ZooZoo-ism is the new religion

Finally, I have decided to write about the latest sensation of the advertising world - ZooZoos (not sure about the origin of the name but I quite like it). The day I saw the first ad (click here to see all the ZooZoo ads), the planner inside me got curious to know the creative brief that the planner on the account must have given to the creative team. Whatever the brief might me, its creative manifestation has ensured that Vodafone continues to enjoy the consumers' affinity in the 'post-pug' era (click here to see the ad). ZooZoomania has taken over the imagination of the people. After a long time, I saw people waiting for an ad to come on TV .

As they say, if advertising is the religion, ZooZoo's are the God :)

Thankfully, O&M, the creators of ZooZoo, extended the thought beyond the mass media and built communities and fan groups (click here) on the social networking sites. The official fan page of ZooZoo on Facebook has more than 3lac fans. (Shahrukh Khan's fan page has around 2.5 lac fans. Click here).

The challenge, however, is to carry forward this euphoria and ride on it as far as possible. Few top of mind options-

- Advertising is nothing but creative storytelling: ZooZoo's became popular because everytime they appeared on television, they had something fresh to tell. People waited for those new 'stories'. Use digital media to tell new and innovative stories about ZooZoo's, by the ZooZoo's. Nothing stops Vodafone to tell interesting ZooZoo stories in 140 characters. That could in fact, attract people to create their own ZooZoo stories. Did I just hear ZooZoo comic?

- Offer what consumers want: People love those 'irrational noises' - the ZooZoo talk. Is there a possibility to do something around that? Can we take it on to the mobile platform? How about ZooZoo based VAS offerings?

- Come out of the television, get in to their homes (and hearts): Indian answer to the 'firang' Barbie. Believe me, its gonna be a hit.

All said and done, one thing needs to be taken care of in the long term. Hutch (and Vodafone) streched the whole 'pug' story too far. From 'pug-o-mania', it went on to become 'pug-o-phobia'. Avoid that in this case.

Waiting to see more stuff on ZooZoo. Hope the entertainment continues.

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

Be a Digital-Celebrity!

As the url of this blog - 'Are you a brand' suggests - it's all about creating a niche for yourself, whether in the real world or the digital world. Creating a brand out of oneself is a long term proposition which requires a carefully thought out plan and its meticulous implementation. A Digital Celebrity in the virtual space is same as a brand in the real world.

How to be a Digital Celebrity or How to create Brand 'You'?

Owning your share of real estate in the virtual world is the first step towards achieving the stardom. Be there on Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and what-have-you and let people know about your presence. The logic is simple - Be visible. These destinations help you create your own circle of influence, which might create the ripple effect, if used judiciously.

In the Digital space, everything is public, be sure what content you are putting up on various social media platforms. Every picture that you upload on flickr or every video that you share on Youtube tells a million things about you. Be careful!

Engage yourself with various communities. Be active and contribute constructively. Let people get exposed to your way of thinking.

As the rule says - Low risk, Low return - High risk, High return. Do not hesitate in voicing your opinion in public forums and on socially (or otherwise) relevant issues.

Last but not least, own a domain name (www.yourname.com), if possible.

Wanna know who is bitching about you?

Recently, I came across a very interesting tool that could add a new dimension to the process of measuring campaign effectiveness. Summize (www.summize.com) is a search engine that tracks the ongoing conversations on Twitter. Imagine, an advertising agency informing its client about the consumer’s attitude, positive or negative, after few hours of a new launch. Simply mind blowing!!! Although, the number of tweets is not large enough to represent the entire digital population, it is still a very useful tool for monitoring a brand.

Just like Google, Summize tracks the conversations through keywords. However, it does not show the total number of conversations.

Despite this, Summize is a great tool that allows marketers to know and understand consumers’ attitude towards their brand.