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Showing posts from 2005

10 Reasons Marketing Strategy should include the Internet

It may seem surprising but many companies, big and small, have yet to develop a rational Internet marketing strategy. Considering the Internet has now been used effectively by marketers since 1994, any organization without a strategy to utilize the Internet for marketing is probably making a big mistake. For any organization that still does not have a meaningful Internet marketing effort we offer 10 Reasons why you should. 1. The Go-To Place for Information Possibly the most important reason why companies need to have an active Internet marketing strategy is because of the transformation that has occurred in how customers seek information. While customers still visit stores, talk to sales representatives, look through magazines, and talk to friends to gather product information, an ever-increasing number of customers turn to the Internet as their primary knowledge source. In particular, they use search engines as their principle portal of knowledge as search sites have become the leadi

Internet eating up TV viewership

The Internet portal Yahoo! recently hired one of the world's best known war correspondents, Kevin Sites, to report solo from every 'hot zone' in the world over the coming years. The American cameraman became famous for filming the shooting by a US soldier of an apparently unarmed civilian in a Falluja mosque. This move by Yahoo! is seen as an attempt to widen its horizons and challenge traditional media companies. In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 13, 2005, Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive, News Corporation, said, "Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new technologies are fast writing newsprint's obituary. Yet, as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. Certainly, I didn't do as much as I should have after all the excitement of the late 1990s. I suspect many of you in this room did the same, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.&qu

Paying bloggers to advertise

For a fee, some blogs boost firms Concerns raised on disclosure By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | June 26, 2005 Jeff Cutler has never purchased anything from Dot Flowers, but you might think otherwise, reading the Hingham resident's blog. ''No more driving to the corner to buy flowers and hand-deliver them," he wrote on his Web page. ''Nope. Now I go online to places like Dot Flowers.com and 1-800-Flowers. I like Dot a little better just because of the personal touch." Dot Flowers's ad agency paid Cutler $5 this spring to promote the florist and put a link to its website on his blog, or online journal, short for web log. Cutler, who does not disclose the payment on his blog, is one of more than 2,000 bloggers whom marketer USWeb enlisted to hawk products and services. That helped the nascent florist double its sales in the first three months and shoot up near the top of Google's search list, according to USWeb. Yes, corporate America has discovered

Revenue For Google And Yahoo Costs Competitors

The extraordinary revenue growth exhibited recently by Google and Yahoo is coming at the expense of established players in the $263 billion information industry, a new report says. By Thomas Claburn InformationWeek The extraordinary revenue growth exhibited recently by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. is coming at the expense of established players in the $263 billion information industry, according to a report released Tuesday by research and advisory firm Outsell. "They're literally sucking the financial air out of the room," the report says. "Google and Yahoo are clearly diverting advertising revenue" from established information companies. According to the report, the 10 largest information companies are Daily Mail & General Trust, Gannett, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Thomson, Tribune, VNU, and Wolters Kluwer. Together, they generated $60 billion in revenue in 2004, an increase of $4 billion over 2003. Google and Yahoo together brought

Manage- Mentally 4

You have come a long way, babe. (I write this article looking at the number of high incidence of female births in this generation. I have 2 nieces and most of my friends are now proud parents to baby girls… hmmm… looks like it is going to be Women Power in the future) Circa 3345 AI (AI – Stands for After Internet; ‘inspired’ by Aldus Huxley – AF: After Ford) Mumbai, India : It is almost midnight and there are a few men hurrying to reach home. A few drunken women walk out of the bar laughing aloud. The men hurry faster towards the tube to catch the next local. The ‘Newspods’ -(no jokes here – I’m sure that in the future the news will be transmitted to you every day/hour to your newspods, which can be Wi-Fi connected to your computer, TV, Audio, or special LCD screens - the size and weight of an ordinary newspaper – Author) daily carry news about the male abuses submitted upon the meeker sex. London: 18 men have been arrested and put behind bars for 1 year. Their crime – had been mast

Management- Ally: 3

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The Art of being Invisible Would you like to be invisible? And if yes, for how long? Hours, days, weeks, months, or for years?? Well, most of us love to be invisible for a short period, especially when you haven’t finished that important project your boss gave last week and he is giving you a blasting. Or maybe for a few hours to take a peek into the ladies toilet at the office to take a ‘closer’ look at what your female colleagues has inside. Or maybe for a few days to be in the bedroom of Mallika Sherwat, or maybe Aishwarya Rai… For past few days I was wondering, if I were to be invisible, how long would be enough for me, and what I need to do during that period… thinking further about it, I realized that I AM INVISIBLE, whenever and wherever it mattered. School Years: All that matters during your schooling years is the Report Card. The monthly unit tests, the quarterly, half yearly and the annual examinations. Other things that mattered were the remarks of your teachers, and of cour

The relevance of being different

BRANDS and, if one may add, branding, are creating a buzz not only in the market place but in media as well. A far cry from the days when people had difficulty in pronouncing the word, leave alone understanding the concept. Today, there are seminars on branding, columns in the business press on the subject, and television programmes airing the views of experts, not to forget three credit courses on branding in every management institute in the country. A variety of definitions of branding are doing the rounds — from the exotic to the functional. So where lies the importance of a brand? According to Fortune Magazine (in 1977), "In the twenty-first century, branding will ultimately be the only differentiator between companies. Brand equity is now a key asset." This prediction has considerable merit and highlights "equity," which is really what everyone who is concerned with brand management is attempting to maximise all the time. While on the subject, it would be val

Management-ALLY :2

Every one dreams of a perfect job. An Utopian dream - where you have a happy job, a great company, good pay, great colleagues, no ‘Work’ and to top it all, a sexy Secretary. Well, I had such a dream. Yeah, that is right – I HAD. After graduating in Business Administration from a non-discrepant University, where I had spent most of my waking hours in cafeteria and sleeping hours in the library, I passed out with the Utopian dream in my eyes. After the academic introduction to Management and all its glory, I was seeking my place in the Management world. The rude shocker came soon, no job interviews for 2 months, none wanted a non-discrepant university grad as a Management trainee, it was the abode for the selected few – children of Bigger Gods – the big B-schools. I learnt my first lesson of Management in the real world – Compromise. Since plan A failed to take off… it was time for plan B – get into the industry as a frontline executive and soon you can prove your worth and rise in the

ToonLand

Having read a few books on behaviour, (weel, honestly most of them were fictions).. I feel that a lot can done in Marketing... and which could be a long term process... Here I want to share my thoughts - please remember any name, company, or person mentioned below is purely coincidental, and only used for literary purpose.. If I were to market a TV Channel targetted at kids... I would form ToonLand Pointers:- 1.Studies reveal that kids learn by the process of coreleation of 'images' and 'words'.. (eg:- SHowing 'Blue' and make them repeat Blue....or Show a person and tell them "Uncle" etc.. 2. A country like India with a majority of Single TV Households, the competition is not just other 'kids' channels.. but also news channels, sports, and the channels relaying the never ending sagas of K-series..thanx to Ekta Kapoor :) Touchbase through ToonLand: ToonLand is the concept of offline touch/ interaction / learning point, exclusively targetted at

Television Commercial

From the earliest days of the medium, television has been used as a vehicle for advertising in some countries. In India, since their inception in the late 1970s, television commercials have become by far the most effective, most pervasive, and most popular method of selling products of all sorts. The radio advertising and print advertising industries were well-established when television made its debut in the late70s and early 80s. Doordarshan being the sole service provider had a monopoly on the content and relay. The programs, mostly - on development, social, and with a few commercial serials. These brief commercial serials had "breaks" that interrupt shows regularly - which are the primary reason for the existence of modern-day television networks. Soon with the Govt. rules in broadcasting industry relaxed, more players entered, starting the early 90s. A typical 30-minute time block includes 23 minutes of programming and 7 minutes of commercials (though some half-hour bloc