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!!

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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.

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Canon, one of the leading players in the market with some of the best in class imaging products to boast of, makes it Difficult for me to Find a Digital Camera on their India Web site!

Canon India web site is what I call Simplistically Complex

So, here is the Home page of the Canon India website.

The roll links on the right hand side are good to navigate, but, once you hover your mouse on the links, there are expandable lists that open, making it MORE DIFFICULT for me and making me CONFUSED.

All, I wanted was, to simply know how to best understand a Digital Camera and get information on how to buy one. I was recommended to canon by one of the flickr group people whom I met at WordCamp India at New Delhi.

If you Scroll Down the page a bit, you get to see a combination of images:

Okay, so these are great navigation points, but the worst part is: NONE of them is a Hyperlink! apart from the heart shaped click here image

None of these images lead me to any information. Simply put, if the image on the left most side, which says how to buy the Ideal Digital Camera, would have lead me to a new page, where I as a layman could have gotten some information on the conept of Digital Cameras, and then some options from Canon divided into the Beginners, Professional etc. ranges, it would have been so eay for me to arrive on a decision.

Basic sense of design – Its lacking

When you design a web site, one of the most crucial things that you need to understand is its for your customers to interact with. Keep the end customers perspective in mind. having an aesthetic and simple design with cluttered inner details, is like saying that you have a 3 step registration, and then after filling in your name and details, you are redirected to the next pagem sayign Step 1 of 3.

The Canon Blog

Okay, so I thought, if I cant access the information on the site easily, it would be easier for me to leave a question, or find an asnwer in the blog community at the Canon Blog, I registered on the same, and found it to be nothing more than a strain on the brain. It couldn’t serve a simple purpose, that is helping me find a suitable Digital Camera.

Search: How to buy a good digital camera

And the Canon blog shows results which area of no use at all.

These are the kinds of discussions happening on the Canon Blogs which have been hosted on ibibo.There are no product reviews easily available and I haven’t still gotten to see a video may be, which would show me a practical usage of the digital cameras.

It took me 20 minutes to write this post, in this time I could have Purchased a Digital Camera from Canon

If canon looks at this, probably if they have someone monitoring Google reader in their organization, they would get to this post! You have confused clients, respond back to connect with them!

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Okay, I must confess, this sunday when I was at Cannaught Place (a posh shopping locale) at New Delhi, India, I didn’t imagine that I would really bump into a spanking new BMW650i parked right in front of the showroom!

Well, on anyother day when CP is bustling with people there would not be any chances of having such a close look at the car, but wallah, sunday the market is closed and hence I present to you the closest you can get (other than buying the amazingly awesome machine) to the BMW650i.

Thanks to a friend (Abhinav) who clicked the pictures!

The BMW 650i from the front, dont you feel like getting in it, well, there is more to come, so read on!! The BMW 650i belongs to the BMW 6 series and is available in the convertible mode as well. Gosh I so wish, I could have presented you guys with it, but well right now, feast your eyes with the coupe!

The Stats!

4.8 litres with 360 Horse Power. The power unit provides for an amazingly smooth experience of RAW POWER in your very own hands! Its like taming your own beast. At 6300rpm well, feeling breathless aint a word anymore, is it?!

Engine: The 8 cylinder V8 engine delivers impressive performance, the technology makes driving an effortless task (I am sure many a Delhi’tes  would love effortless driving), looking at the jams everywhere!

The Design

The BMW 650i from the back! Gosh…did I hear you saying? Apart from the BMW logo, the LED lights, are sleekly designed and integrate within the frame of the car in a seamless manner. The lights are not bulging out and hence complement the streamline design of the car.

Alloy, YES! Ohh, I’d love to take this on for a ride and burn some rubber!! The front brakes of the car are Disc and the alloy wheels by design complement the sleek and seamless shape of the machine. The steel shining bright with the sunshine falling on it, well…this is a sight in itself!

The 6 gears automatic transmission, makes the whole proposition, nothing short of : Give it to me, I wanna drive this one!

Okay, so I apologize that the interiors are not very clear, will soon get a better picture, the upholstery is pure suede and soft cream in color. The pitch black steering wheel gels with the dashboard, boasting of some amazing technology, which asks you to do not much. The contrast of black and soft cream, gives this design a look which is Bold, Flashy, Classy and yet so Subtle!

So, how could I miss the sunroof. Amazing tranlucent black glass, which shades from the sun and still lets you have all of it look at the reflection of the ‘white pole’ on the sun roof and this is in broad daylight.

And well, how could I miss getting immersed into the moment and sharing space with the beauty?!

I would want your feedback on this review, please leave your comment and I would be able to present a LIVE review of the amazing machine, in Full Action!

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Okay, so after a sumptuous lunch and networking around with people, I must say I have connected with some pretty young and amazing entrepreneurs. Good to be connecting with people with similar interests and background

And now we have the session being led by Jonathan, post lunch and the room is full of people enthused!

So, we start by discussing User centered Design and the User Centered Design process. I can very well see the interest level rising in the room. People are now coming up with queries related to their sites and other queries on how to really design according to the user, how to keep your design centered around the users psyche. I know of a few people in this room who have still not launched their sites, and I think this discussion would be of high value!!

What focus groups wont tell you?

Jonathan raises an intriguing point for the audience to comment upon, that is what’s there, that a focus group meeting won’t ever tell you, there are various viewpoints here, and Jonathan answers:

Well, what they wont tell you is whether someone would buy your site/product or not!

Usability Test happening LIVE

So now we are looking at a Usability testing happening LIVE on a web site hotelly.com. We have a participant who has not seen the site before and he would now be interacting with the site LIVE. So we are looking at the home page and asking the participant that what does the web site does? Well looking at the home page, you could not even realize there is a scroll!

The site is being analyzed with huge insights for the girl who represented hotelly at the workshop. I can see people in the room eager to share their inputs on the topic, but what I think is, we have this habit of acting as if we are the experts and we know it all, and that is what is happening in the room. There are all sorts of comments flying around, I personally feel hotelly guys have an amazing content value. The site is content rich, its just that they are not being able to leverage upon the content. I would advice hotelly on:

 
• Branding and Positioning their content right 

And now we have a scenario by Neha, given to the participant leading the charge, “your family is going to London and you visit this web site and you want to compare the prices of the various hotels. What would you do at this website?”

So the guy is pretty confused and is not able to understand how to really navigate through the site. Okay so we are pretty much over with the test and wallah, we still are not very clear about the site. And now Jonathan is talking about how to define your target market in terms of sites who are in the recruitment space.

We pay people to get the do this research for us. But we do it keeping the task in mind and we track what the person is doing and whether he/she has completed the task or not.

Why does Motorola puts the alarm function under the settings option?

So after a brief tea session we have an exercise which tells you about how to really use persona as a technique and create a solid site map, creating a sense of priority from the content elements that you have for your web site. Jonathan says it’s a very powerful thing as far as SEO for your site is concerned and also really fasten your goto market strategies with a beta phase for your site.

I don’t mind how many clicks do you want me to do, till the time they are mindless clicks

Earlier the home page used to be the main navigation page for any website, but now due to Google we can land up in internal pages as well. So we need to understand the navigation intuitiveness from a users perspective.

Seduction points while designing a site

Its not a bad idea in travel to really give a separate window to the users to cross sell. I would not open this information in a separate window though, answers Neha to a question raised by a member of the team makemytrip.com. The question was realted to the fact that at times travel sites give supporting extra information on a flight search as a new pop up/window opening. Is this the right approach?

Squint test

Whatever you see at the first go after you squint your eyes, well that is what your users will see 90% of the times

Provide a quick access point to the user: 10 second is the frustration limit.

I must confess, this was one activity in the workshop which I really found useful amongst others. Squinting your eyes really tells you what 90 per cent of users would see at the first go. Amazing results, I am taken aback!! I think this would really help many a people to define and refine their designs.

We are almost towards the end of the workshop now and Jonathan now shares attributes of a good search results page

1. Position the best hits at the top
2. Indicate the number of results

We are now almost at the close of the workshop and well, I found the entire workshop highly useful and my interaction with various participants has gotten me the same feedback. Majority of people said that it was amazingly simple a technique in which Neha shared thus making the entire topic of Design and UI easy to understand by the audience.

I would love more such workshops, probably more focused, with integrated product reviews, as to why does a product work and how does the message on it/shape/design/color/packaging affects the perception of the message by the end consumers.

We now have certificates being distributed to the participants and I appreciate, Neha writing and signing the certificates singularly herself.

The event was organized by : TiE New Delhi (The Indus Entrepreneurs)

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Okay, It’s the Holi day!!! So before I review action for you on the Social Media front, here’s wishing all the readers of my blog a very Holi, full of colors of happiness and love!

There is a lot of action in the Social Media front, whcih I really don’t see calming down any way (I’m a Social Media Evangelist) so I can’t see it calming down

Well, but more Social Networks?

In the league there already are enough, there is a good community size which is still grappling with the facebooks’ – twitters’ – Myspace’s of the world, and to add onto this collection, well you have a new Social Network coming, itimes, by the Times Group in India.

Advertising happens offline

Times Group does know its marketing good, thus they would be covering the Holi bash happening at the Group’s MD Vineet Jain’s place in New Delhi at the site. Well, a good way to start with the launch and make a splash, but well as in the morning I registered onto the community, I thus present you my review of the community site.

So much for the launch and making a splash, but what’s the value that the community site brings to the already evolving Social Networkers?

itimes brings to you the following features:

• blogs
• networking
• there are groups you can join
• chat
• email
• you can upload your photos
• Videos from YouTube
• Using Open Social you can develop your own Applications
• Fan clubs for stars

So much so, and the site is in Beta right now.

Design and UI

My take on the design and Layout of the site is, well its neat, but they have tied in too many things at the same go. The profile page can be made simpler and much easy to navigate through. The celeb profiles on the right hand column is a disastrous effort in attracting people. I hated the feature.

If someone needs to join a fan club, well, please let him do it by creating a group, the photographs of random celebrities on the page takes away the focus from the basic content of the page and creates a disturbing effect which beats the entire purpose of the profile page.

Linkedin, SiliconIndia and Facebook

Well, if I mention these three Social Networks, I find itimes coming up with nothing new.

I think there is enough clutter in the social network space and how much the market demands another one in the league, well I would not give in. Social Networks now have to evolve as specialized niche offerings to the target markets. Otherwise starting a blog, integrating your photographs, videos, your friends commenting upon it and subscribers following your updates from across the world, how is a vague Social Network, better than your own blog?!

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Cafe Coffee Day, one of the leading coffee retail chains in India, one of    my leading favorites! For anything, all that I know is starting from       catching up with friends to discussing my business plans and new          ideas, I go to a CCD.

And I’m not the only one! India goes there!

So, what happened this valentines Day?

Okay, so this 14th February, the Valentines Day, as I decided to  catch up for a coffee after a meeting, I parked at the Saket market and hoppped to the cafe coffee day there. Good ambience and as usual nice music with Love in the air, I was looking forward to my cuppa!

So what do we do, when we need to look at the menu  to order our coffee?

We, Look at the menu! And what do you do, when the menu is missing? Well, you look here and there and you don’t find it. Then you suddenly see the guy from the store approach you with a small vertical shaped menu (I clicked the pic, but formatted my phone, so lost it), which was like a make your choice Sir, or there is no coffee for you.

Visibly the menu was made especially for the day, with some special couple offer and all the glitter

But I was left asking for my usual cuppa! Finally after staring at the menu which INTERRUPTED me, it made me think:

Is my usual cup of coffee not available for today? Has cafe coffee day really gone overboard with the Valentines fervour? And in this thought process, I was almost left deciding that if this is the menu for the day, well, I dont like it and NO, I DON’T WANT YOUR COFFEE!

Luckily, to break my thought process one of my friends dropped in and before i could ask the coffee guy, he ordered for the plain old usual amazing cold coffee with cream that we order, and the coffee guy got it!

But I did not like the interruption! It was not a well designed interruption!

Let me now share, what was wrong with the interrptive message! Well, the design of the vertical card on which the message was printed. The whole card was designed wrong. the message never got communicated to me in the right way, instead it came negative!

When on the usual menu I have multiple chouce to choose from and keep experimenting with my taste buds, here I am with a card sitting pretty in my hands, with just a single option of a couple offer! Guys, I Didn’t want it!

The whole message was designed poorly and it curbed my zest to experiment each time I visit a cafe coffee day!

What do I say?

Though I do not know how much sales shot up due to this strategy (many of the customers would not have even spoken out, they would just have ordered from the vertical card) but I know of this – cafe coffee day is a brand which has the highest recall amongst all the rest due to their “Soft Purple color” which attracts me from far off, wherever I am.

It’s a purple cow – Seth Godin!

I think, cafe coffee day guys could do much better by understanding what the consumer really looks for and with the standing in the market, well it needs to communicate the message right maintaining the “purple cow” status and just NOT go ahead with the usual Interruptive marketing tactics which products go ahead with. Cafe coffee day for the ususal young Indian, is almost once a day feature, whether at office or driving back or catching up with friends, thus cafe coffee day guys don’t have to PUSH hard, for them the PULL is common with people!

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