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Feb 19 / 2:40am

Getting The Right Mix

Posted by email 

Forget getting the right media mix – TV, Print, Outdoor, Digital --  it is now about getting the right Digital Mix .. damn. Call it digital media optimization if you may.

And here’s why! There is an alarming wake up call for brands to get onto the monster called Facebook that a whole lot of us are sleeping with. And there is a distant cry to `Tweet please’.

And for most of these brands, they still don’t even have their website right! And if they do, it still does not figure anywhere in Search.

So should they just jump straight on to social media and have a business page on Facebook? Big question that. For the completely into Facebook types, this may sound logical. But wait a minute.

What do I go to Facebook for? Networking. Socializing. FarmVille. Damn.

What do I go to LinkedIn for? Networking, Getting Business leads, Attracting Employees? Being visible in that corporate crowd?

Can any of these networks replace my independent business presence?? NO.

Can any of these completely replace Search?? Scary thought. But `NO!’. Ok at least I don’t think so, not for a while at least unless some other huge monster starts sleeping with us soon.

Frankly, it is all about, well, getting the right digital mix. So marinate with a portion of tomato sauce, a teaspoon of garlic, a dash of black pepper, then sauté the fish… mmm smells good..

Essentially there can’t be a one size fits all. And there will be newer avenues opening all the time. The digital space for marketers is posing a whole new way to do things, and to do it well, the best thing to do would be to breathe and live in this medium, yeah... sleep with it. And if you just can’t do that, rely on a very strong digital agency – preferably one that offers the whole mix of digital media – or get a consultant to do it.

So catch you later then.. keep mixing :)

Chhaya Balachandran Aiyer - Founder - MD | BC Web Wise
Mobile ++91-98-21153139 l Office ++91-22-26421292/3/4 | cb@bcwebwise.com | http://www.bcwebwise.com
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Awarded for Excellence in Creating Customer Experiences by Adobe 2011
Ranked one of India's Top 10 Digital Agencies by the Economic Times : 2009, 2010, 2011
Awarded for Business Excellence by the Indian Institute of Economic Studies in 2009
 
Feb 16 / 11:18am

Box-Out Tuesdays, AND Thursdays

Posted by email 

I really did not know what to write today. So I read up Simon Gill’s Friday Fun post and thought it was so cool. And it also gave me fodder for my blog (smiley).

To share something we do similar we have the Lab at BC Web Wise. Our new site is still getting this zone up, so unfortunately I can’t share the link right away. If you wish to know, please leave your email or some id in comments and we will send you the link as soon as it’s up.

To quickly describe we have these random projects we do where creative people can do whatever they want under the assigned topic. Like we had each individual make their creative play around the fish-n-glass, the fish in a bowl or just the fish - our logo. Each of our creative guys came up with an awesome animated film, like a short story around it. We did this around 6-years ago, I still cherish this very first initiative. A series of such stuff follow after that. It was not a disciplined weekly action, but very random. And people till today free to do any kind of independent project, and it shows up in our Lab.  Some are individual, and some group projects where random team members join together and produce the piece. 

On a weekly level we have two initiatives that happen. One is a Thursday AND (Animation And Design) meets. Its like a one-hour workshop and all kinds of stuff gets created here. The team loves it.

Chagas Ferdinando, our Creative Director kickstarted the "What We Love Doing" initiative at the AND where employees work individually or in teams on creative projects of their choosing in a medium of their choice : VFX, stopmotion, claymation, photography, product design. The projects are then presented to everyone and evaluated on how laterally and creatively you are able to interpret the assignment, the kind of R&D that went into it and how effectively you present your work.

Another is a Tuesday morning meet, the Box Out session,(yeah from basket ball). Though we don’t really play the game, this is like a random ideas innovation meet. And it is not just for `creative’ designated people. Anyone gets to be a part of it. So this way there could bet he business head, servicing guys, finance, anyone. And we get some really cool cross connection of thought and direction. Work that is coming out of this includes – sharing of ideas and latest stuff; ideas that can be sold to clients; ideas we can do for fun and experiment. Most of all it is fun to meet like this, especially when we also get some great breakfast going with the meet.

That’s it from me today. Some more tomorrow. Have a great day.

And yea..by the way.. in Japan they have fish for breakfast. In India, in the city of Kolkatta too a small portion of fish makes it to the breakfast too. I believe they are healthy and plan to have a `healthy-fish’breakfast at our next Box Out. For anyone else interested here’s a recipe you may want to try out: http://lkcafe.blogspot.com/2010/09/fish-for-breakfast.html (BTW: I haven’t yet!)

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Feb 15 / 1:10pm

India - Digital Revolution, Who Will Bell The Cat

Posted by email 
In India, users who connect through their mobile phones for Facebook,
Twitter, Foursquare are much more active on these social networks then
those who use it through the larger screen options. Annoying to me so
I disabled my own mobile RSS feeds, as I do not really want a
ball-by-ball update on what the network of people I know are feeling at the
moment, or where they are, or if they are still awake like me.

But what do you have to say about this: We have 730 million mobile
connections in a population of 1.2 billion. We have 80 million users
on the Internet. What does this mean to us?

Seems like there is a mobile marketing, mobile web, mobile
applications, mobile gaming revolution that can completely change the
face of communication in our country? On the other hand the number of
brands who are active on the mobile phone vs those on TV and press is
minuscule. (I don't have access to accurate data to share) Is there an
opportunity for the next generation marketers here? YES of course.. why am I asking.

Everyone with a phone is not only using the phone for calling, and
messaging, using some app. It could be a game, calendar, calculators,
value added services, ringtones, Bollywood music. People are
downloading, exchanging music, rich media including movies, movie
clips, music videos, and definitely porn on their mobiles.

Smart phones users consist of a population 20 million at the least.
That's almost the size of Australia's entire population base. How’s
that! Users who use mobile touch across demographic and socio-economic
segments, and gender and age groups. The garbage cleaner with a
hand-to-mouth existence has a mobile phone on which he hears music
even as he sweeps within the walls of our apartment block in wee hours of the morning. Think about that!

What does this mean to marketers who want to target the country that
is a developing nation and has possibly the largest growing consumer
market of this decade? 

Agencies like the one I have founded, BC Web Wise, are eyeing this
huge opportunity. We are in the process of convincing large players and new entrants to
start their pilot programs and invest in this medium. 

For traditional market leaders used to a set rule of advertising and
communication, will the shift be a big challenge? They work with a
network of traditional agencies that are sitting on huge marketing
budgets. The client-agency relationships are too strong. Can we squeeze in?

Just this evening we were presenting to an organization that is just a
few years short of turning a 100-years old themselves. We shared
budgets for a new media marketing plan, and there was a reaction amongst a few
team members about the monthly commitments. But the senior-most person
in the organization turned to them and smirked. ``This is the budget
for just 4 inserts in a national daily that you can get. And this is
the annual budget for engagement with a few 100,000 users. Where is
the comparison.'' We heaved a sigh of relief.

So who will drive the future of digital marketing? Agencies like us, or individuals like this gentleman?
I think we know the answer. It is the best time to fish.

And if you are still wondering here's something from e-how:

Check daily tide information in the newspaper if you're interested in saltwater fishing. The best conditions are during a rising or falling tide. During these times, your bait will move and provoke active feeding among coastal fish

Bcfish
 
Feb 14 / 9:31am

God Created the World Wide Web

Posted by email 

What a day to start my NYF.TV blog! Valentines! I think I am blessed. J. Today is also the day that my son, now whole of 6 years and 2 months old gives his first ever violin concert performance, that too at the prestigious Tata Theatre, NCPA Mumbai, India. He plays the Lightly Row and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Even as we move through the digital age, the wonders of this very first poem we all learnt across the globe - “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, resonates through millions of young voices across millions of young children dotting the green and lively planet. Earth. Today connected as much by technology as it has been by life, the heartbeats, the pulse of millions that plays in a rhythm, in unison, in a silent symphony.

Strange. But true. When you hear musical cords that wail music like the Allegro and Lightly row, we all feel we have heard it before. We would have. We always did. Just that the frequencies, unseen at one time, today are just being visually enabled by technology, by the web, by the phones, giving a tangible testimonial to the fact that we are all connected. Telepathy has now got its face in the form of SMS, status updates, tweets and for the lesser endowed the email.

Dreams? Just a Second Life, or a Farm Ville, anything, that will help us experience harmony, closeness to our real being, whether real, dreamt or virtual, whatever can get us there faster, easier.

Never have I seen neighbors so willing and supportive, to help you grow so they can nurture and grow their own lives, people who are mere acquaintances contribute so much to your happiness and well being as they do on Farmville. Friends you don’t speak to, even avoid calls from, but today sharing and living together in that same infinite space. Cables are interconnecting us zillions across the globe.

My son skips school often. Yes, we have to speak about how technology is influencing our kids. He knows how to spell big fish games, knows he needs to buy crops that give more XP and Sell for More, He knows that it is better not to spend Farm Ville cash on stuff that won’t give the right kind of XP or coins in return. He downloads and even purchases games on my credit card, and sheepishly apologizes for overloading my MacBook Air promising to delete older games. 

The other day I said, “God is there, He will take care”. And he asked me why I said `He’.”Isn’t Mother Mary a `She’?”

I am ok if he bunks school. And I am ok he is playing games. He is good in Math. And he plays the violin. I know that 10 years from now communication, business, advertising, will be all too different. I am sure that the top 10 brands in the market would be possibly the ones who targeted him when they designed their marketing communication plan today, when they laid out their product development blueprint, when they worked out that it won’t cost so much to produce or sell it after all.

I think he is one of them creating that new system.  And I think his generation is going to create the better world. Because nature just got technological enabled her communication system called the World Wide Web. 

Fishglass_logo

 
Feb 12 / 12:39pm

Friday Fun

Posted by email 
Infi-knit-home-screen

Getting your creative department together for a regular weekly meeting is common sense and is repeated in many a good agency. One problem though, is it’s often the same people speaking all the time. So how do you give the new and junior members of the team their spotlight? How can you make them feel appreciated and involved on a regular basis?

  This is challenge we faced a few years ago and the solution came from our younger members who wanted to help lead our togetherness. Our regular department get together is every Friday morning and we endeavour to start with a fun challenge that involves everyone; art directors, writers and designers alike. These briefs are often dreamt up the day before and relate to a relevant cultural event, a news story, a long held desire or even a client related matter! The activity typically lasts between 15 to 30 minutes and we arbitrarily split the team into 4 or 5 groups to avoid cliques.

  We’ve been documenting these sessions on our company blog – which has helped give a good indication of the culture we are working to foster here at Lost Boys International. Take a look at http://www.lbi.co.uk/tag/friday-fun/ for some the things we’ve been up to.

  The results have been very interesting and without the pressure of an important deadline have allowed many to express themselves in new, often entertaining ways. It’s given everyone the chance to be heard and get involved in the creative process. They’ve been so successful we have other departments (technology, user experience, social media, planning) joining us to get their fix of creative energy. And we’re very welcoming to our guests as an agency we believe in blending.

  The Friday Fun initiative has been so successful we have requests from our client teams to run a quick exploratory brief through. This approach helps us put out feelers into different creative territories and is very good at exposing the obvious/common ideas very quickly providing a great springboard for better work.

  It’s worth noting our Infi-Knit project is a direct result of these sessions. The idea – knit a giant scarf made with the responses to ‘what keeps you warm’ – came fully baked from the session. See http://www.infi-knit.org.uk/ for the result.

  So if you like the idea, organise our own Friday Fun and replicate a few of our challenges complete with your own modifications.

It’s important we all have plenty of fun doing what we do.

  Don’t take my word for it, here’s Lean Mean Fighting Machine uttering those important words “If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right”

  http://www.leanmeanfightingmachine.co.uk/everything%20else/If%20you're%20not%20having%20fun

 
Feb 10 / 1:07pm

Delightful Technology

Posted by email 
If you haven’t seen Conductor from Alexander Chen, please take a look (http://www.mta.me). I find it delightful.

This from his explanation:

  At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in real-time by spawning trains that departed in the last minute then continue accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram



It’s a simple, beautiful piece that builds on some current memes:
·     A one page website - something I’m a particular fan of, as they bring simplicity and single-mindedness to the fore.
·     Uses physical data to generate a visual display
·     Uses a classic design in a new way
·     Is built with HTML5 instead of flash - so it works on your iPhone, iPad. Although you need flash to hear the music, which is a key part of the idea… :(

So does it have any value for Advertising? Is it just an interesting technology demonstrator? How could this approach be used to add value to a popular brand?

  Should this be the type of digital goody the New York subway commissions to bring a little joy to their commuter’s lives, demonstrating how well its trains run? Should it be something a data business develops to demonstrate its analysis skills? Could it be an artist commission for a famous New York gallery or music school?

  I think all of these have potential, but how likely are we to see ideas like this being recognised in award shows this year? Let’s have a count up come December.

  If you like this, check out the work by Rafael Rozendaal (http://www.newrafael.com ) who creates digital pieces as public art, which are sold and kept alive on the Internet for everyone to enjoy. If you like data visualizations take a look at http://chromaroma.com which visualizes London Tube journeys.

(download)

 
Feb 9 / 6:21am

Knowing your audience

Posted by email 
In the UK we’ve had a long running series of ads featuring Halifax Bank staff telling consumers how great their products are and how easy it is to bank with them.

  These ads used to feature Howard, a likeable Halifax employee from the midlands who’d sing a song and tell you how great things are (). These ads were reported as being very popular and made quite a star of Howard. In their latest incarnation, the Halifax staff are running a radio station that is broadcasting financial product advice, to the sound of a catchy jingle (). Again I’ve never met anyone that likes them, until now…

  The following mashup takes the latest ad and mixes it with the sound of Dubstep, the soundtrack of the streets and our student protestors. Lo and behold, people now love it. Funny thing banking.

 

  Yes it’s Marketing 101, but what often makes you smile leaves others completely cold.

 
Feb 9 / 12:50am

So it¹s Social Media Week

Posted by email 
This week, across nine cities, a whole host of people are celebrating, talking, tweeting and blogging about social media, see http://socialmediaweek.org

  Social media is now an essential component of the communications mix for brands. It’s how customers connect with like-minded souls around a shared love of a product, service or brand, and their weapon of choice in connecting directly with a brand to praise, complain and lobby.  Smart brands are entering into this conversation with customers with gusto.

  This ‘age of conversation’ activity could threaten to squeeze out the agency in the traditional mould, so in this new social digital world agencies need to adapt, as ever, to thrive. Our events as part of Social Media Week this week outline how we at LBi bring a social approach to the work we do.

  Firstly we opened our doors to guests with three OpenShop* sessions, kicking them off with an introduction to the basics of social media strategy. In a nutshell:

  ·     Brands must listen first, tweet later – It’s essential you understand what people are saying about you and who those people are, before you engage. We use a series of listening and monitoring tools to do this, along with the all-important human filters working with the data and with the providers to ensure the tools help tell us something useful.

·     Make real contributions to the conversation – Like any good party guest, to create positive feelings in those around you, the next step is to make contributions that are interesting, that say something new or have social currency.  The aim is to produce content that will resonate with your customers, initiate a positive response and be widely shared. Doing this well takes effort.

Our social media services team put this approach into action, breaking it’s offering into 4 areas: Set-up, Build, Populate and Retain. Which relates to strategy, platforms, community building and ongoing relations.

  In addition to our three OpenShops, we’re running Social Media Surgeries, where brand owners are invited to drop-in and sanity check their strategies or chat about the direction they may take. Its good to listen and talk!

  Then on Thursday we’re running a ‘Meet the bloggers’ session, where five prominent bloggers will be sharing their experiences, providing insight into how agencies and brands can best reach out to bloggers to become positively and ethically included in their conversations and communities.

  Our team will be blogging and tweeting from the sessions, I’ll post a summary here.

  As well as our events LBi are also using Social Media Week to run a Summer Intern recruitment competition – Tweet of the Week – with two placements in our Social Media team up for grabs. All an applicant needs to do, is include the hashtag #LBiSMW along with a witty, clever, creative tweet and hope the Social Media Week audience will vote it up You can see the tweets so far, and vote for your favourite,  at http://tweetoftheweek.lbi.co.uk

If anyone reading this is interested in doing an internship in London or Edinburgh this summer, send us your best tweet, with #LBiSMW included.

  * The idea of OpenShop started at Internet Week Europe in November 2010 by Nick Farnhill (http://twitter.com/nickfarnhill). It’s an initiative that helps students, tutors and colleges get a glimpse into what working life is like within creatively driven companies and offer some inspiration that may help make the decision about what to do for a future career.

(download)

 
Feb 5 / 1:02pm

I don't even know the problem, but if you have a solution, I want it

Posted by email 
Once upon a time I heard a story that make me laugh as well as think. It was about a guy named Johnny, who started in a company as an office assistant. Johnny had a lot of innitiative. Any time anyone had a problem, no matter of what kind, Johnny was the first to appear, smiling and saying "I can do it for you. Johnny solves." And then he would put a lot of effort and all his talent on it and already got it done.

Obviously it started  with simple things, since he was an assistant. But the better he solved one problem, the next one would be a little bit more complicated. "Johnny solves" quickly became a quotation in the company. Everybody repeated the quote in the meeting rooms, from finnancial people to Mr. President itself. Finally, since any person in the world loves to get their problem solved (and if possible with minimum effort), Johnny got promoted.

But he never changed his positioning. No matter how high was his place in companie's chart, everyone in the company said "Johnny solves".  It came a time he became CEO,  and young people in the company  couldn't even remember one single time he had solved anything. But the power of the quotation remained the same. Better: the power of the quotation spread itself for all the company, and the company always solved problems and had the loyalty of all its clients as well as employees.

It's a joke, of course, but let's think about. Aren't our times an era when advertising agencies should become solution agencies? Instead of only planning and developing campaigns, shouldn't we be partners in our clients businesses, understanding their core so deep we could suggest solutions that exceeds the basic package of planning-creating-putting in the media-when demanded for?

I see a future (very close, indeed) when the best and most desired agencies will be those ones that "solve". It includes  planning well, creating with excellence, buying media with intelligence and strategic drive and measuring results with accuracy, of course, as always did. But it includes also multidisciplinary vision, open mind, deep knowledge and understanding of the client business, political skills, macroeconomic understanding, close, senior and dynamic account managing, competitiveness and a lot of impromptu power to deal with market situations as well as client's particularities.

When clients can say about us "my agency solves", even when the problem to be solved is not delivering one single piece of advertising as we know nowadays, I believe we can call ourselves modern.

Tulio Paiva
Presidente e Diretor Executivo de Criação

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t:  11 3262 2311 • 11 3262 0257
e: tulio.paiva@paivacomunicacao.com.br

 
Feb 4 / 7:18am

Creative process - Can those two words live together in same sentence? Or Life has no shortcuts

Posted by email 
Advertising is something that uses the arsenal of art. In its best moments, it even gets close to cross the frontier. But advertising is not art. Is business. And business, as something that necessarily has to make money, needs something called efficiency. Cost efficiency, would somebody say, but I'm talking here about overall efficiency, what includes creative processes (or the lack of it).

Deadlines are getting shorter and shorter. Budgets are getting, if not smaller, used with more accuracy, and directed to results. Everything in our industry is getting more efficient, specially in the last two decades, when digital changed almost everything we used to do and see. But are creative guys becoming more efficient, too?

As a Creative Director, I've been leading creatives in the last 9 years. I tried, and I'm still trying, to tell every one of them that creative work is, most of all, sweat. I tried to convince them that, in order to find a brilliant and original idea, you have to go deep in your search. Human brain works in a very interesting way. The first ideas you have when you face any question in life are, necessarily, ordinary ones (unless you are a genious, but it happens not quite often in the history of mankind, as we know). You have to get rid of them in order to be able to start the real work. How? By putting it on paper, in an organized way (what helps to get rid of them as well as to take a second look, in order to see if you're not, after all, a genious). As simples as that, but most creative guys don't do that.

The second moment of creative process is, using the words of an old and loved ESPM's teacher, "recombining ideas". But, in order to recombine things, you have to have thing to recombine. Information. It's obvious, I know, but is astonishing how creative people starts to "create" whitout having proper information about the job in order to recombine.

The third pass is to avoid the trap of "references". Many creatives start their creative process opening the YouTube, Bannerblog or Ads of The Week. They take less time thinking about the problem and much time thinking how this job could produce something like these increadible awarded materpieces. They dream, don't work. And the result is lack of productivity.

The fourth and more importante pass is: work. Hard. Really hard. Never get satisfied with the ideas you already got. The better idea (wich not necessarily means an awardable one) may be be expecting you in the next corner. But if you quit creative process too soon, you will never get to it.

Work, work, work. Produce, produce, produce. Time is the real currency nowadays, for everyone. So why we see creative people spending it  in Facebook instead of having another idea? Yeah, I know social media is very seducing. I work with it.  I understand its charm as well as I'm conscious of its dangers. Creative process is... A process, for God's sake. It needs discipline. This simple word seems a little bit frightening for creative guys sometimes, specially young ones, but it's only a matter of creating a habit.

Once you do that, you earn a lot of things. Specially quality of life. You'll reach good ideas and still have time to catch your kids at school. That is called efficiency.

P.S.: If you don't like my process, nevermind. Develop your own. But its necessary to have one, for the sake of your career, different from waiting for an spasm or some genious insight from the Creative Director. DCs have chytheria, not a Midas touch. Otherwise they would be getting money from stock exchange.

Tulio Paiva
Presidente e Diretor Executivo de Criação

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t:  11 3262 2311 • 11 3262 0257
e: tulio.paiva@paivacomunicacao.com.br