A Stint at Print Ad Making

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Event – Ad Making Competition at NM,Mumbai

:: Case ::

There is a cursed island where only Men can live.

No women can survive.

The men are well-connected to outside world with the latest technologies of the day, Internet connectivity, the latest magazines, Satellite TV etc. But still they are very very lonely.

We need to come up with ANY product that we can sell to this market with a print advertisement for the same.

:: Product ::

We chose – “A Massage Chair“

:: Print Ad ::

And here comes the print ad.

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Don’t know if this is good enough, but this sad looking dude won us a final entry into the competition !! 🙂

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Bet U don’t know: Difference btw Digital Media & Social Media?

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People so often confuse the difference between Digital Media & Social Media Marketing.

Broadly speaking if you ask me, then this is the way I see how they are different:

– Digital Media is a communication media which includes both Mobile & Internet platform, where the message is usually communicated to the customer in a Paid format , e.g. mobile ads, facebooks ads, banners, online applications etc. Thus this is normally an interruptive mode of communication where the consumer is engaged via interruption in his daily life. And as Dave Evan wrote -> Basically advertisements have always been an Interruption strategy to seek consumer attention.[Picked up this line from my unfinished book Dave Evan’s SMM:An hour a day]

Whereas

– Social media marketing is largely driven by the consumer acting as a voice of the brand on a social network platform.

It can be considered as an offshoot of viral marketing where something becomes so popular that it spreads like a virus from people to people in a viral fashion mainly driven by interest or word-of-mouth.

The modes could be display, video, blogs, pictures, articles just anything that keeps a user engaged.

You simply can’t pay to seek a consumer’s attention. There is no interruption, rather engagement.Now that’s the challenge because social media can’t be scaled by money. It’s a human driven effort like self-created, user generated and most often collaborated. No money in the world can do it. But yes what we can do is to try and understand the consumer psychology & what necessarily will trigger the passionate response from the consumers who are the kings & no more the objects.

P.S. I read somewhere that when you give people any challenge then they respond well. So I experimented with the Title of this post. Though the actual title can be just – “Difference between Digital & Social Media” . If you reading this, means it works!!

You can comment to state your opinion.

What’s your Crazy Green Idea ? [tweetmeme source= ‘themavericksoul’ only_single=false]

Sharing some of the outstanding innovative ideas which could help our planet stay Green !!

1. Hotel offers free meal to guests who are willing to   generate electricity 

The Crown Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen , Denmark , is offering a free meal to any guest who is able to produce electricity for the hotel on an exercise bike attached to a generator. Guests will have to produce at least 10 watt hours of electricity – roughly 15 minutes of cycling for someone of average fitness. They will then be given meal vouchers worth $36 (26 euros).

2. Disco pub gets electricity produced by people dancing at specially   modified dance floor

All the flashing strobes and pounding speakers at the dance club are massive consumers of electrical power. So Bar Surya, in London, re-outfitted its floor with springs that, when compressed by dancers, could produce electrical current that would be stored in batteries and used to offset some of the club’s electrical burden. The club’s owner, Andrew Charalambous, said the dance floor can now power 60 percent of the club’s energy needs.

3. Light-switch that changes colors to teach children how to   save energy

Teaching the importance of energy conservation is the goal of this design from Tim Holley. He calls it Tio, and it’s a ghost-shaped light switch that gives kids a visual reminder of how much energy they’ve used by leaving lights on. Tio starts out green and smiling. If the light is left on for more than four hours, he turns yellow and looks shocked. And if you dare to leave that light on for more than eight hours, sweet little Tio turns into a raging red hulk, complete with frowny mouth and angry eyes. But he won’t just visually remind your kids about their energy habits; information from the light switch is sent to Tio’s computer program so the entire family can see how they’re doing. In a brilliant piece of visual positive reinforcement, Holley’s program lets kids grow a virtual tree which gets bigger and healthier the more energy they save.

so , wats your green idea ? any comments are welcome !!

How many Eyeballs you got ??

Defining a content creation strategy for brands to gather more eyeballs in the Social Media Space [tweetmeme source= ‘themavericksoul’ only_single=false]

Every other brand now itches to have a huge fan following on the social media networks. They outline strategies to make people get behind their products endorse their brands & promote it to the viral route.

But they tend to make a big mistake. They think that they can just reach out to the market, and if they have a great thing going on, the customers will naturally want to endorse what they are doing. They think that everyone loves about their brand. Well honestly, no one cares!!

The thing is, no-one wants to be your salesperson—unless they are, of course, being paid to sell your products. But everyone in the social media circle wants to be part of something that’s bigger than them, that’s creative and that brings new ideas into the world. Something that they are passionate about and care to promote & share with friends.

Some of the ways to get things moving could be as

No Direct Pitch for Endorsements

The consumers shall never be asked to endorse a product or site directly. Instead the content should be created with is independent of the brand. The consumer shall feel the genuine desire of the content owner to share the interesting piece of information/application. Only then will they support the cause & also share among their pals. The content shall encourage a consumer behavior of passion, emotion, intelligence or humor – something people would love to get behind & believe in.

You want to create something that many people will join. A cause, a vision

Let it be Catchy & Meme-able

‘Meme’ is an idea that spreads from person to person, one that’s so “catchy” that people almost can’t help but to spread it.

A meme is bigger than a brand. Just Do It is a meme. No Fear is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own and share with others. Open Happiness is a meme

Let people get hooked to it – catchy is the word.

But same time Values-Driven, too

If your project provides awesome value & is catchy at the same time, then you’re not only sure to inspire people, you’ll also be making the world a better place.

So along with everything, the creative project should have some value to the customer as well.

Easy to Join & Agree

Make it easy for your intended audience to participate as quickly as possible. It should be it incredibly easy for the audience to say “yes” & act on it in the fastest possible manner.

Be creative but avoiding inaccessibility

A long webinar, a complex signing form, Jargon filled webpage all are a sign of providing inaccessibility to the ever busy consumer. You can be as creative you desire but without the loss to ease_to_accessibility.

In the end summarizing, for the target of colossal customer base or a huge fan following in the social media sphere, just believe in the principle of simple , catchy , easy to access content which supports a cause / has a vision and also provides certain value to the customer.

You can share you views by leaving a comment – BY clicking the bubble next to the heading!!

Puneet

What the heck is location based social networking ???

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Do these words Foursquare, Location-based-Service Gowalla, Facebook Places sounds familiar, other than off-course the famous cigarette brand famous in nineties, another crapy_internet_jargon, or facebook_is_facebook_but_whats_this_PLACES_thing  !!!!

What else comes to your mind ??????

Well based on my primitive knowledge, I can say, it’s something for people with phones & mobile internet, which can tell their location to online friends say on Facebook via Facebook Location (I am sure this one is definitely not meant for married people!!)

OK time for the technical definition, which I found somewhere, goes like this:

“They are mobile apps that let you share where you are and where you have been with your social web. By “checking in‟ where you are – say, a local lifestyle shop, or a movie theatre – you can act as an advocate by describing what you are doing and how you are feeling, and leave tips for future visitors, turning users into mini Yellow Pages”.

Hmmm so it’s something like a Facebook status update where it’s mandatory for you to write about your location & along with the feedback for that location.

Status Update: “I am at Big Cinemas, Pune. Watching Dabangg. This is an awesome theater with nice ambience, hot looking people & great sound system. Wats more the movie is freaking paisa-vasool” {this was my status for a few days after I watched the salman starrer bollywood flick, but ok, lets not dither away from the topic}

The point here is that the applications like Facebook Places, Foursquare do the very same thing of updating your status based on your location (though in a organized manner) & let your friends know about your where being .

Of the latest in location based social media applications, the social media giant has arrived with “Facebook Places”  in August 2010 (currently in US only) . This is basically a service operable from Facebook smart phone apps and touch.facebook.com that allows users to “check in” at a particular location, see who else is there, and update their friends on what they are doing.

Some Features are as under

Customer Base

• Existing LBS applications, such as Foursquare & Gowalla, currently have user-bases in the low millions. Foursquare has 500,000 active users, Gowalla about 100,000
  
• Facebook Places is initially restricted to US audience of 120 million users
  

Location based social media networking, like any other social media networking, can only be a hit if it has a huge customer base, meaning all your friends etc are at the same platform.

Content – Ability to associate media with the place(s) that the media represents

• Apple iPhoto introduced the ability to geo-tag photos so that they can be sorted according to where they were taken & viewed on maps showing where you have been, who you have been with, and what you have done.
  
• Facebook is now the world’s biggest photo sharing site so Facebook Places will help to make sense of shared events & experiences through associated media.
  

Something for advertisers

• Businesses will be able to claim their locations by searching for the place & clicking something like “Is this your business?”.Owners can therefore monitor what people think about their venue.
  
• A perfect venture for location based advertising since a user will be disclosing his location at a given point in time. Profiling, segmentation and qualitative modeling of customer data will improve targeting marketing.
  
• Foursquare’s business model is effectively a direct marketing proposition. It is based on engagement with users-of-intent rather than intrusive/interruptive form of advertising.
• A good marketing proposition to companies that lack a physical retails presence, which have found interesting & innovative ways of using Foursquare to market themselves.

You can read at facebook blog to know more about Facebook Location / or at Foursquare FAQ.