e Magus

Few days back, thanks to surprisingly less traffic, I checked in early at the airport. Since I had time to kill and the domestic Delhi airport has nothing great to offer in terms of shopping / killing time, I too indulged in the favorite pastime of the nation, or maybe the world, I dare say - Mobile internet (social and search) What caught my attention was the OTA (Online Travel website) banner ad that kept following me. I knew it was because, I had searched for the flight details and fare on their website a few days back, and the cookies were re-targeting me, etc. Couple of thoughts crossed my mind Why were the OTA digital marketing team wasting their ad budget following a 'dead' prospect. I mean, they do not know that I've purchased the ticket from some other place (in my case, directly from the airline website). I had put my date of travel on their website, why didn't the re-targeting ads stop a day before my date of travel. From my

Lately, everyone seems to be talking about personal branding and what it means in today's digital and marketing age. I cringe whenever I get to see any headlines or articles promoting 'Personal Branding' through social media. Every 3rd or 4th article on branding topic in my Flipboard dashboard is about personal branding - how important it is, how to capitalize, listicles on personal branding etc. Over the last 5 years google trends on personal branding shows an interesting pattern. While there is slight increase in terms of the interest over time, it has a jagged growth. The December months sees a huge dip & so also a mid-year dip around June-July. One main reason could be that year ends and mid-year periods are usually lean period for job changes, perhaps? As much as I don't like the whole idea of 'personal branding', this is a new reality and professionals needs to successfully engage with their audience with the available digital tools. While t