Celebrities using web 2.0 platforms is no new phenomenon now…we have seen lots of examples of Bollywood as well as Hollywood ones. From having their own websites, to blogging, to official presence on networking sites like Facebook and Orkut, celebs are doing it all to reach their audience and establish a direct connect with them. And as if these were not enough, now they are having their fan following on twitter as well. Yeah, celebs are actually on twitter now! And following this trend is none other than Britney Spears who has re-launched her website as well as an official page on twitter. Her official website www.britneyspears.com is having a video which says something like this:
“Hello everybody, welcome to the new Britneyspears.com. I want to thank all of you for all your support, it really means a lot to me. I’m going to take you where no paparazzi lens ever could”.
Well, looks like the lady who has always been in news of late for wrong reasons and who is trying to make a comeback with her album “Womanizer” has taken up her image building exercise quite seriously now. One can see Britney all over internet, she is trying to make her presence felt across different platforms – be it Britney TV Channel on Youtube or her revamped official website or her blog or her updates on Twitter. Have a look on these vibrant scrnshots
As I write this, her Twitter page http://twitter.com/therealbritney is already having 2901 followers (and still counting) and 22 updates! Great going lady! Hope social media helps her in revamping her image and she gets covered for the right reasons now. Just one thought – In this age of direct interaction and open communication, isn’t it bit weird that her blogs as well as updates are written by someone from her team and not herself? I didn’t find any post or interaction from her apart from that welcome video. Well, not every celebrity writes blogs himself / herself but at least they project to do so and direct contact via posts, comments or replies definitely gives a feeling of personalized interaction to the fans. Well, I think it would have been better if Britney would have written at least some posts herself (if not all), if not then maybe the language used could have been first person instead of third person. But overall, Britney’s presence on social media is receiving an overwhelming response from her fans and the figures of hits and views of her latest video are already making news in media.
Update: When I took the screenshot of Britney’s twitter page, her followers count was 2835, it took me approx 20 minutes to write and post this, that time the follower count was 2901. Now when I’m trying to edit this post a bit, her follower count is 3237! 402 followers in less than 45 minutes! Whoa…that’s some count I must say
Joining the league of hosting official online communities for Indian movies / reality shows is now MySpace India. Social networking site MySpace will be hosting the official community of Star Plus dance reality Show, Nach Baliye – 4. MySpace is aggressively promoting this program so much so that most of the home page estate of Myspace has been allocated to Nach Baliye promos and content. The “Nach Baliye online community” is offering official content like photos, vidoes, inside stories, behind the scene scoop, wallpapers etc. Apart from these, viewers can vote for jodis (couples) as well as read the official blog giving all updates about the show. It’s also expected to have an online game based on Nach Baliye jodis but as of now I don’t see this feature up on the page.
Well, this trend of having an official community has picked up pretty fast in India. Now every other Bollywood release is having an official community on popular networking sites like Orkut or Facebook, to add to that there are these budding websites who have grabbed some interesting opportunities of being the official online community partner for entertainment properties. We saw some successful examples like Rock On community on Bigadda or Bigg Boss – season 2 community on In.com and not so successful examples like recent release Karzzzz community again on Bigadda. Social media is definitely a great medium to reach the larger mass in a very cost effective way and has been beneficial for some of the movies / entertainment programs. But if the site hosting such communities is a new one or one with lesser traffic then it’s more beneficial for that site as most of these programs are heavily promoted on television as well as online medium with repeated mention of the site thereby leading to more eyeballs and increased traffic. If news of increased traffic and pageviews of Bigadda has to be believed then this strategy of hosting official community has definitely worked for Bigadda, now let’s see if it works for other players like In or MySpace as well who are entering / have entered the same arena.
While assessing some more shopping portals for promoting the festival gift voucher of my company, I landed on www.storeguru.com, the e-commerce team from web18 had contacted me earlier for placing our product there and I had thought I will take it up further during peak season. But the moment I opened the site today morning, I got the following message:
So, aggregation is in the season? www.storeguru.com has become http://shop.in.com! Infact yesterday only I had noticed another development of in.com. As a part of my job, I do give a quick glance to all entertainment industry headlines every morning and www.buzz18.com is one of the sites which come into my this list of regular visits. And since I’m a very regular visitor of this site so it didn’t take me much to notice that www.buzz18.com has now become http://buzz18.in.com/.
Well, quite a lot of development at in.com! We saw lots of online as well as television advertisement followed by some noticeable alliances with entertainment programs and now this movement of their vertical portals like Buzz18 and Storeguru to in.com. So, is web18 group moving from vertical portals to a horizontal one? I’m not sure of the exact objective of web18 for doing the same. Strategy of one horizontal portal or multiple vertical portals has different pros and cons, but I think the decision of consolidating one horizontal portal will definitely benefit in.com from traffic point of view. It will surely help in.com in selling higher traffic figures to advertisers and hence negotiate for better deals. Looks like a good movement but lets see if this aggregation helps in.com compete with the already existing horizontal players in India like Yahoo, Rediff etc.
It scares you when you listen to the experience of lay-off from somebody close to you, it scares you when you listen that some of your very well-settled friends with quality degrees and high paying jobs in US based MNCs have been asked to leave for India over night. It scares you to realize that he is left with no cash to support his needs and it scares you to realize that many of them are depressed to the extent that they intend to give in to the pressure of life. Well to be honest, my intention is not to scare anyone rather express my realistic feelings regarding this issue. And it’s not too late for all of us to be cautious and take some basic steps to deal with this bad time (of course to whatever extent it is possible…). Here are some of my thoughts which I think we can take in person to be prepared for the bad days. Read More…
P.S: I posted this on my other blog today on downturn. Since this topic is not directly related to my this blog but definitely is a burning issue, hence thought of posting a link to it on Marketing Chit-Chat as well, suggestions and feedback are more than welcome
Guess BigTV got a nice answer of spoofing Airtel’s teaser by this new ad of Airtel Digital TV. Well, if I have to describe this ad in one word, I will say it’s BIG, it gives the impression of being big, being colossal. What an irony, isn’t it? BigTV kept on insisting “Ho toh BIG ho” through different creatives and through different properties…but the imagery of being big got very subtly and beautifully established by Airtel with just one television commercial featuring 10 popular celebrities! And the interesting noticeable point was that the celebrities are not used as endorsers rather they are shown as representative of different properties of the product. After a long time I think celebrities have been utilized in a very interesting and different way, else most of the ads these days just take celebrities for the sake of featuring celebrities and there are quite some examples of multi-starrer ads where not even one celebrity was required. But in this ad, the celebrities totally fit in the concept and the message gets communicated clearly. If I’m not wrong this is the first Indian ad featuring 10 popular celebrities.
The ad features a normal guy Rahul who is being welcomed as soon as he is out of Airport with “Welcome Rahul” board, it shows some Kathakalli dancers, then Sudha Chandran in her “K” serial avatar, comedy icon Raju Srivastava, youth icon VJ Ranvir, some cartoon characters, movie celebrities like Vidya Balan & Madhavan, sports stars – Zaheer Khan, Gautam Gambhir, then sizzling Kareena Kapoor opening door for him at his home, A.R.Rahman on piano and finally Saif Ali Khan waiting in his living room, all these characters having only message “Welcome Rahul”, come home to the magic. Wonderful execution! All these celebrities representing different genres and varied categories give a well-structured impression of WHOLESEOME ENTERTAINMENT & COMPLETE FUN. Here is the youtube link for those who have not seen the ad till now:
Overall, I liked the central theme as well as the execution style of the ad. And guess the whole effort of picking up Red Sofa by BigTV resulted nothing as in its main advertising, Airtel has not used that Sofa at all . Good work by JWT! Now lets see if next ad from BigTV is a spoof on “Welcome Rahul” :O
BTW just an afterthought – I’m wondering why these two new DTH players are competing against only each other (atleast in advertisements) and not with the already established players like Tata Sky and DishTV?
So, my confusion was genuine enough and I was not puzzled unnecessarily … I was observing this ad on television showcasing a big Red Sofa and “See you at home” with small fonts mentioning “coming to your home on 9th Oct” but looks like they revealed their product on 8th itself as suddenly on 8th I saw the same Red Sofa with “See you at home with 32 cinema halls” or “See you at home with digital picture and sound” kind of promotion from BigTV. First reaction – ah another one from BigTV but then immediately one thought crossed my mind – why are they doing teaser campaigns again when they have already launched the product with that hopeless “Ho toh BIG ho campaign”! Got quite confused but then thought maybe because of the response to their pathetic creative last time they are planning to re-launch the campaign with a different message.
But well, got an answer to my confusion when I read yesterday’s Livemint having coverage on how BigTV crashed its rival Airtel Digital TV’s teaser campaign. That Red Sofa and “See you at home” campaign was originally of Airtel but the idea got skyjacked by BigTV’s campaign immediately. Since that teaser campaign was not having any mention of Airtel or any other brand, so Airtel was not having any copyright on the same. BigTV launched a stunningly similar campaign using that very similar Red Sofa and the same line “See you at home” with some extra additions like 32 cinema halls, digital picture etc. Ah, so it was a spoof on Airtel Ad and yet another counter strategy to spoil the campaign of a rival brand! Now spoofs, satire or take-offs are not something new in ad world in India – be it the never ending war between Cola giants or the strife between Telecommunication players. But now looks like with increasing number of players the same trend is observed in DTH industry as well. Nothing majorly wrong strategy wise but somehow I didn’t like this counter movement of BigTV at all – first they launch their service with a terrible campaign like “Ho toh BIG ho” and now this force fitted spoof using that red sofa needlessly. Wish instead of thinking of spoiling Airtel’s ad campaign if the creative agency of BigTV would have thought of some other original idea then chances are that they might have come out with something more sensible than nonsensical “Ho toh BIG ho”…
Recently while doing some grocery shopping in one of the retail stores, I glanced on TINKLE digest which was kept on the billing counter itself…and well, as usual I couldn’t refrain myself from buying it (Pssst…Shhh with a hidden face I am accepting that though I’m in my late 20s but I still can’t resist comics like Archies, Tintin, Tinkle etc… ). Anyways, the comic was as interesting as ever but something which caught my immediate attention was the back cover page of the book. The page was heavily promoting online shopping of Tinkle comics as well as e-comics and contest on their website www.amarchitrkatha.com . Hmmm, looks like they have also revamped their website now and that’s why aggressively promoting their e-content.
Curious enough I clicked their URL and the first impression was WOW! Well, lots of changes as compared to their earlier website. Being a Tinkle fan, I had checked their old website once or twice earlier but there was nothing much for me to go back again. But new UI definitely gave an impression that even this 42 year old Indian Comic giant is changing with times. Not only they have changed the look and feel but they have introduced some other interesting features as well which is giving the website overall a modern outlook. I spent quite some time in navigating through the new website and here are some of the things which I personally liked about it:
Homepage looks neat and nice. Navigation is quite easy now.
Focus is not only on promoting its own content but rather creating user generated content as well. One section clearly focuses on inviting story as well as illustrations from users. Another section is focusing on contests. Very interesting features from customer engagement point of view.
Online shop with free delivery anywhere in India. Also offers and promotions depending upon the seasonality. As of today, one can see a Diwali gifting banner there.
ACK Pedia which is going to be a user-generated repository of information pertaining to people, places and culture of the India. Considering their credibility in offline medium for Indian legends, folktales and parables, if they do it rightly I’m sure they can become the authority in online space as well.
Recommendation Section which they are planning to launch in which they will not only review their own books rather other books as well as other edutainment related products. Good feature as per me.
Well, lots of good things but there are definitely some other things which have got some scope for improvement, like:
The home page loads very slow. I have tried it on high speed connections as well but not much luck. They need to look into their performance.
I think comic illustrations need bit of revamp. While it’s good to see our good old characters but to suit the taste of today’s generation kids and compete with likes of western ones like Tintin and all, definitely some new character and new content needs to be introduced with a bit modern kinda illustrations.
I know the world has moved towards complete English comics but still I think a section of Hindi comics can give them bit of edge in Indian market.
The content needs to be refreshed bit more on their homepage, I think as of now major changes are happening once a week, but in today’s fast changing times it would be good if they can manage to change some content daily.
It would be a good idea to launch a weekly contest instead of one generic contest with prominent highlighting of weekly winners.
I think there is a huge scope of improvement in their edutainment content in digital forms like DVDs, VCDs, video gallery on their own website.
But overall I liked this initiative of Amar Chitra Katha and yes, now I do have reasons to go back to their website again and again. Hope they manage to impress their actual TG i.e., kids and teenagers and they also feel the same about this revamped website .
). Anyways, the comic was as interesting as ever but something which caught my immediate attention was the back cover page of the book. The page was heavily promoting online shopping of Tinkle comics as well as e-comics and contest on their website 
