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

Initially I thought flame wars were limited to the Linux OS but guess what, I was wrong ! Even the social networking community has it. People fighting over what is better Orkut or Facebook. Well even though India still has a bigger base on Orkut as compared to Facebook(FB), but the pace at which people are joining FB is much faster than they joined Orkut. Recently I overheard someone say to his friend,

“Orkut is passe, join Facebook now”

Well people may have a bigger friends list on orkut, even I have, but that’s only a matter of time, I guess, when the stats reverse. Oh, by the way if you are wondering about all those statements I made, here’s a 4 minute testimony to the facts and probably enough motivation for you to join or engross more on FB whether for business or for fun !

“As a businessman I feel, be where your customers are, not where they were“

And don’t worry I will be coming up a post soon to talk in terms of stats if you wish to indulge in flame wars

Article cross-posted on Zapylacz Blog

Technorati Tags: facebook, history, internet, social media stats, social-media, stats

Time and again I face this question or rather answer from reputed people that,

Things will happen after all the Internet is FREE

Ideally these people are rated very high in the business circles because of the success they have had in their various sectors but achieving success in one field does not make you a champion in all the other fields automatically. But how much does Sachin Tendulkar knows about the technicalities of the Ferrari F-50 Spider ? Probably next to nothing and that’s what my answer is to all those people who feel that “Internet Is FREE”.

Recently we have been meeting a lot of people, some of them high profile businessmen, some IIM-Grads and some of them who have non-Internet startups. Though most of them quite senior to me but some of them also also fall in or near my age group. Initially I thought that people in the age group > 45 do not understand the power of internet and hence they say. But when I saw that people even on the other side of the above mentioned age group not understanding the situation I had alarm bells ringing in my head that clearly said ‘this is not going to be easy’, in fact “it’s going to be very tough”.

I guess you are still wondering what that blog post topic means. Let’s get to it straightaway. Ok the internet for you is free in office, maybe at home you spend some 800 INR and get that connection working and since then you assume that it’s free.

Let me ask a very basic question, When we start our machines, what is that we do? Open our mailboxes, open some social networking sites, search for something which we require, a restaurant or a new mobile or some place or some person or anything of our interest. Now let’s say that there was no Orkut, no Facebook, no Twitter, no blogs and no Google. Then what do you do? No don’t say, if no Google then I use a Yahoo or a Bing. My question is if there was no website where you would find the information, what worth would the internet be to YOU ? If there is no content to read or browse then what do we do ? If there is no facebook or orkut then how do I stay in touch with my friends ? Obviously I can’t call everyone ! So no content results equals to no internet. Now even if you spend 800 bucks on that connection you won’t have anything to do over the internet if there’s nothing to read or see.

My point is that the Content is King, not internet. Internet might be free but it’s the content that costs. Any blog post that has been written, it requires time and effort to be written. And what I am trying to explain is that time and effort equals Money in the real world. The day labnol or mashable or chrisbrogan stop earning money from their blogs, why would they do it ? Why would starbucks do a twitter or a facebook campaign for their patrons ? Why would someone bother to answer a bad review for a Dell that a customer made on their website or somewhere else for that matter. All these things require time and effort to be put in and obviously TIME and EFFORT are equivalent to MONEY if spoken in the Layman Businessman’s language. So how could you term the Internet Free if it has no value without the CONTENT.

Well those are my views let me know what you feel, would love to engage in discussions.

Technorati Tags: blogs, Business, free-stuff, internet