Guest Post: Choosing Home Broadband

Getting home broadband can be relatively easy to achieve just as long as you know what sort of deal or package you’re going to need in order to match it to what you like to do online. While there are seemingly a million and one different deals and offers out there in broadband-land, it’s not always that obvious which one is going to be right for your requirements. So, in order to simplify things, all you need to do is remember the following three pointers:


1. Before you sign up to any kind of high-speed internet deal it’s a great idea to do your research. The easiest way to do this is get online and compare and contrast the many different packages that are on the market. Don’t sign up for a deal that is bigger than what you need. So, for example, if you’re happy to do a bit of surfing, check emails and so on, then a smaller ‘lite’ style deal will be more than adequate. People who need to download lots of content, such as movies, meanwhile, should look for the beefier deals out there.

2. Read the small print associated with any of the deals or offers that you like the look of. You may find that the advertising blurb sells the package to you easily, but it’s not until you check the hidden details that you might spot stuff that will ruin the enjoyment of your new home broadband package. Limitations on the amount of data that you can download (and upload) is a common issue with some of the less powerful packages. If you’re going to be online and downloading a lot then this is a key issue to look out for.

3. Finally, explore what is involved in the package that you like the look of. Find out if all of the hardware and software comes included as part of the deal and if anyone will need to come to your house to set things up. If they do, ask if this is included in the price. Also keep an eye out for the sort of technology that is being used in your area, as some internet service providers  have a better infrastructure than others. Asking around your neighborhood, reading real consumer reviews and doing that homework before you sign on the dotted line can pay real dividends in the long run.

So, just as long as you pick through these three suggestions as you explore theavailable home broadband options in your area, then you will soon be on theright track to getting a high-speed broadband internet supply in your house.Remember that, at the end of the day, you are the customer, and any internetservice provider that’s worth signing a contract for should, ideally, do everythingthey can to help you get set up as quickly and as cost effectively as possible.

Author Bio: Rob Clymo writes for www.broadbandgenie.co.uk and www.mobilephonegenie.co.uk, the online consumer advice portals for broadband, mobile broadband and mobile phones.

Driving, and driving traffic through the website

Working for a digital agency (www.mrmworldwide.com), I come across various digital marketing requirements from clients. One common client requirement is - website redesign/ changes. And familiar client remarks in such cases are – “Make it look different from the existing website”, “Identify best practices from other website and let’s incorporate the same”. On the face of it, it looks like a very common and straightforward ask …. But the truth is far, far true.

Sheryl Crow sang- A change would do you good. But the truth is, as humans, we seek familiarity. Be it the people we meet, the road we take from home to office, and in majority of the cases the food we eat….we tend to seen familiarity; so would it not be true even for our other habits including online. Yet, when as digital marketers we think about redesigning a website, we mostly seek complete change in the design including structural changes with little regard to the impact on user path

A casual glance into any website analytics would show that at-least 30% of the traffic would be that of repeat visitors. While the frequency of repeat visitors is generally not mapped (which is done either through cookie based tracking or IP based tracking); we can safely assume that there would be substantial amount of regular users to the website. This would be higher so, if the website is the primary source of interaction that the customers have with the brand, the product, or the company. As marketers, we all would be aware of the 80|20 principle. We also would be aware of what the marketing pundits keep repeating – your core customers are the most important ones. If we were to compare the website traffic basis what the pundits say – then should not our focus be on the loyal, rather than on the casual and the passerby

It is said familiarity breeds contempt. But, in many a case this might not be true. Imagine your email interface - be it the local desktop Outlook, or the free webmail services. In all the cases the links to relevant folders are on the left column. It has been so for a long, long time. Even when the email service providers enhanced their product interface by giving global links to folders on the top and bottom of the page, they did not disturb the left column links. Why? Because they did not want to upset the familiarity that people have been used to

A few days back, the traffic police in Gurgaon, the place I stay, converted few two way roads into one way. This was done to ease the traffic. The first couple of days it was chaotic on these roads. People knew where they want to go, but reaching there was becoming difficult. Another funny thing that I noticed was, even though the roads had become one way, people were wary of driving on the extreme right (which earlier was the opposite direction lane), they still stuck to the left lane. That’s how regulars become ‘conditioned’ to a particular path.

Similarly, I’m sure that even though the webmail service providers have provided other global links within the mail box, most people would still be conditioned to the left column browsing. And if keeping your core audience happy is your objective, and if they form a substantial traffic to your website, it is necessary that there are familiar elements in design and navigation so as not to confuse them. What is necessary as part of website redesign is to make it more effective, not different. And the best practice is to understand your current customer behavior on and off the website rather than how other websites look

Cheers

Santosh

Driving, and driving traffic through the website

Working for a digital agency (www.mrmworldwide.com), I come across various digital marketing requirements from clients. One common client requirement is - website redesign/ changes. And familiar client remarks in such cases are – “Make it look different from the existing website”, “Identify best practices from other website and let’s incorporate the same”. On the face of it, it looks like a very common and straightforward ask …. But the truth is far, far true.

Sheryl Crow sang- A change would do you good. But the truth is, as humans, we seek familiarity. Be it the people we meet, the road we take from home to office, and in majority of the cases the food we eat….we tend to seen familiarity; so would it not be true even for our other habits including online. Yet, when as digital marketers we think about redesigning a website, we mostly seek complete change in the design including structural changes with little regard to the impact on user path

A casual glance into any website analytics would show that at-least 30% of the traffic would be that of repeat visitors. While the frequency of repeat visitors is generally not mapped (which is done either through cookie based tracking or IP based tracking); we can safely assume that there would be substantial amount of regular users to the website. This would be higher so, if the website is the primary source of interaction that the customers have with the brand, the product, or the company. As marketers, we all would be aware of the 80|20 principle. We also would be aware of what the marketing pundits keep repeating – your core customers are the most important ones. If we were to compare the website traffic basis what the pundits say – then should not our focus be on the loyal, rather than on the casual and the passerby

It is said familiarity breeds contempt. But, in many a case this might not be true. Imagine your email interface - be it the local desktop Outlook, or the free webmail services. In all the cases the links to relevant folders are on the left column. It has been so for a long, long time. Even when the email service providers enhanced their product interface by giving global links to folders on the top and bottom of the page, they did not disturb the left column links. Why? Because they did not want to upset the familiarity that people have been used to

A few days back, the traffic police in Gurgaon, the place I stay, converted few two way roads into one way. This was done to ease the traffic. The first couple of days it was chaotic on these roads. People knew where they want to go, but reaching there was becoming difficult. Another funny thing that I noticed was, even though the roads had become one way, people were wary of driving on the extreme right (which earlier was the opposite direction lane), they still stuck to the left lane. That’s how regulars become ‘conditioned’ to a particular path.

Similarly, I’m sure that even though the webmail service providers have provided other global links within the mail box, most people would still be conditioned to the left column browsing. And if keeping your core audience happy is your objective, and if they form a substantial traffic to your website, it is necessary that there are familiar elements in design and navigation so as not to confuse them. What is necessary as part of website redesign is to make it more effective, not different. And the best practice is to understand your current customer behavior on and off the website rather than how other websites look

Cheers

Santosh

Driving, and driving traffic through the website

Working for a digital agency (www.mrmworldwide.com), I come across various digital marketing requirements from clients. One common client requirement is - website redesign/ changes. And familiar client remarks in such cases are – “Make it look different from the existing website”, “Identify best practices from other website and let’s incorporate the same”. On the face of it, it looks like a very common and straightforward ask …. But the truth is far, far true.

Sheryl Crow sang- A change would do you good. But the truth is, as humans, we seek familiarity. Be it the people we meet, the road we take from home to office, and in majority of the cases the food we eat….we tend to seen familiarity; so would it not be true even for our other habits including online. Yet, when as digital marketers we think about redesigning a website, we mostly seek complete change in the design including structural changes with little regard to the impact on user path

A casual glance into any website analytics would show that at-least 30% of the traffic would be that of repeat visitors. While the frequency of repeat visitors is generally not mapped (which is done either through cookie based tracking or IP based tracking); we can safely assume that there would be substantial amount of regular users to the website. This would be higher so, if the website is the primary source of interaction that the customers have with the brand, the product, or the company. As marketers, we all would be aware of the 80|20 principle. We also would be aware of what the marketing pundits keep repeating – your core customers are the most important ones. If we were to compare the website traffic basis what the pundits say – then should not our focus be on the loyal, rather than on the casual and the passerby

It is said familiarity breeds contempt. But, in many a case this might not be true. Imagine your email interface - be it the local desktop Outlook, or the free webmail services. In all the cases the links to relevant folders are on the left column. It has been so for a long, long time. Even when the email service providers enhanced their product interface by giving global links to folders on the top and bottom of the page, they did not disturb the left column links. Why? Because they did not want to upset the familiarity that people have been used to

A few days back, the traffic police in Gurgaon, the place I stay, converted few two way roads into one way. This was done to ease the traffic. The first couple of days it was chaotic on these roads. People knew where they want to go, but reaching there was becoming difficult. Another funny thing that I noticed was, even though the roads had become one way, people were wary of driving on the extreme right (which earlier was the opposite direction lane), they still stuck to the left lane. That’s how regulars become ‘conditioned’ to a particular path.

Similarly, I’m sure that even though the webmail service providers have provided other global links within the mail box, most people would still be conditioned to the left column browsing. And if keeping your core audience happy is your objective, and if they form a substantial traffic to your website, it is necessary that there are familiar elements in design and navigation so as not to confuse them. What is necessary as part of website redesign is to make it more effective, not different. And the best practice is to understand your current customer behavior on and off the website rather than how other websites look

Cheers

Santosh

Has Social Media come of age?

One of the main characteristic of any mass media is its ability to impact the society. Be it the newspapers, television or radio, each had played its part, in terms of changing views and shaping the society.

In the recent past, there have been many news articles about the impact of social media in the civil society movements… Be it Coffee Party in America, The elections in Iran, the civil movements in Tunisia, Egypt (#Twitterrevolution) and other Arab countries...or, closer home, the Team Anna’s anti corruption movement in India…. Social media usage has become an important tactic in terms of spreading awareness and mobilizing support.

The question is - has social media come of age?

If you look at the history of mass media… it has always been associated with politics. In fact, it is referred to as “fourth estate”, the other 3 being Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Traditional mass media was and has been controlled by a few (Just imagine, more than 90% of mass media consumed in the US is owned by just 6 media companies), and is limited by its ‘real estate’ – print area, bandwidth, or time… Mass media has always been used as a mass communication system to reach the public.

The relatively new Social Media however is built on a different model. The characteristic of social media is that it is not limited by any ‘real estate’, and more importantly is a mass communication system for the public. On the same platform, one can either broadcast or send a personal message.
There are 3 distinctive features for any mass media –

- The reach
- The information
- Influence on the people/society

The Reach:

The Internet boom took place in most countries during the mid 90’s. Majority of the social media consumers are the people who grew up with the Internet. Of the 640 Million Facebook users, more than 70% of the users are under 34 years…and close to 50% of the users under 25 years (source: checkfacebook.com). According to worldinternetstats.com, there are 2.1 Billion internet users in the world. If we assume that at-least 40% of these users are on social media, we are talking about close to 800 Million users globally. Looking at the sheer numbers, the social media surely fits into being called a mass media

The information:

Any mass media is known by the quantity and quality of information it disperses. Nobody can doubt the quantity of the information… be it a foursquare update on one’s check-in into a local bakery, or a Facebook update of a traffic jam on your way to work, or a tweet about environmental impact of discarded laptop batteries, linking to a blog or YouTube video..there are millions of such updates happening every minute, globally

But, when it comes to quality of information, most of the stuff seen in social media is found wanting. It is known fact, that ‘noise’ is the biggest factor that impacts effective flow of communication. In the traditional media, information flows from a professional few, and a lot of ‘filters’ before it is actually transmitted to the users… But in social media, the number of professionals and the reason for filters do not exist. Hence, there is a lot of information created, but very little percentage of that is of substance… It is early days of social media, but ‘filters’ for information has already begun… be it the search engine algorithms, or the social bookmarks, or user reviews… it is just a matter of time, before the perfect mouse trap in terms of social media filters is created

Influence on the society:

The influence of mass media shapes our concepts of who we are, what is important to us, and how we live our life. Majority of the social media users are the youth. Most information in the social media is created by the youth for the youth. Where as in today’s world the society is being led and shaped by people with experience. Most Decision Maker’s in our society still belong to the classic era of media, and have only adapted to social media (or for that matter, Internet) pretty late. However, the divisional lines between traditional media and social media are diffusing. It is a world of convergence media; Where-in each media feeds of the other for information seeking and broadcasting… You’ll find traditional media tweeting about their articles and liberally seeking information from other people’s tweets… so too, you will find tweets and updates based on the information the user gets from print, TV or radio.

So while, in today’s context, social media may not directly influence the society at large… it can indirectly influence the people who influence the society… (eg. the traditional media). However, as more and more internet generation people becomes decision makers…the impact of social media on the society and popular culture would become strong

So has social media truly come of age?? I’d dare say, yes. However, there are some things that social media needs to overcome to be accepted as a powerful and influential medium by all… The concentration of the users should not be skewed to few locations, there should be stronger filters to reduce the noises, and more importantly wait for few more years

Cheers

Santosh

Has Social Media come of age?

One of the main characteristic of any mass media is its ability to impact the society. Be it the newspapers, television or radio, each had played its part, in terms of changing views and shaping the society.

In the recent past, there have been many news articles about the impact of social media in the civil society movements… Be it Coffee Party in America, The elections in Iran, the civil movements in Tunisia, Egypt (#Twitterrevolution) and other Arab countries...or, closer home, the Team Anna’s anti corruption movement in India…. Social media usage has become an important tactic in terms of spreading awareness and mobilizing support.

The question is - has social media come of age?

If you look at the history of mass media… it has always been associated with politics. In fact, it is referred to as “fourth estate”, the other 3 being Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Traditional mass media was and has been controlled by a few (Just imagine, more than 90% of mass media consumed in the US is owned by just 6 media companies), and is limited by its ‘real estate’ – print area, bandwidth, or time… Mass media has always been used as a mass communication system to reach the public.

The relatively new Social Media however is built on a different model. The characteristic of social media is that it is not limited by any ‘real estate’, and more importantly is a mass communication system for the public. On the same platform, one can either broadcast or send a personal message.
There are 3 distinctive features for any mass media –

- The reach
- The information
- Influence on the people/society

The Reach:

The Internet boom took place in most countries during the mid 90’s. Majority of the social media consumers are the people who grew up with the Internet. Of the 640 Million Facebook users, more than 70% of the users are under 34 years…and close to 50% of the users under 25 years (source: checkfacebook.com). According to worldinternetstats.com, there are 2.1 Billion internet users in the world. If we assume that at-least 40% of these users are on social media, we are talking about close to 800 Million users globally. Looking at the sheer numbers, the social media surely fits into being called a mass media

The information:

Any mass media is known by the quantity and quality of information it disperses. Nobody can doubt the quantity of the information… be it a foursquare update on one’s check-in into a local bakery, or a Facebook update of a traffic jam on your way to work, or a tweet about environmental impact of discarded laptop batteries, linking to a blog or YouTube video..there are millions of such updates happening every minute, globally

But, when it comes to quality of information, most of the stuff seen in social media is found wanting. It is known fact, that ‘noise’ is the biggest factor that impacts effective flow of communication. In the traditional media, information flows from a professional few, and a lot of ‘filters’ before it is actually transmitted to the users… But in social media, the number of professionals and the reason for filters do not exist. Hence, there is a lot of information created, but very little percentage of that is of substance… It is early days of social media, but ‘filters’ for information has already begun… be it the search engine algorithms, or the social bookmarks, or user reviews… it is just a matter of time, before the perfect mouse trap in terms of social media filters is created

Influence on the society:

The influence of mass media shapes our concepts of who we are, what is important to us, and how we live our life. Majority of the social media users are the youth. Most information in the social media is created by the youth for the youth. Where as in today’s world the society is being led and shaped by people with experience. Most Decision Maker’s in our society still belong to the classic era of media, and have only adapted to social media (or for that matter, Internet) pretty late. However, the divisional lines between traditional media and social media are diffusing. It is a world of convergence media; Where-in each media feeds of the other for information seeking and broadcasting… You’ll find traditional media tweeting about their articles and liberally seeking information from other people’s tweets… so too, you will find tweets and updates based on the information the user gets from print, TV or radio.

So while, in today’s context, social media may not directly influence the society at large… it can indirectly influence the people who influence the society… (eg. the traditional media). However, as more and more internet generation people becomes decision makers…the impact of social media on the society and popular culture would become strong

So has social media truly come of age?? I’d dare say, yes. However, there are some things that social media needs to overcome to be accepted as a powerful and influential medium by all… The concentration of the users should not be skewed to few locations, there should be stronger filters to reduce the noises, and more importantly wait for few more years

Cheers

Santosh

Has Social Media come of age?

One of the main characteristic of any mass media is its ability to impact the society. Be it the newspapers, television or radio, each had played its part, in terms of changing views and shaping the society.

In the recent past, there have been many news articles about the impact of social media in the civil society movements… Be it Coffee Party in America, The elections in Iran, the civil movements in Tunisia, Egypt (#Twitterrevolution) and other Arab countries...or, closer home, the Team Anna’s anti corruption movement in India…. Social media usage has become an important tactic in terms of spreading awareness and mobilizing support.

The question is - has social media come of age?

If you look at the history of mass media… it has always been associated with politics. In fact, it is referred to as “fourth estate”, the other 3 being Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Traditional mass media was and has been controlled by a few (Just imagine, more than 90% of mass media consumed in the US is owned by just 6 media companies), and is limited by its ‘real estate’ – print area, bandwidth, or time… Mass media has always been used as a mass communication system to reach the public.

The relatively new Social Media however is built on a different model. The characteristic of social media is that it is not limited by any ‘real estate’, and more importantly is a mass communication system for the public. On the same platform, one can either broadcast or send a personal message.
There are 3 distinctive features for any mass media –

- The reach
- The information
- Influence on the people/society

The Reach:

The Internet boom took place in most countries during the mid 90’s. Majority of the social media consumers are the people who grew up with the Internet. Of the 640 Million Facebook users, more than 70% of the users are under 34 years…and close to 50% of the users under 25 years (source: checkfacebook.com). According to worldinternetstats.com, there are 2.1 Billion internet users in the world. If we assume that at-least 40% of these users are on social media, we are talking about close to 800 Million users globally. Looking at the sheer numbers, the social media surely fits into being called a mass media

The information:

Any mass media is known by the quantity and quality of information it disperses. Nobody can doubt the quantity of the information… be it a foursquare update on one’s check-in into a local bakery, or a Facebook update of a traffic jam on your way to work, or a tweet about environmental impact of discarded laptop batteries, linking to a blog or YouTube video..there are millions of such updates happening every minute, globally

But, when it comes to quality of information, most of the stuff seen in social media is found wanting. It is known fact, that ‘noise’ is the biggest factor that impacts effective flow of communication. In the traditional media, information flows from a professional few, and a lot of ‘filters’ before it is actually transmitted to the users… But in social media, the number of professionals and the reason for filters do not exist. Hence, there is a lot of information created, but very little percentage of that is of substance… It is early days of social media, but ‘filters’ for information has already begun… be it the search engine algorithms, or the social bookmarks, or user reviews… it is just a matter of time, before the perfect mouse trap in terms of social media filters is created

Influence on the society:

The influence of mass media shapes our concepts of who we are, what is important to us, and how we live our life. Majority of the social media users are the youth. Most information in the social media is created by the youth for the youth. Where as in today’s world the society is being led and shaped by people with experience. Most Decision Maker’s in our society still belong to the classic era of media, and have only adapted to social media (or for that matter, Internet) pretty late. However, the divisional lines between traditional media and social media are diffusing. It is a world of convergence media; Where-in each media feeds of the other for information seeking and broadcasting… You’ll find traditional media tweeting about their articles and liberally seeking information from other people’s tweets… so too, you will find tweets and updates based on the information the user gets from print, TV or radio.

So while, in today’s context, social media may not directly influence the society at large… it can indirectly influence the people who influence the society… (eg. the traditional media). However, as more and more internet generation people becomes decision makers…the impact of social media on the society and popular culture would become strong

So has social media truly come of age?? I’d dare say, yes. However, there are some things that social media needs to overcome to be accepted as a powerful and influential medium by all… The concentration of the users should not be skewed to few locations, there should be stronger filters to reduce the noises, and more importantly wait for few more years

Cheers

Santosh

Information Scarcity to Information Abundance – Changing thoughts

Couple of things that happened recently, made me think… Has the growth of technology (esp. Internet) actually diminished the value of information?

2 reasons that got me thinking were -
1) I was planning to make a Goan dish – Vindaloo... I logged on to the Internet to check the recipe. I read it, used it to make the dish. All throughout, I never made an effort to remember the recipe and process of making it…One reason could be - In case I need the same information in the future, I could get it at the click of a button…

2) In the past few weeks… the (scam) news sequence could be summed up as follows – IPL scam>CWG scam>2G scam>Adarsh>Media Tapes. While each of the news is important in terms of the freshness and context…the value we attach to the previous incident diminishes drastically with each passing day. The News today has a short shelf life

About 20 years back, (access to) information was scarce. The only known and popular sources of information were – the books, Newspapers, Radio, Television, Magazines, People, etc. Information was also available on computers and various storage devices (remember the floppy disks, tapes ). The information on the new technology systems were more on limited data retrieval rather than real time access of information/news. There was a lot of barrier in terms of accessibility and availability (on demand, real-time basis) of information/news. Yes, in those days, information was a scarce commodity.

The increase in usage of Internet and availability of Internet for public at large changed it all. Suddenly, Information generation and sharing have become simpler. It no longer was confined to mediums that were not in the grasp of the common man. Real time exchange of ideas, news, and content across the globe was a norm. In today’s world, the use of social media platform has made the availability and accessibility of news on as-it-happens basis. In today’s world Information/News is in abundance.

What is the effect of this on the Human Behaviour??

Economists, sociologists have long said: Every market-place reaction is based on 2 key factors of scarcity and abundance. The technology guru George Gilder has long postulated: "Every economic era is based on a key abundance and a key scarcity." I have to add here that most human development and behavior too is formed basis scarcity and abundance.

When the food is in abundance, the Human body stores it as fat in the body so that it can survive during the time of scarcity.

The human brain is also constructed to store huge amount of information. This ability to store and retrieve information has put humans in the apex of the animal kingdom. Humans would have developed the memorizing capabilities by trying to store information about hunting grounds, watering holes, things to avoid, etc during their early years of development as primates. Since the source of information was mostly through experience it was important crucial for our primates ancestors to memorize and store the experience

One of the important effects of things being scare is that its value is always high. That is the reason why we put high value for limited and finite resources like precious stones, minerals, land, etc…
The value of information and specifically information such as News was high during the scarce period. Since the value of News was high, we used to make extra effort to memorize and store the information. I remember my childhood days on how I used to consume news.. reading the newspaper from Left Hand Top to Right Hand Bottom, and trying to memorize as much as possible. Mapping that day’s information with earlier day’s News to construct a flow of events. Even with the advent of TV into every household the consumption of News/Information remained the same… only the format of the source of information changed. Our behavior in terms of storing/memorizing information remained similar

Since there was a high value assigned to information…We conditioned our brains to memorize and remember it.

With the adoption of technology (especially Internet) and the information abundance that followed with it, especially access to real-time news, the value of information has reduced

Whether it is a news item or a video clip of a particular episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S …it is all available at a click on YouTube or similar Video sharing channel

While ready access to information would have reduced the value of information in terms of us trying to memorize and remember it, another reason could be that we are exposed to multiple source of information (same and different) and human brains could have an auto switch-off mechanism when it reaches, what it believes is, overdose of information. The communication experts have coined a nice term for such thing – Short Attention Span 

My guess on the impact of information abundance on the human behavior is that we would depend more on technology to store information and use our brains to memorize where we can find them in the technology map. We would train our brains more on how to index where the information is and how to find the information rather than the content of the information itself

Example: I would try and remember what keywords I had used to search for specific information on Google and what website I visited post the search results… not necessarily the content of the webpage itself

A few centuries later, this could be a common household scenario

Child: Dad, Where is Africa?
Dad: Ask Google (surely by then Google search would be in speech command mode)

Until then, try and remember the content that is written above :)

Cheers

Santosh

Santosh E.G. |Associate Vice President - Digital Marketing
MRM Worldwide | McCann Worldgroup
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/santosheg
Twitter: @santosheg

Information Scarcity to Information Abundance – Changing thoughts

Couple of things that happened recently, made me think… Has the growth of technology (esp. Internet) actually diminished the value of information?

2 reasons that got me thinking were -
1) I was planning to make a Goan dish – Vindaloo... I logged on to the Internet to check the recipe. I read it, used it to make the dish. All throughout, I never made an effort to remember the recipe and process of making it…One reason could be - In case I need the same information in the future, I could get it at the click of a button…

2) In the past few weeks… the (scam) news sequence could be summed up as follows – IPL scam>CWG scam>2G scam>Adarsh>Media Tapes. While each of the news is important in terms of the freshness and context…the value we attach to the previous incident diminishes drastically with each passing day. The News today has a short shelf life

About 20 years back, (access to) information was scarce. The only known and popular sources of information were – the books, Newspapers, Radio, Television, Magazines, People, etc. Information was also available on computers and various storage devices (remember the floppy disks, tapes ). The information on the new technology systems were more on limited data retrieval rather than real time access of information/news. There was a lot of barrier in terms of accessibility and availability (on demand, real-time basis) of information/news. Yes, in those days, information was a scarce commodity.

The increase in usage of Internet and availability of Internet for public at large changed it all. Suddenly, Information generation and sharing have become simpler. It no longer was confined to mediums that were not in the grasp of the common man. Real time exchange of ideas, news, and content across the globe was a norm. In today’s world, the use of social media platform has made the availability and accessibility of news on as-it-happens basis. In today’s world Information/News is in abundance.

What is the effect of this on the Human Behaviour??

Economists, sociologists have long said: Every market-place reaction is based on 2 key factors of scarcity and abundance. The technology guru George Gilder has long postulated: "Every economic era is based on a key abundance and a key scarcity." I have to add here that most human development and behavior too is formed basis scarcity and abundance.

When the food is in abundance, the Human body stores it as fat in the body so that it can survive during the time of scarcity.

The human brain is also constructed to store huge amount of information. This ability to store and retrieve information has put humans in the apex of the animal kingdom. Humans would have developed the memorizing capabilities by trying to store information about hunting grounds, watering holes, things to avoid, etc during their early years of development as primates. Since the source of information was mostly through experience it was important crucial for our primates ancestors to memorize and store the experience

One of the important effects of things being scare is that its value is always high. That is the reason why we put high value for limited and finite resources like precious stones, minerals, land, etc…
The value of information and specifically information such as News was high during the scarce period. Since the value of News was high, we used to make extra effort to memorize and store the information. I remember my childhood days on how I used to consume news.. reading the newspaper from Left Hand Top to Right Hand Bottom, and trying to memorize as much as possible. Mapping that day’s information with earlier day’s News to construct a flow of events. Even with the advent of TV into every household the consumption of News/Information remained the same… only the format of the source of information changed. Our behavior in terms of storing/memorizing information remained similar

Since there was a high value assigned to information…We conditioned our brains to memorize and remember it.

With the adoption of technology (especially Internet) and the information abundance that followed with it, especially access to real-time news, the value of information has reduced

Whether it is a news item or a video clip of a particular episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S …it is all available at a click on YouTube or similar Video sharing channel

While ready access to information would have reduced the value of information in terms of us trying to memorize and remember it, another reason could be that we are exposed to multiple source of information (same and different) and human brains could have an auto switch-off mechanism when it reaches, what it believes is, overdose of information. The communication experts have coined a nice term for such thing – Short Attention Span 

My guess on the impact of information abundance on the human behavior is that we would depend more on technology to store information and use our brains to memorize where we can find them in the technology map. We would train our brains more on how to index where the information is and how to find the information rather than the content of the information itself

Example: I would try and remember what keywords I had used to search for specific information on Google and what website I visited post the search results… not necessarily the content of the webpage itself

A few centuries later, this could be a common household scenario

Child: Dad, Where is Africa?
Dad: Ask Google (surely by then Google search would be in speech command mode)

Until then, try and remember the content that is written above :)

Cheers

Santosh

Santosh E.G. |Associate Vice President - Digital Marketing
MRM Worldwide | McCann Worldgroup
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/santosheg
Twitter: @santosheg

Information Scarcity to Information Abundance – Changing thoughts

Couple of things that happened recently, made me think… Has the growth of technology (esp. Internet) actually diminished the value of information?

2 reasons that got me thinking were -
1) I was planning to make a Goan dish – Vindaloo... I logged on to the Internet to check the recipe. I read it, used it to make the dish. All throughout, I never made an effort to remember the recipe and process of making it…One reason could be - In case I need the same information in the future, I could get it at the click of a button…

2) In the past few weeks… the (scam) news sequence could be summed up as follows – IPL scam>CWG scam>2G scam>Adarsh>Media Tapes. While each of the news is important in terms of the freshness and context…the value we attach to the previous incident diminishes drastically with each passing day. The News today has a short shelf life

About 20 years back, (access to) information was scarce. The only known and popular sources of information were – the books, Newspapers, Radio, Television, Magazines, People, etc. Information was also available on computers and various storage devices (remember the floppy disks, tapes ). The information on the new technology systems were more on limited data retrieval rather than real time access of information/news. There was a lot of barrier in terms of accessibility and availability (on demand, real-time basis) of information/news. Yes, in those days, information was a scarce commodity.

The increase in usage of Internet and availability of Internet for public at large changed it all. Suddenly, Information generation and sharing have become simpler. It no longer was confined to mediums that were not in the grasp of the common man. Real time exchange of ideas, news, and content across the globe was a norm. In today’s world, the use of social media platform has made the availability and accessibility of news on as-it-happens basis. In today’s world Information/News is in abundance.

What is the effect of this on the Human Behaviour??

Economists, sociologists have long said: Every market-place reaction is based on 2 key factors of scarcity and abundance. The technology guru George Gilder has long postulated: "Every economic era is based on a key abundance and a key scarcity." I have to add here that most human development and behavior too is formed basis scarcity and abundance.

When the food is in abundance, the Human body stores it as fat in the body so that it can survive during the time of scarcity.

The human brain is also constructed to store huge amount of information. This ability to store and retrieve information has put humans in the apex of the animal kingdom. Humans would have developed the memorizing capabilities by trying to store information about hunting grounds, watering holes, things to avoid, etc during their early years of development as primates. Since the source of information was mostly through experience it was important crucial for our primates ancestors to memorize and store the experience

One of the important effects of things being scare is that its value is always high. That is the reason why we put high value for limited and finite resources like precious stones, minerals, land, etc…
The value of information and specifically information such as News was high during the scarce period. Since the value of News was high, we used to make extra effort to memorize and store the information. I remember my childhood days on how I used to consume news.. reading the newspaper from Left Hand Top to Right Hand Bottom, and trying to memorize as much as possible. Mapping that day’s information with earlier day’s News to construct a flow of events. Even with the advent of TV into every household the consumption of News/Information remained the same… only the format of the source of information changed. Our behavior in terms of storing/memorizing information remained similar

Since there was a high value assigned to information…We conditioned our brains to memorize and remember it.

With the adoption of technology (especially Internet) and the information abundance that followed with it, especially access to real-time news, the value of information has reduced

Whether it is a news item or a video clip of a particular episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S …it is all available at a click on YouTube or similar Video sharing channel

While ready access to information would have reduced the value of information in terms of us trying to memorize and remember it, another reason could be that we are exposed to multiple source of information (same and different) and human brains could have an auto switch-off mechanism when it reaches, what it believes is, overdose of information. The communication experts have coined a nice term for such thing – Short Attention Span 

My guess on the impact of information abundance on the human behavior is that we would depend more on technology to store information and use our brains to memorize where we can find them in the technology map. We would train our brains more on how to index where the information is and how to find the information rather than the content of the information itself

Example: I would try and remember what keywords I had used to search for specific information on Google and what website I visited post the search results… not necessarily the content of the webpage itself

A few centuries later, this could be a common household scenario

Child: Dad, Where is Africa?
Dad: Ask Google (surely by then Google search would be in speech command mode)

Until then, try and remember the content that is written above :)

Cheers

Santosh

Santosh E.G. |Associate Vice President - Digital Marketing
MRM Worldwide | McCann Worldgroup
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/santosheg
Twitter: @santosheg

Is online a ‘frivolous’ medium for advertising?

Ok. I know it is a very uncomfortable question, especially in emerging markets where Internet advertising is just about finding its place, and is also one of the fastest growing - in terms of advertising revenue growth. It becomes all the more uncomfortable when you are talking about it online :)

Some weeks back, I overheard someone say that compared to other traditional mediums of advertising Online Advertising as a medium need not to be considered seriously (at-least for now). India, for example, still is a market driven by TVC and Print ads.

True? True, but partially

True, because most of the online advertising is limited to online banners (a replication of the mainline creative/message) with a campaign website that is informative in nature. True, because in most ad agencies, the creative think about the message in terms of TVC, Print, Radio, etc…. and then decide to do something ‘cool’ in the online space. “Let’s have something cool on Facebook” is the latest mantra. True again, because agencies/clients use the Internet for uploading and publishing a so called humorous animated movie, a.k.a ‘Viral Movie’ and hope that it is seen by ‘n’ number of people. Sometimes, it just feels like - “if it is online, it needs to be humorous”. I never could understand, why is that clients and agencies are willing to ‘create’ and ‘seed’ a viral movie on the Internet, but usually shy away from promoting the same as a TVC? Is it, that a creative that is only good for the Internet is not good for mainline advertising??

The above ‘truths’ are here to stay for sometime but there are changes happening (and happening real fast)

If I were to analyze these 3 mediums of advertising (Print, TVC, and Online), this is what I see –
- The Constants
- The Channels
- The Creative
- The Consumer
- The Confusion
- The Change
- The Challenge

The Constants:
Whatever be the format of advertisement, the truth is that it is part of the same campaign there are some things which would be constants – the campaign objective, the value proposition, the message, the visuals, etc

The Channels:

Each of the channels has a perception built around it. This perception has a rub-off on the advertisements that it carries.
Print: Most print publications are perceived as – Serious, trustworthy, reliable (esp. Newspaper and most magazines). Thus an advertisement present in such an environment would have some rub-off on to it from the context of the medium itself
Television: Most TV Channels are perceived as a window to the world – real and imaginary. TV Channels are entertainment, information and come with some amount of reliability – A perception built by the channels over the years of broadcasting (BBC, STAR, etc). While the environment at which the TVC plays do not have much impact on the TVC itself since the brand story is capsulated by the entirety of the commercial itself
Internet: Compared to the above two mediums of advertising, Internet is still in its infancy. Internet for a long time was under the control of the academicians, students, and some Government organizations. It is only in the last 2 decades that the people at large had access to Internet through www. While the other traditional forms of media were developed with a business model in mind, Internet was developed more by trial and error. All the major development of Internet – be it web-based email, search engines, SNS sites like Facebook all were developed and popularized by the techno-savvy individuals rather than business entrepreneurs. Also since it was developed by the youth, it was predominantly for the youth destinations that came to populate the www. This early perception of the Net being youth-centric destination, and with no proper business model stuck with the marketers and public…and it stayed on

The Creative

Print: The format is primarily – Static Image, with text.
Television: Moving images, graphics, audio – ability to tell the brand story in the closest format of storytelling – Tone, Emotions, scenarios, plot, characters, etc.
Internet: It encompasses the above formats of Image/Text and also Moving Images, graphics, audio etc…. but it also has another two crucial components that makes it different – Interactivity and Technology. While these are the USP’s of Internet, the creative people who make the ads fail to capitalize on it..since never in the history of advertising did any company needed to think about their message being ‘interactive’ (on a real-time basis) nor the technology having a direct impact on the advertisement/communication itself. Compared to other traditional mediums of advertising Internet is still in its infancy.

The Consumer:
The truth is that as consumers we always have been exposed to unidirectional communication. Whether it be in our homes (Parents to Child), or at School (Teacher to student), or at work (Manager to employees) – the communication is mostly unidirectional. The advertising message format too has so far been unidirectional – Company to Consumer. And since the format of communication (unidirectional) was something we were familiar with, the advertising message as it is was accepted without much bother

The Confusion:
Technology for creators of advertisements had been mostly helping them create ads faster and better. Be it the Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D animation software, or the desktop editing tools or the high processor hardware all these helped the creative team to build ads in the format they are used to. But advertising on the Internet, had technology not as a facilitator of creating ads but an integral part of the creative itself. Suddenly the creative was not about what the story says, but what the story does.

The Change:
Change is something that everyone is uncomfortable with. We all like things to be predictable and hence stick to things that are tried and tested. The same is the case with marketers. Traditional advertising is something that the CMO’s are most comfortable with. They know what works and what doesn’t. So far, Internet advertising was always relegated to the newbie in the department. But the times are changing and the youth of yesterday who have been exposed to Internet from early years are now taking reins of marketing department. They have seen the medium grow and know the potential of this medium. While it would be a fallacy to say that they would replace traditional forms of advertising, digital advertising would soon be the centre of all advertising campaigns.

The Challenge:
The challenge for the creative team and ad agencies is how to think ‘Technology’ when creating ads. It is not about what Technology can do for them, but what they can do with Technology. Internet is about interactivity, and it is about how to create message that just does not say something, but also does something. This would mean that there should be members in the team who can bring the message ‘alive’ – in true sense.

Another challenge is something that time will solve. As more and more people start replacing the traditional forms of media consumption with Internet, the medium itself would start being perceived as an evolved medium. This is already happening with people using Google (or other Search Engines) as the primary source of information seeking. Also it was in news a few days back how the traditional source of English Language (Dictionary) is being replaced by the Wikipedia. Twitter, a micro-blogging platform, is giving the traditional news channels a run for their money by being a popular source for real-time news

I’m sure in the near future today’s CG (Creative Guru) would be replaced by tomorrow’s CG (Creative Geek) :)

Cheers

Santosh

Is online a ‘frivolous’ medium for advertising?

Ok. I know it is a very uncomfortable question, especially in emerging markets where Internet advertising is just about finding its place, and is also one of the fastest growing - in terms of advertising revenue growth. It becomes all the more uncomfortable when you are talking about it online :)

Some weeks back, I overheard someone say that compared to other traditional mediums of advertising Online Advertising as a medium need not to be considered seriously (at-least for now). India, for example, still is a market driven by TVC and Print ads.

True? True, but partially

True, because most of the online advertising is limited to online banners (a replication of the mainline creative/message) with a campaign website that is informative in nature. True, because in most ad agencies, the creative think about the message in terms of TVC, Print, Radio, etc…. and then decide to do something ‘cool’ in the online space. “Let’s have something cool on Facebook” is the latest mantra. True again, because agencies/clients use the Internet for uploading and publishing a so called humorous animated movie, a.k.a ‘Viral Movie’ and hope that it is seen by ‘n’ number of people. Sometimes, it just feels like - “if it is online, it needs to be humorous”. I never could understand, why is that clients and agencies are willing to ‘create’ and ‘seed’ a viral movie on the Internet, but usually shy away from promoting the same as a TVC? Is it, that a creative that is only good for the Internet is not good for mainline advertising??

The above ‘truths’ are here to stay for sometime but there are changes happening (and happening real fast)

If I were to analyze these 3 mediums of advertising (Print, TVC, and Online), this is what I see –
- The Constants
- The Channels
- The Creative
- The Consumer
- The Confusion
- The Change
- The Challenge

The Constants:
Whatever be the format of advertisement, the truth is that it is part of the same campaign there are some things which would be constants – the campaign objective, the value proposition, the message, the visuals, etc

The Channels:

Each of the channels has a perception built around it. This perception has a rub-off on the advertisements that it carries.
Print: Most print publications are perceived as – Serious, trustworthy, reliable (esp. Newspaper and most magazines). Thus an advertisement present in such an environment would have some rub-off on to it from the context of the medium itself
Television: Most TV Channels are perceived as a window to the world – real and imaginary. TV Channels are entertainment, information and come with some amount of reliability – A perception built by the channels over the years of broadcasting (BBC, STAR, etc). While the environment at which the TVC plays do not have much impact on the TVC itself since the brand story is capsulated by the entirety of the commercial itself
Internet: Compared to the above two mediums of advertising, Internet is still in its infancy. Internet for a long time was under the control of the academicians, students, and some Government organizations. It is only in the last 2 decades that the people at large had access to Internet through www. While the other traditional forms of media were developed with a business model in mind, Internet was developed more by trial and error. All the major development of Internet – be it web-based email, search engines, SNS sites like Facebook all were developed and popularized by the techno-savvy individuals rather than business entrepreneurs. Also since it was developed by the youth, it was predominantly for the youth destinations that came to populate the www. This early perception of the Net being youth-centric destination, and with no proper business model stuck with the marketers and public…and it stayed on

The Creative

Print: The format is primarily – Static Image, with text.
Television: Moving images, graphics, audio – ability to tell the brand story in the closest format of storytelling – Tone, Emotions, scenarios, plot, characters, etc.
Internet: It encompasses the above formats of Image/Text and also Moving Images, graphics, audio etc…. but it also has another two crucial components that makes it different – Interactivity and Technology. While these are the USP’s of Internet, the creative people who make the ads fail to capitalize on it..since never in the history of advertising did any company needed to think about their message being ‘interactive’ (on a real-time basis) nor the technology having a direct impact on the advertisement/communication itself. Compared to other traditional mediums of advertising Internet is still in its infancy.

The Consumer:
The truth is that as consumers we always have been exposed to unidirectional communication. Whether it be in our homes (Parents to Child), or at School (Teacher to student), or at work (Manager to employees) – the communication is mostly unidirectional. The advertising message format too has so far been unidirectional – Company to Consumer. And since the format of communication (unidirectional) was something we were familiar with, the advertising message as it is was accepted without much bother

The Confusion:
Technology for creators of advertisements had been mostly helping them create ads faster and better. Be it the Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D animation software, or the desktop editing tools or the high processor hardware all these helped the creative team to build ads in the format they are used to. But advertising on the Internet, had technology not as a facilitator of creating ads but an integral part of the creative itself. Suddenly the creative was not about what the story says, but what the story does.

The Change:
Change is something that everyone is uncomfortable with. We all like things to be predictable and hence stick to things that are tried and tested. The same is the case with marketers. Traditional advertising is something that the CMO’s are most comfortable with. They know what works and what doesn’t. So far, Internet advertising was always relegated to the newbie in the department. But the times are changing and the youth of yesterday who have been exposed to Internet from early years are now taking reins of marketing department. They have seen the medium grow and know the potential of this medium. While it would be a fallacy to say that they would replace traditional forms of advertising, digital advertising would soon be the centre of all advertising campaigns.

The Challenge:
The challenge for the creative team and ad agencies is how to think ‘Technology’ when creating ads. It is not about what Technology can do for them, but what they can do with Technology. Internet is about interactivity, and it is about how to create message that just does not say something, but also does something. This would mean that there should be members in the team who can bring the message ‘alive’ – in true sense.

Another challenge is something that time will solve. As more and more people start replacing the traditional forms of media consumption with Internet, the medium itself would start being perceived as an evolved medium. This is already happening with people using Google (or other Search Engines) as the primary source of information seeking. Also it was in news a few days back how the traditional source of English Language (Dictionary) is being replaced by the Wikipedia. Twitter, a micro-blogging platform, is giving the traditional news channels a run for their money by being a popular source for real-time news

I’m sure in the near future today’s CG (Creative Guru) would be replaced by tomorrow’s CG (Creative Geek) :)

Cheers

Santosh

Is online a ‘frivolous’ medium for advertising?

Ok. I know it is a very uncomfortable question, especially in emerging markets where Internet advertising is just about finding its place, and is also one of the fastest growing - in terms of advertising revenue growth. It becomes all the more uncomfortable when you are talking about it online :)

Some weeks back, I overheard someone say that compared to other traditional mediums of advertising Online Advertising as a medium need not to be considered seriously (at-least for now). India, for example, still is a market driven by TVC and Print ads.

True? True, but partially

True, because most of the online advertising is limited to online banners (a replication of the mainline creative/message) with a campaign website that is informative in nature. True, because in most ad agencies, the creative think about the message in terms of TVC, Print, Radio, etc…. and then decide to do something ‘cool’ in the online space. “Let’s have something cool on Facebook” is the latest mantra. True again, because agencies/clients use the Internet for uploading and publishing a so called humorous animated movie, a.k.a ‘Viral Movie’ and hope that it is seen by ‘n’ number of people. Sometimes, it just feels like - “if it is online, it needs to be humorous”. I never could understand, why is that clients and agencies are willing to ‘create’ and ‘seed’ a viral movie on the Internet, but usually shy away from promoting the same as a TVC? Is it, that a creative that is only good for the Internet is not good for mainline advertising??

The above ‘truths’ are here to stay for sometime but there are changes happening (and happening real fast)

If I were to analyze these 3 mediums of advertising (Print, TVC, and Online), this is what I see –
- The Constants
- The Channels
- The Creative
- The Consumer
- The Confusion
- The Change
- The Challenge

The Constants:
Whatever be the format of advertisement, the truth is that it is part of the same campaign there are some things which would be constants – the campaign objective, the value proposition, the message, the visuals, etc

The Channels:

Each of the channels has a perception built around it. This perception has a rub-off on the advertisements that it carries.
Print: Most print publications are perceived as – Serious, trustworthy, reliable (esp. Newspaper and most magazines). Thus an advertisement present in such an environment would have some rub-off on to it from the context of the medium itself
Television: Most TV Channels are perceived as a window to the world – real and imaginary. TV Channels are entertainment, information and come with some amount of reliability – A perception built by the channels over the years of broadcasting (BBC, STAR, etc). While the environment at which the TVC plays do not have much impact on the TVC itself since the brand story is capsulated by the entirety of the commercial itself
Internet: Compared to the above two mediums of advertising, Internet is still in its infancy. Internet for a long time was under the control of the academicians, students, and some Government organizations. It is only in the last 2 decades that the people at large had access to Internet through www. While the other traditional forms of media were developed with a business model in mind, Internet was developed more by trial and error. All the major development of Internet – be it web-based email, search engines, SNS sites like Facebook all were developed and popularized by the techno-savvy individuals rather than business entrepreneurs. Also since it was developed by the youth, it was predominantly for the youth destinations that came to populate the www. This early perception of the Net being youth-centric destination, and with no proper business model stuck with the marketers and public…and it stayed on

The Creative

Print: The format is primarily – Static Image, with text.
Television: Moving images, graphics, audio – ability to tell the brand story in the closest format of storytelling – Tone, Emotions, scenarios, plot, characters, etc.
Internet: It encompasses the above formats of Image/Text and also Moving Images, graphics, audio etc…. but it also has another two crucial components that makes it different – Interactivity and Technology. While these are the USP’s of Internet, the creative people who make the ads fail to capitalize on it..since never in the history of advertising did any company needed to think about their message being ‘interactive’ (on a real-time basis) nor the technology having a direct impact on the advertisement/communication itself. Compared to other traditional mediums of advertising Internet is still in its infancy.

The Consumer:
The truth is that as consumers we always have been exposed to unidirectional communication. Whether it be in our homes (Parents to Child), or at School (Teacher to student), or at work (Manager to employees) – the communication is mostly unidirectional. The advertising message format too has so far been unidirectional – Company to Consumer. And since the format of communication (unidirectional) was something we were familiar with, the advertising message as it is was accepted without much bother

The Confusion:
Technology for creators of advertisements had been mostly helping them create ads faster and better. Be it the Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D animation software, or the desktop editing tools or the high processor hardware all these helped the creative team to build ads in the format they are used to. But advertising on the Internet, had technology not as a facilitator of creating ads but an integral part of the creative itself. Suddenly the creative was not about what the story says, but what the story does.

The Change:
Change is something that everyone is uncomfortable with. We all like things to be predictable and hence stick to things that are tried and tested. The same is the case with marketers. Traditional advertising is something that the CMO’s are most comfortable with. They know what works and what doesn’t. So far, Internet advertising was always relegated to the newbie in the department. But the times are changing and the youth of yesterday who have been exposed to Internet from early years are now taking reins of marketing department. They have seen the medium grow and know the potential of this medium. While it would be a fallacy to say that they would replace traditional forms of advertising, digital advertising would soon be the centre of all advertising campaigns.

The Challenge:
The challenge for the creative team and ad agencies is how to think ‘Technology’ when creating ads. It is not about what Technology can do for them, but what they can do with Technology. Internet is about interactivity, and it is about how to create message that just does not say something, but also does something. This would mean that there should be members in the team who can bring the message ‘alive’ – in true sense.

Another challenge is something that time will solve. As more and more people start replacing the traditional forms of media consumption with Internet, the medium itself would start being perceived as an evolved medium. This is already happening with people using Google (or other Search Engines) as the primary source of information seeking. Also it was in news a few days back how the traditional source of English Language (Dictionary) is being replaced by the Wikipedia. Twitter, a micro-blogging platform, is giving the traditional news channels a run for their money by being a popular source for real-time news

I’m sure in the near future today’s CG (Creative Guru) would be replaced by tomorrow’s CG (Creative Geek) :)

Cheers

Santosh

The Importance of “Positioning”

The online would have enough and more dope on Brand Positioning; So, I'd not go into the detailing of what is positioning, and how it can be achieved? I will also not talk about the Importance of Positioning but would try and give some examples of some brand names you are familiar with and interact on day to day basis in the online space.

Couple of days back, I was talking to a brand manager who was mentioning how the online platforms are only best suited for tactical purposes. He went onto mention that maybe in future "positioning" would not be a marketing focus, and "being tactical" would be the marketing strategy of the day. I argued, on the importance of positioning, and had taken couple of examples from the Internet space and said if online companies are focusing on positioning, then 'positioning' is and will be crucial aspect of marketing.

While there is a grain of truth in saying that in future "being tactical" would be important…since new changes and innovations would happen overnight, there would be instant stars, etc..that a long term strategic approach would be so flexible, that any unforeseen eventuality would need to be addressed by a quick-fix tactic

However, the importance of Positioning cannot be discounted…. For example:

What would have happened if Blogger.com, Typepad or Wordpress had come with a feature on their blogging platform where-in they tell the users that their blog update can be only fewer than 140 characters…The up-side is they can update their blog by SMS too. Would there be any takers?? I guess not. As a product, I have a platform where I can write in unlimited words/characters, upload visuals and drive home the point with extensive note… then why would I want to blog with a limited character space…that too 140 characters and only text!!! Ridiculous…. Then comes a company who does just that…..with a single value proposition – tell others "What are you doing" … They positioned themselves as a "Micro-Blogging Platform" – which in truth is nothing but a Lite version of a blog…where in you can't express yourself properly with the character limit constraint. But today, Who Cares! You have a new set of vocabulary that has come up – thanks to Tweet-o-mania

Another similar example would be the Groups and message boards that I'd first experienced in the Yahoo! website. In my initial days of Internet exploring… I was a biiiiggg fan of Yahoo! It was one of the few sites which had a search facility. I could also go and place a request for my web-page to be indexed by Yahoo!. Then of course there was the Yahoo! Email service. But the best things which I liked and used to use the most frequent were the Chat rooms, message boards, groups… All in one site…. You could actually live your entire Internet life without stepping out of Yahoo!... I could connect with friends, real time (Chat/IM) and delayed (over mail, groups), share with them (online briefcase, photos), reach to like-minded people (message boards, chat-rooms)….I'm sure with a single website offering all these utility…no one would have looked any further. Right? Wrong. There comes a company who positions themselves as a 'social utility that connects people and friends around them'… What it had was all the utility tools which already existed… but packaged and positioned differently. Today it becomes a part of our 'social' life….and the utilities that Yahoo! had, all but forgotten

Imagine a portal like Monster.com…. One fine day if they decide to let everyone view your CV. Would you like it? No. I guess not. One of the biggest USP of Monster.com was that you as a candidate could have privacy control on who could view your profile and who could not. You were confident that your CV was secure and would not be shared with anyone else. Job market made a living by providing confidentiality. No-one would ever want to be made public that they are looking for a career change (especially with the current employer getting to know)… Then comes a company that asks you to post your CV and make it public, but positions itself as a professional network platform that will help you build connections. But the underlying truth is that it is used for career opportunities – both by the prospective employer and employee. By positioning itself as a professional network tool… it has made job hunting open and cool under the garb – Relationship Matters

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – all these online giants have understood the power of Positioning – by tweaking, packaging and marketing existing products differently

I wonder why that brand manager felt differently

 

Santosh

 

 

 

 

The Importance of “Positioning”

The online would have enough and more dope on Brand Positioning; So, I'd not go into the detailing of what is positioning, and how it can be achieved? I will also not talk about the Importance of Positioning but would try and give some examples of some brand names you are familiar with and interact on day to day basis in the online space.

Couple of days back, I was talking to a brand manager who was mentioning how the online platforms are only best suited for tactical purposes. He went onto mention that maybe in future "positioning" would not be a marketing focus, and "being tactical" would be the marketing strategy of the day. I argued, on the importance of positioning, and had taken couple of examples from the Internet space and said if online companies are focusing on positioning, then 'positioning' is and will be crucial aspect of marketing.

While there is a grain of truth in saying that in future "being tactical" would be important…since new changes and innovations would happen overnight, there would be instant stars, etc..that a long term strategic approach would be so flexible, that any unforeseen eventuality would need to be addressed by a quick-fix tactic

However, the importance of Positioning cannot be discounted…. For example:

What would have happened if Blogger.com, Typepad or Wordpress had come with a feature on their blogging platform where-in they tell the users that their blog update can be only fewer than 140 characters…The up-side is they can update their blog by SMS too. Would there be any takers?? I guess not. As a product, I have a platform where I can write in unlimited words/characters, upload visuals and drive home the point with extensive note… then why would I want to blog with a limited character space…that too 140 characters and only text!!! Ridiculous…. Then comes a company who does just that…..with a single value proposition – tell others "What are you doing" … They positioned themselves as a "Micro-Blogging Platform" – which in truth is nothing but a Lite version of a blog…where in you can't express yourself properly with the character limit constraint. But today, Who Cares! You have a new set of vocabulary that has come up – thanks to Tweet-o-mania

Another similar example would be the Groups and message boards that I'd first experienced in the Yahoo! website. In my initial days of Internet exploring… I was a biiiiggg fan of Yahoo! It was one of the few sites which had a search facility. I could also go and place a request for my web-page to be indexed by Yahoo!. Then of course there was the Yahoo! Email service. But the best things which I liked and used to use the most frequent were the Chat rooms, message boards, groups… All in one site…. You could actually live your entire Internet life without stepping out of Yahoo!... I could connect with friends, real time (Chat/IM) and delayed (over mail, groups), share with them (online briefcase, photos), reach to like-minded people (message boards, chat-rooms)….I'm sure with a single website offering all these utility…no one would have looked any further. Right? Wrong. There comes a company who positions themselves as a 'social utility that connects people and friends around them'… What it had was all the utility tools which already existed… but packaged and positioned differently. Today it becomes a part of our 'social' life….and the utilities that Yahoo! had, all but forgotten

Imagine a portal like Monster.com…. One fine day if they decide to let everyone view your CV. Would you like it? No. I guess not. One of the biggest USP of Monster.com was that you as a candidate could have privacy control on who could view your profile and who could not. You were confident that your CV was secure and would not be shared with anyone else. Job market made a living by providing confidentiality. No-one would ever want to be made public that they are looking for a career change (especially with the current employer getting to know)… Then comes a company that asks you to post your CV and make it public, but positions itself as a professional network platform that will help you build connections. But the underlying truth is that it is used for career opportunities – both by the prospective employer and employee. By positioning itself as a professional network tool… it has made job hunting open and cool under the garb – Relationship Matters

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – all these online giants have understood the power of Positioning – by tweaking, packaging and marketing existing products differently

I wonder why that brand manager felt differently

 

Santosh

 

 

 

 

The Importance of “Positioning”

The online would have enough and more dope on Brand Positioning; So, I'd not go into the detailing of what is positioning, and how it can be achieved? I will also not talk about the Importance of Positioning but would try and give some examples of some brand names you are familiar with and interact on day to day basis in the online space.

Couple of days back, I was talking to a brand manager who was mentioning how the online platforms are only best suited for tactical purposes. He went onto mention that maybe in future "positioning" would not be a marketing focus, and "being tactical" would be the marketing strategy of the day. I argued, on the importance of positioning, and had taken couple of examples from the Internet space and said if online companies are focusing on positioning, then 'positioning' is and will be crucial aspect of marketing.

While there is a grain of truth in saying that in future "being tactical" would be important…since new changes and innovations would happen overnight, there would be instant stars, etc..that a long term strategic approach would be so flexible, that any unforeseen eventuality would need to be addressed by a quick-fix tactic

However, the importance of Positioning cannot be discounted…. For example:

What would have happened if Blogger.com, Typepad or Wordpress had come with a feature on their blogging platform where-in they tell the users that their blog update can be only fewer than 140 characters…The up-side is they can update their blog by SMS too. Would there be any takers?? I guess not. As a product, I have a platform where I can write in unlimited words/characters, upload visuals and drive home the point with extensive note… then why would I want to blog with a limited character space…that too 140 characters and only text!!! Ridiculous…. Then comes a company who does just that…..with a single value proposition – tell others "What are you doing" … They positioned themselves as a "Micro-Blogging Platform" – which in truth is nothing but a Lite version of a blog…where in you can't express yourself properly with the character limit constraint. But today, Who Cares! You have a new set of vocabulary that has come up – thanks to Tweet-o-mania

Another similar example would be the Groups and message boards that I'd first experienced in the Yahoo! website. In my initial days of Internet exploring… I was a biiiiggg fan of Yahoo! It was one of the few sites which had a search facility. I could also go and place a request for my web-page to be indexed by Yahoo!. Then of course there was the Yahoo! Email service. But the best things which I liked and used to use the most frequent were the Chat rooms, message boards, groups… All in one site…. You could actually live your entire Internet life without stepping out of Yahoo!... I could connect with friends, real time (Chat/IM) and delayed (over mail, groups), share with them (online briefcase, photos), reach to like-minded people (message boards, chat-rooms)….I'm sure with a single website offering all these utility…no one would have looked any further. Right? Wrong. There comes a company who positions themselves as a 'social utility that connects people and friends around them'… What it had was all the utility tools which already existed… but packaged and positioned differently. Today it becomes a part of our 'social' life….and the utilities that Yahoo! had, all but forgotten

Imagine a portal like Monster.com…. One fine day if they decide to let everyone view your CV. Would you like it? No. I guess not. One of the biggest USP of Monster.com was that you as a candidate could have privacy control on who could view your profile and who could not. You were confident that your CV was secure and would not be shared with anyone else. Job market made a living by providing confidentiality. No-one would ever want to be made public that they are looking for a career change (especially with the current employer getting to know)… Then comes a company that asks you to post your CV and make it public, but positions itself as a professional network platform that will help you build connections. But the underlying truth is that it is used for career opportunities – both by the prospective employer and employee. By positioning itself as a professional network tool… it has made job hunting open and cool under the garb – Relationship Matters

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – all these online giants have understood the power of Positioning – by tweaking, packaging and marketing existing products differently

I wonder why that brand manager felt differently

 

Santosh

 

 

 

 

Technology – Building Bridges or Building Walls?

This can be part – 2 of my earlier blog on how technology affects human behaviour. Couple of things that has come to my notice in the past few days made me think… is the popular technology more of a communication enabler or disabler?

A colleague of mine has recently been to Singapore for holidays. An interesting observation, he mentioned, was that how people seem to be in their own world – the ear phones plugged, listening to their ipods, mobile phones, etc… or they were busy fidgeting with their mobile phones, either playing games or watching some video on the phone/ipod. They seem to be in their own world as if they have created an invisible wall around them.

Another is a report that was mentioning about the increase of mobile VAS. Currently the mobile VAS contributes to 12% (in India) of the revenue. While text (SMS) seems to be the major revenue generator in VAS services, contribution from other VAS sources like – Music downloads, Ringtones, Caller Ring Back Tone (CRBT), screensavers, etc are increasing at a fast pace.


You’ll see from the Internet access report image that except for checking emails…the rest of the activity are some form of self consumption

A quick look at how the Internet had trended over the past few years:
- Emailing, Chat rooms, were a big thing about a decade back. It seemed that Internet was being used a big way to ‘communicate’ with others. But stats now show that there is a decline in the usage of email… it has got replaced by search, which is more a personal activity and is all about self consumption. And chat rooms are being dismantled.
- In fact, even when Web 2.0 entered the scene…. Everyone said “here is a platform/tools by which people can converse, collaborate and share”. Tools like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter all had taken the fancy of Internet users. While these platforms are being used for ‘communicating’ with others…. Slowly but surely these platforms are being transformed from ‘communicating’ platforms to platforms of self expression. How many of us now-a-days poke a friend?? How many put a wall posting on a friends profile asking them a basic social greeting like – How are you? Have a Nice day, etc…. I don’t do it.. and I’m sure neither would many of us be doing it.
- Also, have you noticed that most of the tweets or Facebook Updates are more about general things in life (and nothing about personal life updates).. people update about Weather, update about the current global/local news, links to articles, etc… very rarely are the updates talking about what is happening in ‘our’ lives or asking people what is happening in ‘their’ lives… These platforms are soon becoming stages for self expression, and broadcasting . Our personal live glimpses are best left inside of us

Why is it that technology starts of with the intent of filling a basic human need to being in touch with others and communicating with others … it on its way, changes track to fulfill a more self-centric need of humans – about self consumption or self-expression?
Could it be that the low entry barrier for any new technology to get adopted by the people is the Social Need stage as proposed by Maslow in the hierarchy of needs



and as they get used to social stage they look at a higher level and move towards the Esteem stage

It could be a good insight for technology companies who are looking at innovate products or services to see that they enter with a purpose of serving the basic human need and then move higher up in the pyramid

On a lighter note, would as part of self actualization, people realize that there is nothing the technology can do, and hence walk away from technology? :)

Think about it

Cheers

Santosh

Technology – Building Bridges or Building Walls?

This can be part – 2 of my earlier blog on how technology affects human behaviour. Couple of things that has come to my notice in the past few days made me think… is the popular technology more of a communication enabler or disabler?

A colleague of mine has recently been to Singapore for holidays. An interesting observation, he mentioned, was that how people seem to be in their own world – the ear phones plugged, listening to their ipods, mobile phones, etc… or they were busy fidgeting with their mobile phones, either playing games or watching some video on the phone/ipod. They seem to be in their own world as if they have created an invisible wall around them.

Another is a report that was mentioning about the increase of mobile VAS. Currently the mobile VAS contributes to 12% (in India) of the revenue. While text (SMS) seems to be the major revenue generator in VAS services, contribution from other VAS sources like – Music downloads, Ringtones, Caller Ring Back Tone (CRBT), screensavers, etc are increasing at a fast pace.


You’ll see from the Internet access report image that except for checking emails…the rest of the activity are some form of self consumption

A quick look at how the Internet had trended over the past few years:
- Emailing, Chat rooms, were a big thing about a decade back. It seemed that Internet was being used a big way to ‘communicate’ with others. But stats now show that there is a decline in the usage of email… it has got replaced by search, which is more a personal activity and is all about self consumption. And chat rooms are being dismantled.
- In fact, even when Web 2.0 entered the scene…. Everyone said “here is a platform/tools by which people can converse, collaborate and share”. Tools like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter all had taken the fancy of Internet users. While these platforms are being used for ‘communicating’ with others…. Slowly but surely these platforms are being transformed from ‘communicating’ platforms to platforms of self expression. How many of us now-a-days poke a friend?? How many put a wall posting on a friends profile asking them a basic social greeting like – How are you? Have a Nice day, etc…. I don’t do it.. and I’m sure neither would many of us be doing it.
- Also, have you noticed that most of the tweets or Facebook Updates are more about general things in life (and nothing about personal life updates).. people update about Weather, update about the current global/local news, links to articles, etc… very rarely are the updates talking about what is happening in ‘our’ lives or asking people what is happening in ‘their’ lives… These platforms are soon becoming stages for self expression, and broadcasting . Our personal live glimpses are best left inside of us

Why is it that technology starts of with the intent of filling a basic human need to being in touch with others and communicating with others … it on its way, changes track to fulfill a more self-centric need of humans – about self consumption or self-expression?
Could it be that the low entry barrier for any new technology to get adopted by the people is the Social Need stage as proposed by Maslow in the hierarchy of needs



and as they get used to social stage they look at a higher level and move towards the Esteem stage

It could be a good insight for technology companies who are looking at innovate products or services to see that they enter with a purpose of serving the basic human need and then move higher up in the pyramid

On a lighter note, would as part of self actualization, people realize that there is nothing the technology can do, and hence walk away from technology? :)

Think about it

Cheers

Santosh

Technology – Building Bridges or Building Walls?

This can be part – 2 of my earlier blog on how technology affects human behaviour. Couple of things that has come to my notice in the past few days made me think… is the popular technology more of a communication enabler or disabler?

A colleague of mine has recently been to Singapore for holidays. An interesting observation, he mentioned, was that how people seem to be in their own world – the ear phones plugged, listening to their ipods, mobile phones, etc… or they were busy fidgeting with their mobile phones, either playing games or watching some video on the phone/ipod. They seem to be in their own world as if they have created an invisible wall around them.

Another is a report that was mentioning about the increase of mobile VAS. Currently the mobile VAS contributes to 12% (in India) of the revenue. While text (SMS) seems to be the major revenue generator in VAS services, contribution from other VAS sources like – Music downloads, Ringtones, Caller Ring Back Tone (CRBT), screensavers, etc are increasing at a fast pace.


You’ll see from the Internet access report image that except for checking emails…the rest of the activity are some form of self consumption

A quick look at how the Internet had trended over the past few years:
- Emailing, Chat rooms, were a big thing about a decade back. It seemed that Internet was being used a big way to ‘communicate’ with others. But stats now show that there is a decline in the usage of email… it has got replaced by search, which is more a personal activity and is all about self consumption. And chat rooms are being dismantled.
- In fact, even when Web 2.0 entered the scene…. Everyone said “here is a platform/tools by which people can converse, collaborate and share”. Tools like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter all had taken the fancy of Internet users. While these platforms are being used for ‘communicating’ with others…. Slowly but surely these platforms are being transformed from ‘communicating’ platforms to platforms of self expression. How many of us now-a-days poke a friend?? How many put a wall posting on a friends profile asking them a basic social greeting like – How are you? Have a Nice day, etc…. I don’t do it.. and I’m sure neither would many of us be doing it.
- Also, have you noticed that most of the tweets or Facebook Updates are more about general things in life (and nothing about personal life updates).. people update about Weather, update about the current global/local news, links to articles, etc… very rarely are the updates talking about what is happening in ‘our’ lives or asking people what is happening in ‘their’ lives… These platforms are soon becoming stages for self expression, and broadcasting . Our personal live glimpses are best left inside of us

Why is it that technology starts of with the intent of filling a basic human need to being in touch with others and communicating with others … it on its way, changes track to fulfill a more self-centric need of humans – about self consumption or self-expression?
Could it be that the low entry barrier for any new technology to get adopted by the people is the Social Need stage as proposed by Maslow in the hierarchy of needs



and as they get used to social stage they look at a higher level and move towards the Esteem stage

It could be a good insight for technology companies who are looking at innovate products or services to see that they enter with a purpose of serving the basic human need and then move higher up in the pyramid

On a lighter note, would as part of self actualization, people realize that there is nothing the technology can do, and hence walk away from technology? :)

Think about it

Cheers

Santosh