Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

LIVE Blogging the Day Two of Leaders In India with Steve Tappin and Mr. Adi Godrej

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Oct
10

So here I am Live blogging the Day two of Leaders In India 2009, with the first keynote being delivered by Mr. Adi Godrej.

I am sure this is going to be a great learning session with immense value for all present.

Our group has a fairly long history, we are 112 years old, Our sales turnover is a little over a 100 billion rupees

Interestingly Adi is sharing keen information about the Godrej business and they have grown till date. In 1991 we clearly felt that we had to give a boost to our competitiveness. We partnered global companies in our existing businesses, which were GE and P&G as Joint Ventures, though they dont’ continue today.

We learnt a lot from these great International organizations, which we have implemented over the years and they have learnt a lot about India, from us

Each of our companies and businesses, has a non family managing director or president who runs the company, I am surely interested in learning this.  We have a rather strict rule which has that only professionally qualified family members can join the business.

I am the third generation in the business and the fourth has already been inducted into the business

One of the major values we believe in is, that people are our strongest assets. We go out of our way to LIVE the value that people are our strongest assets. We have a constitution of a young executive board, one’s with great future potential and their job is to look at strategy, corporate governance, HRD etc, and then advice the Group CEO’s. Hence we get a tremendous bottom up response. I am very intrigued with the learning from Mr. Godrej.

Being a family business, as a professional and entrepreneur, I am so glad to hear and learn about the functioning of the Godrej group and how it is constituted at various levels. Very interestingly the structure provides the company a very strong bottom up feedback in runnign the company and in my view provides them with a great leadership development tool, creating a very scalable structure.

We have very emphatic programs on diversity within the group

Whenever we have emphasized diversity, the talent we get is much better than the average, Eg: if you go out of the way to recruit strong women, you get great talent, in cases much better than men. We have a very strong E-MBA program within the group. People who have not yet done a management degree, are eligible and promoted to do so. We insist on a 5 day learning schedule.

I myself make sure that I at least spend 30 days a year for learning

We follow a process of forced ranking in our group, we force ranks into non-performers and extra-ordinary achievers. The bottom non-performers which we get everytime in ranking, as it is relative. What this process doe sin a country like India is to strongly improve the working of the team, as everybody does good to work to be in the top 20 per cent.

I get evaluated by my sub-ordinates on a 360 degree basis regularly, and this is only a self evaluation tool

We re-assess our portfolio on a very regular basis and in the last years we have had several strategic acquisitions. We hired a British branding partner called Interbrand to re-launch our brand and it helped us great way in re-positioning our brand and leverage the brand asset value and equity towards achieving growth!

Interestingly we have Mr. Godrej talking about the various succession plans in the company.  Talking about succession planning, Mr. Godrej talks about what if you tomorrow come down a bus, well, we are planned for it, and I remember having the similar conversation with a friend, while running an Incubation Consulting company.

Blog Your Brand – A Vision for Corporate to Leverage Networked Blogging

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Sep
06

Walk the Walk… Talk the Talk… Times have now arrived for the corporate to consider Blogging the Blog!!

Yes, its true, as social media is arriving with the Corporate, there are new rules getting created. New possibilities opening up. The Corporate today wants to get one with the consumer, interact with his relevant target audience wherever the consumer is!

Your consumers are already on the Internet

With the usage of Internet spilling over to almost all parts of the country, the corporate has a valid and an entirely new and ever increasing scope to interact in real time with its consumers, take feedback and hence constantly evolve as a ‘People’s Brand‘.

Your clients are already talking about you, are you listening?

We are licing in change, which essentially is the only contant thing in life. And so is a brand.  A brand needs to evolve with the times, reaching out to the relevant set of people who are talking about you or would want to talk about you!

Blog and Get Blogged about

I suggest many of my clients that they should themselves participate in corporate blogging and not leave the entire communication to be handled by the PR team or any third party agency or marketing company handling your online communications.

Should you tie up with an external agency – Case Study?

Hmmm… I am sure with the strategy that Nokia used before launching N97 in India and Samsung while launching the Jet. What did they do? Call a select group of bloggers and wallah they have arrived at a much lesser cost as compared to doing a TV ad or big hoarding out there, which they will do for sure, but they have captured one strata of the market.

Trends In Indian Corporate Blogging – My View

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The trends purely show, that there is a BIG opportunity and according to me it exists due to the fact that agencies have not been able to show the GAP and the OPPORTUNITY to the Corporate.

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Say ‘hi’ to your sutomer each day, reach out and extend your hand! Get connected and retain your loyal customers!!

A focused Corporate blog will EMPOWER your customer to know more and get connected with the brand.

To leverage the power of Corporate Blogging and create a successful strategy of saying ‘hi’ to your customer each day, CONNECT WITH ME at    patpcom

Corporate Blogging – How Can You Create Social Media Success Through Focused Blogging

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Aug
30

There are many Buzzwords in the Social Media industry today and each day one evangelist is harping on a new one. Much clutter gets created due to the same and hence the diluton of your Brand Equity, as each Brand is pitched these high flying Buzzwords by the marketing agencies.

Corporate Blogging though not a Buzz word, but has been so messed up that many a corporate have lost value rather than generating it. There have been instances of big corporate entities using fake blogs and many other tactics to boost up terming them as “so called social media campaigns”.

I have been LIVE blogging some of the most major corporate conferences in India since over an year now and have been approached by Corporate to support their initiatives. Am I averse to it? NO! But would I go ahead and support just about anything? NO!

Through this post, I intend to cut through the clutter which has been created and make the Corporate present to how they can successfully integrate Corporate Blogging in seamlessly in their marketing effort and with much ease!

First the numbers:

According to JupiterResearch (via Search Engine Watch), 34% of large companies and 15% of Fortune 500 companies blog.

Though these may not be the absolute latest numbers, but with respect to the industry growth, this surely is a number to reckon with, stand up and make a note of, I believe. In the current times corporations large and small are increasingly taking the “being different” and “with the times” route. Blogging has suddenly taken the mainstream route and is one of the factors in the Corporate overall marketing mix and budget.

There may be many people giving much gyan, but what I present here is the on the field reality and of my experience, hence there may still be better ideas, which I would be glad to listen to and incorporate.

What should you do before you decide on that oh! so blog!! ??

  • Put in black and white, your marketing objectives both in the short and the long term
    • Determine if blogging is a good fit for your company

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, is almost true for all, but why are you generalizing the apple with a blog in the social media space? Blog for one company may work wonders for them, for the other it may not work!

Just being cool using blogs, is already a passe! Social Media space is changing and growing at a much faster pace and is much complex. Just having a corporate blog may not be of any tangible return.

  • Are you ready to invest on a blog?
    • The last time I was sitting in this major corporate HQ, I asked them a question, are you ready to invest on a blog and well they were a bit off the track. Blogging they said is easy, we will leverage a free platform like wordpress or blogger. Well, yes, I agree, but you need to invest much focused time and energy on customizing the design of the blog as it represents your Corporate sentiment. Today blogs are as much a part of the entire corporate image as were websites sometime back!
  • Don’t be afraid, Create a solid strategy
    • Strategy for a blog? Well, YES!! For a Blog! As a corporate you may have a single blog for all your functions/ verticals or you may choose to go ahead with multiple blogs representing each of them. Now this is the first stage of your blogging strategy.
    • Positioning: You need to be clear in a properly documented form on the positioning that you would like to create with your blogging effort. Who are you positioning the blog to? What is your target group?
      • you may just create a blog to attract the best talent in the industry
      • you may have a focused blog on thought leadership to position yourself accordingly int he industry
    • Branding: the branding strategy that you intend to establish with the emerging of the blog should be clear. What campaigns (if any) would you intend to run on the blog. Would the CEO/ CFO/ Senior management participate on the blog? Are you trying to make a point?
      • Are you open to external content on the blog other than your own? And are you willing to be open to comments from the external environment?
  • Are you selling/ marketing? STOP…..Start ENGAGING!
    • Since Corporate blogs are generally an effort of the PR department of a company, they have a restricted vision, and hence it reflects on the way they PUSH content on the blog. PUSHing is not the key, ENGAGING is! Your content will speak for itself. If you have smartly invested into content creation, in terms of videos, pictures, etc. you will break the ice much faster with the prospective target audience.
      • its fairly simple, you get unsolicited calls on your cell phone. Would you refer such a company to your circle? Probably NOT, but a genuine follow up and feedback conversation at a preferred time, well yes you would and WOMM is bound to happen
  • Provide Value
    • This is one of the most crucial aspects of a successful blogging effort. VALUE creation.
      • why do you think would I (either your prospective employee or client) spend 5 minutes in going through things which are not adding any value to me in terms of knowing more about you or the industry? Even if I land up and stick to your blog for a couple of minutes the first time, with no VALUE I will not bookmark it for my future reference, leave aside following you on my Google reader.
  • Take Feedback, Build Relationships
    • This is one aspect of Corporate blogging which many a Corporate think of and include in their agenda, but their focus shifts from this objective to the exclusivity of presenting and design. Looks do matter, no doubts, but you need to understand that each feature of the blog would essentially be leveraged towards achieving a particular business objective!
  • Remember YOU are a HUMAN and the person reading yoru blog is a HUMAN too!
    • Many a times, the Corporate get so consumed in their vision of presenting their best foot forward and trying to arrive the best way in their client’s perception, that they lose the basic essence of the fact that WE ARE STILL HUMAN. And business is all about relationships.
    • Write the blog as if you are expressing yourself to your target market/ group!
  • Select Bloggers
    • Yes! I know everyone can write and that you hire the best of class human resources in your company, still blogging is an art and hence I suggest my clients to select a team of bloggers who are honed in their skills and trained further by the company. This team should essentially consist of the following people:
      • PR professional from the company
      • Group of employees trained on company’s social media./ external communication guidelines
      • Social Media agencies
  • NO, your “Corporate Blog” DOES NOT need a SINGLE VOICE
    • Dont be afraid and get only one person to be writing/ punching the keys for you. He/ she will have a certain perception of the company and may as well be limited in the scope. Go ahead involve people. Give them a platform to express what you want to. More hands on deck make the experience for the client all that worth it!!

This is one of the many posts that I would be doing on the correct measures and tips and tricks of the trade of blogging, not out of what people say, but what I have experienced in real time on the field. And I would not be a common voice, but I would say, it works for me!!

To devise a Corporate Blogging Strategy for your company, CONTACT ME

Building Software Products for India – 48th Session of NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (Kumud Goel, KLG Systel)

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Jun
13

LIVE Blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 48th session, and well we are going to make it interactive says the session lead Mr. Kumud Goel who is also one of the founding members of NASSCOM and the founder KLG Systel a leading power solutions company in India.

Incidentally its a great day, coz the NASSCOM EMERGE Community turns one today, I must congratulate Avinash (NASSCOM) for the same and now we have the session underway :)

Mr. Kumud Goel a technology veteran for over 25 years, is leading the session. We have Ankur Lal, CEO, Infozech Software introducing to the audience and well as usual we have the participants introducing themselves to the entire audience.

I am surely glad to be LIVE blogging the 48th session and well, always get excited to feel as we near the 50th session. Interestingly we have quite a diverse audience related to the product space today.

I am a case study of failures – shares Mr. Kumud and though this was said at the end, I would want to start my blog with it.

Kumud is interestingly sharing an incident from his life and my respects to the man as for young entrepreneurs like me, its surely highly invigorating and a great learning to interact with learned people like Kumud. And well, let me not keep it a secret anymore. Kumud is sharing the story of NASSCOM.

When we went to COMDEX years back, nobody used to talk to an Indian

That is when this desire of fighting these people came in me and I had a lot of experience in programming and I started my company which had only emotions behind it and no business plan.

On my first wedding anniversary my father told me that you have no money in the back and hence I gave away my dream of creating software for the rural India. At that time most Indian company did the right thing by making things for the foreign market but we were again at the step when we were looking at a product for the Indian market.

After 25 years of my experience I today feel taht what is more important out of a business model and a feeling is feeling, coz I believe that the business model shall follow

Once you have made an emotional decision of making a product for India, there were two drawbacks…I was at the Silicon Valley two weeks back and I met this guy who is regarded as one of the best deal makers in the tech space, and he told me that Kumud what you are doing is worth 500 million dollars and since you are sitting in India it is worth 20 million dollars. I had to go to the IBM’s of the world and get a recommendation that my technology is good.

All the great companies in the US have come about and have based out of the fact that the government has helped them. The SME’s in India who innovate do not have their path as easy.

The tendering system in Government of India is such that an SME cannot ever go up.

Today US is making money out of innovation and not selling someone else’s goods. Kumud now shares a highly interesting insight into the Chinese government way of working and wow I am amazed. Well, I think this is an applausible moment and I am saying this for the first time in a NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 session, Kumud has broken the wall and is now talking about what NASSCOM should really be doing for the SME’s.

Start-ups and small companies have to get reservation in the government and NASSCOM should take care of that

There Is NO CORRUPTION in INDIA

Do what they want you to, don’t fight them…its your dream, coz you are giving them a poison which will kill them automatically. Corruption is not a hinderance, it is a way to survive. And for the first time I am supporting Kumud on this coz he shows tthe audience the bigger picture.

  • Your cash flow has to be positive, your spirit should not go negative, you have to live through those initial years. for sometime you need to live like a rat if you want to survive.

And now Kumud shares a story on a book he read “the saga of Dharampuri”, which he is relateing to the Indian IT industry. We have so gotten accustomed to the white man that we cannot think of anything out of it.

This life for ME is so shameful that after being 25 years into the industry, I still don’t have a world class  product

The govt. of India will spend 5000 crores dollars to the MS’s of the world and lets say there are 5000 SME’s from India, now if I divide 5000 what do you get? But how many companies are standing today for it?

Psychologically we need to start thinking of ourselves as better people than the foreign lands. We need to just break out of this trap, coz we actually are better than anybody. If you need to create the best OS from India, you need to have that feeling into you and only then it would happen.

The Indian out there is GOD shares one of the participants from the audience.

You have a dream, great! But you anyhow need money to make sure that you survive and take your dream further. You need to somehow find a way by hook or by crook, to reach that 50-100 crore level, otherwise your so called innovation would die.

I made 3 websites when I had 15 crores in the bank and I wen t overboard, we advertised like hell and people came to us. But because we believed into our stuff so much, we never realised the internet bust, and I went bankrupt. So now we had no money, but we had a dream!

Audacity, Audacity, Audacity and Arrogance

We raised money for about 11 million dollars and that came to us only because we had audacity.

The next I thought what is the next problem in India. And I chanced upon power. You need to be like the James Bond, who would take it the way as if the world wont be no more if my software wont be there. I went and borrowed 137 crores and I developed cleantech technology. And I bet my life on this.

And I bought myself a BMW, because I was going to change the world.

Personally I was broke, my stock is pledged, house with a bank, my wife and kids were the only tangible assets I had. And then I happened.

Innovation is like a black Hole, after a certain time you are dead. But once you are dead what can you do – STOP WORRYING!

You have created the aura of being the biggest player in the power industry and since you have already invested into it, you can demonstrate what you have already implemented. For 25 years you have been waiting to say it and when the big companies of the world come for you, to partner, what do you say…Go to !@#!

If you want to be an Innovator, You have to be a great Gambler as well

Anybody who does not listen to you has to become irrelevant!

The last lesson would be – your dream has to be bigger than the world, you will create the biggest product, all you need to do is to make sure that you get some cash in.

Kumud ends the session with some NASSCOM bashing, which he started the session with on a lighter note. I am certainly with Kumud, as this would surely be great for the entire SME community in India.

Small companies should file for patents and should do them religiously. This shall make sure of a winning road for you.

Now we have the participants sharing their thoughts on the entire topic and I can see the thoughts coming in together in the similar direction.

And now we have the session in the Q&A mode.

Thanks Kumud for an amazing session, I have been blogging the NASSCOM friday’s 2.0 for long, and certainly find you one of the best speakers, sharing from the heart.

Paritosh Achieves the Best Views to Comments Ratio at The Great Blog-Off by Sol Solutions Canada

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Jun
04

Almost 2 weeks back, I entered into this contest which was Organized by the Sol Solutions, Canada called The Great Blog-Off!

40 thought leaders/authors/thinkers from across the globe participated in the first stage, out of which there were top 15 chosen after stage 1, which I was a part of :) Post stage I, it was 12 people contributing to the Community Marketing Blog passsionately to create one of the best Social Media communities, lead by some of the TOP thought leaders into the field.

And, after these two full of action weeks, I am glad to share, that I have achieved the best Views to Comments ratio on the  blogs I contributed to the Community Marketing Blog as part of this contest.

  • http://communitymarketing.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/05/i-have-two-kids-i-am-a-home-maker-and-i-run-an-online-venture-how-social-media-is-changing-lives.html

I hereby thank all my followers who helped me achieve this amazing win and also would like to know what all in future you guys would like to read about/know and if you would like to contribute to this blog!! I’d be happy to create your profiles and be glad in creating a platform for emerging people to express their views and thoughts!!

Cheers,

Paritosh

Social Media Marketing and Mobile 2.0 for Your Business (Paritosh Sharma) at OMCAR 2009

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May
28

Sharing my talk which I delivered at OMCAR 2009 – The Online Marketing Summit, New Delhi. I am glad to get the feedback that the talk was well received and thanks to all the people who shared their feedback!

This session was blogged LIVE by: Deepanwita Chatterjee, from team OMShare.

Post tea, peppered with some avid networking, we gather for the next session, ‘Making SEO, PPC, SMM & Mobile Work Together’, presented by Mahesh Murthy, CEO Pinstorm and Paritosh Sharma, (SMM Evangelist, OMLogic). I am LIVE Blogging the session and I can’t help notice the excitement that has been generated in the room at the announcement of the session

Paritosh starts the session by explaining that he will be discussing his views about SMM and how   business can benefit from SMM.

He starts by displaying a slide with a picture of a colorful grocery store with blue and red boxes.
I specially like the story telling method by which he makes his point. He says that once he went to buy a product of his favorite brand and that brand was not available so he had to settle down for his second favorite brand. So inspite of being a brand loyalist he had to settle with his second choice.

Social Media Marketing And Mobile 2.0 presented by (Paritosh Sharma) at OMCAR 2009

SMM can be explained in two words – message and media.

Paritosh makes the session very lively by citing an example of advertising for a bicycle manufacturer. He quotes 3 example campaigns

  1. A description of the specifics of the bicycle
  2. A picture of the bicycle
  3. A video of a woman riding a cycle showing how easy to ride

No need to mention the third method clicked. What really worked is the content, the message, and the media.

He cites another example of the inventor of sliced bread. The person patented it, advertised it still it didn’t catch up for 15 years. Another bread manufacturer came along and packaged the sliced bread in the right manner and it appealed to the user.

He rightly makes a point that there is no single rule for marketing. Advertising on SlideShare may work for a business and YouTube for another. It is important to understand the needs of the client and the client’s client.

He is explaining that the way to go about it is to create a message and target it to the right set of consumers.

He goes on to cite another example which triggers a lot of laughter – TataSky did an adult site, the moment anybody clicks on the site the questions like age and gender comes up which create the impression of the contents within. But the moment you click it it says ‘dude a paap hai’. The campaign sure has been done in a very witty manner which creates a huge recall value.

He also cites the example of jaagore.com and the ‘pappu pass ho gaya’ campaigns about which we all are well aware of. Both the campaigns and the were huge successes and the radio campaign ‘dot is hot’ was a runaway success as well. Jagore.com was a purely online site, and the message ‘chai peke jaago’ was very intelligently done. Kudos to the tata guys!

Television is a passe. There was a time people bought advertising space. But now people are spending more time on the internet on Orkuts and FaceBooks.

The audience silently agrees to that.

Paritosh says that SMM is more about customizing, customizing according to the needs of the customers.
He goes on to elaborate the four steps of creating a campaign.

The first step is to listen and learn. Even the customer is not clear about what he wants from SMM.

The second step is to audit and analyze the customer’s business model, whether SMM will be good or PPC.

The third step is to develop and test.

The fourth step is to execute and monitor. Metrics are difficult in SMM. But it is not that difficult if you understand the business perspective of the client. And till the time there is no metrics, one can always customize metrics for the clients.

He adds

Position your brand right. Do it with the right medium and to the relevant section of the audience online. And that’s where the PPC and SEO’s come into action.

He is now telling us about Skittles where every page is a social media, on one page there is twitter, on another YouTube and FaceBook on yet another. There is nothing good or bad it is about.

He then shares about Webchutney.com. On the home page, there are two tabs saying ‘I have 5 mins’ , and ‘I have plenty of time’, clicking on either takes the user to separate pages. He cites an example that if one sees a YouTube video of a bicycle gear that she likes and on clicking on it she is taken to the home page of the bicycle website, then one wouldn’t be too happy about it. The concept of separate landing works. I can’t help thinking that yes, that has happened to me many times!

He makes a point by reiterating that markets have evolved overtime and its time that one starts marketing to the innovators and early adopters. They are the ones which will take to your product and will do a much better viral campaign on the internet rather than the late adopters.

You have a great product…. You have identified the target market…
and people are talking about u….. and before the fizz goes out, market it…

Paritosh wraps up the session saying

The riskiest thing that you can do for your brand is to be safe.

Even if anybody writes anything bad about your brand, one can be alerted by a google alert and can pacify them.

Thanks for the useful insights Paritosh, it was great listening to you.

One of the most interesting sessions I have blogged. Thanks Paritosh

Thanks Deepanwita for blogging the session for me :)

DLF Indian Premier League – Did Coca Cola get it wrong? DilliDilSe.com a review

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Apr
18

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.

dillidilse

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!!

Forget Google I prefer DuckDuckGo – Towards a Better Search Engine

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Apr
16

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

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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.

Design and Advertising – You Caught My EyE!

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Apr
09

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.

I am getting married, this is my interview

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2

Apr
05

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!

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