e Magus

Some of my thoughts on Why this kolaveri di phenomenon. With over 24 Million views on the original video, (plus an equal number of views on the various versions of it)this have become a true viral/meme case-study from India. No more reference to the Microsoft-Pankaj Udhas 'viral' or any of those 'foreign' case studies. Added to it are dedicated Facebook pages and millions of search results trying to bask in the glory of WTKD (including this blog :D) If one looks in deep, this song had all the makings for becoming a viral success. Any digital marketer could learn from the success of WTKD song. Here are some of the recipes that went into making this an success: Simplicity: A song with least common denominator English words regularly used by the youth with couple of simple vernacular words... the song has the universality of nursery rhymes like, Twinkle, Twinkle Little star.... or a Johnny, Johnny, Yes Papa.. With no music knowledge required, little wonder anybody

The fact is that a cordless telephone instrument, working on radio waves, through which one could make or receive calls within a designated area called ‘cell’ (hence the word cellular), have now become an inseparable media device, we just can’t do without The Mobile phone has come a long way since the time Motorola made the first instrument. Interestingly so, the need for the device and every new improvement or feature was as an augmentation to an existing category demand. It then soon encompassed the entire category itself. For example, the earliest need was to increase the communication means by able to reach places which was hard or impossible to reach through landlines – Ship to shore communication, or reaching across through mountainous regions, etc Since then, with each enhancement, mobile phones ran over an existing media product category. There are 3 distinct timelines of mobile phone entering a particular category The early phase The current phase The future phase

If people are shifting time from watching television to Facebooking, it has nothing got to do with social interactions and keeping in touch with their network… it is just that they get to replay what they are used to seeing on the television. Mostly I feel, Facebook is nothing but television in a new avatar. Like in television you have various channels and programmes that are categorized into various genres. Similarly you’ll find people in your network who fall into such genres Here are a dozen of media archetypes, I’m sure, you’ll find in your Facebook network too The Newsreader: Breaking News!!! You heard it first here! Be it Qantas grounding their entire fleet worldwide…or the local Metallica concert getting cancelled. They want to the first to make a mention of it. No point of view, or any other description; just the headlines and link to the source news website. Usually, such people have their twitter feeds connected to their Facebook Updates. These types are one of the most

Facebook is just not about connecting people who work, study, and live around them. The impact of Facebook is much more than just connecting, or killing time, or increase in data/Internet usage. The best yardstick to understand the importance of Facebook is that every marketer wants Facebook as part of their marketing plan. Trust marketers to know what works and what is impactful or not :-) Broadly, the impact of Facebook on the users and the society can be categorized into 3 types - Material, Behavioural, and Cultural Material: The material impact of Facebook is all about increased consumption and buying. There is an artificial need that is created by the Facebook offerings in terms of its default features or the popular third party applications. Couple of popular consumption/buying pattern that I see amongst my friends on Facebook is in terms of purchase of Cameras (especially high end cameras) and the increase in travel. While there could be various reasons for the increased

Working for a digital agency ( www.mrmworldwide.com ), I come across various digital marketing requirements from clients. One common client requirement is - website redesign/ changes. And familiar client remarks in such cases are – “Make it look different from the existing website”, “Identify best practices from other website and let’s incorporate the same” . On the face of it, it looks like a very common and straightforward ask …. But the truth is far, far true. Sheryl Crow sang- A change would do you good. But the truth is, as humans, we seek familiarity. Be it the people we meet, the road we take from home to office, and in majority of the cases the food we eat….we tend to seen familiarity; so would it not be true even for our other habits including online. Yet, when as digital marketers we think about redesigning a website, we mostly seek complete change in the design including structural changes with little regard to the impact on user path A casual glance into any website an

One of the main characteristic of any mass media is its ability to impact the society. Be it the newspapers, television or radio, each had played its part, in terms of changing views and shaping the society. In the recent past, there have been many news articles about the impact of social media in the civil society movements… Be it Coffee Party in America, The elections in Iran, the civil movements in Tunisia, Egypt (#Twitterrevolution) and other Arab countries...or, closer home, the Team Anna’s anti corruption movement in India…. Social media usage has become an important tactic in terms of spreading awareness and mobilizing support. The question is - has social media come of age? If you look at the history of mass media… it has always been associated with politics. In fact, it is referred to as “fourth estate”, the other 3 being Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Traditional mass media was and has been controlled by a few (Just imagine, more than 90% of mass media consumed

For the past few days, I’ve been working on an online media plan for a client. It has been almost 5 years since I had actively been involved in making media plans. I realize nothing much has changed – then & now… Media planning, we have been made to believe, is a mixture of art + science. What the ratio of the secret mixture is like the Coke recipe formula – everyone knows it is there, but no-one is aware what exactly it is. 5 years back, media planning was mostly about impressions (CPM), Clicks (CPC), and Leads…. The ROI’s were mostly about Click through Rates (CTRs) and effective CPCs… It still is. 5 years back, the tags and weight of the creative were an issue with most publishers… it still is. A normal flash file of 25KB to 35KB is what most of the publisher accepts. It seems like the broadband penetration has done nothing good to the quality of ads that can be served. 5 years back most ad serving tools reported the performance, basis the type of inventory, time, g

Today is the age of personal media ownership. According to a recent news release from Twitter (http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/numbers.html) on an average around 4 Billion tweets are sent out every month. From individual point of views, re-tweets, status updates, what’s happening?, and direct messages….Twitter has become the favourite platform for self-expression for many Every Twitter account can be measured on the following parameters – Popularity – The number of people following a twitter profile Pursuit – The number of people whom a twitter profile is following..either for information or interaction Publishing – The volume of tweets (original) and re-tweets being done by the profile Basis the above 3 P’s mentioned, we can organize the twitter users into different groups…and each group fit into the classical Archetype. The Twitter grouping: On the X- axis is broadly the values of Popularity/Pursuit (for ease of grouping have grouped into 3 categories – less than 1, equal to 1, and

  The corruption and con-stories related to Telecom sector in India is not just related to the higher levels and during the time of license and spectrum allocation… It is everywhere in the system right from the business practices to customer service, to sundry services offered by hole-in-the-wall business, and including the customer themselves… the 3 recent experiences that make me say so… Con story #1: I've been trying to get my enterprise email service activated on my blackberry. It has been about 1.5 years of futile exercise of follow-up with the Vodafone and Matrix customer services… Long discussions on the phone, boot – reboot, change password, set password, etc has been of no use… Now-a-days the customer service people when contacted over email/social media are asking me to call them… rather than other way round… the end result after such long wait and innumerable follow-ups I still do not have my enterprise email service active Con story #2: My Blackberry (Storm) display w

Well, after long delay and many missed deadlines mobile number portability (MNP) has come to effect. It is almost 2 months since MNP is in effect and there has been some traction in terms of people shifting from one service provider to another. Some of the obvious impact of Mobile Number Portability are: - The customer service and network offering would become better; - Parity on the cost / packages On other hand, I think there could be far more subtle impact on the current mobile marketing environment. 5 changes that i foresee are:- - There could be increase in network locked phone schemes (Handset + Connection)...where-in high end phones are offered for lower prices - Increased Value added services. Companies would offer access to exclusive content so as to keep the customer engaged with content and thus create higher exit barrier - Annual subscription packages, in form of widgets and data which would get discontinued when people shift the service provider - Common denominators acro