I had visited the Byculla zoo this Sunday last for the sake of my nephew & #SidNanda (my son Siddharth as tagged on Twitter). I was thoroughly disappointed and my obvious human mind compared it with the Singapore Zoo and my fond memories of that place. I remember names of the animals that I have interacted with and their trainers too! The place is a destination and I would certainly visit there as often as I can!

Getting back to Byculla, I read in the papers that there is a plan to revamp the zoo at a cost of Rs.150 crores. Here’s the link.

I am sure this money can be put to good use. And once done, by allocating some budget for marketing the place, it can be a grand success. Here’s my list of suggestions (albeit unwarranted).

• Today the zoo is just a large garden with enclosures where we can’t find the animals half the time and is ill-maintained. The place first needs a clean-up, laid pathways (flooring was very uncomfortable for pushing a pram), lacks sanitation & drinking water facilities, lacks dust bins etc. By keeping the place clean, half the problem can be solved. No need to cut / uproot / move any of the vegetation! Basics handled would be half the problem solved.
• The place needs a route plan: Think Super Markets! The retail industry is a science by itself! Big Bazaar, Shoppers Stop & Hypercity have mastered it. The way the shop floor designer guides you through your essentials, fringes, not-required but good to have, absolutely not required but I will buy it, and finally those smalls nuggets at the billing counter including the gums, chocolates etc which parents cannot refuse their children while waiting to pay up. Whoa! It is an awesome ride into a human mind. The zoo can take some examples from here. Segregate the animals, birds, insect worlds separately and have a floor plan and guide the visitor to go every place.
• Sign boards & indicators: The zoo requires boards. People must know what they are seeing inside the enclosure. And for heaven’s sake, it is not ‘just’ lion. It can be an African or Indian Lion and they have zoological names. A plain simple Lion won’t do. What are you going to teach the children that visit? I am sure teachers of today would cringe to take their wards to this zoo because of some uncomfortable questions on the species. PLUS, they make awesome advertising opportunity. Most companies have CSR initiatives today and this is one fantastic way to tap it.
• Shows: Seeing a monkey jumping inside a cage is fun. But when you are interacting with it, it is another! I still remember the first Orangutan that kissed me. His name is Surya and he was 4 months old when I first held him in my hands. When I went to the Singapore Zoo the second time, I made it a point to meet Surya again. Only this time he was 7 years old and was a grown up. More stronger and more agile and more beautiful than ever before. I cherish my having met him. Now isn’t that an experience? By letting kids interact with these animals, the zoo would help them in understanding the importance of conserving nature and by pricing it right, you end up making some money too! Trust me, children will make their parents pay for it!
• Shops inside: Why haven’t we learnt to sell wares & merchandise? It is pretty much the same across all national parks & animal houses across the country. I remember the shop from Sanjay Gandhi National Park. It is a shame. Not enough merchandise, not priced right, not visually appealing. It is a shop for the sake of having a shop. Here’s my idea. Outsource it to a private apparel brand. It could be Nike, Adidas, Reliance Trends, Wills Lifestyle, Trent… whoever! Outsource it. Don’t charge them rent for the first 3 years, but charge them from the 4^th year onwards. They must sell only Zoo based merchandise in the store. But they must come up with ideas & merchandise that would make people want to yank their wallets out. The business plan for the brand should be to make it profitable in three years time and then share the profit with the zoo authorities. It is okay if you don’t make money in the first three years. You are not making money from it anyway!
• Food & relaxation joints: There are a few dirty ‘some trust’ sponsored cemented benches which are perennially covered with algae. People will leave the zoo earlier if they are tired of walking. Provide place to sit. Create space for food joints. Same rule as above. Maybe with a one year moratorium. Vadapav, Dabeli stalls with ice-creams while enjoying the pleasant coolness of flora & fauna well within the city of Bombay! Think of the potential. That would make people stay longer, visit again and thus more business.
• Transport facilities to the zoo: Two buses painted in zoo colors can go around town picking up people for visits. They can also be given on hire for school children planning to visit the zoo. Make it a package for the schools to visit the zoo on a regular basis. An entire school cannot visit the zoo on the same day. But each school has at least 1000 children. In batches of 100, you have 10 visits from each school by having an annual tie-up. With a tie-up with even 50 schools, your ticket sales at the zoo would bring in a small fortune. Won’t it?
• Transport facilities within the zoo. Battery trains, golf carts etc. Just to ensure that even if the place isn’t large, it gives the feeling of largeness. One can walk through the zoo in no time, but by planning the pathway to be long and winding, you can make it interesting enough to make people pay a small fee for these rides!
• Entry fee: At Rs.5/- the zoo is not keeping the unnecessary crowd out. And is not earning from it either. By having the fee to a slightly higher level, it would keep the wastrels out and also ensure that there’s more revenue coming in. I wouldn’t mind paying Rs.50 to go to the zoo if the facilities are good. So improve the facilities and charge higher. Having shops inside would also help add to the revenue!
• Corporate tie-ups. Each section Primates, birds, cats, other mammals, reptiles etc can be sponsorship opportunities. Let’s say Reliance Trends wants to have the apparel store inside, then they can be asked to ‘adopt’ the Reptile farm for a specified period. By having such tie-ups the revenue for the zoo will go up, the entry fee can be kept low and higher foot falls generated.
• Bring in local heroes (not the Salman Khan types) who have done a lot of work towards environment protection as part of the core team. Snake catchers like Ibrahim, Vijay Raghavan, Anand Mohite etc have done great work in the concrete jungle called Bombay. I am sure involving them in doing shows at the zoo would be great. They would get their due for the work they do, and the zoo would be able to get more footfalls.
• Social Media: Less said about this the better. Creating a FB page or twitter handle (there I said it!) would be a bit more helpful. I still remember the Bronx Zoo Python that escaped and the twitter handle which freaked out on it. If an imaginary twitter python can shake the room, then think what social media can do for a live animal!?!?!
• Bring in the Animal World Celebrities. If Steve Irwin was alive and is visiting Byculla Zoo to play in the crocodile pool, I am sure there is a huge bunch of people who would pay to visit on that day! We have Romulus Whitaker and Alphonse Roy who still do similar or greater work! Why can’t we have a celebrity day at the zoo?
• BMC runs the zoo. Why can’t they have a zoo day?! Or something equivalent! By having a special promo drive for the zoo, the authorities would be able to make the place a much loved destination.

I would be very happy to wear a ‘I <3 Byculla Zoo’ Tee which glows in the dark and has the face of a beautiful tiger. Won’t you?

Note: The article in today’s paper does not attribute any amount of the Rs.150 crore towards any kind of marketing activity. BMC would do itself a world of good by allocating even a small amount towards promoting the zoo and thus increasing its own usefulness and provide an awesome destination in Bombay! Think again!

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It is true that many times the best sample size for a market research activity is ‘1’, but can we really do that when we choose media? Here’s a small example: Data says (at least if we still can trust RAM) that Radio One is the leading FM Channel in Bombay (yes, I refuse to call this city Mumbai. If you don’t like it, watch Russel Peters for the reason). However, the CEO prefers Malishka of Red FM over “Who’s that unknown RJ in 91.1 FM, which claims to be no.1? It is very Indianly common to have hoardings from the Airport to Office (even if it is just for a few days) for the ‘senior management’ to see & feel happy about during branch visits. It surely keeps the bosses happy!

That apart, it always is a good idea to take a hard look at one’s own media habits. It may just help plan better the next time you write the brief for the campaign plan.

That’s what I am planning to do now. How do I consume media? What do I watch? What do I do? Maybe some planner may get some idea from what I do (unconsciously). My routine can (hopefully) be the trigger for dropping that self-proclaimed omnipresent media vehicle! Here goes:

My demographics:

Age: 37

City: Mumbai

Occupation: Marketing head for a Financial Services Firm

SEC: I don’t believe in this classification. But am earning well.

MHI: ahem! See earlier point!

So what do I do everyday?

• 6.00 am to 7.30 am: The first media that I consume is Vijay TV. Judge me if you must, but Vijay TV in the mornings broadcasts spiritual stuff and it helps keep my mind clear of all the nonsense like corruption, accidents, murders, scandals and other such ‘outrage inducing’ news. So Vijay TV it is!
• 7.30 am: Yes. I do read ToI. But I just browse. I don’t find their editorial engaging enough. Not for me at least. Also, owing to business considerations, their news is filled with negativity. Read point 1 for what I would like to avoid and TOI is filled with it anyway. Lately, even the sports coverage has scandals as the pivot. But yes, I browse through that paper for just being abreast.
• 7.30 am: My modified Nook Color which is now an Android Tablet. I access NDTV app, Economist, Huffington post, NYT for a bit of world coverage. I prefer to read the politics and broader economy items rather than most other categories. Sports comes in too.
• Economic Times: Being in Financial Services, it is imperative for me to read this paper. Thought the colour is mildly yellow, this pink paper is a must read for me to ‘be in the know’. Also, this is the largest circulated / read (both are different) newspaper and I handle retail. QED.
• The Mint: For me, this is intelligent reading. This newspaper is actually where there is limited or no jargon and complex financial events can be understood, albeit with a little effort. Must read
• Google News: A site that is ‘almost permanently’ open on my computer to get my dose of news. I read through articles of varied topics through Google News and it’s constantly updating feeds
• LinkedIn: Provides me with business updates through links posted, people with whom I am connected and business related news.
• Twitter through the day: In intermittent spells, I tweet and read tweets. I follow some news junkies, stand up comedians, advertising, PR & digital media folks, and some politicians too. Most times, twitter is my first source of breaking news. In that same vein, Facebook is almost relegated to a weekly once kind of activity or ‘only when there’s time’.
• I also frequently visit Quora, Mashable & Rediff (not necessarily in that order) for reading about anything under the sun.
• Infrequently, I also read blog posts when someone tweets their links. Not much time.
• My evenings are typically spent with Raymond / AFV, followed by MasterChef Australia. Food is the new porn (as my wife called it) and Masterchef is the epicenter of it all for me! Despite knowing the result, one is always drawn to the edge of the seat with this programme. I try my best not to miss it. Also, I toggle sometimes with Super Singer on Vijay TV. Those singers are by no stretch of imagination ‘amateurs’. Continuing with porn takes the logical next step to Nigella Lawson. I may never eat a morsel of what gets cooked in Masterchef or Nigella’s show, but I seem to be relishing it with glee!
• Back to Nook Color, news & other apps before I crash.
• I drive to work & back. Outdoor is dangerous for me to keep track of! But hey! This is Bombay and traffic is always ‘almost still’. So I do watch out for the billboards too! I am generally a safe but distracted driver! J

I have conveniently and consciously left my personal life out of this!

So, does that make a generalization? Not at all. It is how I seem to be sharing my time with the various media vehicles that I consume / come across.

If this helps anyone while making a media plan, ping me.

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I used to live in a place called Mambalam Road, which was once an integral part of a thriving industry. Film Hoardings.

There used to be two large players in this market with the largest being J P Krishna. Almost every single hoarding in the state for all large banners Tamil Film banners including AVM, Satya and Devar used J P Krishna’s services. The speciality? These hoardings were hand painted and will look so real and beautiful. And it used to be a sight to watch these painters at work because being a film fan I used to get to see the posters / photographs before many others. Also, the size used to amaze me. 40ft hoarding will be actually hand painted. WOW!

Come to think of it, that was all they did for promoting a film other than PR. Those were not the days of TV promos because there were only 2 channels. DD local and DD National . Moreover, the film industry wasn’t run by professionals. They were just the creative kind and all they could think of, was film making. So the rest of the departments including marketing weren’t their greatest strength.

I am amazed at the speed with which the Movie Marketing Industry has taken over the Movie Making Industry in current times.

Nowadays, a movie budget includes the marketing budget and the number is substantial enough to ensure that enough visibility is garnered in the first weekend itself. Considering that 50% or more collections for a movie happens in the first weekend (or maybe the first 2 weekends), it is important to have a very high intensity burst and the marketing functions for these film houses do the job brilliantly.

Icing on the cake? They actually employ advertising agencies and they get really creative in promoting a movie. With many aces up their sleeve, I thought it would be worth discussing a few here.

PR – This is something that goes on an overdrive before a movie release. We Indians are suckers for celebrity secrets and the problem is that the movie marketers know it. So before the release of a film, you would end up knowing almost every dirty secret (of which I would assume that more than 60% would be fabricated) will be shared with the publications with enough pictures. Sometimes, not sharing any detail of the film will be the PR activity itself. And many times, it would be some controversy. Take the case of Raavan. The film was mired with enough controversies to ensure that enough people spoke about it. Starting from Junior AB claiming to have done a stunt and some swimmer from Bangalore claiming to have performed the stunt to Senior AB launching a desperate attack on Mani to say that the Hindi edit wasn’t great, PR was on an overdrive. Maybe it is this overdrive that cost the film dear, but the function did its job beautifully. Unfortunate that the strategy didn’t work.

Trailors – With the idiot box taking over as one of the largest modes of promoting a product / service, it meant that the 30 second cut of the film must be so slick that you would want to endure 3 hours of the same thing. So the idiot box edits are nothing short of awesome to make you want to watch the film.

Reality Shows – The world today is nothing short of The Truman Show. With reality shows garnering more TRPs and GRPs than your favorite serials movie houses started connecting with these shows to promote their films. After all, this would mean that they get to promote the film for half hour (or one hour in some cases) in the given channel. So you can find the key cast of a film participating in a reality show just to ensure that their film gets talked about.

Online – Starting from a full fledged website for a film (example: www.idiotsacademy.com) to taking over the twitter accounts of key members of the cast, the online promotions side of the movie house has its hands full. Sonam Kapoor just before the launch of Aisha started sharing images from the film in the pretext of finding out how she looks with everyone. The good looker that she was, the film did get a positive opening owing to her strategy of sharing images through Twitter. Every film today has a Facebook page too. Social media today forms a key part of every film’s marketing strategy.

Just to be sure that we don’t leave out… Print happens too!

However, it is refreshing to see that movie marketing has taken a leaf out of advertising for products and indulge in creative and innovative ways to promote. Furthermore, these campaigns get considered for Advertising awards. The campaigns for Paa & 3 Idiots won accolades at Emvies for innovative usage of the media.

Film stars go to any length (figuratively and literally) to promote their movies. One of the Emvie winner ‘3 Idiots’ got it for Aamir travelling the length and breadth of the country many times in disguise and the competition was to identify him. This kind of made the character blend with the masses, thus ensuring larger audience for the film.

This certainly is a category where the bar is always high and is raised further with each large project. The film making business is creative and to advertise that you would again get creative. Sounds like the second level dream of Fischer in Inception.

Would certainly be fun…

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Living in Bombay brings its own idiosyncrasies. One of them is the various modes of public transport. No. I am not talking about trains. The reference points here are the Black-Yellow Taxis and Autos. The germ behind the movement is very simple. Three advertising professionals (Jaidev Rupani, Rachna Brar and Abhilash Krishnan) just decided to take the issue in their hands when they were facing the constant ‘nays’ by these ‘service providers’. Adding fuel to fire, a few weeks back the public transport system came under the mercy of the auto and taxi drivers when they decided to go on a strike demanding a fare hike.

Dubbed Meter Jam and designed like a reverse auction, Meter Jam is a reverse strike. While the taxis and autos be plying the road, the idea was to motivate the common man NOT to take either of these modes.

The movement appealed to the sentiments of the public because everyone has been affected by the ridiculous ways of these operators. It was initially promoted only through Social Networking Sites (SNS). But Six Degrees of Separation led this to become a national movement. Well almost!

To add fuel to the fire, news papers (read ‘tabloids’) picked up this cause and fanning it decently. With Mumbai Mirror starting it and Mid-day following right behind, the rest of the publications didn’t want to be left behind and covered it sufficiently. They actually interviewed the union heads and asked if they were afraid! PR picked up steam and the trio was nothing less than celebrities giving interviews to every channel / newspaper.

It has reached a peak and if you search for Meter Jam today, you would find the press articles before the actual site.

Meter Jam was held (or upheld) on the August 12, 2010. There are mixed reports on how successful the reverse strike was, but I felt the roads to be relatively easy to navigate. There were lesser number of black-yellow vehicles on the road and I personally offered a ride to a few colleagues on my way back.

The movement needed a mainstream support like that of PR for it to be known amongst a larger audience. It is absolutely true that it is not possible to build or retain brand salience only through Facebook and Twitter. It may be a very good starting point. Few reasons:

• The SNS user is looking at a quick bang. You don’t see a topic trending beyond say, 8 hours?!
• There still is a large audience outside SNS. Take me for instance. I have been bitten by the IT Policy bug and I don’t have connectivity to any social media (irrespective of the fact that I use them for official purposes too).
• The relevance of SNS may get restricted to a finite set of audience because amongst your connections / friends / followers, it is not a guarantee that everyone would be moved by your appeal. Striking the right chord at least for a movement should be more than just SNS.

The other one was a media sponsored movement along with an NGO of high repute. The NDTV Greenathon, which the channel conducts on its Flagship NDTV 24×7 every year, is generally a great success. The entire package is 360 degree in approach. The event is well promoted in all the channels owned or is part of the NDTV bouquet. The event is also taken on to other media including online. Today it is possible to connect with your favorite news personality through their website. They have their own social networking platform which is also activated during the Greenathon, which is conducted over a period of 24 hours.

Adding glamour is the presence of Bollywood personalities every year. They have some film start co-hosting it for the entire period, thus ensuring enough eye-balls for the key time-bands at least. The event is generally tied up with TERI and is in support of providing basic amenities in far flung villages of India. Some reasons why it almost always is a hit:

• Promoted by a large news channel, thus ensuring enough reach and visibility for the event.
• Presence of a celebrities (which Meter Jam lacked).
• 360 degree in approach thus ensuring a larger reach and awareness for the event.
• Sufficiently sponsored. With a lot of money going into running this ‘on air, on ground, online’ event, reaching and making it a success is not a great difficulty.
• Having a well known NGO brings in its own set of audience and credibility.

By bringing a serious issue out in the open, social movements take its own course to spread, propagate and in hopefully making this world a better place. However, not all such movements get to see as many reams of paper or footage time. Building a brand like ‘Jaago Re’ cost the Tata Group 2 years and sufficient funds to push the thought through. Even then, we had a key market like Bombay registering 34% votes in the general elections.

Though these social movements become large brands, effectiveness still depends on the buyer of the concept. Pity this is not a product / service.

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It was true for a long time. People ended up seeing music rather than just listening to it. Music Videos were a rage. They could see the stars in flesh and blood dancing in front of them at the comfort of their homes. Music proliferation with the advent of national and international channels meant great fame for the performers. Media became as big as the musician itself. They thought the airwaves will forever be filled with digitized signals containing audio and visuals.

And then Radio found its own space to co-exist.

When Weblogs (blogs) came to existence, everyone had one. It was like there was a surge in writers across the world. Every e-mail signature had a blog ID as part of it. Many lost steam after a while, but some wrote on. Some were on and off (like me). But blogs were still around with a fairly sizeable number of readers.

Then came Twitter! A 140 character invention, which took the world by storm. Everyone jumped into the bandwagon. It took me many reports about the November 26 attacks on Bombay to get on to it. I read reports about how people used Twitter to inform the world about what was happening inside the Taj Mahal Hotel. On many other occasions I saw the use of Twitter where people informed their status from inside a disaster zone. It was too good for me to stay away. I started my twitter account.

I had started to tweet and was learning the ropes, not that I am a pro yet! My topics of interest were quotes, news and satire. Twitter is filled with them. I realized that I was making friends through Twitter, attended Tweet-ups and wrote everything in 140 characters. At one corner of my mind, I felt that the blogger in me was giving up. Though I was not a regular in writing, I believe that some people like the way I write. I have been published a few times and it always is a good feeling to see your name on print or on a popular website.

I was actually a #ShamelessAddict in Twitter language. But I could figure that many of the popular bloggers were straddling both these worlds with consummate ease. It took some effort for me to get away from Twitter and to concentrate on blogging again. But today I find that twitter is actually helping me in my blogging too.

I have now connected my blog to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Network Blogging using Hootsuite & Facebook. With every post, the link for the post is automatically posted on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In. Network Blog pulls data from the blog entry and posts an excerpt on Facebook. Many benefits and some issues.

Today I get a lot of traffic from Twitter and Linked In. Many read the blog post as part of my Linkedin profile too. The post is available as part of Network Blogs on Facebook. So many read it there. I have added a wordpress widget called SocioFluid which helps in posting the link to many social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and many more.

I have been writing today on a daily basis as a part of this blogathon and I am able to gain new friends, new associates and I am known within the professional circle because of these community building tools.

As regards to the purpose of my writing, I am not doing this for Google Adsense. If I make money, I would welcome it, but I am doing this for my own satisfaction. This trains me in writing which I enjoy. And it helps me voice my opinions and interact with other professionals in the field.

The world always comes around. Just when you think video killed the radio star, FM became an inseparable part of your drive time. And when I thought Twitter killed the blogger in me, I run a blogathon. And Twitter is only helping me find more readers and interact with them on different platforms.

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Kiruba Shankar – who was once referred by Gul Panag as a Twitter Superstar was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Kiruba Shankar

A few pointers on the questions. I think that Kiruba is a good example for personal branding. And I have tried to bring out that aspect here. If you see his Bio, you will see that this man is multi-talented. Pity Maniratnam hasn’t met him yet :p Or has he?

Why waste your time? Here goes the interview!

1. You were working in the corporate sector for a long time. What made you take this shift into launching your own company?
   You are right. I’ve been in the corporate world for over 12 years. That’s a long time to get used having the luxury of having one’s bank account get replenished at the beginning of every month. I should really thank the economy downturn for helping make my decision to become an entrepreneur.  The recession made things difficult in the last company that I worked in.I chose to opt out and instead of taking another 9 to 5 job, I chose to pick up projects on my own. I had consciously been building up my business contacts and was focused on building my own brand. This greatly helped when I branched out on my own.  I soon realized that it perfectly matched my multi-interest lifestyle.  I was my own boss and I chose my schedule.
2. With two kids it must have been a tough decision. How did you manage your initial years? (I know it is a personal question, but there are people who are unable to do this! Includes me!)
   Actually, it was not a tough decision at all. That’s the beauty of not having choices   If I had to feed my family I had to get in the projects. That kind of pressure actually helped me a lot in getting my firm up and running quickly.
   The initial years were quite adventurous. We had to keep running fast to stay in the same place. My biggest support system was my wife. She quit her job too and joined me at my startup. Having an understanding and supportive wife is a huge bonus.
   We had a very strict rule that we will not delay the salary of our employees even by a single day. There were half a dozen times I had to pawn my wife’s jewelry to pay the employees’ salaries. We always pay ourselves the last. But magically, we would bounce back every single time. We were also gifted by a very loyal associates who put their best into the job.
3. How big is your firm? What all services do you provide and how competitive is the market that you operate on?
   We are a dozen people strong. We run a very lean organization and our overheads are intentionally kept very low. We run our operations out of two double bedroom flats in Chennai.
   We are a Social Media Consultancy. We help large corporate companies leverage the power of Web 2.0. We help evaluate, strategize and execute plans on corporate blogging, podcasting, enterprise wikis, online community building, reputation management and research.  We are extremely passionate about this medium and that greatly helps us walk the talk.
   The competition isn’t very high. We are amongst very few pure-play social media focused organization in Chennai and even across India, there aren’t many.
4. On a daily basis there is some new technology or the other cropping up. How do you manage to keep in touch with all this? How inquisitive are you?
   I follow a few sites like TechMeme and Mashable that really feeds me on the latest trends in technology and social media space. It also greatly helps that we run the Social Media Research Lab and that gives us sufficient reason to keep our ears close to the ground to learn the latest stuff.
5. There was a point when you used to have blog entries on a regular basis. Lately, you don’t blog as much?
   There’s a huge difference when you did something as an hobby and when you did something for a career.  The effect is telling.  Besides, Twitter and Facebook have cannibalized my blogging. Its so much easier and quicker to say the thing I want to say.  However, blogging is my career and if I don’t blog enough, I’m not practicing what I’m preaching. Atleast for that sake, I will get back to active blogging.
6. How do you think creating an online personality has changed over years? And how has its effect on the offline world been? (Being a blogger and being known and being a tweeter and being known. How do you think things have changed)
   I don’t think creating an online personality has changed much. What has changed though has been the tools that helped you express your ideas.  Its without doubt that building one’s own brand is an extremely wise investment for the future. By building one’s brand online, you’ll soon realize that it starts to open many doors in terms of business and helps it easier to make good connections.  An online brand has a huge rub-off in the offline world.
7. Few words about your book on Personal branding that’s coming up?
   It’s a tweet book published by Happy About, a California based publishing house run by Mitchell Levy. The book contains 140 nuggets of information about personal branding. The book will be published in the later part of 2010.

So that’s that! My first interview! I hope the questions were relevant! Comments would be really appreciated!
My special thanks to Kiruba Shankar for taking time out for my blogathon.

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First flight journey. First flight ticket. It was a rectangular booklet containing 3 self-carbonated sheets which had the details neatly printed. It had my name and the best part was that it was next to the Indian Airlines logo. Felt proud! The pride was because the ticket cost was almost Rs.10,000 (which was loads of money around then).

I still remember how tickets used to get booked then. You called up your local travel agent and he would quote a rate for different airlines and different timings etc. You need to choose and then you end up ‘blocking’ the ticket. Once you pay, the blocking becomes a confirmation and you had you ticket to your destination. Whoa! Was it that complicated?

Let us take the trip back to today’s times. You want to take a trip, you get on to the internet and choose amongst the many aggregator brands like Ixigo, Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra etc, choose the sector, the dates and voila! You have details of all flights for the sector you require across all time frames and the cost of your travel including all taxes etc. You can choose your convenient flight which comes within your budget and you are e-mailed your ticket which you take a print out of and travel. If that wasn’t enough, you can follow any of these brands on Facebook or Twitter and you will keep getting the best deal at any point of time!

What has been explained in the earlier paragraph almost killed an industry, but made an EMPEROR out of the customer. The entire ilk of Travel Agents had to change their business model because of technology helping what can be termed ‘Price Discovery Mechanism’.

Taking a cue from where I left day before, I am trying to explore the pricing function and the effect of Web 2.0. Airline industry is just an example.

To my best knowledge all airlines uses a system called Galileo for their ticketing and sector planning requirements. Crudely put, Galileo is something similar to the Finacle of the Banking industry. But Galileo suffered from an ugly-face syndrome. Basically the entire system lacked a decent front end.

With a bit of help from Web Technologies like AJAX, Flash etc Galileo acquired a beautiful front end. All airlines started building their own front-ends running on the same back end. And thus started the advent of aggregator websites like the ones mentioned earlier and they started giving pricing of the various airlines on a real time basis on their website. Your friendly neighborhood travel agent was replaced by a user-friendly web application.

Add to this another entity called the payment gateway. This entity again uses Web 2.0 front end technologies to run on their complex database heavy back end engines and process payments through the internet. So once you as a customer discovered the price at which you will buy a product / service, you have these payment gateways which will help transfer funds from your bank / credit card to the vendor and your transaction is complete.

This poses a great challenge for the airlines. Especially the budget kind. They now have to track the pricing of their competition from all these sites and ensure that their pricing is at least a Rupee less. Thus price wars have acquired a new dimension. And basking in all this is the customer. He surely is the king.

This now is true of many other industries. Some examples:

• Rural India now uses Web 2.0 technologies sponsored by corporates like ITC (ITC e-choupal) to trade on their produce. The produce includes agricultural produce like Potatoes, Sugarcane, wheat etc.
• If you have ever used the internet to trade on stocks and shares, you have been touched by Web 2.0. These technologies help you in identifying the latest price of a particular share in the market and help you complete a purchase or sell transaction.
• Amazon, eBay, Flipkart etc are more examples of Web 2.0 helping in identifying the price and giving you the ‘best’ deal.

So the next time you get a quote for a stock, air ticket or a quintal of sugarcane over the internet, remember that pricing of the offering has been reached to you using Web 2.0 technologies. In the fond hope that the price that is being quoted is dynamic enough to appeal to your sensibilities and aid your purchase. Price Discovery has acquired a new meaning with the advent of Web 2.0.

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‘Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one’s gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know it’s thriller, thriller night
You’re fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight

These above lines were immortalized by the King of Pop – Michael Jackson. I would attribute the success of MJ to an external factor. Agreed he was awesome with his music and moves, but what brought him to light and reached him to a larger audience was something he had no control on.

MTV

I think MTV was a game changer of the 1980 thus opening up many new avenues of livelihood apart from being a trendsetter concept in itself. Some of the many firsts which can be attributed to MTV include:

• Music Videos
• VJ a.k.a Video Jockeys
• Music Awards
• Musics News
• Music Promotion

MTV changed the way people viewed many things, including life. MTV became a rage and its influence on the young is a still debated topic. With the advent of MTV, new and specialized genres started getting its place under the sun. Not just on TV, but on every other medium. It would be fair to say that MTV has influenced every one of us in a very strong way. I must admit that I am!

There is another concept which is silently doing what MTV did in the 1980s. We are about to see the world operate very differently owing to this phenomenon. People will think differently, communicate differently and operate very differently. And that is…

WEB 2.0

Though there is no difference in the technology between ‘World Wide Web as it existed before’ and Web 2.0, the difference is in the interactivity. The power of the internet has become manifold owing to its interactivity and its omnipresence. We now have the web with all its interactive features in almost every single carrier and medium you can think of.

Interactivity, which forms the core of Web 2.0 can now be seen everywhere. An example of interactivity and Web 2.0 at its best is something that you and I use everyday. It is called Facebook. I am just attempting to explain how Web 2.0 will change the way we function with Facebook as an example here.

Communication
Facebook has just changed the way people communicate. With the advent of e-mail, we lost the Postman (at least a large section of the population did). With the advent of Facebook, we now have a communication tool, which is many-to-many and is available at the comfort of your desk. So if I have good news to share, I just put it up on ‘FB’ and I have communicated it to many people. And all my ‘friends’ on FB would congratulate me right there! Many-to-many communication platform right in front of you!

Connect: I know of friends from the fifth grade with whom I connected through FB. If not for FB, I would probably have not gotten in touch with him ever. Especially since he lives in faraway Athens now!

Play: With online interactive games like Farmville and Mafia Wars and many others that I have never bothered to find out about, one has a very different way of connecting with his / her friends and make new ones. Farmville for instance is so addictive (apparently!) that I know of people who have spent eight hours a day just to ensure that they reach the next level faster. I am sure they would have learnt a thing or two about farming, but I think the intention was to make friends, spend time (euphemistic way of putting it) and have a bit of fun. Today, games have taken a very different plane and connect people very differently.

Those were just a couple of examples of how Web2.0 can change the world. But I am going to delve a little deeper on how Web 2.0 can change the way marketing would be affected in days to come. So here goes…

FB has a very active market place. I once wanted to sell something away and I had put it up in FB marketplace. I would have received as many as 15 calls in less than a week. And I am not the most active on FB. If I can get to have as many responses, then an active marketer can milk FB to its hilt. Here’s an imaginary situation:

Sabyasachi Mukherjee (SM) has just launched his new Winter collection (is it winter collection now?) and has decided to launch it online. So you now have videos of the entire collection shot in the cozy comfort of his home draped on a few friends (read: top models) and uploaded on Youtube and has been FBed (well, that’s the term dudes) at 10.30 am on 28-July-2010. Guess when he can get the result for his collection?

1 month later?
15 days later?
1 week later?

All of the above is wrong. He would get the result real time. Same day, same moment! Because there is a ‘like’ button in Facebook which has changed the way people express themselves. So SM would know the marketability of his collection real-time and would also get comments on why the collection is good or bad. What needs to be considered is his readiness to change the collection according to the tastes of the larger audience and ensure that the collection is a success. It will also help him understand the niches which he needs to cater to with his designing.

For instance, there might a few hundred people who might like the collection and would also be willing to pay a premium because it appeals to their sensitivities. But there might be a thousand others who would believe that they would not take a particular outfit because it costs more than what they are willing to pay.

Going by the above imaginary example, Facebook is now the source and soul of the Marketing Mix. Product, Price, Place, Promotion.

Here you have Facebook, which helps you in taking a product decision. SM has created a collection and has tested his line using FB (consumer research) and has tweaked his collection a bit to cater to the larger audience and has also got ideas for his new niche line owing to a few people specifically giving comments on what they would want.

Price decision has also been arrived at using FB. He now has a section of people who are willing to pay a premium because they like some items in the collection and with a little tweaks they would get what they want. So SM tweaks the collection both ways to cater to a niche and to also to a larger audience and prices the two collections differently. He makes his money and retains his elite client base. Best of both worlds!

Place – Obviously all this has happened in an imaginary market place which was created using Web 2.0. Today, web based sales enabled by Web 2.0 tools like FB, Amazon, eBay etc form almost 20% of physical retail sales. My sincere apologies to calling FB, Amazon & eBay as ‘tools’, but honestly that’s what they are! These Web 2.0 tools are amongst the largest market places in the world today. With instant results!

Promotion – Less said about this the better. We have almost every product or service peddled on the internet. From books to insurance policies availability of these offerings on the internet has opened up the requirement of promoting them using these same tools.

Web 2.0 being the core of your marketing mix is not far off and is already a reality with many products / offerings. And Web 2.0 is changing the marketing world in the same way the MTV of the 80s did to culture. I am sure there is more to discuss here, but for now that’s that!

Note 1: One of the regular (!!!!) readers of this blog Mr. Vasudevan had suggested that I delve deep into one of the topics rather than discuss many points as bullets. I am planning to take his advice and will probably attempt to provide my views on Web 2.0 as a marketing tool in my subsequent posts.
Note 2: Some parts of this post were inspired and influenced by a discussion which I had with “Senior”. Yes! We refer to him as Senior and he also goes by the name Anil Nair. He is a founder member of a leading communications, advertising and marketing firm Law & Kenneth.

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“Nope! I have heard it all the time. Twitter is not just online anymore. I get to read tweets from celebrities on every newspaper”, my boss said looking at me without raising his head.

“Yeah! Almost all newspapers have a twitter beat now”, I said with total abandon. Half the newspapers waste environment by printing SRK’s tweets without realizing that almost all of their readers have already read them online.

“So what is it? How does it work? I am feeling archaic about this Social Networking thingy!” said my boss, now lifting his face.

It was a difficult and awkward moment in one. Probably he was genuinely interested. Or he just wanted to humor me and understand how I work. But none the less, I took the bait.

The discussion started with me trying to explain to him why it was important for our brand to go online and ensure that we ‘listen’ to our customers. I even shared with him a print-out (fml – If you don’t understand what it means, click here of the article by Rameet Arora on Afaqs!

“So, Twitter & Facebook are social networking sites. They are not alone. There are more like Orkut, myspace etc. You can create your profile and get connected with your friends through these sites.”

“How does it help me? I am anyway connected with them otherwise!”

“But boss, your status update or comment will reach all of them at the same time – provided they are also online. You can comment about almost anything under the sun. And that’s where the importance of brands being online comes in.”

“How?”

“See, I will just give you an example. Hippo – a snack food brand from Parle Foods decided to get information about stores where the snack is not available so that they can fill the shelves immediately. They used Twitter as the medium to get the info and went online to commit that they will fill the shelves of all stores where people claim that Hippo wasn’t available. They started receiving responses from people across the country – from more than 25 cities. Hippo got this information free of cost. They outsourced the demand gauging exercise to the customer itself. They crowdsourced it.”

“What? All this online?”

I was just getting excited. Totally warmed up!

“Yeah boss! There are enough cases on how we can use online platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to further the cause of the brand.”

“How?”

“Twitter for instance is a medium where you air your thoughts within 140 characters, but Facebook, Orkut or Myspace doesn’t have such a restriction and also works differently. You can create fan pages on Facebook to provide and receive information. It has now become a two way communication model. Gone are the days when you just made a creative, carpet bombed it and waited for the best results. We are fast moving towards a period where you will make a product, put it up in the market and get the result of customer acceptance by the next day, if not the same evening. Hippo is just one such case.”

“Wow! Show me a plan on social media. And I like this piece about ‘listening’ to the customer. What did you say is your twitter username?”

“err… Sir…”

There goes my only source for venting! My boss-bashing on Twitter stops with immediate effect!

Note: This is an attempt to use a different format to put my thoughts across. After all, this is a writing attempt and it is only fair that I try different styles. Comments would be very welcome! Note: psst… I generally don’t boss-bash on Twitter. I have other vents

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Web 2.0 is a complex matrix, interconnecting web tools and thus a wonderful platform for a meaningful conversation. For many users, tools like Facebook or Twitter starts as a ‘fun thing’. But the number of serious users who use these tools to speak about brands, offerings and what can now be termed ‘word of the written word’ a.k.a ‘www’ as a substitute for ‘word of mouth’ is not a joke anymore.

An article in a recent prominent daily mentioned how scared Bollywood is about ‘twitter’. Because the success (or the failure) of many movies are decided by Twitter and not trade reports anymore.

Should this be the case, how should one treat the online space? My two cents:

The web is the most democratic place in the world. However it affects (and gets affected) by the ‘real’ or brick & mortar world!
The online world is very democratic experience. Users have the power to say what they want and the power to accept / reject what the other users are saying. A living example is Shashi Tharoor. What led him to be the most talked about junior ministers also led him to his fall from grace.

The same media which eulogized his tweeting habits helping a little girl in faraway Trivandrum get monetary support bashed him with front page news over a scandal which cost him his ministerial job.

Lessons: Response – real time. Affects you in the real world and can continue to chase you for a while.

I heard a recent incident when a friend of mine tweeted about an issue with his iPhone and Apple started ‘following’ his tweets. Within a couple of days, Apple sent him a direct message with a link to upgrade his software. Response was real time and you have a customer who speaks about the brand. Online and offline!

1. There are no rules. The rules are made as you go along
   Ever watched The Matrix – the movie? Morpheus tells Neo, “I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it”. These tools are available for you to use and with good knowledge! It is up to the marketer to make the rules. Since the online world is the best democracy, one will have people on both sides opining about every step of your way. However, if it does good to the brand, the rules are right. If it leads to continuous discomfort, it means that there is an immediate need for tweaking.
2. The response is real time. So better be prepared to respond in real time
   The online space is extremely transparent and puts you on the pedestal immediately. Every move on the web is noticed by millions of users and provides them with an opportunity to react or respond to it immediately. A prominent blogger wrote about his good experience with an online travel portal and how helpful they were offline. The travel company’s response (which was real time) and the mix (online and offline response) coordinated well saved a potential disaster leading to a great experience. Result: Happy Customer. Now, get on your feet!
3. Be a child. Learn everyday
   The online space changes the field every day. If one doesn’t learn and learn at the speed at which the world teaches you, chances are, that you are being left behind. So if you are still thinking ‘blogging about your offerings’ would be a great way to reach out to millions, think again. Twitter and Facebook have taken over a while back? And if we think Twitter and Facebook are permanent, maybe we would be wrong again.
4. Product life cycle is short
   A interbrand report last year listed the top brands in the world and there are just three brands under the category ‘Internet services’ in the top 50 viz., Google (7), Amazon (43), and eBay (46). It is mighty difficult for an internet services company to sustain the pace with which users move. Add to it the cultural and geographic differences and the task becomes even difficult. It is important to re-invent and re-invest continuously to be up the curve. Google is a live example of that. Very few realize that Google offers thousands of services for the internet. Being a search engine is just one business vertical for the brand.
5. Be up the curve and ride the wave
   Easier said than done! It is important for identifying patterns on user movement from one service to another. When Facebook was launched not many realized how big it is going to be! But now we see that applications within Facebook like ‘Mafia Wars’ and ‘Farmville’ (sounds outdated now!) are growing in numbers with millions of people joining everyday and thousands sustaining their stay! Maybe observing these patterns provide for excellent opportunities. Stupid how much ever it may sound, I believe that this is a fantastic opportunity for farming companies to provide ‘tools & ideas’ for Farmville users. There are many individuals who have taken a fancy to organic farming as a hobby and produce their own crop for their consumption. Providing tips to them and ‘virtual equipment’ would help growing their brand with them, however small the returns are now!

Well, thinking of a product line for ‘Mafia Wars’? How about Reid & Taylor suitings and Set Wet Gels? The big baddie is gifted by the mentor with Suitings and Gel to make him look cool!

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