The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

Companies using sports to promote their brands is not new, not even in the field of IT. CSC has a Cycling team, SAP has been associated with Formula One car racing and Tennis, Accenture uses Tiger Woods very effectively to drive home the point and so on. However, it may be noted that most of these sports are niche in nature and none matches the reach and spread of Fifa Soccer World Cup, save for the Olympics.

While Indian companies have never shied away from sponsoring sports, the spend has mostly been around cricket, and the target audience being India and Indians. This time, we notice that this barrier stands broken, with Satyam (NYSE: SAY) having signed up as a sponsor of Fifa World Cup 2010 , to be played in South Africa. Perhaps it is true in line with Indian IT companies, which have spread themselves across the world, when it comes to serving customers, hunting talent and setting up bases. It is also very proud to see an Indian company logo standing next to the usual bigtime spenders, such as Coke, Visa, Sony etc. What is quite interesting to note that the neither has the Indian soccer team qualified for South Africa 2010, nor is the event being held in India.

When I read the term Prosumer in Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, it hit me hard. To be fair, the term Prosumer was first used by Toffler in 1980 itself. But Wikinomics, provides great insights into mass collaboration with numerous examples, set me thinking. I started looking for examples for Prosumption around me.

Prosumer (Producer+Consumer) is a term that signifies how even traditional media such as print (a little slow) , TV and online are adapting in involving common folks like me and you in creating content for them, and thereby building more content and greater involvement, and maybe credibility too.

I was a little befuddled recently when this blog started getting some visitors refered by the good old Wall Street Journal website. When I went to the source page, I found that on WSJ has an article on Digital Marketing on which I had written a post too and WSJ has used Sphere to pick it up and so nicely provide a link to my post.Maybe this is a very normal thing, but for me it was exciting enough to tell all my friends. What a word-of-mouth publicity I caused for WSJ! (Not that they need, but..!!)

While tradional Indian online media has been slow to adapt to this (new, really?) concept of prosumer and prosumption, some such as IBNlive have started a concept called Citizen Journalist wherein folks such as me and you get to hold the mike and report on a community issue which IBNLive would broadcast on its channel. Infact it has a dedicated page on its site to recent stories submitted by prosumers.

Sounds very exciting to me. See how a student becomes a journalist and reports on happenings are her university.(Don’t blame me if the video is slow, it is directly from IBNLive servers).

It is an exciting buildup at Chennai Open Tennis Open. The 2008 edition is in January and World No 2 Rafael Nadal has confirmed that he is looking forward to it. Infact he has nice words for the Tennis lovers of Chennai, who packed SDAT stadium last year to see him in the semis. In his own words,

“I like the crowd and their enthusiasm and support and they always push you to give your best”.

I could not see the last year event as tickets were all sold by the time I realized I would be in Chennai that time, I am moving for tickets rightway. However, I did see Nadal earlier, and also old legends such as Vijay Amritraj and others.