The e-fly Post

Collect to be or not to be...

2011-04-06T11:36:00.001+04:00

Here's another one worth reading from Adage Digital.
It is almost a panaromic sweep on online privacy concerns and the hardened consumer mind-set on "Free" - and the overall impact it is going to have on digital media.

What it doesn't touch upon too much, is the oncoming wave of PayWalls that we are going to see for sure.
If a "Do not Track" is ever implemented - and actually is even remotely successful - and signs are that it might be ( The Do Not Call service in the US today has over 200 million registrations) - then surely a lot of Digital Media sources that today make the Web a place worth investing your time in - will have to make some very difficult choices. To put behind a Pay Wall their more valuable content. Content that it takes money and wages to produce.
And I agree with the the title of the article - "Hey Web Freeloaders: Your Lunch Is Not Free"! .
Really - it isn't. Either accept to be targeted by relevant commercial messages - or pay for what you enjoy. You can't have the cake, eat it and then spit in someone's face - when they present you with the bill.

Another sweet moment in contextual placement!

2011-01-27T16:54:00.001+04:00

The headline reads' Egyptian police queued up to punch me' - and the pre-roll signs off with 'Egypt - Where it all begins!'.

Another lesson in how to choose your contextual placement keywords and phrases.

Seen on http://bbc.co.uk

YouTube Blog: The ad your ads could look like: Looking back at t...

2011-01-13T14:27:00.000+04:00

YouTube Blog: The ad your ads could look like: 2010 was a breakout year for video advertising, which is an unmitigated good thing for advertisers and viewers alike. As audiences, platforms, channels and devices continue to fragment into ever-more-specific niches, earning people's attention has become ever more challenging... here are a few that made the cut.

1. The man your man could smell like - Old Spice - 25 million views

2. Write the Future - Nike - 22 million views

3. Tipp-Ex - NSFW - 13 million views

4. Deliver me to Hell - Hell Pizza - 2.5 million views

5. Swagger Wagon - Totyota Sienna - 7.6 million views

6. Lotso huggin bear - Toystory 3 - 1.2 million views

Full story here

Brand Building in the Digital Age

2010-11-01T21:44:00.001+04:00

Caught my eye: " I am obessesive about brands; how they should behave, where and when they can add value and how they are created"

And another one:
" so do you have an 'actionable articulation of intentions and ambitions?' that is knowing the difference between the right to win business over the right to be in business".

Brand Building in the Digital Age

View more presentations from Dan Dimmock.

Sweet Moments in contextual placement

2010-03-24T08:47:00.001+04:00

Sometimes it all just comes together so ******* perfectly!
(If you are quick, you can probably see it here)

Facebook Demographics

2010-01-27T09:54:00.000+04:00

From Reuter's - a telling snapshot of who is taking over Facebook:

"Faebook has given me the opportunity to touch with new friends around the globe who bring me up to date on places I visted obout fifty years ago. Also, friends post pictures of their children and I watch them grow into adults.If I want recreation, there are many diversional games to play and have some fun when nothing else is in my plans for the day. Terrific site."

SEO Vs Brand Values - The Great Publishers' Dilemma

2009-12-24T11:01:00.000+04:00

Came across this in ContentSutra - one of the ContentNext Network sites. Worth a read. A good indicator of things to come - the battle-lines are becoming clearer. Rupert Murdoch's call to fence off search engines seems to be finding echoes in multiple quarters.

This speech by Matt Kelly, Associate Editor of the Mirror UK, at the World Editors' Forum in Hyderabad, India is a clarion call of sorts for Publisher brands to unite - and protect, what they fundamentally believe is value created by them, that is being appropriated by the likes of Google and their ilk.

Some of the juicier excerpts from the speech:
In our great frantic headlong rush to accumulate users at any cost, many of us were all too quick to sacrifice anything that stood in the way of search engine optimisation” (SEO).

“... The game is up. The days of leading the newspaper industry by the hand, down the path of mythic riches, are coming to a rapid close.”

"massively oversupplying a finite market generally leads to a collapse in value. Great swathes of newspaper website inventory - sometimes as much as 90 percent of page views - went unsold. "

"the very CPM model we’d prostituted our brands for online, began to punish us. The massive oversupply of ad inventory led to a rapid erosion of value..."

"online, “users” is about right. They find our content in a search engine, they devour it, then they move back to Google, or wherever, and go looking for more. Often, they have no idea which website it was they found the content on. This was the audience we’ve been chasing all that time. A swarm of locusts." (Ouch!!)

"And the hell with SEO. We we’re chasing passion, here, not page impressions."

"It means building sites that perform well for humans, not search engines. It means we have to stop thinking about users, but start thinking of readers, listeners, viewers. One day, even customers."

You can read the full speech here: ContentSutra.com

The Economist - The World in 2010 Festival

2009-12-22T18:23:00.001+04:00

First China Bashing. Then Dubai Bashing. And then finally, they get down to some serious business. Of more bashing.

Western Economic paranoia and angst at its best?

Definitely worht a watch though - for the sheer range of topics.

Watch the video here.

Another R.I.P...

2009-09-27T16:58:00.003+04:00

D***... this is becoming a regular Obit Column.

Despite carrying the digital torch for over ten years now - this is one particular demise that I will definitely mourn.

There are certain print titles that you will always miss. And these are print titles - whose Digital avatars sometimes don't come close to the paper and ink versions.

The wake is for the Far Eastern Economic Review - a long-time favorite.

Dow Jones & Co. said it plans to close the Far Eastern Economic Review, bringing down the curtain on the 63-year-old magazine as the company redirects resources to its other news outlets in Asia.

The website also will vanish. The archives however will be available through asia.wsj.com. Amen!

Another R.I.P...

2009-09-27T16:57:00.000+04:00

From the New Yorker. R.I.P, MJ.

2009-07-06T18:27:00.001+04:00

Digital: The future of marketing

2009-07-06T15:45:00.003+04:00

There isnt enough paint in the world - that can gloss over the essential truth that is glaring out from every conceivable wall.

If you can't read it, then you are not just blind, but terminally so.

Here's the CMO of one of America's retail successes both in the online and brick and mortar worlds talking about it.

Agency Credentials

2009-07-06T14:55:00.003+04:00

About 415, 500 people have already seen this. Which means it is no longer News. But as old news goes, this is great stuff - so I think still worth talking about.

The video is how Boone Oakley present their agency credentials.

Wonder how many pitches, this actually set in motion.

Social Media for Publishers

2009-07-06T13:44:00.002+04:00

Ok - so you are a publishing house yourself and spend millions of bucks trying to put content together in the hope that it is going to appeal

to enough people who will take thetrouble to come to your website or buy your magazine or your book so that you can you can make enough

money to pay those huge salaries to all those people you have employed who are sitting there producing that content that you hope will bring

in those audiences from whom you can can make enough money to ..... all right you get the picture.

Now here's a O'REilly webcast / webinar on exactly how to harness the power of Social Media and how it is affecting Publishers of all ilk.

Tweeting for the Corporation

2009-07-06T10:36:00.002+04:00

A nice, small piece in NYT on managing time and resources when you use platforms like Twitter to keep customer relationships on an even keel.

The article profiles Bonnie Smalley, a "human customer service rep" for comcast - who uses Twitter mainly to reach out to customers seeking to talk to the company. She does it so well that she was blocked by Twitter for handtyping too many tweets in one hour.

She explains how she stays on top of the game - and gives some useful tips - among them" Don't let the web rule you'.

Read on for some really useful tips.

The Hindu gets it - this time!

2009-07-06T10:13:00.004+04:00

For a media giant - the Hindu, in my observation, has always been slow to get technology and new media.

But for the Budget 2009 - they did. And surprise, surprise - no one else did.Not Indiatimes, not Rediff, not Sify.com.

The Hindu had an embedded live feed application called CoveritLive (from Coveritlive).

A nifty piece of software, the live text feed was instantaneous and continuous - no interruptions, no breaks. Well done!

And on Coveritlive itself, this is what the page titled Pricing says: "CoveritLive costs nothing to use. So, if you are a niche blogger: you get enterprise class software at no cost to you. If you work at a massive news organization that usually pays tens of thousands of dollars for quality software: "free" does not mean "flimsy". Try the software today and imagine the opportunities it can create for you."

Hmmm... one to watch, I am sure.

Top Spend = Top of Mind

2008-08-29T19:31:00.005+04:00

Coke and adidas got top scores at the Beijing Olympics according to a study by Mediaedge:cia - done thro the Global Market Insight.

The study however was not done at a global level - but restricted to the Chinese Market - "online interviews of some 1,000 residents of Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou during one week in April and one week in August".

To quote from the report:

"Coca-Cola, which spent between $75 million and $90 million on its Chinese Olympic sponsorship, boosted awareness of its brand among respondents from 28% in April to 50% during the Games.

How?: Coke tripled its monthly spend in the six weeks leading up to the opening ceremony.

Mediaedge:cia says Adidas spent $250 million on its complete Olympics sponsorship and advertising but that Adidas and competitor Nike, not an official sponsor, got the same level of brand awareness--16% and 11%, respectively. But by August, Adidas grew Chinese consumer awareness to 38%, while Nike only raised its awareness to 18%. Why?: Adidas's success was a result of on-screen presence through branded clothing and consistent Olympics-related advertising in the six months prior to the Games.

The article also quotes Jon Wright, director of MEC MediaLab APAC: "If brands want to maximize the return of their sponsorship, they need consistent, integrated advertising strategies. There are six months from the torch relay to the end of the Games, and our research has shown that the brands that succeed are the ones that continually keep their advertising and sponsorship fresh and engaging for consumers."

Is anyone tracking the global impact of spends of about $75 - $100 million by these brands? Obviously, China being the fastest growing and one of the largest markets notwithstanding, those $$$s weren't spent just for a Chinese audience.

Quick: what's your phone number?

2007-10-20T20:24:00.000+04:00

Can't remember it?

Well, apparently neither could 1/3rd of under 30s surveyed by neuroscientist Ian Robertson for a research on human memory loss.

And blame it on those tiny squares of wired silicon that we all carry around in our pockets and laptop bags. We have as the author of the article in Wired, points out - outsourced information storage to the seemingly-more-capable machines, what author Cory Doctorow refers to as our 'outboard brains'.

An interesting piece. Made me want to sit and recite all the nursery rhymes I learnt as a kid, but somehow cant seem to remember any more. Read the full article here

Image credit: Illustration: Luke Hayman/Pentagram, with Darrow

UK Newspapers: Showing the way

2007-10-20T19:48:00.000+04:00

Coincidentally, the story i picked to write my way back into the blogosphere, is a continuum of my previous post on Newpapers.

This story on adage talks about how UK newspapers are experiencing growth worldwide - on the internet. The article quotes some relevant statistics - percentage growths in pageviews, unique visitors and of course - the all important ad dollars.

The Times has spent $20 million relaunching its website, the Telegraph reinvented itself as a "multiplatform content provider," and the Financial Times launched an integrated print and online newsroom.

But the overriding pointer for Newspaper brands and magazine brands is still this: if you are a brand who is trusted, don't be afraid to shift mediums. Audience-loyalty is not to the paper the news is printed on, but to what the brand stands for and the role it plays in their lives.

Another side-light is this line" British media content is respected around the world". At least as far as news content goes - it still has no equal.

The death of paper - and the birth of ... what?

2007-07-28T21:38:00.000+04:00

Everyone agrees. News as we know it - and news as most of the world still gets it today - is dying.

Warren Buffett has this to say: "The present model - meaning print - isn't going to work."

And here is what Barry Svrluga, a 36-year-old baseball writer for The Washington Post, has to say: " "If circulation is dropping," and we're trying to figure out how people are going to get their news, who am I to say no to trying out new avenues?" . So, like many journalists today, he has turned platform-agnostic.

Rupert Murdoch has talked about hiring "all the best business journalists in the world" and making The Wall Street Journal free and online only.

And finally Warren Buffet offers another solution: "The ideal combination would be if The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Post had a joint Web site, and you couldn't get any one individually. That, you could sell for a fair amount of money, and it would have one hell of a readership."

So, what will the Newspaper of the future look like? No one seems to know. But everyone agrees - it wont be on paper.

Here's the link to the article - Can the Washington Post survive? on http://money.cnn.com/

Movie marketing goes convenience shopping

2007-07-03T17:47:00.001+04:00

Interesting story on a promo for Simpsons, The movie.

Everything from the name of the store to the stuff inside for sale was pure Simpsons.

Twentieth Century Fox, after an arrangement with the chain, chose 7-eleven stores across the US 9 ( a handful) and converted them to the Kwik-E-Mart, the fictional convenience outlet in the animated series The Simpsons.

As the story reports, 'Customers are traveling from miles away to buy KrustyO's brand cereal and Radioactive Man comics. But you don't have to hunt for a Woo-Hoo-flavored Squishee -- 7-Elevens across the nation are stocking all things "Simpsons" related. The Los Angeles Kwik-E-Mart sold out of its "Simpsons" stuff early Monday, and some customers were hauling Buzz Cola out of the Mountain View store by the case. "

And as one customer reportedly said "I like it. I think it's cool" . "I'll probably take the kids and see the movie." Read full story here.

Trump says' I quit' before NBC says ' You're fired!'

2007-05-21T21:19:00.000+04:00

It had to happen sooner or later. It happened later. But Donald Trump didn't wait to be called into the board room and be told ' you're fired!'. He quit.
After NBC dropped his show ' The Apprentice', (co-produced by him along with Mark Burnett) off its Prime time line-up, the billionaire-entertainer-real-estate tycoon - decided to pull the show out of NBC.

But the show itself has suffered a series of setbacks - both in terms of advertisers and sponsors complaining of botched-up product placements (check this earlier post) as well as plummeting ratings - losing more than two thirds of its debut season audience. (But I confess - I love those pink ties he wears!)

According to this Reuter's report - Trump will continue to work with NBC on his two flagship pageant shows - 'Miss USA' and 'Miss Universe' .

Got telecom billions? Buy a Football Club

2007-05-01T20:38:00.000+04:00

First you sell your stake in the country's biggest Telecom corp. Then you get ousted by the military from your post as Prime Minister. And then you go back to your erstwhile obsession of owning a Premier league team.

Thakshin Shinawatra - he from the land of smiles - is out to get his hands on an English Football Club. This time he is targetting Manchester City. Remember the earlier attempt to buy Liverpool, 3 years back?
Well, this time the exiled premier's band of laywers and accountants are busy doing the due diligence - once it is completed - you just might see a new owner at the helm of Manchester City.
Here In Reuter's Own words

How do you say 'Do no evil' in Chinese?

2007-04-10T07:54:00.000+04:00

These days Google execs must come dressed in camouflage fatigues to the office. On one side, the web-mammoth is cutting a wide swathe in traditional media businesses - stealing shark-sized bites off established players. The glint of steely determination unmistakable, behind the facade of ' digital do-gooder'.
On the other hand, like a huge, blundering amateur it is displaying signs of naivete that would put a debutante to shame. The latest fiasco is of course its run-in with the Chinese internet giant Sohu.com and allegations of Grand Theft - of database of results from Sogou - Sohu's chinese-language character transcription engine.

The misdemeanor was discovered when results on Google's Pinyin were fraught with the same errors that appeared on the older Sogou utility. Pinyin is a Latin alphabetic transcription system for Chinese characters. Google Pinyin allows users to type in pinyin to generate Chinese characters.

After the case of the suspicious co-incidence was exposed, Google has apologised - admitting guilt. But with no explanation as to how it got the database or if it intends to remove it from the site.

J&J: With Serious Intent

2007-03-25T12:52:00.000+04:00

P&G did it in 2005. Shift spend significantly to online formats. Now J&J follows suit. And overtakes. With 20% of its ad spend going to online and other digital formats - J&J and other big FMCGs are sending a clear signal to the TV networks and their partners in collusion: WE WANT ACCOUNTABILITY.

Adage has a more detailed break-up and background on the J&J move.

But disheartening to see, of course, is the recalcitrance that big Agencies sometimes still show towards embracing the online reality. Efforts to carry over strategy from traditional media campaigns to online and even mobile have been anything but seamless. Disjointed efforts or at best size adaptations of print creatives is the only nod that most big agencies give interactive.

And oh yes, some of them havent heard about Dinosaurs either.