This morning I noticed Google Reader was recommending a feed of from one of India's largest telecom service company - BSNL . This company is an example of a corporation being formed out of what was earlier a government department- though its business is to facilitate conversations, it certainly is not one known for having conversations with its own customers - you would know that if you have been a BSNL service subscriber yourself. Needless to say, I quickly added this feed to my list. What attracted me even more was that there were over 70 subscribers already - okay, not very high, but interesting.  I had also noticed the term 'blog' on Indian Income Tax Department main website , as well as Police Blogs, and this whole phenomenon of Government Departments and Government Owned Companies moving towards 'conversation' appeared attractive enough to check out. Cut to BSNL blog. It is actually a news feed, and not a full fledged blog with its own crisp URL (such as ...

Few posts back I promised to talk about conversational brand properties in India and specifically mentioned about Maggi Club, which I had noticed on one of the packs few months back. The idea sounded exciting and for curiosity sake, I even tried to register that time, but I found I need to be in a certain age band to be able to register. However, the link www.maggiclub.com is broken and there is no site hosted at this URL. I have been checking periodically and looks like the Maggi Club site has been pulled off. To be sure, I verified the domain is still registered in the name of Nestle. Is this the case of the low net penetration in India making such a property commercially difficult to justify?

When Alvin Toffler coined the term Prosumption in 1980, he may perhaps not thought about the various forms this would acquire in a later day. He would certainly not thought at that point that newspapers would use reader generated content to enhance brand engagement and build loyalty. That is exactly what a Chennai based free-to-distribute Tabloid Ergo is seeking to do. Ergo has gone one step forward in reserving a space every single day for a reader contributed photograph. To be fair, reader contents have adorned the pages of print media for very long, whether it is humour columns such as Life's like that in the Readers Digest or story writing contests. Playing on the urge to see our work in print, Ergo invites its readers to email pictures shot by them which may interest other readers. The column has been quite a success, and going by the response seen by me, certainly generated a certain sense of loyalty in the readers. Such is the rush to send photos that many of the con...

So, what did Microsoft buy when they paid billions to take 1.6 percent stake in Facebook? The appeal behind the social networking groups site is not just access to a large user base, but access to behaviour, group and individual, which can be used to promote a product, a gift idea, a charity. Why do the marketers love SNS? Love to know group behaviour and communication patterns. Ability to influence word of mouth recommendations (influencers). SNS' offer some degree of well identified closed group, unlike web which is open. Think about a community of guitar artists and the guitar manufacturer gets a chance to place an ad in this group. Communities based on interest groups are even more homogenous(marketers love when the crowd is homogenous). A lively photography community is more likely to receive a camera equipment ad especially if there are folks who are talking about it. When people talk, they generate peer pressure.It does not only happen in teens but in ...

Let me state this upfront. This series was taken up by me in response to a question from a friend, who is a marketing tiger, but a wet cat, when it comes to anything digital. Now read the last two posts to get a sense of what I am talking about! Look at this blog from Income Tax Department of India . Yes, government departments too have realized the importance of a conversation(atleast pockets of the government have), which those in India, will agree is a complete change. So, you can register, post a question of common interest, and Income Tax department will address( Yes, sometimes you get to ask them a question and they would answer). I would not say it has really taken off big time, but certainly sounds a very promising idea. Which brings us to the central point of this post - how many of us really know about this particular blog? 'Discoverability' of a blog may not be automatic, and certainly require some promotion. Barmer Police Blog is a case in point. It is listed in ...

Last post I mentioned about talking about the brand blogs we see in India in different segments. I started to think what yardstick to use to talk about them, and what to measure. So, first things first. The most important criteria in defining a brand blog in my view remains the ability to create content by the target segment themselves. This could be by way of full length text articles, reactions, pictures, videos, links or just comments. Some form of prosumption is a must to have to get the conversation going. In my judgment this is what differentiates a community and a conversation from a billboard or a print ad, which you just see, smile or ignore, and walk on. In short, this is which engages and builds the readership ,this is what makes people come back again and again. A glossy looking site, is bound to fail, if the target segment thinks that is an advertising portal. Finito . So make them talk. I looks at glossy ads only when I am getting bored waiting for my medical appointm...

This one has been an intention for a while. I have been watching the evolution of blogging as a brand conversation medium (brand touch point) in India. Lot of interesting (and not so interesting) development happening all around. It is my intention to take a sector and talk about blogging and non-blog conversation, for example, at Maggi Club . Coming soon. After a break!

When I read the term Prosumer in Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, it hit me hard. To be fair, the term Prosumer was first used by Toffler in 1980 itself. But Wikinomics , provides great insights into mass collaboration with numerous examples, set me thinking. I started looking for examples for Prosumption around me. Prosumer (Producer+Consumer) is a term that signifies how even traditional media such as print (a little slow) , TV and online are adapting in involving common folks like me and you in creating content for them, and thereby building more content and greater involvement, and maybe credibility too. I was a little befuddled recently when this blog started getting some visitors refered by the good old Wall Street Journal website. When I went to the source page, I found that on WSJ has an article on Digital Marketing on which I had written a post too and WSJ has used Sphere to pick it up and so nicely provide a link to my post.Maybe this is a very normal thin...