The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

I happened to see Tata Tea’s Hindi commercial so rightfully taunting folks who use the election day for anything but voting. The ad’s simplicity and optimism impressed me very much. The ad closes by a tea vendor pointing out to a website run by Tata Tea for enabling voter registration. The name of the website is also quite thought out – Jaagore.com (Approximately translatable as ‘Hey, wake up!’). The use of social messaging to promote a brand evokes a subtle and positive sentiment. Very neat.

 

Today, I noticed a StarBucks ad offering free coffee for Americans who cast their vote in Nov 4 elections in US( “A tall cup of brewed coffee”). I loved this ad too.

Wonder why only beverage companies take this line of election themed social advertising. The biggest spenders on TV including the mobile companies, the soaps and cosmetics have completely stayed away. It sure takes lot of guts to stand apart and Tata Tea and Starbucks surely remain the very few of them. My vote goes to Tata Tea and Starbucks. Three Cheers to them!

I am not sure this happens anywhere else in the world this way. Every evening(or daytime), a TV channel poses a leading question in the name of opinion poll (I can almost think up this question for the opinion poll -Do you think terrorism should be countered with a heavy hand – Y/N) or asks its viewers to send in their congratulatory messages for popular cricket stars(“Wish Yuvi on his century by typing Yuvi follwed by your message and send to 5XXYY”) which the channel would display on a scrolling bar. Viewers are urged to participate in such opinion polls and those who want can participate only by sms, not by email, nor by submission on the channels website(“If you agree, type Y and send to 5XXYY, if you disagree, type N to 5XXYY”, or, “Type Dhoni followed by your message and send to 5XXYY”). Last evening, a Hindi channel kept running an hourly ‘ win a gold coin’ contest asking extremely silly questions- here’s a gem:

“Which festival is celebrated today – Diwali, Dhanteras or Bhai Duj”. Now, the entire country celebrated Diwali and Dhanteras few days back, so even if you have not heard of Bhai Duj in your region, you would still know the answer. How intelligent. Important to point out that this was a Hindi channel, and all the three festivals are fairly well known in the Hindi speaking areas of India. Love this.

Then there are reality shows where viewers vote for their favourite contestant, like Indian Idol and Big Boss.Votes sent by sms could turn out turn out to be in multiples of hundred thousands(lakh).

Why do Indian TV channels love sms so much? An argument could be that more people have phones than computers. But why only sms, why not email, webpoll as well as sms? The answer it would seem, lies in economics.

Everytime, we send an sms to a TV station, it costs upto 3-6 times more than a regular sms (Rs 3 in my case).My phone company gains, the TV channel’s phone company gains, and in turn, passes on a commission to the TV station. The more smses, the more money the TV channels make. What a cosy arrangement! On the other hand, a web poll, or a Happy Birthday Yuvi message receiving system on the website would not yield them anything other than server costs.

Look at last evening Win-a-Gold-coin contest.

One Gold Coin = INR 15000 ~ USD 300 – winner of the contest will get this.

Viewer spends INR 3 per sms. The lure of Gold in India is so strong that channel would get , say, a hundred thousand messages. Assuming they get a third of the sms cost as commission, the channel would get a hundred thousand rupees. That is the cost of about seven Gold coins. Not sure many other businesses have such a business model!

(This post is dedicated to all of us who have grown up looking at the Chandamama, as well as my daughter who is all excited about Chandrayaan)

To the uninitiated, Chandrayaan is India’s first space mission to moon. And no, it is not manned.

On 22nd Oct 2008, Indian Space Research Organisation will light up a 316 ton launch vehicle, that will  travel to the moon which is, about 3,84,000 km away. In other words, if you travel on the equator, one circle is just 40,000 kms. A flight to moon, even if traveling on a straight line is more than nine times that distance. Unfortunately, the flight is not a straight line. And no, the entire rocket would not reach the moon. Read on.

The rocket will go only a few hundred kms up and leave the Chandrayaan in an elliptical orbit of earth. Only the 1304 kg ’spacecraft’ a.k.a Chandrayaan would make the rest of the journey. At specific points in the orbit, a rocket would be fired to change the direction and altitude towards the moon. Recall that it takes a minimum speed of 11.2 km/second to escape from earth’s gravity. Finally, the Chandrayaan would reach to an orbit of 100 km above moon surface and release the payloads.Here’s an interesting graphic depicting this flight path. The journey could take 5 and a half days.

One of the payloads would actually impact the surface of the moon.

Should the launch go wrong and the rocket appear to endanger life or  property, ISRO has authorized an officer to destroy the rocket. (In fact, he has used this authority to destroy a rocket in an earlier launch)

What’s the big deal about Chandrayaan? The big deal is because it is not everyday that someone can fly a rocket to moon. It distinguishes the men from the boys.

I would have loved to see some more content available via the ISRO website to keep the excitement going. Maybe a frequently updated blog, a mailing list, some interviews, some photos and videos, an RSS feed, a Facebook community and perhaps frequents Tweets!

The Isro page on Chandrayaan -1 is apparently last updated in Jan 2007. I find it difficult to believe nothing significant about the project was considered worth getting added in the last eighteen months. Contrast that with NASA website, where any mission page has a huge build-up, with live coverage in text and video form. In fact, Nasa has a picture rich page dedicated to Apollo Program Program which took astronauts to moon.

PS:

Few imaginary Tweets  from Chandrayaan 1:

1. At lift-off: Good riddance from mankind!
2. Hurrah, I figured it out- the sky’s black and not blue.
3. Been flying two full days and still circling earth. No variety in life!
4. Midway but damn excited. 
5. Just woke up after a sleep, the moon is BIG!
6. Looks like we have reached, I am so damn spacelagged!
7. Whose footmark is this, Neil who?

(Photo Courtesy: Shrinidhi Hande’s photo blog)

I never ever imagined to see a BMW ad talking about money. That too in such big letters right in the center of the ad.

 

The conventional wisdom has been not to talk about price in the context of premium brands. That too on quarter page space on the the front page. Next what? A luxury LearJet advertised as being sold by redeeming supermarket discount coupons?!

PS: Either way, I want one of those head-turner beauties being advertised above!!

There is nothing unusual about an Olympic Gold Medallist becoming brand ambassadors of all things that are sold in a festival and shopping season. So what about the full page Samsung LCD TV featuring Abhinav Bindra? Just take a look at the endorsement line attributed to the brand ambassador. Below the text is a half page picture of Abhinav Bindra with  Samsung TVs. Below the picture are the product details such as variants available and prices.

The ad ends with the tagline ‘Design that performs”.

My curiosity is merely what an ace shooter has to do with the design of the TV. Is he impressed by the product attributes, such as performance or looks?

When Aishwarya Rai does jewelry ad, the connection is beauty. Sachin Tendulkar comes in Boost energy drink and talks about the secret of his energy. M.S.Dhoni comes in Pepsi Youngistan ad and again the connection is the youth. Tiger Woods’ appearance in Accenture ad is clearly to demonstrate expertise and learnability.

But design in the context of a shooter such as Bindra ? That too an Olympic Gold medallist saying “Design is a passion”?! Do you mean the process of design, or the style element of design? How does performance come in?

Wish those incharge of the brand had made better use of this expensive brand asset.

While working on a training assignment, I decided to include this matrix. Not sure how many of you agree.

Touch-point	Strength/Weakness	Communication credibility
Sales Team Contact	Quality of contact and follow-up	Takes time to establish trust
Website Access	Information updation cycle Impersonal May have limited, template information	The algorithm to make it credible is fairly known.
Print/ TV/Radio	Limited distribution	Strong credibility via editorial coverage
Another customer reference	Limited usability	Strong- nothing like word of mouth
Third Party Advisories	Limited reach	Strong
Industry Conferences	Focused, targetable audience	Moderate
Blogs	Can become unfocussed easily	The diffused focus makes it real Easy to listen back

I remember attending Blogcamp 2006 in September in Chennai and getting amazed at the momentum around blogs when the term social media was not so much in currency. Blogger was the platform of choice and blogs on own domain meant you really had deep pockets. Wiki was synonymous with Wikipedia and certainly not heard of in corporate environment. Micro blogging platforms such as Twitter were perhaps taking baby steps – and I certainly had not heard of Facebook then.

Come 2008, and scenario changes completely. Blogging is no more an underground platform of expression of the immediate post teens but we now have people in different age groups adopting it. Wikis are slowly intruding into corporates as a collaboration platform. Platforms such as Facebook is a rage and Twitter has now not just got more mainstream, but even managed to acquire Summize. There are networking sites around all possible hobbies and activity groups and there is a fair amount of device convergence, such as moblogging, or mobile internet, or plain sms. Even staid corporations are adopting Blogs as means of conversation. While corporate websites cannot be replaced by the CEOs blog as a source of information, they serve separate purposes and establish different connects.

It has now become possible to build an information stream on a subject or your choice, in which you are not just receiving or sending cues target to specific audience groups, but respond and participate. It certainly makes the job of those in corporate communications, event management, brand management, even management communication within and outside the companies much more challenging and exciting, depending on what boat you are riding. My interest is in watching the possibilities less from a technology perspective but more to explore and possibly identify some learnings from a marketing angle. It is also worth noting that while Blog consultants are dime a dozen in this world, but all they do is to setup a Wordpress package for you with a glossy theme, or install MediaWiki! It remains my view that there are very few professionals who can advise on the content aspect social media. That is the opportunity.

Barcamp Chennai is here and hope to see you there.

Being in a slides driven environment has its challenges.Three years back we were having a coffee table discussion what about an(then and still) emergent phenomenon  called blogging(Sep 2005)!. I was all excited about it and the folks on the table senior in age were all cold and almost conveying me to keep quiet. Not willing to take it lying down, I made a slideshow and mailed it to them. I called it Blog 101. The challenge was to convey what I wanted to convey without giving a talk-over. I never heard from those folks and would have forgotten myself except this little discovery to see the same slides adorning another person’s screen (not sent by me) when I was crossing him few days later!

Recently while scrubbing my machine for old files to be destroyed, I came across this file too. Somehow did not feel like deleting it and though it does not look a great professionally done slide deck of the type I would run in the conference room, I uploaded it to Slideshare last evening. What’s interesting, it still appears fairly valid.

Blogging 101 (Basics)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

And while I wasn’t completely sure if I should be posting it on my blog, have finally done it to see whether you folks think the contents are still valid. And if you need the file on your machine, it is downloadable from Slideshare.

Tom Peters statement at recent INC conference saying “If you’re not blogging, you’re an idiot” maybe a little strong, but we all know what he means. Blogs as a medium of expression have evolved to create a completely new connect with the targeted stakeholders. Blogs not only bring in soft content such as product stories and legends, but can also enable a corporation to handle the hard part – public communication in the time of crisis. Marriott International Chairman Bill Marriott’s blog just stands out on this count, as the hotel chain battles to recover from destruction at its Pakistan property.

By posting a statement and details of the tragedy on the blog within few hours of the attack, Marriott management reached out directly to customers who would perhaps not read a press release by going to the Marriott corporate site. By providing for everyone to comment and express condolences on the site as well as offers to help, it allowed for a two way connect to be established between Marriott and its customers, something no other channel of communication would do so well.

 

“I am very sad to report a terrible tragedy at our Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan..”. Opening sentence of Bill Marriott’s blog post.

“Dear Mr. Marriott: Please accept my deepest sympathy to the loss of life that was beyond your control and that of your Staff in Pakistan.As an MVCI owner and a holder of Platinum status with Marriott, your company is more of a second home than just a place to stay….”Comment by a customer on this Bill Marriott’s post.

Bill Marriott’s blog generates confidence and brand experience continuity.For professionals in corporate expressions, this is a case study unfolding.

Corporate Blogs have proliferated like never before (The other day I noticed one of India’s unarguably iconic brand Amul, has a blog too). It is easy to find consultants who can lecture a company for hours on how to get started with a corporate blog and the virtues thereof. Very few such consultants can, with some degree of authority, can talk about some clear does and don’ts to keep the corporate blogs alive.

GM is a great company undergoing a painful time for last few years. It has some great brands and it has been early off the block on the corporate blogging block, perhaps innovation comes easy to them. Its Fast Lane team has identified some clear dos and don’ts on making corporate blogging work which should be read by any marketing professional initiating his/her corporation into Corporate Blogging. Read you must.