Google's "Don't be Evil" mantra - Holy shit

Last night Google announced that they are starting a new project named Knol. Hmm interesting I must say. Actually, it pertains to creating wiki like pages. Now people will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on and so forth. One of two things comes to my mind when I read about this new development. Firstly, will Wikipedia and Wikia become yesterday and secondly if it becomes due to certain reasons which I will elaborate later, then are we going to get crappy results (spoke about it in earlier post) which we most often get when we try finding something in Google.

Considering that, Wikipedia is turning out to be one of Google's biggest rivals in terms of search results. So there is all the more possibilities that Google is trying hard to kill both Wikipedia and Wikia (Jimmy Wales social search engine).

So the interesting detail among all these is the timing of this announcement which comes just days before Wikia's beta launch. So what's the future of Wikipedia and Wikia? It all rests in our hands. Though Google is in a win-win situation because of the following reasons:

• Still we use Google as primary search engine and with its allied services, we will be driven towards making those knols which can anyway outrun Wikipedia in terms of the fresh content which we found in Wiki.
• Remember Google's indexing mechanism which can now index Knols to a larger extent (since it's Google's own system)and keep the major traffic away from Wiki.
• The moolah factor which is on the side of Google will definitely help it to close the deal better than wikipedia which is trying to raise some money.
• The corporations just love Google because of its far-flung reach through its ads program and other different tie-ups. So when the corporations love Google and in a way hate Wikipedia on its openness program, so biting the larger chunk of the cake won't be that difficult for Google, I suppose.
• Last but not least, the power of the masses is in favor of Google as of now due to its reach.
  

So my take on this will be conservative, as in, it will take some time for people to get used to Knols and creating, editing & publishing fresh content. But my gut feeling says that the war is far from getting over between Google & Wikipedia. And at the end of it all, we the users will be most benefited as I suppose some changes are due in Wiki's front and I personally want to see what Google comes up with next.

Height of Measuring Word-of-Mouth

Some skeptics say that social media lacks two most important attributes: One being the lack of scalability & the other being the measurability parameter. Though, I don't totally disagree with the above statement but it has always been one of my interests to understand how to measure effectiveness of things like word-of-mouth without asking the analytics guy to work overtime.

The answer came in a very weird fashion if I may say so. Being a marketer, it's important to have an eye for detailing. Even more in your observation, understanding and last but not least sharing the information with your peers, family and sometimes to those whom you don't actually like sometimes :-). So that is the very essence of word of mouth. But you can't actually measure it until & unless you see your sales figure or something related to that moving northwards. Isn't it?

But I have an interesting point of view here. You may disagree with me totally. But being a marketer, when you see your non-geek friend, less media savvy guy or sometimes your grandmother talk about something new which she has seen or heard; then you know that it must be working.

Actually, the point is that nowadays we read into too much of data and forgo the intuition part of it. So when your next door neighbor (whom you usually hate sometimes) tells you about a new gizmo he has seen few days back; remember that your company (if it is making that gizmo), then actually you are doing good in your word-of-mouth campaign. So Information+Intuition=Order of the day.

Memes, Haikus & Tinyurls are the order of the day

I am always on a lookout for what's in & what's out, primarily in the business arena. Though it will take the dexterity and finesse of a pro, still my thirst to find something in nothing won't go away that easy. I won't deny at this point that the idea of Twitter"ing" is just very addictive. But on the hindsight if you think about it, internet is nowadays so open that for a web onlooker like me memes, hiakus & tinyurl's is all that matters to start off a conversation.

"Conversation" or you can say dialogue (remember DI-alogue) is the power of two. Bearing the fact that once upon a time, it used to be just TV who was the sole bearer of ideas. Now the power has shifted and now every marketer knows the fact. Infact, the reason TV used to work tremendously well for quite some time was because that was new then and it touched people in a way which they could never have imagined. Now it's not so. The only reason that could be cited is due to more choices and less time. So the most obvious thing that consumers can do is to just ignore you (No wonder there are so many new product launch failures..approx 95%).

So then the whole Web 2.0 emerged. It's not at all that having a web presence will solve all the problems, but definitely it will help people to talk about you at the end of the day. Now, in the post PC era, companies which let its customers talk about itself makes "Meaning beyond Money". That is power of conversation.

And talking about conversation in Web 2.0, its not all about blogs, wikis etc. It's more about new emerging micro-trends like Twitter, Jaiku's, Truemors etc which are having a very significant & influential impact, even in business and the way your customers talk about you.

So at the end of it all, if you scroll down to that moment when you talk about customer touch points, think about this for a while. The latest cool thing for customers are memes, haikus and all those million tinyurl's which float in this vast web because now the customers can talk, share, criticize, spread the word about you.

How can watching Movies in theaters be more interactive

Turn your brand message into a brand experience through emerging technologies- that's what most brand evangelists will say. But the question pertains to rather difficult proposition of nudging consumer's expectations.

I can't help thinking myself doing anything different except buying the usual popcorn, waiting for the intro trailers and finally the moment of truth i.e. the movie. So is there any other way to make movie-watching more exciting? How about this video....



The video above dubs the concept of "Human Joysticks". This shows the power of engagement & participation in the world of conversations between the value innovators (companies) and value perceivers (customers).

Happy Communion of Man,Technology & Data

Moments back, a friend told me about emerging technology trends and its repercussions on us. So where are we going exactly? 3 trends that have followed suit while we were sleeping :-) all this while were:

1. Moore's Law which states that number of transistors on a chip doubles every after two years. Which means in a simple layman's term that we will see a lot of happenings in tech space (more in hardware though), but also somehow connected to software by and large.
2. Data,Data everywhere: The second noteworthy thing is proliferation of data as suggested by Forrester Research which talks mostly about how the volume of the world’s data doubles approximately every three years.
3. Third but lastly, the human element. More and more, in the post PC era (started with iPods,Zunes,iPhones etc), we are getting more and more techno savvy. So dilution of technology is at its prime and least amount of resistance is coming from consumers.

So, the picture seems perfect. Or we may say it seems like a happy communion of ever growing data with fitting technology to collect,hold & distribute it and at the end of it acceptance by man. So the future seems right, isn't it? Or it is just a small blip in the long tail of B.S.O.S. (Bright and Shiny Objects Syndrome).

Word of Mouth - *The Pond-Ripple Effect*

It's not that word of mouth is now a trend. It's been there for ages; definitely in a different way of course starting from biblical ages. But things have definitely changed along the way. The way it was perceived; the way it was spread; the way it got assimilated in our culture. And of course authors writing about it, made hell lot of difference in the way companies took it as an important marketing tool- be it in form of viral like "dove-evolution to onslaught" campaign or "We didn't start the viral" campaign to name a few in recent times.

But there has been a shift in the way it used to be spread then and now. I call it "The Pond-Ripple Effect". To simplify the concept, few things have to be kept in mind. First, a news/information which has to be spread is more like a story which is passed along the way like a baton. Secondly, the target audience is more like a pond along whose contours we are going to play with (metaphor).

So, we are already there to demystify the strategy. Supposedly, a story (here it is like a stone) is thrown to a target audience (the pond) through various means of media to create a ripple effect i.e. some sort of hype (may be good or bad). Generally, the stone is thrown in the middle of the pond to create maximum ripples. But sooner or later it fades away because of media proliferation and lack of customer attention.

So what do we do now? No, we are not heading towards the dead end. Take this case into consideration. Supposedly, the same story is thrown towards some opinionated evangelists who forms the boundary of the target audience (the pond). Now what may happen is this- Since marketing today has become more of a reflection of social paradigms and we believe more on peer recommendation, so these stories will keep on adding new values all the way through in the pond with bigger & better ripples.

So at the end of the day, your target audience knows about you; credibility is duly manifested since in every culture we follow some figures who are most often than not opinionated and at the end of it, you are creating conversations which makes "Meaning beyond Money".

My 5 most favourite books- Have you read them?

It seems that the difference between a good marketer and a (not so good) marketer depends by and large on the amount of knowledge that he/she possesses. Now for me thats not all. For me it also depends on how the theory that we learn from these books can be practically transformed into real life solutions. Now thats what is required from a neo age Marketer.

So for all those knowledge thirsty marketers who are always on a lookout for refined knowledge resource, I fortunately came across some of the books which shaped me, guided me, molded me all this while. So this post is dedicated to all those greats who have written those books.

1. All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin
2. The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke
3. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
4. The Search by John Battelle
5. Join the Conversation by Joseph Jaffe

This list of 5 books have been my best read books of the year 2007 (though the list is not on the priority basis). Hope to read some more like those in the next year. So what are you reading now?

Slidepost: Innovate to Differentiate

Months back, I wrote a post on "Innovate to Differentiate" in which I try to explain how Innovation is so important to essentially differentiate in the mass cluttered marketplace. Now I came up with a slide which I want to share in this post.

| View | Upload your own

If any of you, has some suggestion, surely I will try to improve in my next slideshare post.

Advertising: Do you know the truth?

Ever wondered about why your customers are getting weary about your ad messages day by day. Now Nielsen did a global survey<download pdf> about which advertising platforms in use today is most effective in terms of generating "Trust" from consumers.

What emerged from this survey is quite interesting. I won't go much into the details (you better download the article) but one thing is of prime importance than everything else- Word of Mouth.

Meanwhile, I will give some of the most important and revealing truths about traditional media. Check it out for yourself; then you can decide whether your last advertising budget should have gone to better places.

• 18%: Proportion of TV advertising campaigns generating positive ROI
• 54 cents: Average return in sales for every $1 spent on advertising
• 256%: The increase in TV advertising costs (CPM) in the past decade
• 84%: Proportion of B2B marketing campaigns resulting in falling sales
• 100%: The increase needed in advertising spend to add 1-2% in sales
• 14%: Proportion of people who trust advertising information
• 90%: Proportion of people who can skip TV ads who do skip TV ads
• 80%: Market share of video recorders with ad skipping technology in 2008
• 95%: The failure rate for new product introductions
• 117: The number of prime time TV spots in 2002 needed to reach 80% of adult population – up from just 3 in 1965
• 3000: Number of advertising messages people are exposed to per day
• 56%: Proportion of people who avoid buying products from companies who they think advertise too much
• 65%: Proportion of people who believe that they are constantly bombarded with too much advertising
• 69%: Proportion of people interested in technology or devices that enable them to skip or block advertising

Source: Justin Kirby & Paul Marsden (2006). Connected marketing. Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann. xix

So based on these hard data, everything boils down to two important questions:

1. How are you going to engage your customers?
2. How are you going to deliver good customer experiences consistently?

Google knows about you

My last week's traveling got better of me, I guess :-( . Now I am in my bed coughing and sneezing. Though I suffered from another kind of syndrome which is not too much prevalent in the medical books. It's called "Blog Guilt", since I could not post much last week. My sickness by and large is making an impact on the blog posts. So please bear with me, if I am not able to post as such in this week.

Still, while in my bed with all the medication (yikes) with me, I do keep myself hooked into internet to keep those mails and information flowing. Some may ask, why am I then posting in this condition?

Though, the answer could have been any smart pant types, but I will give the truer one. First of all, we have heard and read a lot about Google and its sister concerns, though not refraining from privacy issues. So just wanted to share some information with you folks. Nothing much; at least in this post, no amount of great research is required for which I have to use my grey matter.

So, continuing with the topic, how much do u think Google knows about you. I will give you certain clues.

• #1 Search engine portal
• A leading email service
• A leading social networking website
• A leading customized homepage
• A leading video hosting website
• A leading peer-to-peer chat software (Gtalk)
  
• A leading feed reader website
• A leading feed management system
• A leading analytics product
• The largest online ad network
• Most widely distributed traffic monitoring toolbar
• Last but not least, Google collect millions of user data from Google accounts every day

And not forgetting, everyday Google is coming out with newer products which will be well entrenched into our day to day activities (Think Android).

So at the end of it all, Google (our next door internet friend) knows a hell lot about us. So until it acts as "Big brother", we are more than happy to welcome since the word that follows Google is FREE..FREE...FREE!!!