Phew! I thought i’d write a lot but currently I am thinking of even discarding of what I’ve written above. I feel it’s time to deliver some actual results rather than just talking. Time to complete all those pending assignments and show something worthy enough.

No, this is not a new year resolution but I’ll try to be regular up here with something up for grab always. That’s what I hope to do. Coincidentally I have joined an organization [South Asia's largest Media Group] where my boss asks me to blog more often (probably she might be the only boss or one of those rare few, at least in India, who ask you to blog). Glad to have such a boss/manager/instructor/guide.

Between, I also am joining the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB club in IPL[Indian Premier League]) bloggers bandwagon, so you can also catch me up there.

See you folks with some awesome stuff soon. Happy New Year. By the way don’t forget to drop in your new year resolutions, would love to learn from you, maybe it helps both of us so do share.

Technorati Tags: 2010, Life, new-year

Chasing a mighty 350 runs target in 50 overs, Sachin Tendulkar, arguably the world’s best ever batsmen and undoubtedly the best currently playing batsmen, played an innings of a life time and scored half of those runs alone (175 runs) but couldn’t take India to victory as the entire team fell 3 runs short of the target! Each and every Indian who saw the match was heartbroken and their broken hearts and tears flooded twitter with their emotional tweets. Eventually Sachin made it to the Twitter-Record-Books, he already has probably already has all batting records against his name. Coincidentally, he also entered the cricket record books yesterday with another world record of being the first ever batsmen in history to score 17,000 ODI runs.

Coming to twitter analysis, Twitter Trends is way of knowing what is currently hot over the web all over the world at any point of time. Although I knew about it from a long time but I realized the power of trends ever since I saw Michael Jackson trending. Yes, it was through trends that I saw that MJ had passed away. MJ’s demise stayed on twitter for almost a month. Making him one of the most trending topics ever (see pic).

For those who are unaware of what a ‘Twitter Trending Topic’ is, as Twitter puts it :

Trending topics on Twitter are keywords that happen to be popping up in a whole bunch of tweets. We measure these topics and adjust them in real-time throughout the day. It’s a great way of finding out what’s happening right now.

As far as the Indian twitter connection is concerned, although “India” trended on twitter on the 14th and 15th of August (reason being India’s independence day on 15th of August) there have only 3 incidents (excluding yesterday’s “Sachin” Trending) when an Indian individual has been a trending topic on twitter. India’s dram queen aka Rakhi Sawant, Late Andhra Pradesh CM Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, and eliminated veteran BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) leader Jaswant Singh, have made it to the trending topics. Unfortunate but a matter of fact is that all of them made it to the trends for the wrong reasons. Rakhi sawant for the disgusting swayamvar show, YSR – when he died of chopper crash and Jaswant Singh – when he was mercilessly thrown out of India’s 2nd biggest political party – BJP.

See Rakhi trending here.

The fourth instance of an Indian making it to the trending topics was Sachin Tendulkar, though made it for the right reasons, his heroic knock, but what was heartbreaking to see was that India had lost the battle. Well, what’s important is not that Sachin was the fourth Indian, but the fact which is overwhelming to know is that he’s the first cricketer who has made it to the list.

We all know that records hardly matter for a man of his stature, but for all of us they really do. Hats off to Sachin for making us proud yet again – on the virtual world this time. Kudos to Sachin, you truly are a Brand. Cheers !

Technorati Tags: cricket, india, india-vs-australia, Inspirations, michael-jackson, rakhi sawant, sachin-tendulkar, social-media, sports, trending-topics, twitter

Joy of giving week reminds me the thought of giving. We often give gifts to our loved ones, we give money/food/clothes to beggars/needy ones, we give …. probably lots of things to people but what is that that cannot be measured in terms of money? I thought for some time that what is that I have given to the society that doesn’t involve monetary transactions? What is that which I gave or wish to give in future for nothing in reward? What is that which I gave and made me happy, just that feeling of happiness? Yes, I came up with an answer, it was ‘Knowledge’.

As a student and even now as a professional, there is one thing which I don’t stop giving or sharing and that is knowledge. Educate somebody about something, spread what you know and preach what you practice. There are some things which we can learn only from our peers, and education is one of them. Everybody reads the same text books but still someone knows more, someone less. Why not share our knowledge and make the world a better place by giving everybody the power of information. I have often seen people hiding their knowledge or not sharing what they know, reason being they fear their friend might overtake in the particular field/subject. How can someone overtake you if you told him/her how to take the first steps? And even if he does, you should feel happy about it, and that too for two reasons. First is, someone listened to what you had to say and has actually implemented what you were trying to convey, how many of us do that? And secondly because if he knows more than you some days later, you can learn all those new things from him and that too in a much lesser time than you would have originally spent. So its always good to ‘give’ and the joy of giving can never supercede any other joy.

Now let me know (in the comments section) what is that you’ve given or plan to give in future which would give you ‘Joy of Giving’.

Technorati Tags: education, information, joy-of-giving, knowledge, Learnings, lifehappiness, sharing, teach-for-india

DevD was one example of an Indian movie that did some sort of online promotions for the film. Probably seeing the success of an offbeat film getting good response and Fox Production House from the US involved, the hype around Social Media, the producers were tempted enough to do some promotions for Quickgun Murugun (from now referred as QGM), another film with no star-cast around. But little did they know that the agency are sitting to make money and to fool people and not to do some real work.

I came to across a twitter profile of QGM sometime back when it followed me, but seeing the tweets I assumed that it’s some person who’s making fun of it or maybe just making use of the name since it’s promos were out. But when I came to know that there’s some agency that’s handling it I thought I should look over and see what they are doing. I always want to learn more and thought that I can learn a thing or 2 from their campaign. Had never thought that I would be writing this later on. I did a very basic analysis and was surprised to see such a crap campaign. Let me share a few of the primary faults which make the campaign a total waste. Wasted in the process is SOME effort, LARGE amount of money and created some negative thoughts in the mind of the people about online marketing as a medium.

First things first : Twitter Analysis :

How many personal twitter profiles do you have ? Well, I have one and I guess all of us have a single profile. No, managing more than one is a different issue. QGM has 2 profiles ! I have no clue which one is original, well I guess both are fake or both are real (real means handled by the marketing guys).

Well, my analysis showed that both were handled by the same people. What ? Why 2 profiles ? Doesn’t it create a confusion as to which one is real, which one should I follow, if any, am I not dividing my followers by creating 2 separate profiles ? Also makes it difficult to maintain 2 different profiles.
Loses authenticity, viewer trust, credibility, no of followers and makes the job difficult. In short foolish thing to do.
Not to forget the numbers, the profile does get even even half the no of people it is following and they call it they have spread the word. Crap.

Let’s come to Facebook now :

QGM has a profile as well as a fan page.

I wonder what are the people trying to promote, the character or the movie? Seems they are confused themselves. Before you jump to conclusions, I must verify that both of them are handled by the same people. The profile has some 700 friends while the fan page has some 1300 fans. Again the same problem, authenticity apart from double the work and most importantly dividing the fan base (whatever small it exists) ? 700 friends and 1300 fans means a meagre 2000 people connected (although there will be a lot of repeated people, so count would be much less).

Moreover they did not even bother to secure the personal fan page URL. It has a long 12 digit number making it impossible for a user to recall. To tell you all, after 100 fans you can secure the URL for your liking.

Well the confirmation for both the twitter profiles being handled by same people comes from here as the QGM profile page and Fan Page give links to different twitter profiles. Strange but true and moreover quite stupid I would comment. Keeping fans confused all the time I guess was the aim of the campaign, if it really was, then I must say, they did a splendid job. Fan page points to orkut profile and quickGmurugun twitter profile. Same twitter profile points to profile page on fb, the profile page points to blog and site and a DIFFERENT twitter profile which points God knows where. Phew!

Even though the movie has been released, it has been able to generate just a handful of people especially considering the fact that DevD generated some 14,000 fans that too in a time when Facebook was not the premier choice of the people in India. It’s been off late that people have switched to facebook from Orkut and that too in the metros, people in other parts of the country still stick to Orkut.

Orkut, well is a total tsunami. Atleast before the website disaster I would say. The orkut community was created a mere 5 days ago, that’s 2 days prior to the release date.

Probably the promoters realized that since FB and Twitter are not working, but my target audience (TG) are on Orkut as well and hence created a community. Well the community got all its posts on the same day, and was able to generate as many as 31 fans (till I last noticed). Yes you may check it, it’s only 31. Wonder how that was promoted, even if I create a community today, I know I can get a 50 people in a day, to say the least. QGM, being a movie should have generated a few 100’s atleast had it been managed properly. And if it was done on time, it would have generated a huge number as well with proper management.

Let’s come to the tsunami now : The QGM Website

What’s the difference between a website and an image/photo/picture ? Probably you are thinking how can you compare the two, there’s no relation and can’t be done. But when you see the QGM website, even you can compare between them or rather end up saying like I did, the promoters do know the difference between a site and an image. To be precise, the site has just poster of the movie and a single clickable link on homepage, of course not to forget the designer’s link. The link (if you find it), redirects to a index page,wonder when will developers understand the need for specific URL’s and not just default ones. To make matters worse, the index page has a very heavy flash which takes ages to load that too on a broadband connection, no matter the bounce rate for the site is a whopping 60%. Wonder when will the people understand that usability has to be given preference rather than looks. Pardon me, but the fact is that the website is not a lady, for whom you fall for looks. Half of the internal links open in new windows creating to the agony of the user. Also there is no option to turn off the sound, which made me turn off my speakers for the few minutes I spent on the website trying to analyze it. Phew! Poor, really poor. What’s worse is that it doesn’t have a single interaction place.

Ah! Did I forget the blog ?

The website have a blog in itself ? Why ? The developers did not know how to install a wordpress or a blogger probably, so what did they do ? They started a blog on blogspot. What’s more surprising is that even though they did not get the desired URL on blogspot they did not bother to host the blog on the website itself. The desired name is wasted by someone on blogger and the wordpress similar domain name seems like they thought they might use this but then thought of something else. The wordpress blog has just ONE post, briefing about the movie, giving the site link, that’s all. Not even bothered to change anything else on the blog, not even the default text on the ABOUT page. Though it may be kept in mind here that there is no confirmation as to who’s handled that blog.

The original blog, on blogspot, has 21 posts generated around a period of 2 months. Problems :
In that span it has put just 2 movie trailers, that too the latest being more than a month ago, I suspect there are many more than 2 promos made.

There was an attempt to create some series of articles, a good thought but again lack of blogging experience was very highly evident. The first 2 articles in a series of 4 were posted way back on July 14-15 after which the bloggers went off to a sleep and woke up again a month later to complete the rest 2 that too on a single day. Objective is never established in such a case. The readers NEVER stick to an inconsistent blog. No wonder they managed just a handful of comments on the entire blog (spanning 21 posts). They even tried to engage the readers through a one off contest but that also didn’t manage a single comment, reason as even you can guess now, if now one reads the blog how will they come to know about the comment and what’s the reason of having in that case? Again a waste of time and effort.
Another big flaw is that none of the posts led to further pages about the movie, it does not have a link to the twitter profile, NOT EVEN TO THE WEBSITE. Yes, even I couldn’t believe this! God knows what were they thinking when they created that crappy blog.

The purpose of an online campaign is to engage the readers/viewers, keep them updated, occupy a small place in their mind at least whenever they are online and then connect to them for letting them know more of the brand. When this is done successfully only then can an investor think of some ROI (Return on Investment). If he spend X amount of money does not generate you X+Y amount of money (Y being a positive no), then what is the use of having the promotion done?

A movie which such great content to promote and that has to target straightaway to the young crowd (15-35), is able to generate only 1300 fans on FB (that’s the max they could do). It’s not wrong to say that they made a mess of what COULD have been a remarkable example of online branding and marketing in India.

And what they claim is that they have a team dedicated to run that campaign, probably I alone would have run a better campaign than that, especially with the amount of money they would have got; I say!

Just hope the movie does well, wanted to convey that what all you shouldn’t be doing in an online marketing campaign, or probably discuss with someone better in the field, not one who FAKES !

Technorati Tags: Branding, campaigns, ethics, false-campaigns, internet, internet-power, marketing, movies, online-branding, quickgun-murugun

Wikipedia says : A brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer. Brands have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as “cultural accessories and personal philosophies”.

FreeDictionary.com says :

A trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer.
A product line so identified: a popular brand of soap.
A distinctive category; a particular kind

apart from a 100 other definitions.

Let’s talk practical : Shahrukh Khan is a brand, Farhan Akhtar is not; Harsha Bhogle is a brand, Arun Lal is not; Michael Jackson is a brand (yes, he still is), Rakhi Sawant is NOT. Even though I did write about her sometime back and that too in relation to branding, but she never was and can never be.

In terms of product value, I will say they are brands because the first thing is that THEY SELL. Any Shahrukh film just sells, even though the promos have not been good, even though the film is crap, even though it may have no other superstar in it, what matters is it sells. Same does not hold for Farhan Akhtar.

If Harsha Bhogle is on air, everyone listens to him, his name sells there. The same is not true in the case of an Arun Lal or a Rameez Raja, even though they are seen commentating on all channels and are all over the place, people may listen but do not respect their commentary.

Brand Michael Jackson

So who is a brand ? Let me tell what does not define it. Any person/product/company which catches the eye of the people simply is NOT termed a brand. It is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Something which fades away with time is NOT one. Negative publicity does NOT make one.

A brand is something/someone/product or company which :

is famous (the primary condition)
has earned respect in the society (society may be a variable term here, but constitutes of people who do not know or are NOT associated with the brand personally)
has value (the product is good or the person has excelled professionally or the company has done exceptionally good business)
which sells outright (does not need much of marketing)
raises eyeballs every now and then, with positive actions or sometimes even with neutral ones
no of people who love the brand >>> no of people who hate it (yes you ought-to/must have those who hate you)
does not become news for negative reasons

May be you can add more points ? I put what I could recall of but I guess you may have much more to add, looking forward to discuss and learn more from you people.

Technorati Tags: bollywood, Branding, farhan-akhtar, harsha-bhogle, michael-jackson, personal branding, rakhi sawant, shahrukh-khan

I was shell shocked to see this email I received a few days back.

HI

We are providing Experience certificate for IT professionals (like Dot net,Java,DBA,Networking,Webdesigning,PHP,Mainframe,RUBY on Rails, etc) with life time verfication.

Details are as follows:
1) Offer letter/Appointment Letter
2) Experience CUM Releving Letter
3) Salary Slip
4) Corporate ID
5) Corporate Email ID

Charges : 10,000/- Rs

Do Call us for more details – 011-4164****
Regards

Raj

What ! I couldn’t believe my eyes on the first instant. Okay, I know it happens at quite a few places but I never thought that people would straightaway send mails along with their contact numbers ! Unless and until it’s legal how come can someone do that ? Are they not afraid of anyone ? The law, justice department, police ???
Well, I didn’t want to know much, after all I am not a journalist or in police that I get to the roots of the case, but I want to inform my readers that all such practices are fake and will only land you in trouble sooner or later in your life/career. Please avoid getting those fake experience letters as in the end a lie remains a lie. All private companies now get the background check through outsourced people and that too without the knowledge of the employees. What’s more is that now even the Public-Sector companies have followed the same route and are firing people who have some discrepancy in their CV’s.
Best is do some hard work and get some job through a truthful way rather than going for all those ways, even if you are jobless. It may do you some good in the short term but you will definitely be a loser in the long run. My genuine advice is “Please avoid these“.

Technorati Tags: career, ethics, experience-letter, fake-certificates, job, Life

Kind Attention CMD’s, CEO’s, COO’s and top management

Following the address, it had information regarding the program which was succeeded with a 2 line statement about advertiser’s background. Now I guess we can imagine how much information can be dispensed in a 3″x4″ ad. And hence as a result of which the ads are always suffixed with a website link, an email id and a contact no, assuming the advertiser and the addressed people have enough technology exposure. You must be thinking so what’s wrong in this ? Nothing ! Absolutely correct.
The website has a single page and that page contains nothing more than a 1 paragraph information of the company. There are 4 other links on the website, one of which links to a related external site, good enough. But out of the other 3 links, 2 do not work. The last one says “News”. Hoping that this will have information at least about the ad, I clicked that link. And guess did I see.

This post has been deleted.

I assume that, okay, the website might be having some problems so I pick up my phone to call on the given number. You can’t believe what reply I got,

Please check the number you have dialed !!!

What my first reaction was, I probably cannot write here.  Still assuming that IT’S OKAY,  there might be a printing mistake, I gathered  some courage and clicked on the only link that was working (the linking to an external site). That website, though functional,  also did not have any info about the advertisement. Somhow I found a landline contact no and I had full confidence that atleast this should be working. Alas! it was not to be. No, the numbers were correct, but none of them was recieved. I dialled both the numbers but to no avail.

Harms caused by bad timing

Can you imagine what sort of impression would this sort of campaign do. It’s done more damage than you can imagine. The website’s not ready, has no information, the news section says post deleted, the mobile numbers don’t exist and nobody is bothered or responsible enough to recieve the landline calls. Waaaoow ! I am impressed. And in case you forgot, then I may remind you that the post was addressed to CEO’S, COO’S and CMD’S. No, I am not anyone of those, but yes I do own an organization or rather a startup I should say and the advertiser is connected to me due to previous background.

Things they lost from all this :

Trust :   Confidence :   Loyalty :   Growth/Business (for a short term and with some concerned people at least) : and the most important BRAND VALUE, if they had any.

Lesson to be learnt : If your soldiers aren’t ready, don’t FIRE !

This is a perfect example why you should synchronize your advertising and marketing/branding campaigns. Probably they should have waited at least till the date the website is ready. Since a bad impression lasts longer in the human brain, I guess next time such or may be any ad from the same organization, wouldn’t be treated trustworthy or would get the response it expects.

By the way, after all this, I didn’t bother to try the email id.

Technorati Tags: advertising, Branding, Learnings, lessons, mistakes, timing

I know I may be hated by the readers by writing about it, but believe it or not we can learn a lot of things from the Drama Queen.

All, ohk probably most, of us want to be a brand and become famous but are not able to do so. We have the skills but seeing this recent talk of the town I guess we have a point or two to learn.

First and the foremost thing is that talent alone is not the sole criteria, its publicity that plays a major role that will make you famous. Skill is a necessary condition but it is definitely not the sufficient condition. In my previous post I wrote about marketing your talent. Yes, that’s a very important point but I want to take your eyes to the tactic that Rakhi has used and used it better than enyone else. Get media publicity the WRONG way. Hardly people knew that the girl who did a couple of music videos and few movie item songs was Rakhi Sawant. But now, she’s a household name. Sometimes we have enough talent but don’t get the right/enough opportunities to show it. She made use of every opportunity. If I am not wrong, she shot into fame with the Mika Kiss Scandal. Got publicity on all those news channels who have more masala than news and eventually got more dance offers from movies and got a few TV reality show appearances as well.  Mission Accomplished I would say.

Result : Gets famous in a day all of a sudden, rules news channels for a week or so and in some cases gains public sympathy as well as anyone who cries on screen can easily get some emotional Indians sympathise her.

Second, if you can’t win, cry Cheating ! Everyone admitted that she was a good dancer, but when she was ousted on public voting in a reality show, she cried foul over the organizers claiming that the “votes were tampered”.

Result: Even though people like me who didn’t watch the show came to know about her and her dancing skills as it was again on all the masala-cum-news channels. Dancing skills proven, she starts getting more dancing offers in films, shows and no wonder her bank balance skyrocketed. Ofcourse she was famous by now !

Then comes third step and rather a mindblowing one. As people have a short memory and tend to forget things quickly, she comes with an ulmitate move, setting up a Swayamvar for herself. Marrying a person on a reality show! Who would think of that ? Are you Nuts , was my first reaction when I first heard of the show. Man, can you believe it ?  I don’t know whether it was all framed or real but bottomline is that the show managed to even get NRI’s to fight the others to marry her.  And guess what, the NRI wins ! Not sure whether the marriage will actually take place or not and the fact is who cares.

Rakhi ka swayamvara clip

Result : Purpose of the show is solved. The show gets high TRP’s, especially because there were no cricket matches around the time of show being aired. Initially I also refrained from the show, but once when I saw it, I just couldn’t stop laughing. It was meant to be serious and emotional but it turned out to be absolutely foolish and idiotically funny and which was why even I watched it. But what surprised me more was that when I got back to work, logged into twitter, there were people who were updating about the show. News results all over the place. Ofcourse the masala-news channels had BREAKING NEWS. HAHA, I guess these news channels would run outta money if they don’t show this stuff. Everyone watched the show for various reasons and talking about her as well. Positive or negative but the point is SHE GOT PUBLICITY. I wonder what will up in those newspapers, but I guess being in Bangalore I can assume they won’t give her more than a small 5th or 6th page column.

Whatever ways she adopts, bottomline is she gets famous each time and does not let people forget her. Quoting a friend who just updated his facebook status which reads :

Rakhi sawant is a real celebrity , Hilton beware rakhi is coming, A real drama queen at it’s best on NDTV imagine ! don’t miss it

Update 1 : Latest news is that she even made it to the twitter trending topics.  http://bit.ly/12VWH1

Update 2 : Over 15 million watched ‘faisle ki raat’  http://bit.ly/1YfZ31

Technorati Tags: india, personal branding, rakhi sawant, reality shows, tips

1. Talent must be MARKETED, if properly shown to relevant people, it can reach new levels and set new benchmarks. (Joe, a great guitarist, does not want to tell people and give auditions)  If people don’t see your talent, how will they value it ?

Market Your Talent

2. What we’ve learnt must be shared with others and must not end if we end, it must go on. A true leader always always creates a 100 more leaders (Joe and KD started a business of nurturing new talent) .

Create new leaders

3. We all make mistakes but the point is do we learn from our mistakes and move on keeping in mind that we won’t make the same mistake again. (Joe realized that Aditya was not wrong, it was the situation and the circumstances that made him feel so,  which he understood and came back).

Magik reunited for that Second Chance

4. Life does not offer a second chance to everyone, but if that chance is given do we grab it with both hands ? I guess most of us let that chance go ! (Magik grabbed that chance and performed once again on stage, and I don’t need to say that it did remarkably well).

Criteria for success - Money ?

5. Money is not the only criteria to be successful and happy in life. (Aditya is very successful and has everything in life what an ideal person would want to, but was Aditya happy living that life? All of us know the answer, there are other things in life that are important in life to keep us happy.

6. You must set your priorities right, there are a 100 different things to do for everyone at an given point of time, it’s WE who have to take that correct decision based on the importance. (Rob could have met that producer whom Anu Malik wanted to meet him, but he knew his priorities – Magik).

Learn to Compromise

7. We all have to make compromises in life at some stage, we should LEARN do that, sometimes a successful compromise can take us a long journey (Had Magik completed their first album according to the director’s needs, the album being a HIT, they would have dictated terms from the next album, unfortunately, they DIDN’T) .

Learn to Forgive

8. Sometimes even our “bestest” friends do something bad to us, but they don’t do it intentionally, we should find out the reasons, and best part is FORGIVE them. No point in carrying a heavy heart all through your life. Needless to say, your friend should be worth the forgiveness.

Friends Forever

9. Best friends are forever, no matter how good or bad the times we face, real friends will always be at your side.

Learn to innovate

10. When resources are less and we really need something. that’s the time when we have be INNOVATIVE (Magik really needed the money and Aditya was innovative enough to sing old songs with Rock Touch).

Last but the most important point, Live your Dreams ! Someone has correctly said

Dreams are not those which you see while asleep, but they DON’T let you sleep

In order to ROCK ON, you must have a Dream !

Live your Dreams

Well, those are the things I learnt, it’s not an exhaustive list, probably you can something more. Drop in your learnings in the comments section. Highly appreciated.

Technorati Tags: arjun-rampal, bollywood, farhan-akhtar, hindi-movies, india, Inspirations, Learnings, Life, movies, rock on

My childhood dream of having my own firm has become a reality and it’s then when I want to establish my identity as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur AbhinavSahai is now Co-Founder at Zapylacz Labs.

At this place I would be talking and getting involved in discussions relating to Entrepreneurship and Ethics primarily. These discussions will also comprise of Life Career Job. These are some topics which I have always loved and would love to discuss these with all you people around.

So today we start a new journey. Cheers !

Technorati Tags: abhinav sahai, career, entrepreneurship, ethics, Life