Author

Kanupriya Sindhu

Bollywood promotions – other interesting examples

July 3, 2008

I had written post about bollywood marketing earlier as well, I must say things are getting innovative day by day. The most talked about two recent releases are “Love Story 2050” & “Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na”. Both are releasing on 4th July’08 and both these films are marketing their stuff quite aggressively. Though both are quite hyped up movies but guess Jaane Tu…has managed to grab more pre-release attention because of its super aggressive PR plans and 360 degree marketing approach. After observing different promotional strategies of these two movies, I think the two key catchy promotional strategies which I noticed are:

  • Marketing Tie-ups: Both these movies have managed to get big brands roped in for their movies. “Love Story 2050” has got Lux, Xbox 360, Tata Indicom and Sun Microsystems interested for branding and marketing tie-ups whereas “Jaane Tu…” has secured marketing alliances with Zee and Sony, and is expected to sign Coke and Toyota, brands endorsed by Aamir Khan. Not that tie-ups like these are something new but the fact that now-a-days such tie-ups are covering the overall production cost of even huge budgeted films like “Love Story 2050” is something really fascinating. “We have covered 20% of our production costs through brand and marketing tie-ups. But if we combine the money that we have earned through merchandising and distribution deals, it would cover 100% of the costs. Anything that we will earn from now on would be profits for us,” says Rowena Baweja of Harry Baweja Productions. Love Story 2050’s production cost is an estimated Rs 50 crore (Source: ET online, dated 23rd June’08). 50 crores getting covered through tie-ups and merchandising, wow, really interesting!
  • Increasing online promotions: Next important thing which caught my immediate attention today was promotion of these films in online world…most of the popular sites are splashed with “Jaane Tu…” promo today, not sure if they had started their online promo earlier but it struck to my eyes today only and more so because of this very catchy ad on msn India homepage today.

(Brief description for the benefit of those who have missed out this ad: As soon as you go to msn India home page, suddenly you see Imran Khan walking all over the screen very coolly and then he suddenly knocks the screen and goes back to that Jane Tu Box). I have seen some other ads earlier as well like this but somehow the presentation and background score of this ad was too good! Apart from this they have other interesting banners on facebook, AOL bollywood etc and a very trendy website as well. It’s cool, vibrant and think can establish a good connect with their youth TG. Hmmm, movies are seriously investing in websites these days!

Well, the fate of these movies as well as the return on investment will be decided tomorrow but one thing is sure – movie marketing is definitely becoming an interesting field in itself.

Aside: I watched Jaane Tu last weekend…loved it. Same old story, same old climax, same end but still it was so fresh! I would recommend it to everybody who just want to go for some light and fun flick. And take my words, it will surely remind of your good old student life days and suddenly after coming out you will feel like either talking to your friends or talking about your friends 🙂

Internet Spend in India

June 20, 2008

Was going through the “Indian media forecasts” report released by GroupM recently, the report has covered trends of different media quite comprehensively. Well, I will write my view-point and analysis of that report separately as I still need to go through some of the figures in details. Call it my special personal interest in this space or the nature of my job, but one thing which immediately caught my attention in that report was trend of internet media. Spend on internet media was Rs. 390 crore in 2007 as against Rs. 204 crore in 2006. And this spend is expected to become Rs. 624 crore in 2008. Here is the table which I have made out of GroupM April’08 report for internet spends.

Well, the good thing is that internet spend has increased by 91% since last year, a very commendable growth so to say and is further expected to grow by 60% in 2008, but the sad part is that the % share of media is just 2%!!! Now this is an abysmally low share of the total media spend considering the internet penetration amongst the urban India now-a-days. Had read it in last year report that on an average, Indians in metros and category A towns spend 9 hours a week on internet. And if I think of myself and me like lakhs of consumers who are working professionals and their life revolve around internet, I think this average time will surely go high. On an average most of us must be spending 5+ hours daily on internet and this is far more than time spent on TV or newspaper. Television for sure is restricted to few minutes on weekdays and few hours on weekends. Despite such high internet reach in most of the metros, A and B category towns, why is this % share of overall media so low?

Though more number of brands are advertising on internet now but still internet as a medium is taken in most of the cases just to complete the 360 degree circle. Also whichever company I have worked for, one key factor which I have personally experienced in planning an internet campaign is the fact that most of the media planners present internet as a lead generation medium wherein a small ad click will take you to a landing page asking you to submit your details! No freshness or uniqueness at all! One can hardly observe any innovative and engaging campaign on internet these days which is for brand building and not only for lead generation. Well, working for a company where leads play a critical role for sales team, I agree that lead generation is a very critical objective for any campaign but just spending few grands or max lakhs on internet only for lead generation and not for brand building is not at all justified for this medium.

When most of the big budget campaigns have advertising money spent in crores on traditional medium like television or newspaper why can’t there be money spent on internet as well? When money can be spent on hoardings or television where there is so less accountability, why on internet everything needs to be justified by CPL or CPA? I think a good internet strategy should have both angle – brand building followed by lead generation and marketers as well as decision makers should realize the importance of internet now. Internet as a medium is not only having high reach these days but it is also one of the most quantifiable medium. As compared to any other medium, internet can measure the performance of any campaign more accurately and precisely. Well, its time now that this medium should definitely be given its due!

Fate of SMS Marketing???

June 12, 2008

Now this is the 6th SMS in last 5 minutes! As usual, SMS starts from WIN blah blah blah and here goes my immediate reflex reaction, Press DELETE! This is the fate of most of the SMSes which I receive these days. In 99.99% of the cases, I delete the SMS without even reading the second line as the first three words itself tell that this is yet another stupid promo SMS. Almost every SMS promises me XYZ Car, 1 Kg of gold, 1 lakh cash price, Holiday in Switzerland or dinner date with Kareena Kapoor! And to the pain of those SMSes are the pre-recorded advertisement calls which suddenly comes in esp. when you are in the mid of something important. Even after opting for those do not disturb services, there is just no respite from those WIN, WIN, WIN SMSes and “Hi, I am Ram Gopal Verma…” kinda pre-recorded messages”.

Mobile advertising is really hot these days in India simply because of the penetration factor. For every internet user there are 5+ mobile users in India. SMS marketing is relatively a nascent concept but still it has taken off in a big way. I had read it somewhere few days back that of about 30 million short messages exchanged in India every day, an estimated 7 million SMSes are exchanged between short-code operators and consumers every day. (Don’t remember the exact source of info for this data). There is no dearth of SMS marketing companies in India now and suddenly we see lots of players jumping into this game.

Though the SMS advertising industry seems promising enough in India but one very big drawback which I am observing in this industry is the lack of right and attractive content. Almost every other ad by any brand just looks like another “me too” offer. Everyone is using this WIN WIN WIN funda with absolutely zero creativity in content. Now com’on, today’s consumer is not fool enough to believe on promises like 1 kg gold or 1 lakh cash prize. Most importantly if every other SMS is promising the same thing then you know how credible these offers are! Next key deterrent is the timing & frequency of these SMSes. In the mid of an important meeting if you receive 6 SMSes in 5 minutes then you know what will be the fate of those SMSes! Considering the mobile phone usage in India, SMS marketing is definitely one of the brilliant promotional mediums to reach masses these day but even very powerful marketing tools can have a very early fatality if not used properly Remember what rage email marketing was and what doom it had because of the abusive over-usage of this medium by promoters and service providers. I am wondering if SMS marketing is also trailing the same path.

Enough of friends, movies & music, now its turn for ghosts!

May 22, 2008

I still can’t believe this 🙂, quite interesting I must say. Initially when I had read this news in March, I just couldn’t believe that someone was actually thinking on this line and I was almost sure that it would be some sort of media rumor, but no I was wrong. It actually is true that now there will be a social networking site for ghosts and aliens! Oh yes, Steven Spielberg is actually launching a ghost / UFO centric social networking website which will be for people who would like to share and discuss paranormal and extraterrestrial experiences.

Speculations are still on about the name of the portal. Some say it will be called “Ghosts”, some call it as “Ghost Town”, latest update being that the site is perhaps going to be called “The Rising” or “Rising”. Apart from networking angle, the site will also have original video content focusing on alleged ghost and UFO stories. Now we all know the connection between Steven Spielberg and paranormal experiences. Who can forget movies like E.T The Extra Terrestrial, Close Encounter of the third world, Jurrasic Park etc which are one of the highest grosser of all times at box office! Steven at many occasions has also narrated some real life chilling experiences about his encounter with ghosts and supernatural forces. Well, don’t know to what extent his experiences are real but he definitely claims that ghosts and aliens do exist and because of some real life experiences, he got inspired to make movies on this subject.

After general networking, vertical specific networking was definitely slated to be the next big trend in community industry but being niche to this level following a specific vertical is definitely some disruption I must say. And though I don’t believe in such phenomenon (rather I don’t want to believe I guess 🙂) but still there is a large chunk of people who believe in such clairvoyant experiences. And for such TG this kind of open forum will be definitely great wherein they can discuss and share their views with like minded people and know more about it. Hmmm, so looks like enough of networking sites for friends, dating, movies, music, college reunion etc etc, well now it’s the turn of ghosts and bhoooot!

Review sites: Making or breaking the brands?

May 13, 2008

Few months back, I remember referring to a very popular review site for reading some resort review where I was going to stay for a weekend trip. After seeing so many good reviews over there, I felt positive about that resort, the snaps posted were also quite nice and so made my bookings for two nights immediately. Well, the real pleasure came when we landed at the resort. There was a huge difference between the virtual projection and the actual experience. The resort was really shabby with hopeless customer service. Food was bad and unhygienic and the overall cost of stay was nowhere justified by the service. Infact a few kilometers away, there was another resort which looked promising enough but alas I couldn’t shift to this resort as I had already made my payment to this earlier one and at no condition, he was willing to return the same. On my way back I stopped for lunch at this second resort and while talking I asked the manager as to how come they have negative reviews on this review site whereas this other hopeless resort is having so many positive reviews and comments? He immediately replied back, “madam, don’t trust these review sites, the manager of other resort knows that you people in Bangalore refer to review sites and blogs before going ahead for a weekend drive and hence he himself goes ahead and writes lots of positive reviews about his resort and criticizes others through different ids”!

Well, this is not something new which I would have heard recently. Many other companies are facing this issue as well i.e., competitors bad mouthing them in online space through multiple dummy user ids by writing negative reviews or criticizing services and thus creating bad imagery in the market. Marketers are playing around with user generated content to the best of their advantage. There are many companies who have hired professionals to do reputation management (oh yeah now-a-days there is a full fledged profession with this fancy name) for them in online space. To my utmost surprise, there are specialized reputation management agencies these days who contact me for managing the brand reputation of my company in online world and if you ask what all they can do, you get one standard answer – write positive pages about your company and negative about your competitors. I can somewhat understand positive pages about own company but negative pages about others as competitors…hmmm quite a misguiding strategy I must say.

In today’s net addicted era wherein most of the consumers are actually spending majority portion of their lives with laptop and internet, user generated reviews play a huge role in creating an image or perception of any brand. Before making a purchase decision, almost all educated consumers these days check internet to get some reviews or feedback of the product. These review sites act as one of the key influencers in any buying behavior as the general impression is that a sales man will always try to hard sell the product by only highlighting the positives of any product whereas normal consumer feedback will give some genuine views about that product. Considering the trust and faith which a user places in these contents, I think such misguiding strategies are absolute felony. Most importantly it’s not only that particular product but in the long run even those review sites are going to suffer by such acts. If there will be no credibility of content who would like to visit that site again? Not sure if it’s possible to take any step in this regard in India but sites like mouthshut, techtree, indiareview should definitely think of some strategy to counteract the same in future. As far as I as a user am concerned, I now definitely don’t trust the reviews of products on sites like mouthshut etc. esp. if there are only good reviews about any product 🙂

Big B n blogging – another marketing gimmick?

April 23, 2008

The news is everywhere across media, and almost every channel and website is speaking of this, Big B has taken to blogging now!!! Well, we were aware of Rahul Bose, Shekhar Kapur and Aamir Khan being pro bloggers but now Amitabh Bachchan too. This is really surprising but what’s more surprising is the blog site whicb Mr. Bachchan has selected. Umm, his selection surely doesn’t look natural. Doesn’t a thought come naturally to our minds as to why BigAdda? Now come on, don’t ask why not a wordpress or a blogspot or his own personal URL and why www.bigadda.com ? I think it’s pretty simple to guess. Arrey still didn’t get it…after all bigadda is a reliance entertainment company yaar!

Looks like BigAdda’s cores & crores of money on advertising with hoardings (yes they actually took huge hoardings across cities for promotion of an online social networking site, LOL) & on TV (ROLF, yep there were long television commercials too reminding of friends and networking 🙂 ) etc have not worked at all and now they have decided to take one final shot at one of their products viz., blogs. With Big B endorsing their blog and each posts of Mr. Bachchan having comment counter close to 400+, I’m sure atleast one of BigAdda’s categories will surely get noticed now. And the kind of effort which bigadda team is taking for this, there is no second thought that this looks like a planned promotion strategy of BigAdda. Here is an excerpt from Big B’s blog which can make things clearer further:

“The bigadda.com team came over. I educated myself more on blogging and its ‘finer qualities’. As per the advice of some of the fans and ‘co bloggers’ we got into the process of setting up a team to assist me in working my blog more efficiently”.

A team to assist on working on his blog more efficiently!!!!!! Whoa blogging is becoming really serious man! Quite a strong promo hook by BigAdda team, lets see what mileage they get out of it in future.

Now speaking of Big B’s blog http://bigb.bigadda.com, honestly speaking I liked the content of this blog and the way Mr. Bachchan has written it till now. Though I’m not a die-hard fan of Mr. Bachchan & not sure if he is himself writing the posts or somebody on his behalf is doing it but if he is himself writing it then I must say good effort! The way he has highlighted the contribution of Anil Dharker for his book Icons or the way he has pulled Headlines Today for telecasting Abhi-Ash for 15 mins and still criticizing them or they way he has responded to some of the comments on his posts is quite noticeable & praiseworthy. I just love the poems of Mr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan and the beautiful usage of those poems in Big B’s posts is another highlight of his blog.


Though the idea of Big B blogging on www.bigadda.com looks very artificial and definitely some sort of marketing gimmick but the content of the blog looks natural. So, hope Big B continues expressing his thoughts like this on his blog and BigAdda gets atleast one product right amongst all its failed ventures J.

Yahoomail or Gmail?

April 16, 2008

I’ve been using the new Yahoo mail for quite sometime now and initially I used to think that it’s because of some initial glitches that the performance is so slow and bad. But it’s been months since I’m using the same and I don’t see any improvement in their performance. Somehow the moment you open that in-mail chat window my laptop goes for a toss. It becomes so damn slow. Though I think it has got nothing to do with my laptop as the same machine is being used for so many things including the in-mail chat service of gmail and there it works absolutely wonderful.

 

My first email id happens to be a yahoo id and when I had opened up my first email id more than a decade back, I used to be thrilled with Yahoo messenger and other services of Yahoo as compared to Rediff / Indiatimes mail and chat services. I used to love those cute li’ll smileys so much and everything about Yahoo used to be so cool…I would say, I was quite a hard-core Yahoo loyal user but slowly their product started getting deteriorating. Then came gmail and for most of the practical purposes, gmail proved to be a better option than Yahoo. Many people like me very soon migrated to Gmail for most of their regular email interactions.

 

Well, I know market share wise, Yahoo still dominates the email market but I think service of Yahoo is getting more and more hopeless day by day. They have got one of the worst spam guards…on any normal day my spam counts are anytime thrice or four times than my normal email count in my yahoo inbox! I don’t know what spam guard gmail has adopted but it works wonderfully atleast for me. Also host of other benefits like security, size of the mail box, archiving options, convenience of smooth in-mail chat facility etc are just few of out of the whole gamut of benefits which gmail offers to a consumer. So for me as a consumer despite Yahoo mail launching new features everyday, its Gmail which rocks and serves my purpose anyday better than Yahoo.

Ad zara hat ke

April 13, 2008

Few years back when I was a student, I remember the first mobile phone which I used to have…I guess I used to pay Rs. 4/- per minute for an incoming call to the service provider Essar and approx Rs. 8/- per min for an outgoing call! Mobile phones were absolute luxury that time and were used only in case of utmost urgencies. Slowly mobile phones started getting accepted in India but when Reliance entered the telecom market with its phenomenally low price offerings, the whole of telecom industry dynamics changed & mobile phones became a revolution in India. Then came Tata Indicom’s price challenge and very soon almost all service providers joined the bandwagon and were fighting the same price war. Mobile phones became the commodity of basic necessity instead of absolute luxury for majority of Indians.

Now since last 1 year telecom service providers have gone super aggressive in their selling. A consumer is now literally tired of everyday a new price plan communication, bombardment of ads offering free lifetime incoming, free mobile handsets with every new connection, almost nil kind of price plan promotions etc etc. I remember chatting with a friend just few months back wherein I had said, looks like a day will come in next 2 to 3 years when instead of charging us telecom service providers will actually pay us for talking on phone. Well, the day has come & whoa it has come pretty soon than expected with Sir Richard Branson deciding to capture the exponentially booming Indian mobile market as well. Yeah, we all know the new telecom service provider in India now…Virgin mobile which thinks “Zara hat Ke”.

Instead of debiting money from your balance, this company is actually crediting money for every minute you talk on phone. Though the money credited is not something great but still I would say it’s different and Hat ke J…The best part is the commercial which is being aired across mediums…no more communication with 999 plan and free lifetime incoming calls…rather quite unique and creative advertisements so to say. Of all the different advertisements on air these days, I particularly liked this one the best:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROFaEycLs_0]

Here’s hoping that this hat ke telecom giant really lives upto its name and gives some “hak ke” good experience and customer service to Indian Consumer as well.

Vernacular web content in India

April 8, 2008

Another vernacular content in India. Yahoo has launched its maps in local Indian languages and walking directions, for the first time in India. Yahoo! India Maps is now available in nine local languages. Apart from English, users can also experience it in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi.

Of late, vernacular content in India has become a rising trend. After the biggies like Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. adding content in local languages, even channels like Animal Planet and search engines like Guruji are adding local language content now. As per Juxt report, although various players are trying to pull traffic by coming up with local language sites – including Yahoo!, Google News, Blogger and Webduniya – it is Google that has captured the throne when it comes to vernacular content. Out of the three million local language content users, 12 per cent prefer Google for searching local language content and 8 per cent local language users log on to Yahoo! for local language content. South Indians constitute 52 per cent of the entire vernacular user base. Some 19 per cent of the three million vernacular content users prefer Tamil and 19 per cent prefer Hindi. Malayalam is preferred by 15 per cent of the users.

But when it comes to vernacular content, I do have my doubts over there. What I’ve observed is that by vernacular content, most of the sites in India mean translating English content in local languages. Does translation itself classify the content credible enough for local language TG? I mean do you think that the target audience for Hindi or Tamil content will be similar to their English translated content? Have we ever pondered on the fact that despite lots of local language portals coming up in India, why haven’t we still got the desired traffic for those portals? Of course internet penetration and computer literacy are two important reasons but one very strong reason I guess is the missing local or regional flavor from these content. While translation of national / international content is good but if the publishers won’t give that regional tadka to the content, they will never be able to get those traffic and hit counts on vernacular portals!