Vendor space and internal to organizations

Ever wondered how the vendor market shapes up?

Looking at the vendor landscape, i feel, any emerging platform- which has a long term potential will see the emergence of a vendor landscape. If vendors are getting into a market, it is a leading indicator, that the platform  will become big, and may be, as a big organization, you need to start exploring developing internal capabilities in that space.

Marketing Evolution!

The trigger for this blog is the link below:http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31278/The-History-of-Marketing-An-Exhaustive-Timeline-INFOGRAPHIC.aspx

This is an infographic, which talks about the evolution of marketing. In recent times, we hear marketers crying out loud that they do not understand their consumer. The consumer space is growing at a pace, that is hard to keep up with. Technology has been a key driver for the same.

I often wonder, how much of this is just a problem of an old wine in a new bottle. After all, when TV was introduced the first time, the telemarketing was introduced the first time, the marketer was struggling to understand, how to capitalize on these new opportunities. Was the challenge of the marketer of the 60s or the 70s any different from the challenge of the marketer today. Is so, what?

I wonder, if the issues that the marketer of 60s was grappling with- ever changing channel numbers, understanding customer behavior, is relevant today also. Here are the similarities:
- Both marketers needed to understand the new emerging technology and how the consumer is using it
- Both marketer is required to understand the changing consumer behavior w.r.t to new technology and if it has an impact on the changing values of the consumer

How much what we see as our unique challenge is unique? Is it possible to build over human thinking- or is the evolution just incremental.

Related articles

• The Content Marketing Explosion {INFOGRAPHIC} (edelman.com.au)
• Maximizing Customer Value with Behavioral Marketing (sitecore.net)
• Infographic: The Content Marketing Explosion (marketingtechblog.com)
• Infographic: 'The History of Mobile App Stores' (mobile-ent.biz)

Club Culture- unites the world

In One week I traveled New York, Hongkong, Istanbul and Delhi. Travelling three continents, one at the cusp of Asia and Europe, I could not help noticing the how the youth across the world is united by the club. Each city has a Greenwich village, a Taksim, or the latest night club. The experience is almost the same, across the clubs around the world. Loud music, drinks, pretty women and good looking men. The music is mostly a combination of some some global popular artists, spiced with local tunes. It is always hard to get into the popular hot spots. The big burly men outside the doors, make the entry intimidating. Cover charges are often replaced with drinks. As most of the club going crowd is young, I do not really see a difference across the world around the behaviors. The male-female attraction, clubbed with high pitch music and alcohol, is a recipe of an great evening out, among the young across the world. And make sure, when visiting, find such a place. Club-culture is another example of a culture uniting the world - and may be today, this is much bigger than the hippie movement, which was primarily concentrated in the US. Today's clubbers are in all parts of the world, on that one street, which starts to wake up after mid-night. 

Related articles

• 10 Hot New Nightlife Destinations (travelrendezvous.wordpress.com)
• Maltese Tenor - New Release (intostillness.wordpress.com)

Cool Ideas! Kloutscore.com

I have been researching on social media measurement for a few months now. One of my earlier posts spoke about this phenomenon. There is a huge amount of interest out there on how can one use social media for their own benefits.

Social media is a kind of online networking. How many friends do you have on facebook who are your acquaintances and not really friends. If you recommend something- more often than not, you will not get a response from them or may be a one line response. Many of the 500+ friends out there are a result of a polite gesture.

For a marketer, the question is- if you have 500+ friends, does that mean you are a huge influencer??

Not too sure.

Companies like KLOUT.COM are measuring your klout score. Check it out!

Related articles

• Opting In to Social Media (it's not what you think) (lisarivero.com)
• The social media revolution inside (winningbysharing.typepad.com)
• Next Up: A Social Media ETF (paul.kedrosky.com)
• Social Media Revolution Video 2011 (prwarrior.typepad.com)

Are online communities now supporting offline communities- Justin Beiber or Egypt..!

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

2008 - 2011- It took three years to take this kid from a performer being shot on home video's posted on you tube to a teenage heart-throb doing concerts at MSG. Yes, the power of social media.

Did you know, today's teenagers spend more time online than watching TV. Scooter Braun's, discovery of Bieber accidentlly online via a you tube video is well known. However, this might the first example of the phenomenon called social media. It was not only his discovery, but his subsequent gaining of popularity via social media points to the value social media can generate. During his tour of 180 cities, when he was still unknown, Justin would tweet every day- on what he was doing next- the next city he will be in concert- the next radio station he will be unplugged. As people started listening to him, they started following his tweets and him. The crows started collecting in front of the music stations, the halls he was to arrive at. Thus, tweet by tweet, was build this phenomenon called Bieber.


The Egyptian revolution is yet one more examples. It is believed, the government cut down the phone lines, but the facebook phenomenon ensured people knew where the revolutionaries were collecting.

What i find interesting, is that it is a belief, that as people are becoming increasingly digital, physical contact and activities done by meeting up are reducing. The above two example illustrate contrary. The digital world was infact the primary activator in creating an offline community.

Are we seeing a paradigm shift- when the online communities are supporting communities offline?

Related articles

• The social media revolution inside (winningbysharing.typepad.com)
• Taking a day off of social media. That' (carfreebrad.com)
• Five things social media can't do (econsultancy.com)

Why is consumer experience important?

In today's world unique selling proposition and creating a differentiated product/ service offering is a much used and missused concept. Organizations have focused on building a consumer centric marketing organizations for over a decade now. The concept once focused on developed products or services where the consumer was at its centre, however, the marketplace today is filled with such products/ services that this is not longer a differentiating factor. So, how can organziaitons differnetiate them selves in the market place to catch the consumer eyes?

More so, once captured the attention of the consumer, how can organziations continues to hold the attention of  the consumer, as in today's world, with the  number of choice easily accessible are rising, the likely hood that a consumer will be loyal to a brand is low.

These are some of the questions that today's marketers need to address. Experimenting and innovating on consumer experience can be the new way of differentiation. Can this potentially be the next wave of innovation in the marketing space, is this the new buzz word?

Companies like the American girl place, Ikea, Apple have been leaders here. However, is this phenomen becoming more mainstream. The answer is yes, yes, yes.

My next blog will talk in detail about this emerging new phenomemon and the tactics used by companies.

Brand TJ!!

Inmates of Tihar Jail - packing snacks! Ahoy, here comes brand TJ!!!

Will you ever buy a product produced by the inmates at Tihar Jail? http://www.tihartj.nic.in/A question the marketers of brand TJ would be asking each day, as they launched the brand TJ.