Category: Marketing

What kind of blogger are you?

I have been blogging for over 4 years now. I have been asked why I blog numerous times. And obviously I have give piece of mind to all those people. I have also met and interacted with a lot of fellow bloggers and I have realized that there are basically 4 kinds of bloggers.

  1. Conscious Bloggers: People who really want to make a difference – not only in societal context but also in terms of business, way people use technology and other things. They are very focused in their approach and make sure they are attuned with the latest in their respective industries. More often than not, they end up becoming an influential voices in their respective fields.

  2. Copy Cats: Because having a blog is cool, there are people who want to be cool and who would want to follow fads, they blog. Most of these blogs are abandoned within a short span and end up contributing to the Internet Junk. The lesser said about these people, better it is. Saves times and energy and content on Internet

  3. Money Mongers: People who want to make money using their blogs (inspired by TechCrunch and other such blogs). They would start by posting everything and anything under the sun. They would blatantly copy things from other popular bloggers and will submit their blogs to search engines and aggregators at a feverish pace. It is very unlikely that they would ever make money with their blogs and will end up frustrating themselves. Some who are smarter, would on the course realize that blogging with an objective of making money would not work and they change course and obviously end up successful.

  4. Confused Souls: People who don’t know why they blog but they anyways do it. The idea is not to make money or to get famous. The idea is to find an audience for their thoughts. Only gratification comes in the way of comments from their friends and other random visitors that have stumbled onto these blogs. They often have interesting things to say but due to the lack of recognition, they are lost in the noise. They are like the needles in the haystack that if identified could be put to good use.

What kind of blogger are you?

Originally posted here.

Simpu Sodhi – Bring back Simpu Singh

How about writing to Channel V and bringing back Simpu Singh? I am ready to create FB groups, Orkut communities, send out chain mails and file petitions online. I will do anything (virtual) to get him back.

For the uninitiated Simpu Sodhi is/was a Channel V character that they created way back in 2000 for their shows. It is modeled after a sikh teacher and he is simply awesome.

Simpu Sodhi is all you can want in a person. He is a grown up. He is a kid. He is charming. He is innocent. He is intelligent. He has a temper. He is sensitive towards cute school kids that look more like micelings… He is Simpu Sodhi. Like No Other.

PLEASE HELP ME GET BACK SIMPU SODHI. Can some marketing whiz help me promote the cause and get some media attention?

He certainly makes it to my list of favorite fictional characters that includes Homer Simpson (of Homer Simpson fame), Michael Corleone (of Godfather fame), Jack Bauer (of 24 fame) and Udham Singh (again Channel V).

My playlist on Youtube.

Links for Simpu Singh Sodhi fans
1. http://www.indianpad.com/story/208901
2. Youtube Playlist of Simpu Sodhi vids

Bomaby Quiz Club

Bombay has this quizzing club that meets every month and conducts quizzes for its members. Since quizzing happens to be a favorite pass-time, I thought I will try and see if it’s any good. And so I went to Bombay Quiz Club’s first quiz on Sunday.

There were some 35 odd people. The youngest was a student at an engineering college and the oldest was (I think) a retired professional. Most of the people seemed to know each other (probably because they have been meeting over a period of year) and few of them were past winners and finalists at various quizzes (Brand Equity Quiz, Adclub Mumbai Quiz etc).

Their format is also pretty cool. It encourages participation and it rules out good quizzers ganging up to take the fun out of quizzing. They randomly divide all participants in 8 teams and get on with the fun. The n00bs get to learn from the 1337s. Its that simple.

I must say that I was humbled and inspired at the same time by the whole experience. I always thought I was an above average quizzer and there I realized that I don’t even exist in the quizzing circles. The quality of questions and participation was really great. I would recommend any quizzing enthusiast to be a part of the club.

And yes, the place was offered by Pinstorm and its amazing how a small gesture like offering a place for quizzing can become a branding and advertising strategy. More on this later on Thoughts @ Work blog.

Future of War of Words

Few Facts First

1. No one reads your personal blog if your last name is not Hilton or Spears.

2. Even though people dont read your personal blog, it still hangs in the air (stays on the Internet) for everyone to see and read.

3. It still reveals a lot of things about you. Lot of them desirable (that you think, that you are honest, that you like straight-forward, that you love adventure sports) and lot of them undesirable (that you are old, that you are a MBA, that you are getting balder with each passing day, that you are still single and that you dont want to get married) etc.

As I have said earlier that I am thinking what to do with this blog (here and here), I will try to pen down the arguments against and for the decision.

Reasons against shutting down

1. 4 years of effort (first post ever here)

2. Emotional attachment (even though no one else reads this, I write because I want to write and I like venting out whatever I think is relevant to me).

3. Very strong identity (Google for Saurabh Garg and this is amongst the first results).

Reasons for shutting down

1. 4 years of effort – with every passing day this 4 years is growing and would be more difficult to shut tomorrow.

2. Very strong identity – I started this when I was a student. Today I am looking at creating businesses. Every new contact I make in the real world would search for me on the Internet. And they see this blog – which is a good thing but does not talk about my work and other professional interest areas. One way to go about this is to brand this as a personal blog and move on (this is a good idea – I will do this right away).

So basically there is only one strong reason for me even thinking about shutting this blog. Point to ponder is that is it that big that I shut this down (wow three “that”s in six words – a new world record?). Will keep on adding points and thoughts to this. And come to think about it, this could be an interesting personal marketing and branding problem.

How about selling this on ebay? May be I get few interesting bids and money can motivate me to finally end this? Any offers from any generous people around?

More Rational thoughts on the reservation policy in India

The last piece I wrote was an emotional outburst. This is more rational argument on reservations. I shall try to figure out the impact of reservations, thoughts on what could have been done and finally is there any hope?

Ok why reservations in the first place?
Reservation was the card played by the VP Singh govt. when they decreed for the first time that India needs reservations to help the lower castes. Some people credit their win at the centre to this card only. Obviously its a thing of past and no one can say what really happened. After-all history is written by people who win the battles.

I am not saying that reservations is a card that is played when you want to elections. You actually want to help the backward classes. You are motivated by general upliftment of the country.

Is it really going to help?
I have my doubts. These doubts are based on following observations.

  1. I don’t have numbers but I am told that at engineering colleges of repute (not the ones that are opened in small homes on outskirts of Bangalore), the candidates admitted from reserved classes don’t pass at all. Most of them flunk in first and second year and stop studying thereon.

  2. Then a lot of seats for reserved categories are filled with people getting less than 10% marks. End of the day education is about quality of students and maturity of interactions between them. If there are 53% people from general categories and average scores of 80, and 47% of people with average scores of 20, what kind of discussions are we talking about?

  3. There seats remain empty because there aren’t enough applications in the first place to grant admission to people belonging to reserved categories. If an institute can intake 100 students and it has to start a course with 80 students only because we could not find enough people to take reserved seats, aren’t we depriving other students of an opportunity to study?

Obviously I don’t have numbers to prove or reject these claims. Can someone help me with this?

To end this chapter (if I may say), honestly I don’t think that reserving more seats is going to help. They should rather try to find out why do people from these classes perform this bad in the first place. Is there a flaw in the primary education system? Is it because they assume that education for them is going to be easy and hence no need to put in effort?

What will be the impact and what could be possible outcomes?
Impacts would be many-fold. For the students that avail this opportunity, students that are now deprived and the country itself.

  1. Reservations means that only the best from the education system get into quality higher institutions. What happens to people who were average? They would have to settle for below average education. And because of this, they would miss the opportunity that could have transformed them from average to exceptional.

  2. This also means that general quality of education will come down. Not because people from reserved categories cant perform or they lack intelligence. But because they are not equipped to face higher education. Mind you a person can be intelligent and ill-equipped at the same time.

  3. Brain-drain might be back. And with a bang. I can already foresee a lot of talented budding doctors, engineers leaving the country in search of a place where their talent is respected. Not their castes.

  4. All the hoopla about FDI and India’s growth story might be in for a rude shock. If I was Microsoft or Google or Suzuki for that matter, I would not want to set shop in India because I know that finding good people would be tough and costly. It would also mean that business environment is unconducive. And once the growth story stops, then its a debate for another day if the country would grow or not.

Is there a way to help backward classes?
Getting a reservation done at under-graduate level does not guarantee that the life standard would improve. This move might create a large work force that is unemployable. And this would bring in more frustration. You are educated and cant find a job. From personal experience, I know for a fact that there is no feeling worse than that.

So what can we do to change things for people who have been oppressed? To start with I think we need to change the way they live. A child learns as much from his parents as from his surroundings. How about taking a cue from Madarsas and Gurukuls and replicate this in mainstream? These are the places where gurus preach and teach kids about virtues of life. Make them aware of the world around them. If we cant provide quality education to these kids at formative stages of their lives, how about making the system unconventional.

I used to work with an NGO called Pratham and they used this concept really beautifully. They would take a community and teach all the underprivileged children there. Mind you – underprivileged, not the reserved category. And they did it very well. That model runs on a self-sustaining model and is awesome. Can share more details if someone is interested in knowing more about it.

What can be done to mark protest against this move?

  1. How about getting talking to all bloggers to write about it? At least the ones with reach like Mutiny, DesiCritics etc.?

  2. Can this be a topic for blogathon? Anyone from their team listening/reading?

  3. Help YFE and other forums with online propaganda and marketing.

  4. Make an online task force and spam news websites with comments, thoughts and opinions. And make these quality comments so that they have to raise it on their prime-times. Knowing Indian media, they would anyways do anything to hike their TRPs.

  5. I am strongly against any kind of mass agitations that stops the normal functioning of the country. I voiced my opinions on the medico strikes, batti bandhs etc. I think I was wrong when I took that stand and I need to change. Now I am neutral to it. Is there a strong case of a mass agitation?

I am simply out of ideas. Can someone please put forth more thoughts so that we can actually do something constructive rather than just debating? Another peril of Indian education system is that we start debates and never finish things. Lets come forward with solutions rather than talking about things.

To end this on a light note, I was thinking about way forward for people who advocate reservation

  1. Just education is no point. We need to reserve places on the buses also. How about roads? Special clubs for reserved categories. Does someone remember ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’ posters? How about ‘dogs and unreserved not allowed’ posters? Come to think of it, this could be an awesome article.

  2. Now that we have reservations for SC, ST, OBC, how about talking about reservations on the basis of religion? region? height of a person. Imagine – we only accept applications from people who are 5 feet 7 inches and weight 150 KGs.

  3. How about creating small states for every simgle category that you can identify and then ruling over them? Who wants 29 states. Lets split India into 19043 states all with homogeneous people. There could be a state for people who are bald and have Sharma as their surnames. Oops what about ladies then? Will they marry inter-caste, inter-state? Will these be approved?

Please understand that views submitted are personal only and might be flawed. Please help me see the correct picture.

Crossposted

1v1: Excellence vs Mediocrity

Third in series after Popular vs Pertinent, Expert vs Employee.

Excellence vs Mediocrity

You can either pursue excellence or remain a mediocre.

A mediocre by definition is someone engaging in an act where objective is to finish the task rather than to complete it with best of abilities. Often, shortcuts are used and outcomes are ordinary. Borrowed wisdom is put to work and original thought process takes a back seat.

Excellence is where the objective is to compete with oneself. Idea is to create something out of the world even though the objective is well defined. Excellence could be in way you work, in way you opine of things or even the way you execute. People who pursue excellence sleep easy and tight.

Mediocrity vs Excellence in one line: The pursuit of excellence creates original thoughts that a mediocre person would put to use.

Both these are more about an attitude rather than expertise or availability of resources. And once you start the pursuit of excellence, its very easy to fall in the trap and move back to mediocrity. By definition, most of the human population falls in the mediocre category and funny thing is that they dont even realize it.

You can pursue only one at a time. You could be mediocre or you could be excellent. What are you?

Originally posted at Thoughts @ Work

1v1: Expert vs Employee

This is second in the 1v1 series after Popular vs Pertinent

I was talking to Monica when I remembered something I had thought of about 5 months ago. Finally posting it.

Expert vs Employee.

You can be seen and known as either an expert or employee.

An employee is a “just another person”. He is competent and does his job well but that is all to him. There is no such thing as new ideas, innovation, bright sparks coming out of him. He is one amongst the crowd. No one expects anything from him.

Expert on the other hand is someone who is everything an employee is and then there is lot more to him. He is expected to change the way world moves, come up with brilliant yet simple ideas and should be as close to indispensable as someone can be. Expert belongs to the rare breed.

Expert vs Employee in one line: You would not want to meet an employee but would pay to see an expert.

And interesting thing is that the distinction between an expert and and employee is often an outcome of the way a person himself thinks and approaches things. Until you start projecting yourself as an expert, no one would consider you an expert.

What are you? Expert? Employee?

PlaygroundOnline.com > Review

Playground Online
PlaygroundOnline.com is yet another entrant in the Indian e-commerce space. It retails sports related media and equipment. They currently offer books, CDs, equipments, apparel etc. This is probably first of its kind online store in India. I took PGO for a spin and here is my feedback.

What I like about PGO?
First and foremost, although they want to sell things online but they have put a lot of focus on customer friendliness and costumer interaction. Things like polls, news, forums can make this website a default place for sports enthusiasts. These initiatives help build a strong and loyal community and eventually garner sales.

The range of products on PGO is really wide. From a t-shirt worth Rs. 280 to a bicycle worth Rs. 46000 (obviously for a professional), PGO had a lot of things for offer. I could not check if this range is comprehensive but everything I could think of was either there or they were accounted for and being worked upon. This is a good thing for an e-commerce business. I can think of people visiting PGO to find out more about sporting goods and then buying it offline. Challenge will be to convert these information scouts into customers.

Design
The website interface is impressive for an Indian startup and they have used a good mix of traditional style web design and Web 2 functionality. They still need to work on few things though. Like for example when you are trying to signup, the errors are reported in a pop-up box. This should ideally be a Web 2 pop-up where errors are notified the moment they are encountered. I should never get a Windows pop-up.

Team
PGO has been started by a team of 4 people with average work experience of 15 years. Experience of 60 man-years could be a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. With experience comes rigidity; you might start shooting down ideas even before you give them enough time to fruit. You start living on assumptions. You are scared of breaking out of the mold.

And with experience one develops the knack of running businesses. The team is experienced enough to know what is to be done to make the business run efficiently. Looking at the website and they have used their experience well.

What I like about their team is the fact that all 4 co-founders have different and diverse backgrounds. From client relationships to technology to marketing to customer insights, they have it all. The roles could thus be clear and they can concentrate on larger things.

Competition
They don’t seem to have one large competitor right now. However they compete with bookstores (fabmall, om books etc), apparel stores (rediff, sify) and obviously with traditional retail stores. The business model is new in India and looks lucrative. There should be many more players in the market soon.

Payment Options
One of the key reasons why e-commerce is still in nascent stages is lack of adequate payment options. Credit cards penetration is still low in India. People are still skeptic of using their cards online. And finally they are not really convinced about credibility of these websites.

At PGO, there are limited payment options currently but they have mentioned that they are working on more methods. I would love to see them implement a cash-on-delivery method. COD gives an online merchant immediate access to people who dont have cards and people with cards who are scared of using the cards online.

What more can PGO do?
Comparison between brands and products. When buying a product, people love to understand the features, benefits and differences. I don’t see a link for comparing two items. If they can somehow implement a comparison, it would be great.

User community. All the ecommerce websites have been adding users to forums. If PGO is really convinced about sports as a leisure or a lifestyle activity in India, create special interest groups of people with similar interests. Give them things like competitions to participate in, platforms to talk about their interests etc. Basically in one word, give something more than a typical forum or a social network.

Final thoughts
PGO has done a good job with their store. The only thing that might let them down is the very acceptance of the business model. If I was a VC with money, I would have invested in the business, obvisouly after talking to the owners and looking at the projected cash flow statements.

And finally, since we are talking about ecommerce, lets try to see what can be sold successfully over the Internet? Something that is standardized. Something that you are confident would be similar irrespective of place you bought it from. Something like an airplace ticket. Something like a computer. Something like a book. Sporting equipment – I am not sure. Lessons for other players? Make the products standardized, eliminate shopping pains and have in place an awesome customer service.

Questions to ponder on?
Are sporting goods similar to airline tickets? Books?

Minute Maid Pulpy Orange

I shopped at Big Bazaar and guess what I found in my bag once I was home. A Minute Maid Pulpy Orange. I distinctly remember seeing it at a special display and not picking it. I checked my bill twice to see if they had billed me. No they hadn’t billed me. I hadn’t picked it. What was it doing in my bag?

Anyways who doesn’t like free goodies? I certainly do. While I was opening it, I thought may be I will check out the price. Eureka. It said “FREE SAMPLE NOT FOR SALE”.

There was another article on Minute Maid somewhere. Coke was apparently planning to use Dabbawalas to push free samples to all offices in Mumbai. Imagine a free Orange drink with lunch. Innovative I must say.

Coming to the most important part – do I like it? I would say I don’t like it and I don’t dislike it. I am not an Orange person. I would not refuse it someone bought and offered a sip but I would not go out and buy it. Only drink I can buy and drink is water or may be a Frooti, Mazza or a Slice. I do not differentiate between a Mango drink.

The claims of being a pulpy Orange drink are accurate. It is pulpy. It is refreshing. It is different and yes it is recommended.

Coke has done a wonderful job of marketing Minute Maid Pulpy Orange. Worth a try.

Cricket Australia – New Avatar

Today was third day at Twenty 20 Cricket Worldcup in South Africa. Just came back from Australia v Zimbabwe match. Australia went in the match as clear favorites but Zimbabweans had other plans. They defeated Australia by 4 wickets. Well played Zimbabwe. They outplayed Aussies in Batting, Bowling and Fielding. Scorecard from the match.

Interesting thing to notice was the new avatar, new uniform of Cricket Australia. They still have their yellow and green colour schemes but there is a subtle change in their uniform. The uniform is tighter around their biceps and triceps. It can easily pass off as suits used by swimmers and wind surfers. Obvisouly this change is by design rather than by accident. May be they want to reinforce their supremacy at the game? May be they have a scientific reason behind it. May be propaganda @ play? May be a bit of everything?

Ideas for marketers …?