The New New Thing

E4m today concluded this two part series (part 1 and 2) on Digital Marketing and Advertising Agencies in India. They spoke to Quasar Media, Interactive Avenues, Webchutney etc. about the industry and their opinions on the year ahead.

As a stakeholder in the industry, these are the key takeaways from the report.

• Digital would grow (Captain Obvious ;)). But at what rate? No one knows for sure. Number varies from 23% to 43% to 50% to 70%.
• Publishers and as a result, inventories are rising. Yet again obvious. But what about the quality of publishers? Would these home-grown publishers attract traffic? And what about traffic from non-frequent users? Will the job-seekers, matrimonial-alliance seekers visit these publishers?
• Advertisers are still not using digital as a medium. Everyone is skeptic of the sucess of the medium. Everyone seems to be waiting for ever elusive sucess story.
• Everyone seems to be confused about the direction that digital business will take. Everyone is speculating. Everyone is repeating what has been said by bloggers time and again. There is no thought-leadership in the industry.

All said and done, digital as a medium is still under-estimated and not really understood by the advertisers. I strongly feel that digital marketing industry needs to come together and evangelise the medium itself. More importantly, we need thought leadership from agencies. Thought leadership in terms of the direction industry would take, understanding of the medium and finally, innovation. No one wants to see the same search engine ads, flash movies etc.

BTW this article tells us that most agencies in India dont even have a proper web presence. And I am talking about agencies taking lead in the digital medium. Interesting days ahead for the medium :)

P.S.: We at Creativeland are hiring for the digital division. Please help spread word.

Nokia as a company continues to impress me with their initiatives with Social Media and Interaction with customers. From WOMWORLD blogger outreach (of which I was a small and insignificant part) to Nokia Conversations to enabling people like Jan Chipchase, Nokia does phenomenal work.

The latest in series is an initiative for Nokia N96. Yet again, the idea is fairly simple. They took one N96 and decided to send it on a world tour. Unlike a typical world tour where one person has the ownership, they decided to crowdsource it. They would send the phone to an individual. Each person uses it for a week. And passes it on. Along the way people can upload and share videos on OVI channel, Twitter and obviously write about it on their personal blogs.

Fantastic idea. Apart from touching lives of all these people and people around them, the media and content created with this phone over the tour period would not be less than a treasure trove. I really look forward to the output.

The very fact that I as a mere silent spectator am blogging about it, justifies that the experiment is bound to create some hype.

Costs for Nokia? One N96 handset, shipping across the world from point to point, a webserver. Negligible.

In this post I shall talk about brands as I understand them and as they are applicable to digital brands. Please note that this list is still in beta and will evolve with time. Your feedback would be really appreciated.

This is required because we need to stop looking at startups as just startups but serious businesses where branding plays a vital role. Often, the way you look at the business makes a lot of difference to way you work.

Coming to the point, I think there are three principles. Utility, Emotional Connect and Relationship that goes beyond just one product.

A: Utility

• Customers never talk about a brand they are going to use. They talk about the action they will perform. What problem does the brand solves?
  • I need to book and air ticket. I will use Cleartrip.
  • I need to upload slides and show them to friends. Let me use Slideshare.
• The brands that can make themselves synonymous to utility invariable become the leaders.
  • Can you Google the data on number of Internet users in India?
  • Can you Slideshare your presentation please?
• The utility could be functional, mechanical, emotional, psychological or any of those –al things.
  • Using Twitter helps me stay in touch with friends on the go.
  • I use FB because the elite Internet users in India are on FB.

B: Emotional Connect

• A customer will use a brand that he can associate himself with.
  • I like Apple products because they stand for innovation, user interface and simplicity.
  • Google stands for open culture. I am an open source evangelist and hence I will use and promote Google initiatives.
• If possible, the association with the brand should elevate the status of the user.
  • Google could have invited everyone when they launched Gmail. Limited invite was a way to get traction. All limited launches are like that.
  • Alltop gave away batches like “featured on alltop”. People displayed these batches because it was a way to show off that you belonged to the best of the category (as rated by alltop).

C: Relationship extending beyond single product

• The relationship should start with one product and when the company launches more products, I should be aspiring to buy them too. This is very important for creating sustainable businesses that go beyond one time relationship.
  • My relationship with Apple started with an Ipod. I have already bought a MacBook and have pre-ordered the iPhone.
  • I started using Google as a search engine. Then I started using groups. Then it was Gmail. And then calendar. The list continues.

Which one of the three things are valid about your brand? If it does only one, how can it do other things?

Please give your feedback to me at saurabh.garg+digitalbrands@gmail.com

Today India won their first ever Grand Prix Lion at the Cannes Lions. JWT won the award for their work on Lead India campaign for The Times of India Group. The idea was simple yet effective. JWT created a reality TV show to choose an Indian that can become a political leader in times to come. This campaign was executed on print, tv, radio, BTL, Internet, on-ground and almost all the platforms available to reach the consumer.

This Grand Prix is important because it marks the arrival of Indian Advertising on the global scene. Indian advertisers have now proved that they are at par with (if not better than) their counterparts from other markets. It is also important because Lead India was a very visible campaign (compared to other winning ideas that are hardly seen in main stream media).

Congrats to JWT and winning team. Hope this would give inspiration to everyone else in the Indian creative community to create more commercial good work.

UPDATE: JWT also won the Integrated Lion 2008 for the campaign. Two big wins for India in one year. Kudos.

We live in a branded world. Brands are everywhere and without realizing you come in contact with tons of brands. I am right now at Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. This festival essentially celebrates and awards the best pieces of paid for communication. Winning the lion is amongst the best things that can happen to anyone in the creative business.

I had an hour to kill that I utilized to finish some of my Google Reader list. Today has been an interesting day. The presentation on advertising in China by Saatchi and Saatchi China was ordinary to say the least. The workshop by Wunderman was brilliant. The Mindshare talk on Branded Entertainment was interesting. All in all an interesting day so far. Better than yesterday where none of the sessions was really impressive.

And for the lack of something really brilliant to say, I am right now in a lounge where free Internet has been sponsored by Microosft. From where I am sitting, without turning around, I can recognize following brands Motorola (Phone), Nokia (Phone), Blackberry, Coke, Macbook, RayBan (glasses), Puma, Adidas, HP (laptop), Evian (water). Not a large number by any standards but interesting thing is that all these are global brands and universally they stand for the same things.

Coming back to the festival, India has had some 20 odd shortlists so far. Haven’t had time to see the entries and work submitted by agencies around the world but will soon see and comment on them.

Wunderman left with a lot of food for thought and there are few ideas. Need to go back to Mumbai and work on them.

So far the festival has been very ordinary to say the least. Even things like scheduling is bad. Most of the sessions are overlapping and they could have better planned. For the second day in the row, the sessions are overlapping and everyone around here is been complaining about it.

More notes soon.

GoaFest 2008 is the annual conclave of the advertising industry in India. Although I did not attend the fest, I read about it on e4m and agencyfaqs and key takeaways for me would be ..

1. Clients expect advertising agency to move further from just advertising. They expect advertising agencies to understand their businesses, environments they operate in and act as a partner rather than a service provider.
2. Clients want agencies to be more accountable and agencies should take a proactive role rather than a passive one.
3. There is bit too much specialization and hence fragmentation happening in the industry. There are departments at agencies to take care of BTL campaigns for young adults in cateogry A cities going to the top 100 colleges in India and who have more than 10000 bucks to spend per month. This kind of depth is desirable by all but what about the larger picture? Business objectives rather than getting too creative? How about generating sales for a change?
4. At the cost of sounding like an old-schooler and offending a lot of creative people, I think that there is nothing more important than generating sales. A lot of creative people forget this and plunge into the art.
5. Internet as a medium is still in very nascent stages. It will be years before it gains acceptability. More thoughts on Internet as Advertising Medium in India on my wiki.

Finally, I liked D. Shivakumar’s session the best at the conclave. I wish I could meet him and pick his brains.

This can also be seen as a a fast summary of all the serious business that happened at GoaFest apart from all the parties, awards, discussions over drinks and regular glamor surrounding the event.