Tagged: Agencyfaqs RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:51 am on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Agencyfaqs, , , , , , , , , ,   

    Agencyfaqs Story on How Real Time Search Is a Game Changer for Marketers and Content Creators 

    Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!

    I was recently quoted in an Agencyfaqs story on how real time search is a game changer for marketers and content creators.

    afaqs real time search

    I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer of search. The real power of Twitter lies not in being able to send and receive 140 letter messages, but in being able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. Twitter realizes this: that’s why it has put search at the center of its redesigned homepage. Facebook realizes this: that’s why they are moving strongly towards a public status message oriented design. Google and Microsoft/ Bing realize this too: that’s why they are working hard to integrate real time status messages in their search results.

    The ability to search real time status updates is already changing search behavior for early adopters like myself. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story, who else is present at the event I am attending and what are the early reviews for a movie that was released earlier in the day. The next big step is an ability to search for what my friends, people like me, or people near me are saying. As this behavior is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers.

    One important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and more personalized. Which means that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

    Along with the above changes in content search and consumption, I see a parallel change in content creation. When Blogger, Wordpress, YouTube and Flickr made it easy to create and share articles, videos and photos, several consumers started thinking of themselves as writers, photographers and filmmakers. Still, the focus was on creating content, and it needed significant time and effort to create content, so the barrier was still to high for most.

    Then, Twitter popularized the idea of real-time status messages and the content creation barrier came crashing down. Not only that, the nature of content itself changed, to conversations between people. So, people are more likely to organize themselves around conversations now, not content, and that’s a fundamental shift.

    The self-perpetuating viral loop is at the core of word of mouth marketing and Twitter and Facebook have made it more potent than ever. Word of mouth has always been the holy grail of marketing and, now that it is more easy to seed and track than ever before, all marketing is beginning to look a little bit like word of mouth marketing.

    Here is the full text of the story:

    Points of View: Will real-time search affect the business of search?
    Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, January 18, 2010

    Google and Bing have introduced the concept of real-time search, which will also show results from recent Twitter, Facebook and blog updates. Is this the way to go now?

    Pushkar Sane
    Chief digital officer, North and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group

    For starters, it will increase the ‘volume’ of indexed pages and the natural search rankings for brands may change rapidly based on momentum built by social conversations. Brands will need to re-orient their approach for search as it will bring up organic results with social conversations, making it difficult for brands to get their ‘controlled content’ in front of people. They will have to try harder in organising content, integrating ’social elements’ and optimising it continuously.

    While positive conversations will help in enhancing brand equity, negative ones will accelerate the erosion as bad news travels fast. Finally, brands need to create a seamless strategy for digital with search and social at its core by getting rid of specialist silos within digital or within marketing.

    Mohit Hira
    President, Training.com, NIIT

    If you had searched, on Google for Copenhagen on the morning after the climate talks failed, you’d have first got a Google Map result and then one old item on the Climate Summit followed by a Wikipedia entry. Now, try the same search in real-time using Google’s Experimental Lab. You’d get links posted by the minute on BBC, Twitter, YouTube and a chronological list that grows longer before your eyes.

    The action has been shifting from publishers to user-generated social media content. If you’re smart enough to worm your brand into digital conversations in real-time, you’re likely to get picked up. Not in weeks or months, as is the case with new sites and search engine optimisation (SEO), but in minutes. But this doesn’t mean that life is short for search engine marketing (SEM). It will take a while before everyone switches to real-time search by default. Also, things will be unpredictable in the short term.

    Mahesh Murthy
    Founder and chief executive officer, Pinstorm

    SEO has become a low-value commodity activity, farmed out to individuals. Till a few years ago, all you had to optimise were text results. Today, a smart business will optimise results related to text, videos, images, twitter updates and blog entries – because the search engine results page consists of all of these.

    I hope it will lead advertisers to increase their focus on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Advertisers will find that if they are not on Twitter, their customers and rivals already are – and that the conversation is already going on there. Many brands tend to think of things in the TV paradigm – ‘run me a month-long campaign’. A social media campaign has to be 24 x 7 x 365.

    Gaurav Mishra
    Chief executive officer, 20:20 Social

    I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer for search. The real power of Twitter lies in being Able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. The ability to search real-time status updates is already changing search behaviour for early adopters like me. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story or who else is present at the event I am attending.

    As this behaviour is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers. An important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and personalised – meaning that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     
  • Gaurav Mishra 1:06 am on December 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Agencyfaqs, Andy, , Draft FCB, Graphic Novel, Indica Vista, Kapil Ohri, Leela,   

    Indica Vista Changes Everything With the Andy and Leela Graphic Novel 

    Indica Vista Changes Everything Andy and Leela Graphic Novel

    Kapil Ohri from Agencyfaqs has written quite a complimentary story on the Andy and Leela Graphic Novel we created for India Vista.

    It was my last campaign before I took a sabbatical from my role as the Brand Head of Indica and Draft FCB and Phonethics have done a great job with it. Some of the social features we were supposed to add on the website are still in the pipeline and I’m not sure if anyone is driving it from Tata Motors anymore, but, still, it’s a campaign I’m quite fond of.

    Here’s the complete text of the Agencyfaqs story –

    Andy meets Leela through Tata Indica Vista
    Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, December 05, 2008

    Tata Motors is running a website called ChangesEverything.in to promote a new version of the Indica called Tata Indica Vista among young executives.

    Ironically, the website is not loaded with information and statistics about the car. Instead, it carries an episodic graphic novel, which tells the story of two virtual characters called Andy and Leela, who meet at an Indica Vista showroom and gradually fall in love with each other.

    The car brand plays a supporting role in the story, stepping in at key times to solve Andy and Leela’s problems.

    So, what’s the story and how is Indica Vista a part of it? Andy or Anand Sharma is a 28-year-old bachelor and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. He runs a digital marketing agency in Mumbai and uses his father’s car to commute. When he is sent to Delhi to set up a branch of his agency, he plans to buy his own car.

    Leela Banerjee is 26 years old and has studied at the National Institute of Fashion Technology. She works with a leading fashion designer in Delhi and dreams of setting up her own boutique. She is planning to buy a car with her own money.

    Speaking to afaqs!, Satish Ramachandran, vice-president, DraftFCB Ulka, says, “Both Andy and Leela are represented as free spirited and ambitious individuals aspiring for the better things in life. They are proud of what they have achieved and unafraid of taking the less-travelled path to success. They are down to earth and fun-loving and value relationships. We think that these are the character traits that the Indica Vista target audience identifies with, thus making the characters more real and identifiable.”

    The first two episodes build the background of the story and show the lives of Andy and Leela independently. They highlight the traffic and other problems both of them face while using public transport. Fed up with the commute problems, both decide to buy an Indica Vista.

    In the third episode, Andy and Leela arrive separately at a Tata Motors showroom for a test drive of the Indica Vista. But only one car is available for the test drive, so both of them agree to take the test drive together. The fourth episode shows that during the long ride, the two get to know each other, and eventually start dating.

    Ramachandran explains why they opted for virtual characters: “The character-based approach is an interesting way to tell the brand story and it also has the potential to involve the prospects and generate consumer dialogue.”

    He adds, “The primary objective behind ChangesEverything.in is not to push the brand or generate test drives. The idea is to create an interesting story that the prospect can identify with and to weave the Indica Vista features subtly around it. While the plot revolves around Andy and Leela’s love story, the brand plays the role of a facilitator at key stages. This will lead to a positive buzz and awareness about the brand.”

    Saurabh Gupta, chief executive officer, Phonethics, the agency which developed the characters and story, tells afaqs!, “The story does not end here. In fact, it will now move into the consumers’ hands and they will decide where they want to take the story. For this, we will launch a Facebook application which will provide specific tools to its members to create a comic strip around Andy and Leela and decide their fate.”

    He adds, “The automobile company will incorporate the best comic strip in the story as the fifth episode and also reward the person who takes the story forward.”

    DraftFCB Ulka manages the Tata Motors account.

     
  • Gaurav Mishra 2:33 pm on March 22, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Aditya Mishra, , Agencyfaqs, , Duncan Riley, , , , , Michael Ryan, , , , , , , , , Wall Street Journal, ,   

    Check It Out: My First Podcast on Why Startups Need Workaholics and Why Mobile Will Drive Web 2.0 Usage in India 

    Quick Summary: Check out my first podcast on Indicast where Aditya Mhatre, Aditya Mishra, VeerChand Bothra and I discuss why startups need workaholics and why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India.

    My First Podcast on Indicast

    I had a great time last Sunday recording my first podcast with Aditya Mhatre, Aditya Mishra, VeerChand Bothra (tweet) on why startups need workaholics and why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India (tweet).

    All three of them have extremely rich backgrounds, resulting in an extremely vibrant discussion —

    - Aditya Mhatre is India’s leading podcaster at Indicast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

    - VeerChand Bothra is at the center of India’s mobile boom, as MobilePundit, as organizer of Mumbai Mobile Mondays and as VP at NetCore Solutions (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

    - Aditya Mishra is deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in India through his work (he has the fancy title of Entrepreneur-in-Residence at TCS) and his role as the organizer of BarCamp and Kickstart (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

    It was really good fun, like Leo Laporte’s TWiT for India, and Aditya (Mhatre) had a tough time keeping Aditya (Mishra), Veer and me within time (tweet). Aditya has done some brilliant editing on the podcast and it’s now out in a crisp avatar on Indicast

    Part 1: Why Startups Need Workaholics

    We first discussed how the Jason Calacanis startups need workaholics controversy plays out in the Indian context. Since both Aditya (Mishra) (his post on the topic) and Veer are deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in India, I got some interesting insights on the topic. In the end, we agreed that startups do need people who are totally passionate about the business and people who work for large organizations are indeed in for a culture shock if they move over to a startup. The big insight has that entrepreneurs should set an example for their teams by being passionate about the business and practicing frugality themselves.

    Background links: Jason Calacanis, Duncan Riley, Micheal Arrington, Robert Scoble, Michael Ryan, Techmeme, Aditya Mishra, Ashish Sinha, Pranav Dharma, Venturewoods.

    Part 2: Why Mobile Will Drive Web 2.0 Usage in India

    We then moved on to why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India and why mobile advertising will become really big in India. We agreed that mobile — along with local content, vernacular languages and local social dynamics — will drive web 2.0 usage in India. We also discussed why an Indian web 2.0 model will have the entire cycle — registration, friending, content creation and content consumption — on SMS. Finally, we discussed that new mobile advertising formats based on permission marketing will evolve to tap into this opportunity.

    Background Links: Gaurav Mishra, Hindustan Times, Wall Street Journal, Agencyfaqs.

    Watch Out For Our Next Podcast

    In the next podcast, we will cover how the ‘economics of free’ is hitting the music industry and how the web is getting widgetized (tweet). So, share any interesting links on either topic on del.icio.us using the tag TKM2 and, if we use them, we’ll credit you with a hat-tip (tweet).

     
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