splendid future

3G Burger – with extra sauce

2010-06-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

Bidding is over and there is only anticipation that is left between now and the date of launch.

But will it work in India? Will Indians spend on this new functionality?

I believe it will - if we McAlooTikkify the 3G service.

(McAlooTikki Burger = Global product, local taste)

The past has already shown us the way. What really moves people are the novel plans (packages) rather than the technology that really moves people. From Tata Indicom’s long hours plan, to Airtel’s night calling. From MTN’s free 10,00,000 minutes to Vodafone’s unlimited SMS pack. Its all about making the AaloTikkiBurger out of your service and my favourite – ‘chhota recharge’.

All these helped in making mobile phone usage almost like having chai – a habit not just a necessity.

Indians are profusely emotional & shamelessly frugal. We are not pragmatic & yet we have a intuitive sense of how much things should cost. If 3G bases it’s offering on these two important characters of users in India – it might be in for something big.

If priced right, 3G would be the equivalent of a portable 24x7 webcam in the hands of as many people as can make a phone call today! That is a heady mix.

Here are the 8 shifts to look for in the next half to one year of India with 3G

SMS usage will fall

Imagine you are in love. Will you wait to send an SMS to your loved one? Won’t you just switch press a button and just talk to her right away.

Rural will play a major role

While we all know that metro cities will drive growth due to rich pockets. But it will be technologically of the poor who don’t how to read and write. For them communication will become as simple as ON and OFF just like your tubelight. A father won’t think too much to speak to his son who is studying in city.

Video streaming sites will see a boom

Either your social networks won’t exist or they will adapt to video streaming service. Either Youtube will become the next social network or Youtube will become an integral part of Orkut etc. Youtube will derive an its own kind of ad network. Today, as we see facebook f integrated in all sites. Next 2 years will see that Youtube’s Y integrated into all.

Media will have a lot less control on their content

Today, the way Twitter let us know about the latest event in textual form.The same tweets might just change the form into video tweets. Twitcam will become a hit app in India as well.

Data related industries will change

With upto 7.2 Mbps speed, Bollywood production houses will hardly rely on distributors. Because every handset will become their desired screen and the end consumer will be the new distributor. Consumers will buy movies on the go. First show first day will be on mobile first then in multiplexes.

Storage providers will mint money

Particularly cloud storage business will grow. It will become very difficult for storage solution providers to keep up with the pace of data transfer. Product innovation will become the need of the hour. Therefore in the event of finding low data space on their handsets, people would prefer to store their data in clouds than in a mini sd card.

Business models will change

Businesses would prefer rental models than the sale models. For example movies will relay on your handset, rest on it for the specified time and then they will automatically expire.

Pressure will be to innovate

Handset manufacturers will be under tremendous pressure to produce low cost, low power and long lasting battery handsets.

Cyber crime will be at its peak

Today, governments are banning Google, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube just for a simple reason that all the critical relating to nation’s security is freely available. Today, Indian government has given a restricted access to Google Earth so that it can peek into critical geographical territories. But after 3G mobile handset in everyone’s hand who would actually need Google Earth to get that info.

Finally, TVC will be back.

I would call it near end of 2D internet advertising. Flat print ad adapts web banners won’t be used at a large extent. Clients, advertising agencies, new media houses all of them will be forced to learn interactive advertising. I am intentionally avoiding the word digital here.

All the industries will be impacted, be it education or healthcare. There will be real time product reviews, service deliveries etc. Decision making time will be left to milliseconds.

Advertising and Accessibility

2009-09-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

A world beyond Zoozoos

We all felt the storm during the recent Twenty20 cricket season, the storm of Zoozoos. Approx. 30 odd TV commercials of Zoozoos were aired by Vodafone in the period of just 2 months, which did prove to be fruitful. I am sure the client Vodafone was extremely happy because this invented character called Zoozoo stirred the whole telecom industry, won them many international awards and generated a huge fan following in the digital world, some 3,00,000 fans joined the Zoozoo page.

But in this whole marketing activity, we missed to address a very important target audience, the audience, who is visually challenged. Why do we neglect this audience while making advertising and media strategy? Now, it won’t appear to be a surprise to the agency and client that Zoozoos didn’t mean anything to this different target audience. Because, the whole ads series was more or less skewed towards visuals and the people with visual disabilities understands the language of speech, touch, smell and little bit of text.

While the whole world is thinking of this sizeable target audience, why isn’t the advertising industry?

Some numbers to show the potential of this target audience:

About 314 million people are visually impaired worldwide, 45 million of them are blind.
Most people with visual impairment are older, and females are more at risk at every age, in every part of the world.
About 87% of the world's visually impaired live in developing countries.
The number of people blinded by infectious diseases has been greatly reduced, but age-related impairment is increasing.
Cataract remains the leading cause of blindness globally, except in the most developed countries.
Correction of refractive errors could give normal vision to more than 12 million children (ages five to 15).
About 85% of all visual impairment is avoidable globally.

Source: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/

Some of the recent work done for this alternately skilled target audience is as follows:

Apple created the new iPhone 3GS with the visual assisting featues
Yahoo opened India Accessibility lab in Bangalore.
Google is testing Accessible Web Search for the Visually Impaired.
Adobe India is supporting visual rehabilitation centre ‘Ujagar’ established by Shroff’s Charitable Eye Hospital.

There are many such initiatives which are run by some of the world's biggest brands to empower this neglected community.

These initiatives are so empowering that they are building one of the most talented community by providing assisted technologies to the visually challenged group. My recent few visits to ‘Ujagar’ actually surprised me when I looked at those students. To tell, they use Jaws to access computers, Nuance to read mobile screen, DAISY to create and edit audio files and of course Braille to read and write and a lot more. Isn’t it amazing?

I think they are challenging the world and aren’t challenged in any way.

I just hope we all start seeing them as an important part of our target audience.

ZooZoos and more

2009-06-01T02:19:00.000-07:00

The recent statistics of ZooZoos in the online world shows that ZooZoos have actually stormed the whole Indian advertising industry.

Some of the figures are like this:

65,000 users joined the world of ZooZoos on Facebook.com

More than 3,700 comments were received on Facebook.com

On May 4, the keyword ‘ZooZoo’ was the third highest search word on Google.co.in

ZooZoos YouTube channel is the second most subscribed channel in India

Source: Agencyfaqs.com, http://digital.afaqs.com/perl/digital/news/story.html?sid=23957

These figures are enough to show how popular it has become in India and how valuable a property of Vodafone it has become. Besides, I think ZooZoos have touched many business angles and means much more to advertising agencies, Vodafone and to digital platforms like facebook, Youtube etc.

Considering the scenario of advertising agencies:

Ogilvy & Mather India, the advertising agency behind ZooZoos has stirred the creative production capabilities of all competing agencies. Not only the agency has receive the initial fame for ZooZoos from PETA, but has also made the agency as one of the most promising contender for all upcoming awards. The campaign has gained so much popularity in such a short time because of its clutter breaking production differentiation and seems to have posted threat to many Indian mom n pop digital creative agencies/viral marketing & social media optimization specialist agencies.

O&M has tremendously helped Vodafone India with the seamless transition of the brand image from just pug to highly popular ZooZoos. It takes the brand transformation capabilities of O&M to a next level. Simply put, better work means more business for agency.

Implications on Vodafone:

Keeping a track on such a popularity of ZooZoos in India, shouldn't Vodafone carry forward this campaign and storm the whole world and not just India. This animation-like advertising has broken all the cultural barriers and have created such a neutral ad campaign. Now, how will Vodafone extend the ZooZoos implications is a question worth considering…

Will Vodafone start a cartoon series on ZooZoos?

Will ZooZoos take the seat of the so called Happy to Help?

Will ZooZoos be extended to other countries, due to its culture neutral nature?

Will ZooZoos become a new face of Vodafone?

Or some other route, it will depend on marketing objectives.

Learning from ZooZoos?

It has been talked again and again that the “content is the king” in online world. But just leaving the content to float and become popular on its own is not a solution to effective social media marketing, which ZooZoos’ marketing campaign has again proved to us.

Therefore, any content put up on any social network needs to be constantly monitored.

A marketer must listen to their consumers continuously and respond back even faster because consumers are keenly waiting for reply.

Before any other user gives any biased comment, the marketer should reply but should support it with facts. In the case of ZooZoos on facebook, Neo@Ogilvy and OgilvyOne Worldwide, the digital media and creative agencies of O&M, listened to the demand of ZooZoos related content and immediately uploaded it on facebook and Vodafone’s India site.

Consumers are ready to give feedback and suggestions but valid and interesting questions should be put in front of them. Just see the ideas flowing in …

Aircel and Vodafone have both attacked the Indian telecom industry with VAS related campaigns, I am keen to see how Airtel will counter it?

What comes before music?

2009-04-29T03:02:00.000-07:00

Last week Music Ally* released the latest figures on the usage of Nokia’s Comes With Music Service in UK. The figures are quite obvious, as it points out that the accessibility of genres has increased, no. of downloads has increased as compared to Nokia Music Store but alarmingly, the majority of downloads are from PC and not from mobile. I mean Over The Air(OTA) downloads hasn’t picked up much. Even the no. of subscribers of this service is just 23,000. Nokia is soon launching this service in India as well.

So, what do these figures mean for Indian market?

As per the latest report from televisionpoint.com dated 23^rd of April, the total revenue from the combined sources from all voice portals is mere 13 %, which includes music, jokes by dialing into an interactive voice response which have a 13 per cent revenue share. This report also points out that there is lack of awareness of VAS in India.

Nokia’s Comes with Music launch also reminds me of Motorola India’s recent acquisition of Singapore based digital music aggregator, Soundbuzz. When Motorola launched its music download service in Indian even they din’t offer DRM free the way Nokia did it in UK. Later, I guess even Motorola joined hands with Airtel Live due to high operating costs and infrastructure restrains. It would have certainly helped Motorola to corner around 25% of total mobile subscriber base in India. But again I’ll stress that music wasn’t DRM free and only downloadable on Motorola and Microsoft platforms.

Now, it will be worth watching that what kind of business model Nokia will bring to justify its services driven strategy to India. India being one of the most important market for Nokia, is fortunately also the hottest market for digital music downloads. Comes with music’s success will actually define the success of Nokia’s services in India. Now what all are the options available with Nokia to launch this music service?

Will Nokia support it with the help of advertising model, by using its Nokia Media Network?

Will Nokia club the cost of music in the phone?

Will Nokia follow iTunes model?

Will Nokia launch music Comes With Music on the lines of Imeem?

Will Nokia offer DRM free music in India?

Will Nokia tie up with any service provider?

How will this service be different from Airtel or Vodafone’s music service?

How will Nokia sustain the relationships with telecom service providers because ultimately Nokia is attempting to garner the share of VAS which is till today the bread and butter of service providers?

Isn’t it a tough job to answer all the questions absolutely correct?

*Music Ally is the leading digital music business information and strategy company.

Unseen battle between Google and Nokia

2009-04-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

Google Vs Nokia

Since the time Nokia has decided to align its business operations under services category, my mind keeps asking only one question, who will be the winner?

Nokia is entering into Google’s territory and Google is entering into Nokia’s territory. When I say Google’s territory then I see internet services and when I say Nokia’s territory then I call it mobile handsets operating system and related software.

Let’s look at their core strengths:

Google = Internet powered world class consumer centric softwares

Nokia = World class mobile handsets for masses

Does it actually make sense for Nokia to be present in all the stages of mobile ecosystem, excluding wireless services?

From product manufacturing to product selling to aggregating services to services selling

Should we call it diversification or should we call it distraction?

Shouldn’t Nokia focus on manufacturing world class handsets in place of aggregating & selling services? We are already seeing services becoming virtually free due to free download, p2p software, easy sharing technologies like Bluetooth2.0 . Just imagine the seamless sharing after Bluetooth 3.0

At least in India, I haven’t come across any friend of mine who will buy a handset coz of services. Just visit any local market and for only 100 bucks get all your content transferred in your handset by the local mobile handset repair shop.

If I look at OVI then it seems Nokia is taking the route of “Connected Convergence”. By CC, I mean diversified and unified internet services but all connected at the backed. Here, I mean services being connected under OVI umbrella. But the question is what will be that thread which will keep the Nokia users connected? Will it be Ovi’s ID or IMEI? I don’t know which of these will be a stronger proposition. I mean which of these will help Nokia to keep track of users across platforms like Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, Nokia handset etc? What will happen if there are new services to be launched? Won’t the umbrella get shrunk? There are many such questions popping up in my mind.

If I look at Google then I see Google banking on its core. That is to create internet related world class consumer centric software. Only the platform has added with the advent of 7^th mass media i.e. mobile. We all have seen the revolutionary operating system Android in Google’s kitty.

When it comes to Google I am somehow optimistic that it will win this software development battle, which is ultimately banking on internet, be it PC or Mobile. The best thing I like about Google is Google’s “Connected Divergence”. By CD, I refer to diversified and spread out products of Google, like Google search engine, Youtube, Gmail, Orkut, Google maps, Google earth etc. but all are seamlessly connected with your one email id. By keeping all the products connected Google stands an advantage of monitoring the continuous user behavior. Nokia doesn’t have this edge over Google.

Whether you are using Google on PC or Mobile, Google has all the information of operating system, time spent on device, model number being used, which is later clubbed with customer profile being stored at Google’s end.

Nokia doesn’t have this edge because it is not connected to its customer, despite connecting people. Nokia still needs to work on its analytics.

Will Nokia’s Ovi or MyNokia will actually help the company to understand its customer, I am keeping fingers crossed.