New Media, Marketing and Entrepreneurship

The DLF Indian Premier League, one of the biggest cricket extravaganza in the recent times, has started today!

Mumbai Indians has won the first match of the DLF IPL!! Though I dont have any team as my favorite in particular and am not really tracking the event for the teams and the matches, but there are many other reasons which I am tracking the event for!

The design of the event, the execution and specifically the activity happening on the internet with respect to the event. While driving to work each morning, I hear Coca Cola’s ads on the radio and the disclaimer at the end says www.dillidilse.com and today finally I got the time to catch up with the web site.

Including interactivity and creating an advertising cum promotional campaign with an objective for making the message viral is an one of the best possible ways today to engage your target audience. With Social Media changing the rules of the game, such a campaign was on the cards!

But showing a bottle of Cola getting filled surrounded with cricket  – Hmmm, I have my doubts!

The color and the design interface looks good, interactivity has been taken care of, to the extent that you can move the cards on the home page as you feel like. The entire concept sounds good, but I still am negative on this going viral and far from establishing Coke as the official drink for the DLF IPL (though this may not even be Coke’s vision) this is purely my thought on the platform and business objectives and value related to it.

I remember reading a case study while the Beijing Olympics were on, when people were not sure whether Pepsi or Coke was the official drink of the games!

A simple intuitive Strong Call to Action interface would have been better!

The campaign is engaging to the point that I would like to know the Delhi team, but am I really interested in knowing if a player is a Libran and what his interests are?! Would I share this information along? NO!! Virality is a far off dream, though it may work for Coke, as it would spend big marketing dollars in employing big online marketing agencies.

I remember a couple of previous viral campaigns which I blogged about previously, with simple, 2 static flash based web pages, but a high Call To Action! They clearly never gave you an interruptive message at your face to go and buy the product, but were high on Brand Establishment and brand recall!

The message being delivered by Coke can be much enhanced and the whole campaign be leveraged towards a higher engagement value with the end consumer, carefully working on the market segmentation, and understanding the message that the consumer is looking out for.

Looking forward to some exciting action at the DLF IPL!!

Share on Facebook

Yes the title of the post is correct and well, I am writing one after a long time. There has been lot of action lately in the social media domain. While working towards refining Social Media metrics and measurability and making things more transparent and understandable for the client, I have been working towards synergizing Social Media with the business objectives for my clients and the journey has been fairly fruitful.

Have stumbled upon a few tools which I found fairly interesting. In this post I am sharing with you a search engine which I digged, DuckDuckGo !! Yes, that’s the name of the search engine, and No, I havent lost my senses!

Strange name, but effective results. Far from the advertisement laden Google results, DDG comes fresh with a new interface and search results which are in contexts better than Google search results. The way DDG classifies search results and shows you the official site for yoru search result (if there is any existing) and then shows the rest of the results is amazing!

Who created DDG?

DDG is the brainchild of MIT grad Gabriel Weinberg, who is self funding the initiative!

I support Weinberg when he promises “less garbage” results. While I am writing this post, I have explored DDG for almost a couple of hours now and I do appreciate the design!

Design – what has it got to do with a search engine?

When you have just a text box on the landing page, what do you need to do with the design of the page? I found it highly intuitive and intelligent of DDG to be giving the user the option of clicking on the many options of internet web sites available on the right sidebar of the screen of your search results.

So, lets say, if I search my name: paritosh+sharma

The first result that comes is my official site:www.paritoshsharma.com followed by the other search results. Now I was fairly amused by the deep search results that I got while doing a name search.

Okay, so I got the search result, now what if I need to see the presence of the searched item on Social Media?

DDG has very intelligently placed links on the right sidebar of the page, which link to various social media channels and other popular sites and an automatic search query goes to the channel which gives the searcher access to your social media profile on the channels directly.

Thus with a single click on the YouTube icon, I reached to my channel on YouTube

Though not a Google yet, but DuckDuckGo is soon predictably going to prove to be a toughie in the search space, creating its own apprecaitive user base.

Share on Facebook

I live in New Delhi, India, in of the best suburbs with posh markets just a couple of minutes away and all at access, I was driving down one of the lanes yesterday, when something caught my eye.

I have been seeing design and how it affects the consumer perception

Well, I saw an entire stretch of road, almost a kilometer long, with amazing looking installations. (Will share the pictures soon). Now these are metallic poles of about 8 feet in height and have a tranparent glass installation at the top, with in built LED’s for lighting. Though there was nothing inside the glass installations, (no advertisements), the design captured the eye!

The message catches even if you are zipping past

Simple and elegant! Uncluttered and a well defined shape. Nothing very new that would make you think, but good enough that would make the advertisement inside the installation, catch the eye of anyone, zipping past the installation while driving as well.

Glass gives the whole look and feel a very elegant look and its simple, its something that we see everyday!

Brand Recall!

Well, these installations are there after every few steps, thus elegant lights in the dark, when youa re strolling past the market, catch your eye and you are tempted to see the message!

But there is a potential flaw which I feel the designers have overlooked

The installations have not been placed at the right spots in the market. Even during the night time, there is ample light and so many glaring lights and big billboards glaring at you (being one of the hottest markets in Delhi). Thus being unique, this installation could catch the eye for once, but I think will merge into the whole environment so quickly that it will lose its appeal!

The design seems intelligent but positioning is NOT! Its the same problem which many of the clients come upto me with, when they say, that we have a good brand, the recall is good as well, but there is something that is not working. Our message is not reaching out. I tell them the fault may not be in the message but how you position it.

Share on Facebook

Okay, so its been pretty long since I have really written a blog post!! There has been much action in life since the past couple of days!

Well, and today I share about a relationship which is the purest relationship in life and binds two individuals for the rest of their lives together. Its about growing old together and what am I talking about, well, I am talking about marriage!

Yes Marriage!

Today I was sitting at Cafe Coffee day Cannaught place, New Delhi, with a friend and well, I had three families meeting at three separate tables doing what? Well, discussing prospective suitors for marriage! YES! there were three families with smartly dressed fathers, shying away daughters, mothers and the prospective grooms family!

Right opposite to my table was a girl who was probably alone and had come to meet the guys family, who was with his brother and mother. And I could not resist looking at the girls reactions. How she was shying away and fiddling with her hands. How she was both confident and so confused at the same time. How she was looking at future and looking at her present at the same time.

The moment really created with me something which I cannot describe in words, but there was a feeling which said, well, life’s happening right now. There is nothing which is going to come tomorrow! Its all happening in the now. Looking at the reactions of the girl, well, the feeling was kind of overwhelming, which also was like reinforcing the feeling of being responsible at the same time making me a bit unnerving!

India is changing

I always have heard form my parents how they got married when they did not even know each other, and now parents meet at coffee houses, which makes the whole discussion causal and the girl does not have to cover her head wearing a traditional dress and shyly walking in the room where the guys family is present in all force, with tea in her hands.

The whole experience was good to see, as the whole concept of marriage as an institution is taking a whole new shape and people are getting to know and interact and the whole process is about people, its about the realtionship. Its about the bride and the groom and the realtionship together.

And now the coffee ends and I am off for a long drive back home, while thinking in my mind, God Bless the guy and the girl and may they be happy forever!

Share on Facebook