Firebrand™: Advertising has a new dimension

Just think for a while- Wouldn’t you love seeing those chirpy, sexy, funny advertisements again and again. Now for all those who have risen their hands, there's a great news again (though this is not the first time it ever happened).

Firebrand™ came up with a concept which says "Advertisement as Content". Now think MTV showcasing music videos. Thats what Firebrand™ is going to do with showcasing advertisements. Now where's the catch you may ask- Actually you can view it in three different yet the most influential media platforms of the 21st century i.e. television, mobile and the ubiquitous internet simultaneously.

Watch the promotional video in YouTube

Now another point I want to note here is that Youtube™ is full of videos in the web giving marketers yet another chance to spread the message. But this time, Firebrand™ is only dedicated to viewers who are sick and tired of all those boring sitcoms and sometimes wish when is the next advertisement breaks gonna come. And thats where I think Firebrand™ has a good chance because it will be showcasing some of the best creative advertisements of all times.

The video below displays how Firebrand™ with its high-tech interactivity will work on all the three platforms.

Though the internet is buzzing with prominent bloggers like Rohit Bhargava, Joseph Jaffe taking their own call for this revolution but for me as an ardent interactive marketing and advertisement onlooker, I have many reasons to smile. I hope to post some fresh insights about Firebrand in the near future.

Official Launch: 22nd October
Reference Note: Firebrand's Press Release
Official Website: www.firebrandtv.com

The Sharp™ Xperience

While surfing seamlessly through the cyberspace, once in a while it happens that you stumble upon something cool like this. I was checking adverblog and I saw this cool and funky site.

Believe me I have no damn clue about it (except for that its the latest creation from the stable of Sharp and it's a TV promo ad)? But with my little experience of trying to search and analyze the most happening interactive marketing means, I can say "I just love it". Check the site for yourself. Try fiddling a bit with it with your mouse cursor. I can guarantee that even you will like it too. Now I had only one wish that I should have known Japanese and I guess even you will also feel the same thing!!

Great work!!

Happy B'Day Google: Is it 9 or 10 Years Old?

The Google home page is sporting the special logo above, celebrating the company's ninth birthday, with one of the G's turned into a nine. But wait? Didn't Google just turn 10? Google's domain name turned 10 years old on September 15, but the company itself celebrates its incorporation date in September 1998. But when is that incorporation date: Sept. 7 or Sept. 27?

Check out Wikipedia to see what they have to say about Google's birth. So I am puzzled at this!!! Are you??

Mass advertising is dead

Mass advertising is dying. Just think in a 30 second slot of any prime time television programme, you try to showcase your product in the best possible way. But there is a small problem. Nowadays educated and experienced customer care less about commercials, ads, banners or any form of fancy wording which is forced upon them.

So companies are trying to find new and innovative ways to woo the customers. As of now all the promotional measures didn’t do one thing i.e. they don’t necessarily introduce the product/brand to the customer. Though it is evidential that archaic means of advertising has given way to search based advertising or even word-of-mouth still something is missing in the whole picture.

So I thought of adding a new concept where customer/consumer will have a first hand experience of the product by trying them out. Now its not that companies have not used this concept before but the efficacy is debatable. If we delve deep into the ineffectiveness of the type of advertising then we see one very distinct similarity i.e. companies just do it for the heck of doing it i.e. they take it as just another form of cheap promotion. Whereas it induces two-fold effect i.e. word-of-mouth as well as brand intimacy.

For example, observe this when you visit a mall; you may see some sales guy showing a product in a jazzy way with free samples. Now how many of us recall the name of the brand with which we blissfully attached sometime back. Not many I guess!! So that’s where companies are missing it altogether. Companies should try to make a wholesome experience or more interactive for a customer when he is with the product. In that way brand recall won’t be a problem.

So if we outline advertisement in a basic framework, this is the result:

Simplicity + interactive + depth= Profitable advertisement

"What better way to test your Security Glass than by creating a display loaded with cash and telling people to kick. That's exactly what 3M did".

Where "Google Adsense" goes wrong...

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.

Google AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful – this is what Google Adsense team says in their site. Now the point I want to raise here is did anyone talk about relevancy i.e. google ads related to the site’s content which the visitors may click and in turn will generate revenues for the site owner.

Check out the advertisement below which came in www.ibnlive.com:

The advertisement clearly shows that though the news content is on politics (broadly) still the advertisements below the news is about sports and insurance. Now supposedly if I am viewing this content, there is a least possibility that I may go on clicking the link below. So where does the Google Adsense work.

That’s why sometimes I believe that computer generated advertisements like the above one doesn’t work most of the time (it seems as if a monkey is sitting and doing all this mess).

Dilemma for internet advertisers

Check out the codes (damn little html codes) which websites or bloggers use to keep a check on the number of users visiting their sites!! There are hell lot of sites like sitemeter, google analytics etc providing this service. But there’s a problem in it. Though not that evident as of now but slowly and steadily it will pose as a problem especially for the internet advertisers.

Already speculations point out that internet advertising will surpass the traditional media advertising like newspapers.To be exact spending in internet advertising will reach $61.98 billion, and will surpass newspapers to become the US's leading ad medium in 2011. And I don't think India will be far behind as already companies are looking for a new channel to augment their promotional activities.

Now why I am saying all these these? Actually while I was checking my viewership in two of the best viewer(user) trackers, I was astounded by the difference of viewership in two viewer tracking sites. The difference was about 60%. Now I especially don't have any problem with it as long it shows the viewlist. But think about the internet advertisers. If they presumably invest in a site whose actual viewership is not what it shows i.e. far less than the actual then they are just wasting their money on wrong information. Though if it is more than expected then there is no problem but still the aura of uncertainty prevails.

So what can be the possible solution? What I feel is that before investing for any website, companies should have data from all the possible sources. At least this way they can understand where does the website stand. And in case of major discrepancies companies can pull out.

So until a major geek comes out with a phenomenal website tracker which solves all the problem, the problem of accurate viewership will continue.

How interactive advertisements are creating brand loyalists

When the question comes to market a particular product to a set of people who are intelligent, tech savvy and have more information about "whats in and whats out", so the work of marketers becomes all the more difficult it seems, primarily because too many things are in the market already and to make your product visible among so many other products, first of all, companies should try making their advertisements all the more interactive. Some of the advertisements are shown below who have captured the imagination of their customers in a very subtle and creative way.

Watch the video in youtube

Note: Remember Hutch's Catch Phrase- "Where you go, our network follows" with that small cute little dog following. So this ad captures that attachment in this interactive ad.

One thing about these sort of advertisements is that they were able to make their product visible among their competitors' product. Now one argument can be that will these advertisements pull out moolah from the customers?

My argument will be that yes they will. Since the value attached to these brands are quite tangible for the customers, so they won't mind fishing money from their wallet.

Watch this video in YouTube

One more aspect to interactive advertisements is that they have made customers a part of their promotional campaign.

So at the end of the day customer likes when the decision to buy a product rests in his hands and not by the companies who by their usual coaxing and snazzy campaigns try to influence them as it may lead to short term buying of course but not a brand loyalist.

SEO: How it is redefining internet marketing?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

Now one of the most interesting things which I find in internet searches is how we get the search results especially in Google searches. Type marketing and you will find wikipedia, marketingprofs etc time and again. Now in my previous posts I have mentioned about how google searches through its spider crawler. Now there is more to it. The video below mentions some of the tricks and trades of the game.

Watch this video in YouTube.

This video definitely gives some perspectives about Search Engine Optimization techniques. Its basically a technique which leads your website to top of google's high priority search results. Then definitely the chances of clicking you website increases and since the number of users using google search engine is huge so there won't be any dearth of users for your website.

Now if I can employ effective SEO techniques then definitely number of hits in my site will be more. That means that there is higher probability as the advertisments may work in my site. And this is the bottom-line for the internet sites i.e. to get more hits per page which may lead them to higher revenue generation model.

So cheers to two mavericks named Larry Page and Sergey Brin who revolutionized search engine business model for which people are going crazy to get better off them. Now who wins, only time will tell...

How Indian Social Networking websites are raging a new kind of war

Indian social networking websites have got it late. You may ask what? Think Orkut™, Facebook™, MySpace™ etc which started off this revolution. One point is that they presumably started quite early i.e. more or less they have the 1^st mover advantage.

Now put the Indian internet biz conglomerate which caught on this revolution late in the frame. Still there could have been no problem if they were able to pull crowd. Now one problem which I very well figure out is if I have registered myself in one of those above sites, I find no reasons why I should get into another except for if there is any particular advantage which the newer sites can give me.

So, the Indian social networking sites are trying out a new game plan. Below you can see one of the advertisements of a prominent Indian social networking site. It says “You control who sees your profile”. What comes in your mind when such a statement is thrown at you keeping in mind you are registered in Orkut, myspace etc?

Yes, the writing is on the wall. I call it “Weak Link Marketing” but in bits and bytes because most of the international social networking sites don’t have this feature to control the viewership (though they are working on this feature like Facebook etc). But the million dollar question is that will it help them to get what they want i.e. precious loyal users.

Basically, it boils down to three important features. One is simplicity in navigation of the sites, second is usability of the interfaces and third is giving it an Indian touch.

So these short term marketing means may not help them as such because in cyberspace loyalty is a derivative of simplicity and usability for the users.

Gorilla (guerilla) Marketing!!!

Guerilla marketing is a low-budget, unconventional spin on marketing that often doesn’t feature the actual product at all. Also another form of stealth marketing, this type of campaign tricks the consumer into thinking about a certain product, without them realizing they have been exposed to commercial advertising. E.g. Apple Mac Mini (Remember!)

Watch the video in YouTube

Nowadays customers don't want advertisers going gun ho about showcasing their product. They want entertainment. In India ITC tried to bring the same concept with their BINGO snacks which more or less tried to break the myth of traditional advertising. I hope by now people can very well understand the effectiveness of its advertisement by mind share that BINGO has.

I guess its the new form of advertising that is catching the customers attention. But companies have to make sure that they don't fall into the trap of short term sales. They should try to build long term brand values.

Internal Marketing: Latest corpotate mantra

Companies spend millions of dollars in advertisements to woo customers endorse their product. But nowadays companies are engaging themselves in an activity called “Internal Marketing” in the form of word of mouth (WOM) advertisement.

Companies believe that the employees can be the flag bearer of the company in terms of carrying the company’s name to the market and advertise with a positive connotation. This creates an aura of positive vibes about the company or the company’s product per se.

But the processes have to be in place like aligning the current employees in tune with the company’s values. If the employees are a happy lot, they in turn will communicate positive WOM for the company which catapults the company’s profitability over the sustained period of time.

So it can be said that companies should see that branding takes place at the root i.e. the employees as a viable option rather than spending millions on traditional advertisement for nothing but for a bunch of disloyal customers.