Mobile Media:- The next big thing

The biggest contradiction: 1 billion plus corrupt blame it on few thousands

2011-06-27T04:43:00.000-07:00

The year 2010 was the most shocking year for the Indian community across the world due to outbreak of scams. Scams involving very high profile politicians, corporate and bureaucrats, they were questioned by various investigating agencies followed by high profile arrest in the first time in the history of country.

With the outburst of these scams, all sections of the society started discussion on corruption, its root cause, the solutions and the people responsible for it etc. TRP based news channels held useless long debates with experts in the various fields to pocket the big fat advertisement revenue. So much discussion had happened on the topic of corruption since then that, I bet every citizen of our country has the solution to it.

Most of the India population holds the opinion that the politicians, bureaucrats and the corporate people are the real culprits behind all this but if we take a microscopic look at the society we come to know that we the common people of this country are more responsible for this than anybody else…..

If we observe our daily life we get answer very easily for the same.

Only 45 % of people vote in our country in spite of holiday declared by the GOI on the day of election, if election comes on Friday we planned long weekend trips)

Nobody can question the elected members because of the two; either they have not voted or taken money for voting.

No body wants to wait in the queue either at the RTO office or at the temple (pay more and get privilege of special darshan)

Nobody wants to pay the tax…..nobody ask for bills (In some cases even for the transactions).

The first thing CA tells you is that he will help you to pay minimum tax by exploiting loopholes or even by doing wrong things

Farmers are happy with one time loan wavier than permanent irrigation infrastructure

(60,000 Crore on loan wavier……could have strategically used to irrigate the millions of hectors of land providing permanent solution for all the problems to farmers)

The most threatening thing is the moral of our country has touched the rock bottom level, earlier in school day teachers and parents used to impart on young generation that “truth never gets defeated but it comes out in light sooner or later, one needs to have give time and be patience. Here lies the biggest contradiction, as in today’s competitive world nobody have time and patience and that why truth is defeated not once but always. Everyone in today’s world is in hurry nobody has time and patience that’s why nobody cares about the truth and that’s why we have new saying nowadays “Sach bolne se kuch fyada nahi hota”

To end just small story: once a person asked Swami Vivekananda, What is Poison? Swami answered him saying “Everything in excess is poison”…………today people are running after more and more and more and in this conquest of getting more n more people are forgetting the difference between the rational and irrational means of achieving things and that’s why I think everyone of us responsible for the situation of our country today……………

The Big Lost Opportunity: - CWG-Delhi

2010-10-20T02:04:00.000-07:00

We won big…..and we lost big…..that’s how one can explain the CWG –Delhi. Our sportsperson brought us pride and OC brought shame to India.
It’s honor for every country to host the international sporting event as it provides the world stage to showcase the capability of the country, management acumen and skills require to make these events successful which in turn helps the host country in building the positive perception across the world, attract more investment, attract more tourist, fuelled the export growth and many others potential benefits…………
Few examples:-
Sydney Olympic games: - Increase in the economic activities due to increase in tourism
FIFA world’s cup in South Africa: - Help to build South Africa as a brand and Increase in tourism
Beijing summer Olympics: - Increase in ranking in the nation brand index, Positive image across the world, huge investments in china
There is other side to it as well as it took many years for Athens and Montreal to paid up there bills after the Olympic events…………....

Now let’s discuss the positive outcome of CWG-Delhi:-
1. Medals and More Medals:-
First time ever India has won more than 100 medals in any international events which are quite moral boosting to athletes. This will certainly fuelled ambition of more and more athletes to win medals at bigger events than CWG.
2. Motivation: - We have seen that many athletes won the medals are from tier2 or tier 3 cities which is certainly a motivational to the youngsters from smaller cities and rural areas to consider sports as full time career and succeed.
3. Infrastructure:-Because of the games at Delhi and Pune in recent past….at least we have some international facilities now ready with us which were not the case few years back.
4. Positive Perception across the nation: - The success of the Indian athletes has helped in changing the negative perception the population across the nation.
5. Sponsorships: - we can be certain now that there will be more and more sponsorships to games other in cricket crazy nation.

Negative sides of CWG-Delhi:-
Corruption charges: - very unfortunate thing could happen to any country hosting the international sporting event, which could have been easily avoided with clean and rational people in organizing Committee.
Dent to the image of India on world stage due to poor and late completion of facilities:-it has raised the doubt across the world on India’s capability in building the infrastructure for the mega sporting events
Utilization of infrastructure:-Thousands of corers have been spent on building world-class infrastructure for the games but its has been observed in many countries that the infrastructures is not utilized properly after the games which should not happened in this case.
Rewards: - No clear system for rewarding the medal winning athletes in India
The Road to Olympics:-It seems quite difficult now for India to compete for hosting the Olympics in 2020, by virtue of negligence and poor show by our organizing committee. All the culprits should be punished and Indian government should replace them with the rational and qualified people.

Internet Marketing -The Beast Unleashed

2010-10-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I don’t think any one of us have any doubt about the power which has revolutionized the way of communication and the way of living....Marketers across the world from multinational companies to small retails shop owners have started using the Internet for communicating about the product and services. It has become integral part of IMC programs of most of the leading brands and have recorded consistently upward trend in media expenditure on internet since last 10 years and it is expected to grow exponentially in coming years because of growth in IT-Infrastructure across the world, More and More use of laptops and Smart phones, Fierce competition among the service providers making it affordable to masses and innovative services available on internet.

I just would like to share the basics of internet marketing:-
Let’s take look at what makes the internet marketing so lucrative:-

Reach: - Global
Scalable: - Highly Scalable campaigns can be designed
Content: - More and precise content & more freedom for the creativity
Interactive: - It satisfies the most fundamental condition of communication Process i.e. Interaction
Viral in Nature:-

Measurable:- This one of the most important characteristics of the Internet marketing..marketer across the world struggled to measure the results of the campaign and which is the most important part of any campaign. We can measure the number of visitors on the site, the links they click, the time they spent on the webpage/website which are very valuable indicators of the success or failure of the campaign

Economical: - Cost to reach per user is less than the other media vehicles

Analysis: - In depth analysis can be done about the geographies of the campaign, Buying and Psychological behavior of the customers based on the information they search and the communication they exchange on social networking forums

4 p's of Internet Marketing complementary to the 4 p's of marketing are:-
1. Permission: - Well, till date most of the marketers are practicing Push marketing but it is losing its essences in the era of information explosion, media explosion and product explosion, customers don’t want to get bombarded with huge information through variety of media but they are more and more selective in getting information from right source it helps the marketers to reach to interested customers base rather than mass marketing.
Internet marketing offers:-
Clear Optin
Clear Opt out
Customer- Chosen content & frequency
Relevance of the content

2. Participation:- Its psychological need of every human being to have someone to share the thoughts, information with like minded people......at the same time it has become crucial for marketers to listen to what their target say about the products, services and what they do. Internet addressed the same need in appropriate way for both the marketers and mass population. Marketers are using MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more to interact and engage the customers.
Brand Engagement
Reference /Forwarding the content via mail/SMS
Brand Participation / Involvement
Social Networking (build the communities of like minded people)
Market research / Expert views / Improvement on product quality & Services

3. Profile:-The customers need to feed in the personal, social and professional data during the registration on most of the sites which offers the better segmentation and targeting to the marketers.

Capture the crucial information Age, Income, Employment details, location, Area
Target right customer group
Know Your Customer (What they do & don’t?)

4. Personalization:-
To personalize the marketing communication in effective and economical way is the biggest challenge to the marketers. Internet marketing helps the marketers to send the personalize communication on mass scale in more cost effective manner.

Internet marketing is the only media have recorded more than 12% during the recession and is expected to grow with the more than 12% in coming years. Internet marketing will very soon overtake the print media which on second rank in media spending.
So, every marketer irrespective of the location, size or type of the product and services should use internet marketing to optimize the marketing efforts.

Mobile Media - Application to Different Industry Segments

2010-02-24T10:26:00.000-08:00

Well in my last blog I discussed mostly about applications of Mobile as ‘Media’, basically about the marketing and promotion of products & services to the mass base using various tools like SMS, Blue tooth technology, GPRS & WAP site & social networking.

But this tiny thing has much more to offer to every segment of the business and also to the basic industry segments like Manufacturing, Agriculture, and Banking. The mobile base services to these segments could be instant reporting, VAS and functional services…

Manufacturing Sector:-
Most of the Indian basic industry segments were busy in implementing the enterprise wide transactional software like ERP and reporting tools like SPSS, SAS, and Cognos to assimilate the data generated in the various functions and analyze them to monitor, take corrective and strategic business since last decade.

I think most of the large scale & medium scale organizations already have at least the basic ERP system installed.

Application of Mobile:-
Now the tools like SMS or interactive WAP sites can play the major role in communicating the daily reports & analysis to the Top & Middle management by taking the reports from ERP or BI tool.

Now let’s take Scenario: -
Auto parts manufacturing company with turnover of Rs.100 corers have four manufacturing units in two different locations & having head office at third location. The company has implemented the ERP at all locations which generates the daily & weekly reports. The SMS or WAP integration with the ERP or BI system, can help the department heads of Finance, Sales & Marketing, Production, Stores & Purchase and quality with the daily & weekly reports directly on their mobile everyday & anywhere about the key performance indicators of the each function.

The same can be applicable to most of the other manufacturing segments as well depending on the KPIs

Agriculture Industry Scenario:-
Well this is one of the industry segments in India, has so far dominated the share in % GDP of India and still is unorganized and under developed. Majority of agricultural output still depends on the rainy season. The condition of the farmers across India is in worst stage since last five to seven years where farmers are taking the route of committing suicide after they find they are not even capable to feed their family through the output from the land they sow the seeds into. But as an Indian I feel very ashamed of farmers’ suicides happening in our country. There could be 100s of reasons behind this but the truth is its reality and number is not negligible………………..

Well since 1991 we are progressing in every segment except the agriculture in spite advance technological breakthroughs like BT varieties seeds available in the market.

The problem:-
I think there is something major problem in the communication of information to the grass root level i.e. to the farmers about the Weather conditions, Market trends, Govt. Schemes (which most of the times never reach to farmers and misused by local politicians middleman and bureaucrats), Allied business, Availability of Finance, Soil testing methods, Use of bio fertilizers etc…..

The Solution:-
VAS for farmer to update them periodically about the minute details about the above mentioned areas.

Financial sector:-
Financial sector is the early adopter of the various tools offered by mobile technology. Be it in the form of Mobile WAP site by Share index (BSE, NSE), VAS by share broking firms, VAS, mobile banking and M commerce by leading banks across the globe, also the alerts & updates about the insurance by insurance segment

These are really a much needed service to the end customers as they wish to be updated all the time about the share prices of their portfolio, do the financial transaction on the tip of fingers without moving anywhere, pay your bills on the move and get your account statement on your mobile.

I think M-commerce will grow exponentially in coming five years as it offers all the ease required by the end customers against only one concern about the security of information
of users account.

I would like to discuss the application of Mobile based services to other industry segments like Entertainment, Retail, hospitality, Education, Transport & logistics and service in next session.

Mobile Media - The Next Big thing

2009-12-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

We are living in knowledge oriented, ever changing and technology driven world where mankind is working towards catching up with time and space. In last few decades internet has revolutionize the communication segment and have opened up huge opportunity in the form of Digital media for marketers. The most unique feature of digital media activities is the sheer number of target audience (Entire World) which makes it a most lucrative option for the brands having presence across the world.

“Interactivity” and “Accountability” are the most powerful features which make the digital media, the most sought out media. As in today’s competitive and dynamic world marketers, it has become crucial to know the ROI on their media spending.

Emergence of mobile technology since last couple of decades has changed the way of communication across the world. In today’s scenario we have more than 4.5 billion mobile phone subscribers across the world which is more than half of the world population. India has more than 488.6 million mobile subscribers till Dec.09.

This mammoth increase in subscriber base, innovative and latest data transfer technologies and smart mobile handsets has opened up the huge opportunity for digital marketers to reach to people in direct and most effective way.

Let us see what makes the mobile the lucrative option:-
Mobile is Personal – Always attributable to single person
Immediate Communication
Reach –Mobile is in arm’s reach 80 % of the day time.
Location based marketing tool
Direct marketing tool
Interactive
Economical

Mobile media vehicles:-
SMS/MMS: -
Blue-tooth
Interactive WAP sites
In build Mobile Applications

What we can do:-
Communication: - SMS, MMS
Advertising & Promotions: - Mobile coupons, Mobile vouchers
Interactive campaigns: - Interactive contest/ quiz / customer feedback/ customer satisfaction surveys
VAS: - Value added services
M commerce: - Mobile base payments services
Social Networking

Who can use:-
Mobile media has application in one or other form in all the industry segments
Retail & entertainment
Hospitality & Real Estate
Educational & training institutes
Media & communication
Banking and Financial institutes

So that’s what make the Mobile based service and applications the next big thing !!!!!!