Me-too Blogs!

Having watched a lot of me-too ads, me-too brands and me-too products over the years, I wasn't surprised when I saw a 'me-too' blog. Following the stupendous success of the Fake IPL player's blog (click here to see), another blog called 't20worldcupmole.blogspot.com' (click here to see) has come into the limelight. The author claims to be a part of one of the teams participating in the T20 World Cup.

My initial reaction - hmmm...let's wait and watch.

The initial response to the blog is nowhere comparable to the FIP blog. This blog only has 2 followers and hardly around 100 comments. But passing any judgement at this point of time about the popularity/following of this blog would be too premature. Once the World Cup begins, then only we would get a clear picture.

Few random thoughts on 'Me-too' stuff -

- 'Differentiate or Die' Or 'Diferentiate & Die': Its all about cracking that 'insight' basis which a branding idea is developed. The insight/branding idea for two different brands may be silmilar, the execution needs to be different and obviously better (Sorry, Mr. Jack Trout). Differentiating your brand just because your competitors' have already postioned themselves in a certain way is definitely debatable. Two different brands can own the same idea and still execute them in a completely different way. Two brands can still survive without infringing into each other's territory.

- Trust your consumer : You don't need to get defensive in case their are any similarities between the two ideas. Recently, Ad-pundits have pointed out lot of similarities between the latest Loop mobile campaign and the Vodafone (then Hutch) campaign. So What?? How does it make a difference. Leave it to the consumers to decide. If the consumers find a better emotional connect in the recent campaign compare to the earlier one, they will accept it otherwise it would be forgotten just like most of the other campaigns.

Take it lightly!

A very simple yet effective WEBSITE created by Ogilvyone India for the brand Cadbury's Perk. Click here to see.

P.S: Don't miss the loader

World's smallest 'learn-by-earning' University

Yes..you read it write. Sumit Roy (my Account Planning teacher at MICA) runs world's smallest learn-by-earning university called Univbrands. Check out his website here. Read an article on 'Aha' trees - A tool devised by Sumit for doing brand research and generate consumer insights. Click here to read the article.

Digital News Lifecycle

Read an interesting post about the Digital news lifecycle. It talks about how breaking of the 'breaking news' on the social media platforms is no longer a news. In fact, these days, if a news appears in mass media before it is twittered, then definitely its a matter of surprise.

Few excerpts:

The Digital News Lifecycle -

1. Twitter Alert: A bystander (accidental citizen journalist) will break the story via Twitter.

2. Blog Post: News organizations and bloggers will pick up the story and write a quick blog post about it, often with a link to the tweet or the photo.

3. Article/ Package: News organizations will convert the story into a 300 word newspaper article or a 3 minute TV story.

4. Context: Bloggers, news organizations and Wikipedia contributors will quickly start compiling background material on the story.

5. Analysis: Bloggers and news organizations will offer in-depth analysis on the story, and news organizations will often interview the bloggers who have broken the story or provided the most context on it, as part of their analysis.

6. Conversation: The conversation will continue in the comments sections of blogs and news websites, on Twitter and on social networking, social voting, and social bookmarking websites.

7. Customization: The entire story, across multiple formats and sources, will be available as an archive that can be searched by tags, accessed in various formats, including RSS feeds, and recombined to provide context for future stories.

As the news story will move through its lifecycle, both the depth of the story and its reach will increase, hit the peak in the context or analysis stage, and then decrease thereafter, as the interest in the story decreases. The story will move from alert to analysis in an hour, a day, or a week, depending on the nature of the news. The conversation and customization stages will in the domain of the long tail and go on almost indefinitely, driven by search.

Click here to read the entire post.

Communication: Then & Now

Source: Mike Keefe Cartoons

Wolfram Aplha is just 'another' website

Yes, you read it right. All the hype and talk around the new so called Computational Knowledge Engine - Wolfram Alpha aka Google Killer is nothing more than a euphoria before every new launch. When Cuil was launched, it was also termed as the next 'in' thing. We all know what happened to it. Viewzi also died unceremoniously (well, almost).

After having experienced the new search engine, my point of view on it is very clear, Its just another website and nothing else. When you input any query, you get 'crap' and tonnes of it. The kind of absurd facts and figures that you get would be of no interest to any normal internet user. Take for instance, if you search for advertising. This 'search engine' shows you the input interpretation, typical word frequency, synonyms, narrower terms, broader terms and a complex looking synonym network. Click here to see. What the hell? Mr. Wolfram, I want to search the knowledge on the internet. What you have done is, you have converted a simple dictionary into a complicated looking 'search engine'. I don't need a mathematics based search engine to know synonyms or definitions. Disgusting!

Take another example, I wanted to visit Reliance communications' website. When I typed Reliance Communications, it showed the message - 'Wolfram Alpha is not sure what to do with your input'. See here. Hell. When I typed Reliance, it showed me some absurd details about a US based company. Click here to see.

My reaction - a big thumbs down.

The reason why Google has managed to capture the imagination of the internet audience is -

- Simplicity: Its not about complex coding and algorithms at the back end, the internet user cares a hell about it. You give me what I want, not what you want to show me. Filter the crap. Don't show me irrelevant stuff and most importantly, present it in a simple, easy to digest way.

- Innovation: Google always builds on its existing offerings and simplifies things further. Its ability to innovate has made it what it is today. Showing synonyms and definitions is not innovation. Its using high-tech stuff to take you light years back.

It would be interesting to see whether Wolfram Alpha would be able to compete against Google or not but one thing is clear, someone who prefers simplicity, would stick to Google.

Hail Google!

And the winner is...Fake IPL Player

I thought of writing this post when the news of someone called ‘Fake IPL player’ blogging about the inside stories of the Kolkata Knight Riders’ camp broke out. However, I managed to resist the temptation of blogging about the current superstar of social media (read Fake IPL player). Before doing that, I wanted to see how far the story would go, whether there would be any interesting twists and turns in this unconventional Bollywood type suspense-thriller and whether some intelligent brain, cricketing or otherwise would be able to catch the protagonist of the story red-handed.

To everyone’s surprise, Fake IPL player has become more popular than the celebrated cricketing stars. It seems Fake IPL player has got real intelligence (and balls).

A lot of people have been talking, writing and closely following each and every post that our blogger writes, I managed to bring out few observations which I believe were crucial to the success of this blog. Click here to access the blog.

- Content is the king: In my earlier post I have emphasized on the importance of having content which is interesting and meaningful to the target community. The digital audience is waiting for the content that they can talk about, share and most importantly contribute. Whenever they get such opportunity, they build on it, contribute with more related content, invite others to share their views and obviously react to them.

- Its about conversation: More than 7200 followers, 110,000+ profile views, 13000+ responses to the poll and hundreds of conversation threads following clearly shows that the conversations are happening and people are enjoying them too. Initially, I thought that the Fake IPL player would keep the conversation one way and restrict himself to the posts about the KKR camp. I was wrong. The F-IPL-Player actually responded to the comments and queries posted by the people. Had he not responded to those comments, the blog wouldn’t have got the popularity that it has got. Atleast I think so.

- Relevance of the content: Given the hype-hulla around the event, the glam quotient and the million dollar underperforming babies, the blog became the central point to get all the information about the much talked event. Whether it’s the racial discrimination within the KKR team, the romantic encounters of Kishen Kanhaiya or the onfield antics of Appam C******, the blog talks about everyting.

Whether the Fake IPL player would reveal his identity, as he has promised, is yet to be seen but one thing is clearly evident, Fake IPL player is the real superstar of the social media.

My First Experiment

The verdict is out and it’s a success. After being in the digital communication space for more than a year and having talked and seen a lot of interesting stuff, I finally decided to create a viral on my own.

Given the nature of the online medium, you cannot control the message. Once the communication is out, you can just hope that you find favour among the people who get exposed to it.Any communication which is not viral-able, is a waste. With that rule in mind I started thinking of what possibly I could do that can become a viral.

Inspired by the recent Domino’s incident which took the entire digital space by storm, I chose Facebook to do the experiment. During my MBA days at MICA, I met and interacted with lot of talented people who were really passionate about MICA. Due to this reason, I chose to talk to this closed community of MICAns. For that I developed a Facebook application – Which MICAn are you? This application calculates your MICAn quotient based on few questions and tells you what kind of a MICAn you are. (application to be submitted to the directory)

Few thoughts that passed through while I was thinking –

- Don’t tell people what you want to say, tell them what they want to hear: MICAns cherish every single moment that they lived at MICA. Talking about those moments in some form or the other would definitely appeal to them. All the answers in the quiz reminds of those moments – be it the nights spent playing counterstrike or those pfaffy lectures.

- Never tell a person that he is an idiot, he wont pass that to his friends: There are lots of things, good and bad, which we want to tell people. If your message or communication or content offends them, they wont viral it. Make sure you convey the most offending thing in a lighter tone. E.g. You can’t tell someone that he is a womenizer but you can definitely say that he is a ‘palaash-gal’ lover (contact a MICAn to know more about Palaash-gal)

- Understand your TG, their likes and dislikes: As I mentioned earlier, MICAns are really passionate about MICA. No matter what, you can’t hurt their sentiments in any way.

- Positive or Negative Word-of-mouth – You can’t decide: Well, the experiment itself was a big risk. Talking about MICA to MICAns! I was lucky that the community accepted and viralled it. My job was to initiate the conversation, which I did, but beyond that I had no control over it. It was the community which took it forward.

Hope to do more such experiments using this interesting medium and share the learnings with everyone.

The latest source of inspiration - Youtube & Google Images

Of late, the way research is carried out in the advertising agencies has changed drastically. Two of the most popular sources of 'reference' that I use are google images and youtube. However, the reference is not just restricted to inspiration but can be seen explicitly in the creative output. Recently I came across an article that talks about the instances when the creative manifestation was very much similar to the orginal source of inspiration (read youtube). Click here to read the article.