In the middle of all the action

I am back to give words to my thoughts after a long gap...while writing the last post I thought that I will be more regular from now onwards but as the title of my post says "in the middle of all the action" - the action around me didn't let me get hold of my thoughts which were running all over the place while I was running between Delhi and Mumbai !

It's been an interesting change of role for me - Pretty exciting and challenging by far! So with basic infra and set up in place @ Mumbai I am all set to run faster....

As I write this down, another piece of news which is getting syndicated across internet and thus spreading like wild fire is our alignment with WPP!

It will really expand the canvas for us to strengthen our knowledge & offerings in the digital space and keep doing the good stuff !

So, there is action all across and I am excited to live through it! The last two and half years or so have been full of action and that's the way I love to live :)

Laters....

Quasar Talk

So after a lot of Internal "Talk", discussions & research we are all set to tap the Social Media Landscape and add value to the brands through virtual conversations and social interactions - a part of it is in the lines of Qualitative Research and other part is to devise programs & tools to engage with consumers over the social media platforms like facebook, orkut, blogs & forums.

Here is the formal announcement of our foray into Social Media:


Quasar Media launches Quasar Talk, to take social media marketing a step ahead Pallavi Goorha

October 25, 2007

Quasar Media, a digital media and e-business solutions company, has taken consumer interaction a step ahead with the launch of its ‘Quasar Talk’. A blog marketing platform, Quasar Talk enables consumers to directly interact with the brand. General Motors has already signed on for Quasar Talk.

Manish Vij, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer, Smile Interactive, the holding company of Quasar Media, pointed out that Internet marketing was growing much beyond the traditional media planning, buying or creative development. Though these remained essential in digital marketing, the new generation of consumers wanted to interact with the brands and not get pushed with advertising.

He said, “It is important for brands to create time than buying time. The consumer will buy brands which are friendly to them, interacting with them and understand them. Till recently, all marketing was a one way process and brands were afraid of talking to the consumer, but I think that’s passé. New consumers now have the power to share and they have started trusting other consumer reviews before arriving at a purchase decision. Few of my FMCG marketer friends feel this might not be for them, but I think otherwise, the more mass the product, the more need of interacting. A recent survey proves that consumers in India trust ‘Internet reviews’ much more than television advertising, therefore it is time our marketers start taking social media marketing seriously.”

It is important to note that social media marketing is not just about writing corporate blogs or blog marketing, but much beyond it. Quasar Media has also tied up with international technology partners to measure the effectiveness of social media efforts.

Quasar Media is eyeing a 20 per cent share of the digital advertising market in India. Some of the well-known clients of Quasar Media include MakeMyTrip.com, Monster, Microsoft, Airtel, Zapak, General Motors and LG.

Quasar and Quasar Talk are here to stay !

Connect with me if you are also keen to take this ride. We are looking for internet and social media enthusiasts to scale up this division !

Time to go Anti-Social

In between all the hue and cry about social networking sites here is something different - some one is talking anti-social now....Check out the evil version of facebook.com - Hatebook.org ! Phew!

Concept might not take off as well as the original one..but traditional yin-yang wisdom taught me that opposite do and can survive in tandem....we are surely nearing an era where we will have a dot com for any & every thing...scary !

Shaadi Ki Ghodi - Great Advertising!

Couldn't resist having the privilege of being the first one to publish this TVC on a blog...As it reaches more eyeballs I am sure it will spread like wild fire! Also, had the privilege to work closely with the team working on this project. Based on a great cultural insight this one drives home the point bang on target - to survive in this globally competitive world every business needs to follow the right standards. Moreover, the TVC hits the social media before it hits the mass media...enjoy!

Billboards by Goooogle

Fellow Internet enthusiast & head of the online travel meta search engine http://www.zoomtra.com/ - Vikas, brought to my notice ( through a comment on my previous post's reference to Google's usage of mass media to market it's products ) this interesting link of a blogpost on Google using OOH media to promote it's local voice search offering. The post captures an interesting scenario:

"Google is interested in expanding into all forms of advertising, including the $7 billion outdoor market -- billboards, that is. Perhaps it's purchased some billboard space, in the hopes of using its dynamic, auction-based ad-selling system to resell it at a profit. Until it finds buyers, it may be using the billboards to promote its own services"

You never know - next revolution in advertising could be "Billboards by Goooogle" !

Thanks Vikas.

Read complete post here.

User Generated Advertising

Today, while checking my mail @ Gmail I noticed a video link posted on the home page. I am sure every one logging on through this page would have noticed it. Google's Home Page and Gmail's Home Page are any ways the most premium real estate properties available on the Internet and we are all so used to see the clean white interface that any deviation from normal can't get unnoticed!

Coming to the video now, it's an interesting collage of videos submitted by users across the globe in response to Google's Call for Videos on "How an email message travel across the globe". It's an interesting execution hinting upon the way email in general and Gmail in particular is connecting the world. It also made me think that it might give a talking point to the early Gmail bashers on the privacy issue - in a way the ad shows the message passing through so many hands ! Just another way to look at it for the folks who may still believe in this school of thought.

Linking this back to my last post on the importance of creating time - this one is the latest add on to the "perfect examples" list. More than 3.5 Million Users have already seen it ! Makes me wonder - Will Google ever need any sort of "so called" mass media !?

Some Related Links:
Link to the final collaborative video page

Also, check out all the responses from which the final video is made here

Buying Time to Creating Time

As a group of passionate believers of Internet media we guys at Quasar keep discussing the importance of creating time over buying time ! If you think of it that's where Internet as a media has made a difference and can be differentiated rationally over other mediums of communication. The battle of eyeballs & clutter end with this argument - Internet is the only medium which lets you buy time from the audience. That means how well & for how long I can engage my audience on my website - all the time they spend on your site seeing demos, reading brochures, watching videos is the time you have not paid for - You only paid to get this user on to your website. In India, we still don't see brands realizing the importance of creating time with their customers. Across the globe kick-ass videos are being produced & released specifically for the Internet - BMW pioneered this with their "The Hire" Film Series which crossed 100 Million Views! BMW only incurred the production cost and then created time from their audience - That's the power of Internet - Here the media can also be created !

Web : The Way I want it !

It's been some time that I came across creating totally customized web pages for yourself ( the likes of igoogle ) but never found a fancy for any ! The idea of getting only the information that I want ( and nothing more ) along with some cool widgets always fascinated me but somehow I couldn't stick for more than 2-3 days on any of these even after spending some valuable time customizing the feeds and widgets.

It was only recently that one of my "more" tech savvy friend - Satish, introduced me to Net Vibes. Trust me, it has made my quest for relevant information easier. I loved the simplicity of presentation & the fact that you can customize the site to the minutest possible detail - they haven't even put their logo on your customized page ! Now, I no longer have to hop from site to site looking for information that I want rather than the information that I am shown.

But, if such will be the form of the websites users will like to visit ( or rather create for themselves ) in future then what will the form of online advertising they will consume? As a consumer I would love to get Hot Deals on my favorite brands as RSS feeds within this page (remember Google's mantra to success was to treat advertising as a commercial information which consumers are looking for ) or put up a cool widget like LIVE Cricket or Tennis Scores on my customized web page - Both give a very good advertising or branding opportunity !



I also see a huge potential in the way advertisers are integrating applications in "Facebook" - Flixster's Movie Rating Application or Trip Advisor's Travel Map Application - to me that's the perfect way of riding on the social media wave as treating social networking sites like just another "eyeball" play is not the smartest thing to do. You need to be a part of them to get noticed and thus make a difference to the community at large!

Web 2.0 !

In my first post I couldn't resist myself from making a reference to Web 2.0! Talking of Buzz Words doing rounds - "Web 2.0" is the most fascinating one. Every one keeps talking about it!

We all know that in "some way or the other" it connotes a new Avtaar of Internet - rebirth of sorts, which passes on more control to the users. But users always had the control since the inception of the Internet!

I think the difference has come largerly from the way users have accepted these ideas. They are more open to collaborative environment now and have found Internet as a medium of expression & choice.

To me, web 2.0 is a way of looking at Internet as a platform rather than a medium. A platform where users are expressing, sharing, connecting & earning ( Google Ad sense & The complete network model ) ! It's like passing the complete control to the users - so the model is of decentralizing ( blogosphere ) and Trust ( Wikis ). Found a really interesting video which captures this evolution really well ! Have a look !

India Rising

Pretty thrilled to see this on one of the largest social networking site in the World - Another indicator of how Indian's are influencing the WWW with their sheer numbers and how seriously large players are eying this audience !

Advertising Intelligence

I have seen online advertising evolve since it's early days in 90's and thought it will be a good idea if I can put this journey into a story - A story coming straight from "web advertising" which has seen it all through it's journey - from a small button sitting somewhere "no where" on a web page to somewhere "over the top" of the page. It's a story akin to "The rise of the Phoenix" - Yes, it has seen the dot com burst and is now back with a bang!

And the story begins -

Hi, I represent an advertisement on the Internet and in the simplest of formats I have been given a generic name of "Banner" - though I come in many variants and names - display ads, sponsored links, text ads, buttons etc. but for the sake of simplicity I will call myself "Banner". I have come a long way since my early days where I was confined to pixel sizes which didn't even justify my existence to times where I can stretch myself over the content of the page - does this mean I have got supremacy over the content - at times yes, but that doesn't mean that this supremacy in size is my most effective Avtaar - I can be most effective if I am placed at the right place & under the right context - consider my Avtaar which comes across as sober "Sponsored Links" !

I have other cousins as well - most popular being "Print Ads" and "TVC's" but i wish my life would have been as simple as their's where the struggle for survival ends with the Big Dad's approval - that's the client - yes, our complete family stems out of this big daddy - we get a birth only if they give their nod otherwise we end up in the "recycle bin". In contrast I am put to scrutiny with every appearance ( they call it as impressions ) & I am evaluated with my performance rate ( they call it as click through rate ) - how many times I got clicked !

If that's not enough, at times I am also evaluated for things beyond my control - something called conversion rate - How many clicks of me lead to an end action - expression of interest, filling up a profile or buying something. Now, if the information being provided through me is not relevant in the context of the end action how can you blame me for something beyond my control! Basic premise of successful advertising is to sell more & that's exactly what I am enabling. Make the messaging through me a true representation of what you want your consumers to do and see the difference. I might get clicked less but then what do you want me to do? Get clicks or get results?

And, its getting difficult for me with every passing day! With things like behavioral targeting gaining ground I am set up to work harder - like chasing a suspect from site to site, page to page till he gives up and clicks on me. But you know what - I am loving it! I have given a completely new dimension to advertising. With mixing technology & advertising I am bridging the gap between advertising and results. I am accountable for every penny that you spend and will never give you chance to say "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half"

My story doesn't end here - It's just the beginning :)

- From "Ever Evolving Web Advertising" -

Through this post I am trying to touch upon the debate of whether putting emphasis on "Return on Investment" through web advertising is justified or not and to what extent. I am a firm believer of equating web adverting to any other form of advertising since like all other forms & formats it's also giving a certain "commercial message" to the consumer in a "branded environment" - tell me how different is an ad (when seen while reading an article in a magazine) from the ad ( with same communication ) seen while you are surfing the web. They both cater to curious eyeballs & impressionable minds. The difference is that in the print version one can not know how many eyes actually saw it and then passed on a message to the brain to act upon the communication where as in the online version one can know precisely how many times the ad appeared (attracted eyeballs), got clicked (consumers interested in your message) and lead to a behavior ( real-time consumer behavior! ). One can then accordingly act on this intelligence & make the advertising work better - I call it "Advertising Intelligence". Living in this digital age, can we ignore this advertising intelligence?

Finally- The "First" Post

So, finally I started!

After seeing the so called Web 2.0 grow so rapidly around me ( i am living through it every day.. ) its hard to resist the temptation of joining the bandwagon and start giving text ( voice otherwise - yeah that's web 2.0 ) to your thoughts...So, one fine Sunday afternoon I also signed up at blogspot to give myself a space in the growing web of thoughts and expressions....and here i am trying to type as i think "what the hell will i do with this space?"

I think creating a space for yourself is the easiest part ( which i have just done ) but to keep it alive and kicking is a tough ask ( i am excited to do that ). Now that I have created one, I am going to use this space for scribbling my thoughts, ideas & creativity through text and pictures ( i had to find a place to showcase my "attempts" at photography anyways)

Why Sans Syllogism - Syllogism is a form of deductive reasoning - reasoning from the general to the specific - A reasoning derived out of logic. So, while I put my thoughts in this space, they are My (SANdeep'S) reasoning's ( derived out of logic - not always though ) but you can also take them as sans ( without ) reasoning since thoughts are fluid and they need not always require a "reason" or "logic"...food for thought?

So, it took me 30 mints to set it all up and put my first post together...its not all that tough!
:)