Bollywood on Social Media

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.

Bollywood on Social Media

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:

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

Pondicherry : Give time a break

Yeah “Incredible India” campaign for Pondicherry says this & it’s a very right statement for Pondicherry aka Pudducherry “Give time a break”… Got this t-shirt in Pondicherry from one of the Incredible India stalls…

Well, we both were just dead-tired of our hectic work life for past so many days…n it was over four months that we were planning to go on a long drive. But of course work pressure and our series of official tours were not allowing us to do so. Finally last Friday we suddenly thought to go somewhere even if it meant no good hotel bookings anywhere (thanks to Bangalore and Bangaloreans’ weekend trips that getting good hotel rooms during unplanned weekend trips is a rarity). After debating on few places we finally zeroed on Pondicherry… but yeah pondicherry meant one more day apart from weekend… hmmm. Shall we try our luck with our bosses for one extra day off? Afterall we have been working on so many weekends since long. We tried & here we go, we managed to get that 1 extra day off on Monday and so we were all set for Pondicherry next morning.
Plan was to start at 6:30 am on Saturday morning, but hee hee hee me and my sleeping habit, we finally started at around 8:30 am in the morning, route was pretty simple and we had taken printout of route available on net, so it was quite easy to drive ahead. And I must say that drive was just awesome, it’s a delight to drive on Hosur-Krishnagiri road for all those who enjoy driving. It took us five and half hours to reach Pondicherry and we finally settled at a nice beach resort at ECR road. Oh whosoever said Pondicherry beaches are not good are just fools… well I agree it’s surely not like Goa but it definitely is a cool place for enjoying those peaceful mornings and silent evenings near the sea. Other attractions of Pondicherry are serene Aurobindo Ashram, astounding Auroville, beautiful French colony & yummmmy sea-food!!! Oh it’s a foodie’s delight to eat those amazing delicacies… me n hubby were just not getting tired of eating J… and yeah last but not the least shopping, hmmm now this was so much fun that this itself can be a topic of another full post from me. Finally after all that masti for next two days, we drove back to bangalore on Monday afternoon. For other travel related details, you can read my travelogue here.
Overall, we had a great time far away from the city traffic and terribly hectic work life of ours, no laptop and no phones for three days :-). It was a perfect place for lazy weekend and relaxed time. We finally did manage to give time a break for three days!

India highest scorer in viruses

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 contains virus. Not to forget those viagra & other such werid product promo mails and yeah our very own O3 spam comments which sometimes are in such huge numbers that the mere thought of deleting soooo many comments makes one scared. 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?

India with highest virus ratio

Photobucket

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?

Sexy women at IBNlive???

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. Out of curosity, I clicked one of the links & it actually took me to IBNlive’s website with so called sexy pics of Bipasha, Kareena etc…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!

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

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!

Beggars @ traffic signals

Everytime I wait at those traffic signals, shiver run through my spine to see those kids – burn marks all across their faces, bruises here & there, impaired limbs, weathered out clothes, tears running down from their eyes… oh god, what a agonizing scene it always is…& the worst is many a times kids carrying another infant in their laps & pleading that if you don’t give money that poor kid will die because of hunger!!! Yeah I’m speaking of kids begging at traffic signals in all major Indian metros & in such a poignant condition how can you stop yourself from paying some bucks to those poor souls?
Howmuchsoever I’m aware of forced beggary racket & the need to discourage it strongly, I still can’t sometimes control myself from giving away money to these kid beggars. It happened with me yesterday as well…one girl with completely bruised face & with a crutch walked upto me & pleaded for money. Initially I ignored her, but she kept on persisting me, one look on her again & oh gosh…so many contusions on her face!!! Looked like somebody had beaten her badly, for maybe not earning enough money last night by begging, maybe for not revealing the actual money she earned to the begging racket leader or maybe…oh before any more dreadful thought could have come to mind, I just pulled out money from my purse & handed it over to the little girl. Well, I know I again did wrong, I’ve again contributed towards the dirty begging industry, but…
Here are some quick facts about begging in India:
? Begging has actually been coined as one of the industries!!! Yeah “Begging Industry” so to say…
? Begging industry pegged to be more than Rs. 200 crores in India.
? A child beggar earns only Rs. 10 to 20 a day & rest all the income is being taken by the racket leader!
? Majority of the kids who had been rescued from begging last year & kept in children home preferred to go back to begging as they were not able to earn & feed themselves on their own.
? Analysts have even come out with results that begging sometimes work out to be more lucrative option than a low-wage job.
? There has been enough number of messaging & coverages asking common public to discourage begging by not providing any money to beggars.
Well, I guess most of us are aware of the above mentioned facts but despite the knowledge & our rational minds which say that we should dissuade begging, is it possible to ignore the bruises & tears & hunger of all those kid beggars who just stand in front of you during those red lights? Is it possible to ignore the cries of small infants who are supposedly howling because of no food or extreme weather conditions? Hmmm…atleast its not possible for me, as honestly speaking I keep on getting disturbed by seeing those kids & I either end up paying money or end up thinking about them all my way…and even after thinking a lot I don’t know what’s the solution to it!