Bangalore Bus Branding

Big 10: New routes introduced by BMTC in Bangalore, with ultra new branding

The Big 10 branding is refreshing! For a change someone took the bold step of coming up with something really different. I am surprised on how the branding might have slipped through the babus in the government - whoever convinced the govt. that we should go with this did an awesome job!

Talking about branding, many buses in Bangalore have the following red 'strokes' on the sides and back- I am not sure what they signify, but at first, second and few more instances they look a bit silly to me! Definitely a bold step, but could have been done better? The bus is an insect with legs and wings, or it is an organism with red blood in its veins, signifies the chaos the buses have to go through each day - what could the inspiration have been?

Ogilvy on ROI

Ogilvy said this decades ago: "When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative'. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product."

As in my earlier post, finally advertisers are catching up!

I think Ogilvy would have simply loved the online medium, with it's immense possibility of almost real-time measurement. The articles they (O&M) wrote to promote themselves (again, decades ago) were ROI oriented - here are some examples: "How to create corporate advertising that get results", "How to make your sales promotions more profitable", "How to create food advertising that sells" - could have translated very well into modern day webinars.

Moving Ads: Advertising on Train Exteriors

Above is an image of Rajdhani train from Delhi to Bangalore, at Bangalore station.

The first three bogies had wall to wall advertising on the outside - of Airtel and if I remember correctly of another brand or so.

Looks impressive! and must be quite a sight for watchers as it moves through villages and towns!

Mass consumer brands should definitely go for it - phone companies, middle-class soap brands, chocolate & ice-cream brands, etc could be good candidates.

Buses and aircrafts have taken similar initiatives - let me look around :-)

Pay for Performance Mainstream Advertising?

"Coke, HUL Moving To Pay-For-Performance Advertising"
http://in.reuters.com/article/paidmediaAtoms/idIN16055381620090721

Cool! Finally the advertisers are getting real and soon the competition might too!!

Would love to see the creative folks of TV and print who move around in shorts and pony tails (confession: I was like that long time ago) turn to words like ROI, sales impact, revenue share, variable payments!!

While people should not stop making coooool ads, it takes a leap of faith to realize (based on hard data) that a pure text ad can generate a higher response than a neat looking image with a celebrity.

About time that advertisers and advertising agencies (and production houses and directors and cameramen) start looking at data. Else of course they are welcome to create pieces for museums and personal collections (another confession: as I will do at some point in time :-))

Do Coaching Posters work? Would Word-of-Mouth Work Better?

Ironical that there are so many coaching posters near the Allahabad university!











In any case would these posters really be working for the advertisers? For a community that is as connected as the students, I think word-of-mouth is the only thing that might be working.

To make their service different and 'remarkable', the professors or coachers could try some of the following:

• Put up a blog with generic advice - e.g., how to approach an exam, how exam patterns are changing; if of value, this will get forwarded in mail
• Put up at least one question each week, as a blog - something that students can crack their heads on (more word-of-mouth), and post answers as comments
• Setup communities and fan pages on Orkut, Facebook - existing students will become part of this, and their friends will see this too. Focus of Facebook fan page could be to answer questions from students

Of course it would be easy for others to replicate. Good content (teaching) would definitely help!

Colleges Can Leverage Word of Mouth

Recently a relative of mine was asking me about which engineering college should her son opt for. The son had got a decent all India rank (CET?), and stood a good chance of getting into a good college.

I thought a bit and amazingly I thought of the same things I was under the impression some 20 years ago! CS at REC (now NIT) Trichy is good. Suratkal is good (Chemical?). Mechanical at NIT Rourkela is good. In general computer science is good. All impressions I had formed decades ago!

Has the world really changed, or am I woefully out of tune? Well I guess both might be true!

One thing is for sure, of course – word of mouth sticks! The impressions I formed, for right or for wrong, have stuck a very long time.

I guess most colleges would love to leverage such impressions, and influence impressions in the first place.

Here is what colleges ought to do:

• Create information newsletters and mailing lists, department and domain specific if possible
• Create successes – journal papers, seminar participation, conduct seminars in college
• Industry consulting – projects, lectures
• Leverage alumni – have strong linkages with alumni through hiring, consulting, mailing lists, seminars, guest lectures, etc
• Reach out to wider audiences through in-campus summer workshops thrown open to public
• Create domain specific portals of general and academic interest
• Participate in Top-10 kind of lists, or create one of one’s own on portals, etc

Providing something of value, to a wider audience, and creating a positive impression – the beginning of word of mouth.

Infosys: A Branding Oppotunity Lost

I was recently at Infosys's training facility in Mysore to drop my niece who was joining Infosys. Having heard a lot about the world's largest training facility, and expecting warm hospitality, and a dekko around the campus for a few tips, I was rudely surprised when we had to stand outside the campus gate for about 3.5 hours in a rough line, in the rain and sun.

With so many parents who had come to drop their kids from different parts of the country, it was a big opportunity of word of mouth lost by Infosys, by not providing even the most sparse hospitality. Even more unpardonable with Indians known for their hospitality, and Infy considered an Indian company to the core!

No facility to eat or drink in the walkable and visible vicinity, no roof to hide from the rain or sun, and no loo! What else could have gone wrong with their planning?

Religeous believers and brand loyalists

Religeous believers and brand loyalists are quite similar?

• they hardly ever switch loyalties
• both will fight for their brands
• once they form an opinion, they hardly ever question it
• they believe anecdotal infomation

Autorickshaws, Bidding and Google Adwords

Autowallahs not going by meter, on late weekday evenings, and asking for their "bidding" is always a bit irritating. But look at it another way - if we are not irritated by Google's bidding framework on Adwords, why do autowallahs irritate us? Google charges us basis what other users could pay us, and we need to bid accordingly. Autorickshaws do the same - they ask for what they feel others could pay!

IIM Ahmedabad Website: Reflection of the Brand?

Does the website of the India's best management institute - Indian Institute of Management(IIM), Ahmedabad, reflect the institute's brand value?

I think it is an emphatic NO!

If one were to go by only the website to assess the institute's brand value, I think the institue would not figure in the top 20.

Here is how I would rate the institue's website on the below parameters, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being excellent:

Overall Brand Positioning: 3
Design: 4
Usability: 3
Establishing thought leadership: 5
Marketing/traffic ready: 5
Showcases Industry Linkage: 4

I think a marketing student of IIM-A should take this as a project - what would it take to turn the website into a $100 million brand?

Unrealistic Expectations from Paid Search

It is one thing that Paid Search is measurable, and another that we want to measure it in a completely incorrect manner.

Paid search (and digital marketing) is not a panacea for all of one's shortcomings
It should replace the focus on making good products/ offering good services
It does not replace good prospect management
It does not replace, in many cases, human communication (face to face, phone, personal emails, etc)
In short it does not replace anything you would do with a prospect you meet at a trade show.

Paid search is only the beginning of a relationship. Post that it can still take the same time to close a sale, as when the lead has been acquired through another channel. Of course, it is important that one benchmarks the cost of lead acquisition through different channels correctly.

Innovative targeting, and monetization of shelf space

Tags on shelfs at Crossword, Indiranagar, Bangalore. If done well, not very intrusive, and quite innovative!

In-plane (aircraft) Advertisements: Step in the right direction?

NDTV ads in a Kingfisher flight. Can go well with the decor!

Could Air Tickets be Free?

Could an airline subsidise air ticket to almost zero cost, through in-air advertising?

In-air advertising could be on the audio-video system provided in (some) planes, or poster on the walls and roofs, or pamphlets in the back-pockets.

You think people would simply close their eyes in deep meditation to skip the advertisements? Then lets do this - they get a refund on their ticket based on a quiz they take before they deplane - the quiz tests them on the ads they saw during the flight!

But realistically, how much would advertisers pay for an in-flight ad. Or put another way, how much would one pay for a person's attention? Let go about it in a systemic manner - lets begin with how much advertisers pay for TV spots or newspaper ads. Then we can move onto calculating the attention span of a customer. More of these in later posts.

Micro-payments: Let Eveyone Make Money

The great thing about Web2.0 is that everyone can participate. Everyone can add to the content. But does everyone get to make money?

Consider three scenarios:

Amazon, a commercial marketplace, with users adding reviews and ratings. Users don't get anything for adding a review, Amazon does. (Of course, users get to read other people's reviews, and make informed decisions. A bit like Pay it Forward, but I will leave the larger implications to another post.)

Another site, with a lot of user generated content, displays ads to generate revenue. Again the users get to participate in generating the content, but not in the earnings.

Yet another site, gets users to generate lots of content and eye-balls, and waits to cash out in a sale to a larger player. Again the users who generated the content in the first place lose out.

Put micro-payments into place, along with all its shortcomings (!), and let everyone participate in the earnings, including the people who put those apps up, as brokers. Of course micro-payments is not going to be a panacea, but it is worth taking the web in that direction.

Micro-payments: An Alternate to Adsense?

The success of the web has been it's being predominantly free. And with web2.0 coming in, it is more free than ever before. And how can you beat a craigslist, which is almost 100% free.
But the larger question is how sustainable is it? We will revisit Craigslist in a later post, and build a case around that, too - but later.

For now I wish to tackle the problem , as i perceive, of the business model of most web2.0 companies based on sweat, free content, and adsense revenue. Generate lots of traffic, and get people to go to other sites, so that you can make money. And people probably go to other sites that are similar. And I think this model is fundamentally flawed.

So I would like to turn the whole model on it's head. I would like to make the whole content paid. Yes. All content.

The whole web would work on micro payments. Visit a site, read a page - pay $0.001 cent or some such. The amount you pay could depend on user ratings, frequently visited, etc (just the way a lot of web2.0 works).

Of course there are tonnes of problems implementing such a system - has the page been read, should children not browse the net, payment a function of time spent on the page, cost of implementing micro-payments more than the payments, what is the payment aggregator (each of this will potentially become a post) - but it is not flawed like the model of getting people to go away from your shop, if you wish to make any money.

Why Adsense is Flawed

You wish to make money. Sure.

You can write. So you decide to be a journalist. You wish to write and be paid for it. That is understandable.

So you write. Publish it on the web. Popularize it, get people to come to your blog. Then you pray that they go away, so that you can make money. This is the difficult part.

Well that is how adsense works! You make money when people go away from what you have to offer!!

Now, we know Google has made tonnes of money out of this, and there are businesses that are making a lot of money purely out of this sort of thing. And every now and then I come across people whose whole business model is to depend on adsense to make money, and some of them are simply being naive.

To me, something like adsense is flawed at the roots, and would be replaced by something better in a few years. Again, to stick my neck out, adsense would go when all content is paid - but that is for a later post.

My Do's and Dont's about adsense:

• If you have loyal readership, and are sure that readers will comeback, even if they go away, use adsense.
• Use adsense when it is logical for users to explore further before they make a decision, or you have nothing more to offer.
• Dont distract users from your main content.
• Let adsense look distinctly different from the look and feel of your site (not sure, but gut-sense).

SMS Yourself to Salvation

"Reach out to God! Make offering(Rs 10-Rs 150) via SMS! Sms to 64655 @ Rs4/msg. ..."

This is a message I got a couple of weeks ago. So the world has evolved from the days when pujas could be offered on the net!

Salvation is just an SMS away. What else? Marriage? "I do." Simple enough to SMS. Divorce? "Talaq. Talaq. Talaq." Not tough.

How about sex? Why not? Here is what a marketing message (sms) might look like - "Reach out to the most beautiful women in Kasauli. Choose from: Meena: Rs 500. Munni: Rs 750. Mira: Rs 1000. SMS 66666 @ Rs4/msg. Our trusted associates with have safe sex with your chosen one. It is the thought that matters."

Philosophers, seers and saints would love this. Let everything, save eating, happen from a distance. Disengage from the worldly matters. Let SMS be the way to distance yourself from reality, and lead you to salvation. Of course, marketers would love this too!

Second Life: A Marketer's and Philosopher's Delight?

Attention of potential two million active users (and rapidly counting) is surely something each marketing manager would like to get a pie of. More about this another day. For now here is an interesting page to track (complete with linden $ charts, conversion rates, volume on SL, etc!):http://secondlife.reuters.com/

And here I am sitting alone, with $L 0 in my pocket:


It is always refreshing to think about the Zen philosopher's story: "Am I dreaming about the butterfly, or is it the butterfly dreaming about me?"

There is an interesting story in Mind's I, by Stanislaw Lem, touching briefly on the dichotimy between virtual and real existence:
http://www.usfca.edu/philosophy/pdf%20files/princess%20ineffabelle.pdf

Mind's I, by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, is a real good read exploring in some depth real and virtual worlds.

What ever the reality, I shudder to think that some day Ray Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" will be a reality, thanks to Second Life and the like.

Contextual Mobile Ads

Each day I get a few SMS from my credit card, or my mobile service provider to spend some money and get get some cash back, or pay some cash upfront and get a few SMS free. The credit card ones get deleted the moment I see them, and the SMS ones I probably delete them half way.

Let me not even talk about voice marketing cold calls that I get on my cell.

So what could be a bit more innovative and relevant? Could contextual ads work in the mobile domain?

Idea 1: Say I am having a conversation with a friend, and we talk about a book the other person has read, and I evince interest in getting hold of the book. And the moment I get off the phone I get a message that says, to order such and such book SMS xxx to 2345, or something similar. Looks too severe? Would this be considered breach of privacy? What if the mobile company assures that no one is really listening to the conversations - it is only the intelligence of the algorithm that throws up the ad? How different would it be from traditional contextual advertising on the web?

Idea 2: Advertisers pay you to advertise. Of course. Now what if they pay you to have their marketing message as your ring tone? You use Nescafe's message as your ring tone, and you get, say, Re 1 for each full cycle of the message, to a unique listener, each day. The payment could come in the form of a credit in the monthly bill from your service provider, or some other mechanism. Part listing could entail a part payment. And of course you would carry the ringtone of the advertiser who pays the max - the highest bidder wins!