Author

Kanupriya Sindhu

Bollywood on Social Media

April 5, 2008

After Subhash Ghai’s Black & White promo on Facebook, now Yash Raj Films as well as Devagan productions have taken the route of promo through social media for their upcoming films Tashan and U, Me Aur Hum respectively. Both these upcoming films are having their official communities on Facebook, Orkut and Youtube. Their official communities have promo clippings, songs as well as downloadable pictures of these movies. While Facebook group of Tashan is having more than 400 members, Orkut group is having more than 19,000 members. Orkut group is quite interactive with people discussing their thoughts and casting votes in the polls. Even U, Me Aur Hum group is very active Orkut group with approx 6000 members and very interesting poll questions.

Hmmm, looks like it has become a major trend in bollywood as well to ride the wave of online social communities. Almost every bollywood movie getting released these days is resorting to sites like Orkut, Facebook, Youtube etc. Well, why not? After all, more than anywhere else, that’s THE place where you can catch the young India these days. According to a recent study done by AC Neilson across males and females between the ages 13-35 years across the country, users spend an average of nine hours per week on the Internet, only for personal purposes, and of these nine hours, approximately 25–75% is spent on a social networking site (Source: Express Computer, March issue).

Of late, bollywood has become quite innovative in promoting the films in varied ways. Gone are the days of film promos where the names of actors like Raj Kapoor or Nargis or director like Satayajit Ray itself used to the biggest marketing hook for any film. Now in this age of commercialization and media bombardment, film marketers are trying it all- from traditional media like hoardings and television promos to digital media like exclusive websites to new age television phenomenon like reality shows and now to the latest IN thing, interactivity through social networking sites. With zero media spend and a sure shot way to capture the minds of Indian youth, of course interactive promo on social communities like these has to be the next BIG thing for marketers.

Challenges in lead generation campaign:

March 7, 2008

Well, I’ve been doing lots of lead generation campaign for my current organization and for this organization, lead based campaign is more important than acquisition or brand awareness. The service which is being offered requires sort of consultative selling hence its better to get qualified leads which is followed by the internal telesales team. Considering that this is a start-up, the organization is very ROI driven and we have always been extra cautious to get the right kind of leads in the most cost effective way. But despite our efforts, we are facing some genuine issues in our lead generation campaign. I am stating here the results as well as the issues faced by me in this campaign: 

  • The campaign is SEM campaign – text ads, contextual display, ad networks and blog networks
  • The ads lead to a landing page which is a lead capturing page
  • To ensure more correct leads, I’ve announced a contest as well on the landing page
  • Approx 52% – 54% of the leads are correct for us
  • Rest 46% – 48% are junk leads – ie., numbers are incorrect or fake.
  • Because of higher % of junk leads, my cost per correct lead is going very high.

 Though I’ve read it as well as experienced in my earlier campaigns that generally internet campaign leads to higher % junk leads. But was wondering as to what’s the general trend across industry? I wanted to have some real time data for

  • Approx % of correct lead which a typical internet campaign leads to?
  • What’s the general cost per qualified lead which one can get? I know lots depend on the category for which the campaign runs, but can somebody share some approx figures for different categories, say insurance, movie ticketing, games, e-commerce sites etc?

 I’m hunting for the data on my own as well, but was thinking if I can hear of some other experiences as well. Thanks in advance for your comments J

India with highest virus ratio

February 20, 2008

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Earlier we were in hit list of spam and now virus! Well, this is just one of the downsides of internet penetration in India I guess. Few months back I had read it somewhere that as per Govt of India report, 76% of mails originating from India are spam!!! And now there is a report stating one in ever 30 emails in India contains virus! “Virus activity increased across a number of countries in January, including India, which takes the number one spot with 1 in 30.5 emails,” a study conducted by a web security services firm MessageLabs said. India has been identified as the most vulnerable destination for virus as well as spam. The ratio of virus attack in western countries is far lesser in western countries. Infact in New Zealand its 1:768, in Australia its 1:298.7 & in US its 1:191.5.

Phew, so where are we as far as internet security is concerned? On an average I get somewhere between 12-20 spam mails on each of my account – yahoo, gmail etc. Despite my all trials of deleting / unsubscribing from all those junk mailers, there is not much refuge from the same. And every fourth email which I get is having an attachment with .pif / …. kind of unknown extensions which surely contain virus. Well, regardless of best possible anti-virus software & spam filters, those junk emails keep flooding my mail boxes everyday. Infact yesterday only I was trying to delete my spam messages from my yahoo id which has got the worst spam filter I guess and after deleting a few I just felt sick & tired of doing the same thing again and again! Well, no wonder if we accounted for 76% spam origin & 1:30.5 virus attacks as the repercussion of the same can be observed in my own inboxes as well J. I’m wondering – is it the phenomenal growth in internet penetration in India or is our poor security systems that we are such a susceptible target for spammers & virus attackers?

IBNlive’s new positioning – Sexy women at IBNlive?????

February 5, 2008

Of late I’ve been observing these advertisements of IBNlive.com all across web. Whichever site you go to, you see a google ad of IBN which says sexy women at ibnlive.com. Displayed below are some of the screenshots of ads which caught my attention while surfing through news sites, google or blogs.

I’m seriously confused, why a serious site like ibnlive.com is using promo messages which read like this? Isn’t it contradictory to the brand image of ibnlive? Well, we all know that sex & women as keywords sell a lot in search engines but still… catching attention by using messages like these by a site like IBNlive is quite weird and ridiculous. Are they short of genuine content that they are resorting to gimmicks like these? To me it projects absolute desperation of IBNlive to increase their web traffic & readership. Don’t’ know the logic or thought behind this but looks like the brand person or the online agency has been given some tough task of increasing their web traffc & hits by X % hee hee hee… Well, quite bizarre!

Now SabseBolo.com

January 16, 2008

Sabeer Bhatia launched SabseBolo.com, the free conferencing facility. Well a desi & nice name & a neat layout. One needs to register on the site & after getting an id & PIN, one can make conference calls absolutely free! The revenue model of this website will be of-course advertisements, maybe inbuilt call advertisements or web ones too. I surfed the site and the site performance is pretty fast to start with. Logo is cool & top banner is looking ok so to say. The site is targeting mainly SMEs & as of now the site is supporting conference upto 10 callers. The site is in alpha stage & definitely needs some info additions/updations for eg., the “About Us” section is not explaining much about the service but its giving all the info about the founders Sabeer Bhatia & Yogesh patel. Well, maybe they have done this thinking sirf naam hi kafi hai J. 

But surely a good service to be launched considering the limitations of conference calling facilities in India. And the best thing is its absolutely free, so good for many small & medium enterprises. Now lets wait & watch if the revenue model works well for sabsebolo.com. From my side, I will surely wish all good luck to this new venture J.

Education in 2.0 world

December 26, 2007

Be it my love for maths as a subject or my strong conviction about need for education / tutoring portals in India, one site which I have always closely followed up since its inception is www.mathguru.com. This site was launched somehwere in July last year & the recent metamorphosis which this site has undergone is a lovely change I must say J. The site has evolved as a very interesting online tutorial portal & as per the industry sources, the site has got 15,000 registered users till now & is expected to grow to 25,000 users by March 2008 (Source: Hindustan Times) 

Well, as a kid I remember how many of my friends used to hate maths as a subject & considering the phobia of maths in many students till date I think it’s an excellent move to have a portal like this to make the life of students simpler & easier. Oh how I wish such portals would have existed when we were kids!!! Life would have been so simpler for many students in our generation as well J

However, why only maths, I think there is a need for many such portals in India who can offer education to students in an easier and cost – effective ways. Such portals are a win-win situation for all in a country like India, where curriculum based education is being given the highest priority as compared to any other country, where teachers in normal schools and colleges are one of the lowest paid salaried individuals & where accessibility to good education in most of the states is still a burning issue. With such cost effective portals students can get access to quality education in an easier way & at the same time even teachers can make more money as compared to their low salary being paid in most of the schools/colleges. Considering the need & potential of education as a category, I’m all eager to see the developments in this category in future & I’m sure this category will also see a huge boom like travel, job, matrimony & entertainment.

Imagine, another one as NDTV imagine

December 13, 2007

Today saw web banners of NDTV imagine all across main internet publishers. Well, the banner surely raised curiosity & made me click the links immediately and oh yet another entertainment channel & that too with nothing new L… same old daily soap concept. Though I was aware of NDTV launching 3 new channels in entertainment & movie segment but still after seeing the programming details of the channel on its website, I personally got disappointed… same story soap concept, musical reality show & then dance reality show etc…Aren’t we done to death with saas bahu sagas & reality shows? Well, the formal announcement of NDTV new channels always said fresh entertainment but the sneak preview on the website definitely promises nothing like that. Maybe once the channel is live, we can judge its best. 

Well, lot many channels got launched during the last 5 to 6 years & Indian Television Industry has surely seen an explosive growth. Infact its one of the fastest growing industry in India, with more than 300 channels launched in last one & half decades. The industry is surely saturated as far as channel concepts & programming are concerned but still in last few months, we have again seen quite few new channel launches.  Despite the clear cut advantage lying with first movers like Star, Sony & Zee since years, new set of biggies like UTV launched Bindass & INX launched 9X entertainment & 9Xmusic in recent past!!! Gosh… too many me-too channels with same kind of programming! Isn’t it sort of ENTERTAINMENT OVERDOSE for Indian television viewers???

Here comes Mash

September 18, 2007

Looks like a carnival of social network sites is on… now joining the bandwagon is yet another big player – MASH which is the new social networking site from Yahoo. Yahoo announced its new venture MASH on Friday & currently beta version of it is on, wherein people are invited for mashing on this site. I tried visiting the site but currently it says only by invitation.

So, whats you first reaction? Atleast I reacted like eh… yet, another social networking site! How is it going to be different from the current ones? When there is already an Orkut, why do I need to move to another site unless & until there is something really different and interesting over there. Anyways apart from Orkut, there are currently n number of general social networking sites like, fropper.com, minglebox.com, facebook.com, yaari.com, zhoom.com & many such similar x, y, z.coms & not to forget those professional networking sites like linkedin.com, ryze.com etc. Well, every such new site during launch claims that its different & something really new but alas the end product is pretty much same with no innovation at all. Classical example of this is bigadda.com! They spent such huge money on advertising this site but the end product? Well, its really sad…forget about being different, bigadda is not having even those very much required social networking features also. So, gimme one good reason as to why I should migrate to some other similar site when I am already settled & happy with my friends networking on Orkut or with my professional acquaintances on linkedin?

Despite it being a very general statement, most of the site launchers are failing to understand one very basic rule – user needs some real good reason for migrating & getting hooked on to some new site. Something different, something new & something persuasive enough! All those wannabe sites who think that by just changing the UI color or the font design, they will become yet another orkut are just dreaming something near to impossible. Huh, so let’s wait & watch what Yahoo has got in store for us now. However the kind of Yahoo fan I am, I would surely expect something cool coming out of them… Hope Mash is mashing enough like other cool tools like yahoo messenger & mails J.

Good Step IB Ministry

July 30, 2007

Everytime I used to see those advertisements, I used to feel so exasperated by the content of those advertisements. Absolutely pathetic, indecent & suggestive. Yup, I am speaking of Amul Macho & Lux Cozy ad The Amul macho ad shows a woman washing a mans underwear at a dhobi ghat and by looking at the underwear she gets turned on. In the other Lux cozy ad, a washerwoman comes to the apartment to pick up laundry and she finds a man standing at the gate wearing a towel. Suddenly, his towel drops leaving him only in his undergarments and the washerwoman eyes him quite suggestively. I had read many reviews of these ads claiming that these are very creatively done sexy ads, well I dont know about creativity at all in these ads, rather I found these ads to be really vulgar esp. when these ads pop up between programs which you might be watching with family members & kids who will never stop being inquisitive about the ad or will keep on repeating the jingle later like they do for all other ads.

Hmmm for once I am in favor of I&B Ministry, this time I think they have done a very righteous act by banning these ads on prime channels in prime time slots. I can see lots of opposition from many people against banning these ads & people protesting as to why cant I&B ministry stop being moral police & let the public decide what do they want or dont want to watch on television? Well, I dont think in this case I&B is acting as unnecessary moral police, or has done anything wrong as by all parameters those ads were very much indecent & double meaning ones of course there is nothing wrong in so called such sexy or funny ads but what was wrong was the placement of those ads which was very much on all main channels at peak time. Also I heard & read some comments from people saying that before banning the ads I&B should have thought of music albums & movie scenes of Sawants & Sherawats. Yes I agree some of the music albums as well as other programs being shown on TV are also obscene, but if those are not banned then does this mean that nothing else can be banned? Its definitely a good start from I&B ministry & lets hope they continue doing justice to their existence. I strongly believe that there is nothing wrong in any kind of content / messaging in ads or TV programs or cinema provided they run at the right place & at the right time everything definitely cant be shown everywhere!!!