BlogSat

A "2" and Facetime maybe?

Phone 7 released today in NYC , and it rained (there's a "the Gods wept", or worse, joke in there somewhere.) Sorry, too easy. Jokes apart, the demos look pretty slick and I'm going to try to find the time to go into a store to check out some of the phones. Microsoft definitely knows how to do great launches. However one of the best parts of the launch is the ad below: both the premise and the execution by their ad agency (CP+B) . However, something seemed vaguely familiar about the ads. Looking back, the Bing ads follow a similar pattern - again great premise and great execution, and based on the same template: there's a problem, which is ruining everyone's life, and this product solves it. Its Marketing 101 really. Oh and also, we're smart enough to make the story funny. However, here's why the Bing ads didn't work: they tried to position Bing as solution to a chronic problem (" Search overload ") but the problem doesn't real...

A long, long time ago as an 19-ish-year old undergraduate student looking for sponsorship from companies for an event we were putting on, I was wrapping up a conversation with a Marketing Head from a local software company. They were going to be a sponsor the event, and as part of that have a recruiting/marketing booth that a few students were going to volunteer at. His parting comment; he looked me straight in the eye and said "Let's make sure there are a couple of pretty girls at our booth." I was caught by surprise, and was simultaneously annoyed (for obvious reasons) and grudgingly admiring (the man knew his audience.) There's nothing new or even novel about this. From time immemorial, its a tactic that's been applied to most obviously to cars, guns .... basically anything that you want us guys to buy. Internet banner advertising is all about trying to find a way to get the users attention through great copy and content/images/flash; and in a sad commentary o...

In a clear sign something is going right in the economy, I get targeted by a lot of job ads that are surprisingly relevant to my experience (and even reasonably interesting.) But that's another post, for now enjoy this. I can relate to this. I often type up something similar when I'm unable to complete a frustratingly mundane sentence.:)

Really? Someone thought this was a good idea? Enough to launch a massive advertising campaign? :) I just started reading this book on advertising, where one line (paraphrased) resonated with me, "Just because it works and people remember it, doesn't mean you should be proud of it."

Just got served this on Facebook. "Special Feelings" just seems wrong...immature giggle-worthy at least. :) ...also the ad copy is grammatically awkward to boot. On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised by some of Bing's slicker features (link to video)!

Great GCN ad targeting? or not? :) Check out the ad I was served in Reader with my last blog post.

Interesting... More from Engadget here . I haven't really seen the phone that's being advertised (despite working at Google :)) and while I like the idea of a strong Android-based competitor to the iPhone, I'm always wary of positioning a product as something that is "better than... " or "in opposition to... " If you compete on (and even better) some features, but don't measure up on others (like usability, aesthetics etc.) you're going to take a beating. :) Also the "Droid does" line and horror-movie music at the end is clearly designed to appeal to a young, male, techy demographic. That's probably a pretty sound segmentation/marketing bet given the product, but its still impressive to see any phone company bet like that. :)

Hmmm....I'm a fan of good acting and good marketing and good advertisements...which is why everything is this ad from Microsoft makes me cringe. Its not a terrible idea in itself...I guess. Well, its a pretty terrible idea actually, but the execution is atrocious. The ad is badly conceived, horribly scripted, and the acting is so fake it makes the worst Bollywood melodramas seem understated. Yikes!

....too bad about everything else.:)

... While searching for a friend on Facebook, I suddenly noticed that I was being served search results on the side, that were "powered by Bing" Apparently this started a couple of weeks ago. Pic below for searching for Google, with the search results block in red. Facebook usage does lead to searches ; some study a while ago showed that Facebook users tended to increase their Google searches, and I can believe that given my own behavior. Bing is pushing hard to acquire traffic. I can hardly do a general-ish query on Google without being served an ad for Bing . Not a bad way for Microsoft to make use of its investment . :)

It's actually pretty effective, now that I think about it. The times are-a-changing, and if you're not Tier-1 VC firm this is a good way to source business plans. The super-targeting that Facebook offers means that I've had a bunch of interesting ads served to me some where the targetting works and some when not. I've even had photo ads from  someone who wanted to work on YouTube someone who wanted to work at Google someone how wanted a date to the Google dance. :) When the targetting has failed has been once I got engaged a year ago, and had nothing but wedding-themed ads for months (where to get married, what to buy, wedding gowns etc.) Of course, those have disappeared now that I'm married. :)

So here's what happened. Maybe because its set in Chicago, or maybe just because the writing is so good, I really like My Boys. So its on my DVR list. I get home excepting to watch the show a few Thrusdays ago, except that something funky happened and the recording got messed up. My options: wait a few days and record the re-run, or catch it online right away. I decided I wanted to watch it right then, and went to TBS' website. Here's what the th ought-stream went like after that Click. Woohoo, they have full episodes on the sites Click . Huh? Ok. the show isn't online yet; maybe in a few hours? Click . The new episode will be online on the 19th; exactly 8 days from now! Argh! WTF? Click . Fine, I still want to watch the show now, so twenty minutes later I did watch it on my laptop, but TBS didn't get a chance to serve me ads in the middle of the show and severely reduced the probability of my visiting TBS.com ever again. Using windowing strategies (i.e. making thi...

As I started reading through a collection of short stories over this weekend, I couldn't help wondering: why aren't there more (or for that matter any!) advertisements in books; fiction or non-fiction? We've accepted ads in magazines and newspapers. So why hasn't anyone tried it in books? Don't the same economics apply? You can either make smore money by selling these ads (I'm not buying that it'll change the reading experience so much that it'll significantly change the number of copies sold) or this will allow you to reduce the prices of the books, and hence according to basic economics sell more copies....and hence make more money. So, why isn't this happening? All the time? Are you telling me that some Brand wouldn't have paid tons of money to have the inside page of the last Harry Potter book? or a page in the middle? People send strong signals with the books they buy, and I can't help feeling that numerous advertisers would like to be p...

LOL. Targeted social-network based marketing at work.:)

While watching TV ads today the following line comes on{ "Toyota Camry...now available for the price of a Corolla!" This tag line was repeated at least thrice. Why wouldn't someone catch that this was just a terrible ad! You're making the Corolla brand look bad. To me, I'd never thought of it as a "cheap" option. Suddenly you just put the idea in my head. You're not actually telling me how much money I'll save if I buy a Camry now. You're assuming that I know how much both cars cost...I don't...which means I'm less likely to act like you want me to. My guess: someone looked at how much they could discount the Camry, noticed that it was close to the price of a Corolla and decided it was a promotional strategy...resulting in the mess above. Good intentions all around, just a possibly bad outcome for the Corolla brand. The moral of the story? Always consider side-effects and always get an outsider's perspective.

Greenspan on the Daily Show: the portion on monetary policy (in the beginning) was like a flashback to Macro .Loved it! I really like Jon Stewart and his detached, look-I'm-poking-fun-at-authority-because-I'm-kinda-smart-and-curious brand of humor. But he seemed to doubt the free market there for a little bit...tsk, tsk. :) Ooo..favorite Stewart/Carell/Colbert moment from the last Emmys (enjoy it while it lasts on YouTube): While I'm embedding videos anyway, here are two more; new Pepsi commercials in India. I love it when movie stars are willing to acknowledge they're old. Also, at this point I'm comfortable saying with some confidence that the average Indian TV advertisement is better than the average US TV advert....if you get em.:) Hmm...someone seems to be taking down advertisements from Youtube too. Seriously, who wouldn't want their ads to be distributed more?

..in that they all pretty much look and act the same. A good friend sent me this Makkadman video link. Warning: you're not going to get it, unless you understand Hindi and really Hindi films.:) It turns out the spoof Hindi-Spiderman-animation is a advertisement for this social networking site: DesiMartini . Check out the site. Does the UI look vaguely familiar??? I spent at least a minute trying to figure out how it was related to facebook ; if it was related to facebook etc., etc. Its not, but it looks exactly like it. Given how many white-label social networking tool providers there are now (i.e. companies that make the site for you and slap your branding on it), a social network site is basically a commodity ( GigaOM post on this way back) and just as everyone's personal blogs kinda look alike (because of the limit on Blogger templates), its a matter of time before everyone's social networks kinda start looking alike, especially if systems such as Ning continue to ga...

Creative advertising is always entertaining, and I've always thought that the best Indian ads have always been particularly brilliant. Past advertisements revolving around cricket though, even the good ones, always seemed to be based more around cricket stars rather than cricket. In general, Indian ads of late have been over-using celebrities. So I absolutely loved the energy of this new Nike advertisement (below), which though it has Sreesanth and Zaheer Khan, just has them looking on rather than being the focus of the ad. The ad is very Nike "Just do it" , but also very Indian and very cricket-friendly. The ad was done by JWT Bangalore , and the soundtrack is a lot of fun.It is a Konkani song so in theory I should get it, but given all the flavors of Konkani floating around, I can barely make out a couple of words.:) Incidentally, I stumbled on to this link on AdAge , which ranks the top 100 advertising campaigns of the century . Most are really old, but interesting r...

I learnt something cool about the way the economics of Internet Radio work today. Too bad the entire industry had to get into danger ( BusinessWeek link) for me to get a chance to read about it. I picked it up at GigaOM , and then BlogMaverick (the one remaining concern I have about the Dallas Mavericks :)). So here's the super-distilled version without the actual numbers: The entity that sets the royalty rates for streaming songs is the Copyright Royalty Board (which represents those much loved people: the RIAA ). It upped the royalty rate from $0.0008 per performance to $0.0011 per performance this year, rising all the way to $0.0019 in 2010. The upshot is, given listening patterns and current subscription rates, (or rates available for ads served) there is just no way most streaming Internet radio sites are going to be able to stay in business. This obviously hurts the smaller stations the most, especially since they lost the option of paying as a percentage of revenue (and ...