Do you take a look at the rear view?

One thing about social networks is the ultimate temptation to see the updates go up and hence the hard on of seeing your “authority” and “rank” go through the roof.

Yet, there is a risk of having said something embarrassing and having to live with it. But, this seems to be pretty low.

One solution to actually find this out would be to go back on your own tweets or facebook profile for the last three months and see how the authority came up. Good that the world is so fast paced that people are forever looking for the fast approaching stuff than glancing on the rear view.

Bondsurance – viral video – Bond, Hema Malini, bad ass bike and unshaven villains

A new viral has come out for IDBI Bonds. This one comes from Contests2win.

The idea is pretty cool. The execution is neat and very Bombay.

Yet, is viral the real way?
Could bonds be sold though humour?

1. Bonds are known for their less return and serious target audience. One may laugh at the ad, think about the hawaldar joke and then move on. Good from an awareness perspective. (We have the coconut dealer with the thick Tamil accent talking about the returns and riches at the end).

2. Ideal solution for selling products which require more thought and research from the audience should be some other form of advertising rather than a viral. Makemytrip virals by Webchutney have clicked as buying air tickets involves opening a few tabs and then booking it. FTW! FTW!

3. Looking at the viral from the contests2win perspective, this is a complete win. They get the eyeballs, they get the creative appreciation and maybe a few awards to put up as testimonials for their competence. However, as an ad agency, they should really look for other means of selling the bonds. Get down to the basics – get more people to buy their client’s stuff.

Awesome effort though. Guess its time to move on from Tamil accent bashing. It ceases to be funny after 25 years!

On ‘the’ three letter middle name

Saw a killer obeservation by Seth Godin on middle names. Here goes….

It’s “The.”

As in Attila The Hun or Alexander The Great or Zorba The Greek.

When your middle name is ‘The’, it means you’re it. The only one. The one that defines the category. I think that focus is a choice, and that the result of appropriate focus is you earn the middle name.

Jordan’s Furniture in Waltham was the place to go for that sort of thing. Bocce Pizza and the Anchor Bar were the places in Buffalo when I was growing up. Google is more appropriately called Google the search engine.

Seek the.

Of course, Winnie the Pooh is the exception that proves the rule.

The president’s phone

Techcrunch has come out with a killer article on Obama’s blackberry.

To be very frank, I never thought it created much of a fuzz anyways. But, then again one could track the exact location of the president, maybe hack into the emails, get some satellite ‘ping’ on the phone, get access to the calls made by the man etc. etc.. On the other hand there is the need to be super efficient, save time, schedule work and a serious blackberry addiction to worry about.

Solution would be to get to manufacture one phone with proper encryptions – un-hackable to use the word. Only the president could use the phone. Voice Recognition and finger print recognitions are nice. But there still could be a chance of bypassing them. Use DNA recognition if you can. Military security systems could also be employed on the phone – for the satellites. One very cool way of doing things would be to duplicate the position of the president. Create maybe 2456 replicas of Barack’s position across the globe. There would still be a risk of 1/2456 of finding his exact position though. If he appears on TV live in say Calcutta, one could be sure that he is not in say Moscow.

Good time to refer movies for ideas. Even Rajni movies for that sake.

Idea of a perfect gift – a prepaid card!

I was thinking about gifts one day. For one I dont like to buy gifts. Too feminine a practice.

However, on a recession struck day a jobless guy like me would like a prepaid card. How cool an idea is that – a prepaid card! Man, that is one gift I would give to a college kid.

Market predictions for the future – how exactly?

I have been following a few market research articles since July 08. Used to think how these guys come up with predictions for future – like for five years in the future.

“Online spends will increase by 20% in 2013″
“Email usage will go up by 75% by 2012″

One tight recession slap and suddenly the double digit figures still remain – “Online spends in 2009 to increase by 0.16%” – we still have two digits post the decimal mark.

I believe most of these numbers actually stand for the present stage of the economy. All predictions stand on the present. I don’t really know if we stand on March 2009 and look back at the predictions made in June 2004 about the future of Online Video (well in 2004, there was no online video – except for a lot of Porn maybe).

So, if you are actually in the business of making predictions for the future – like for five years in the future based on the present set of technologies that is available, what exactly is your game?

Is numbers the real game?

Number of followers is your currency. Follow it like the end of the rainbow.

Really? I don’t get the true gist of this game. Is it relevance or the number of people you reach to. Search Engine Optimization and the Marketing has reduced the entire game into a numbers game. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it ugly?

1. We will get x users and put in y ad. This would give us z views and take it on a CPM basis.

This is the home page of Exchange for Media. Good content actually and lot of readers. However, the numbers have made them do this – a storehouse of ads which makes money by just appearing and disturbing the readers.

2. We would get x users to register with us, quote the figures for a VC pitch.

We all know about Satyam don’t we

3. We would get x users to register with us and send them a newsletter with ads.

And expect people to read the newsletter. No, we do not send newsletters to show them our ads. We just send them that stuff so that they can keep in touch with us. I wonder why we get so many subscription drops.

Ah man! Crap! I need some money – lots of it. HOW?

Wrong assumptions for net behaviors

I really thought I can pretty much make out what people of my demographic would be doing on the web. Guess I am wrong!

1. Online video is not dead people. It is just on the rise. Yes, I like to keep myself busy on the web with the easily accessible written information and get out of the wait for the Youtube video to render itself (and the slow net speeds too – it kinda sucks that way).

2. I was already of the impression that it is the time for FF vs. Chrome debates. People are still enthu on IE. And the dinosaur versions that too. Firefox is still a long way for them. Chrome is “that new thing”.

3. People still have faith in the media – a lot of it. High IQ individuals still watch MTV. There are enough things happening there minus the music that finds its people.

These three observations makes one inside the media umbrella think again. Logic does not really work here. This is mad!

Period in pictures (source: BBC)

Some cool pictures

Vodka and Christmas – drink and rejoice

Winters in India – need for fuel

Power Play – size matters

destruction at gaza

Shah Rukh Khan, Jet airways and youtube. how?

Ever seen lame ads with famous people saying “Imagine”?

Saw a report on Livemint with sort of a case study on SRK. He comes across as a dude who comes on tell you to imagine things that could happen on a Jet Premier flight.

Idea is to shoot SRK take an 8 hour flight from Bombay to London and to shoot the entire trip on camera (“hidden” of course to use the word). SRK could eat, sleep, read, flirt with the hostess, wake up, look out, stretch, work out etc. for these 8 hours.

Now 8 hours equals 480 minutes equals 240 “2 minutes”. Put these two minute shots on youtube and air it directly from the corporate site. Send it across to dudes who can fly (company paid or self paid) premier flights. You may convert a few and maybe manage to kick the ‘guest’ idea