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Physics & Digital Marketing: Part 1. Path of Least Resistance

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P hysics has been one of my favourite subject since school days. Thanks to an uncle of mine who gifted me couple of Russian books (english translated) called Physics for Entertainment by Y. Perelman. Digital marketing is a passion that I’ve been pursuing in my professional life. We all know that the underlying aspect of any digital marketing is a combination of technology and principles of marketing. I see many instances where the laws of physics are very much in play when it comes to digital marketing User Experience (UX), as popularly defined, is improvement of accessibility, usability, and satisfaction of any design. In digital space, it is mostly defined by the designs of website or an application (including widgets, apps, games, etc) Path of least resistance, according to physics, is termed as the perceived pathway a forward motion object will take from a set of alternatives. The principle behind it is that the object will always take the path that has least resistance...

Idea born out of Maggi fiasco

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This is a Pulse post that I've written earlier in the day Maggi, the 2 minute wonder, from Nestle, has got its 15 minutes of fame...though for wrong reasons. I trust Nestle, as a company, and have faith that if the product did have toxic substance beyond permissible limits, it was by pure mischance.  This post is not in support of Maggi (or Nestle) nor it is to slander them for what happened. There are many more who are more competent than me to talk about it. In fact, as I write this post, Maggi is going for a huge PR exercise to minimise the damage and improve its image.  Being a digital marketer, I generally look at various opportunities and events from the prism of technology and marketing. Is there a value or customer need that the product can satisfy? Is there a marketing opportunity here? Can technology play a role in the same?, etc are few questions, I try to answer. This post is about a marketing idea that came out from watching th...

Future Trends: 3D printing and crowdsourced manufacturing

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Manufacturing sector has always been the main driver for economic growth and creation of wealth. Be it large industries or SMEs, they have a direct association in creating more jobs and allied services. One of the biggest concerns with manufacturing has always been that it is very resource-intensive. The factories need to be built near to raw material access. They are capital heavy to start. Logistics and distribution plays a crucial role in terms reach and cost.  The advent of 3D printing technology will change the manufacturing/production model as we know now. Manufacturing might get crowd sourced. In the future, hundreds and thousands of small players (most working from home) will start making different components in small quantities and the same will be collected by the companies and assembled as the final product. Imagine, a manufacturer of Air Conditioners. Except for the crucial components, say compressor, the other parts, like the body, blower, circuit board, et...

Why media companies are angry today

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The past few days, I've noticed something peculiar happening when watching the evening news on television. Almost all media channels are angry. They are angry with few cabinet ministers, they are angry at the 'system', at business houses, bureaucracy. They are angry with the society, culture, and guess what...they are sometimes angry with themselves too. I was wondering, if their anger is a representation of the audience mindset; which means have 'we the people' become short fused. I guess not One main reason why the media is angry is because they are being displaced from their comfort zone. There is so much external influence in media industry that uncertainty is the underline fear faced by them. Some obvious signs are: The falling view time of news channels... More competitors, less audience Shorter attention span Rising cost of infrastructure and people Falling revenues/profits Digital Technology bringing in more options which are far more relevant ...

Simple Venn diagram of relationship between people and technology

A simple relationship framework between people and technology

Facebook limits organic post reach

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Literally, the writing was on the wall for quite sometime now. Facebook has officially announced that they will limit the organic reach for posts on Facebook Pages. This means you pay, if you want your posts to be seen by more people, even if they are your fans. For more, read here While it is not end of the road for the brands to increase organic engagement with their audience through Facebook page, it surely puts a spanner to the works on how they will have to spend monies on Facebook advertising. Let’s be honest, most people would not like to interact with the brand on day to day basis, let alone visit the brand page regularly. So such a limitation might actually work in the brands favour, albeit with monies involved. What smart brand managers would need to do is, to increase the relevance of the post and then promote the same. One big difference this new rule from Facebook will make is, brands who have been focusing on increasing likes through paid advertising and...

A contrarian view on the future of tech devices

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S tarting of the year is always a good time to talk about trends and how it will impact us. I don’t want to be left behind too :) Year end or Year beginning contents are usually highlights about what happened during the past year, or what is in store for the year ahead. I too have a lot of optimism about technology, devices, digital marketing, and all other  things that I’m interested in. This is a perfect setting for writing this topic. My Kid is right now playing with his toys, building blocks, while I’ve opened my iPad and started typing this blog. There are times when I’m busy with my iPhone/ iPad and he comes over asking me to spend few minutes playing with him. Most times, I oblige. But, there are instances when I deny him my time and continue working on my devices.. his reaction is palpable.It is usually “close your iPad/mobile” “play with me, please” kind of reaction.  This made me think, as we spend more time with our devices, there is a potential for a ch...