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EC Design Sprint. The action begins on Monday, December 26. Bookmark the date. We're streaming it live here on ExperienceCommerce.com

5 days of digital jamming as we race against time to build our new website.

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Have you started planning for the New Year? Party, Venue, Dress, Designated Driver... What about your health?

As our lifestyles become more glued to our devices and less prone to that daily walk, here's a little something to keep you on the right path. A simple, fun, and easy to follow health plan per say. Every week, drop one bad habit and pick up a good one instead. Easy habits. Like stop texting too much, or Start drinking your 8 glasses of water everyday.

There's something new every week, and there's a team of community managers & members to keep you going. There's even fancy badges, of which, I already have TWO! :P

So check it out, and answer us this. Are you Game for Health?



About the Campaign
Britannia NutriChoice Game for Health is the end of year campaign on iHealthU.com. The campaign lasts 5 weeks, and on Jan 1st, stories of the successful participants, the Health Superstars will be spread throughout India, to inspire more people to live healthy.

Read more about it at Afaqs: Britannia NutriChoice campaign gets people in shape for the New Year

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There's a new reality show in the house, and these deliciously tempting snacks are putting on quite the show!



What? India's first Snack Reality Show

Where?? Why Snexville ofcourse, at www.snexy.in

Why? To find India's truest, snexiest Snack!

Who? 7 snacks, the desi Samosa (mmm), buffed up Burger, lip smacking Pani Puri, the poppin' Popcorn, naught Namkeen, twisty Tedhi Medhi and the sultry Chips.

No, who's behind this campaign? You'll just have to stay tuned to find out!

But WTF is Snexy??? That's what everyone is asking!



So WHO is the True Snexy? Cast your vote & find out at http://www.snexy.in/rate !

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2011 is coming to an end, and marketers are still trying to decipher what the Digital Platform holds for Indian brands. The medium is constantly evolving; technology is changing as is consumer behavior online. One of the tools we find constantly relevant in this chaos is Gartner's Technology Hype Cycle.


Basically, all technology goes through these stages.
>Technology Trigger - this is when some smart techies in Silicon Valley, Bangalore, or apna Mahakali Caves churns out a neat piece of tech
>Peak of Expectations - fortuitously, the tech has caught on! everyone is using it, are you? it has to be part of your brand strategy!
>Trough of Disillusionment - over time, people realize, this new tech? not really going to solve world peace
>Slope of Enlightenment - over some more time, you start understanding what this tech is good for
>Plateau of Productivity - you've made your piece with the tech and now you're using it the right way, to your advantage!


In Action: NRIMatters 'Light a Diya' campaign

We built a neat tech, beautiful visual layered on top of Google Maps, to allow Indians to send diyas to loved ones all over the world. Celebrate Diwali in temples, pujas, and this year, online. Check out the campaign, you can get lost in reading Diwali messages being sent real-time across the world.

We built a very cool gadget. And we just new, it would attract people, incite them to share, get featured on portal homepages & so on and so forth. Yep, expectations were soaring in the EC office. It's a good thing we relied on Tries & Tested activities that lay in the 'Plateau of Productivity' stage to meet those expectations. A combination of online ads, email marketing and good ol' online PR (a nice mention on the Yahoo Homepage), and we're enjoying numbers soar with every page refresh.



A very cool gadget -- as all web apps must be, to attract people, incite them to share, and to get featured on portal homepages. This gadget was soaring in expectations in the EC office, but it was really the Tried & Tested activities that helped adoption numbers soar as high. We used a combination of online ads, email marketing and good ol' online PR to get our app out there. And share options & an embed code to let people spread word as well.

Every bit of tech has it's purpose. The onus is on us to discover it.

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The entire EC team touched this project one way or another, and it's great to see the ripples it's making!

Shortlisted at the Yahoo Big Idea Char, under Best use of Technology!

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The Spike Asia Digital shortlist was just announced, and our campaign "Build a Dream Car" for Tata Aria has made the cut! There were fourteen entries in the 'Websites - Cars & Automotives' category, four made the shortlist, one by ours truly.



Watch the entry video!


Check out the full entry at the Spike Asia website.

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Welcome to mid-2011. The digital-crazed era when…

• The Indian janta supports The Fight Against Corruption by putting it up as their Twitter status
• Bands and Restaurants tell us to LIKE them on Facebook
• Niche Boutiques let us know about merchandise stocks via Black Berry Messenger
• Newspapers tell us to check out their Exclusive Bloggers at their newly ramped Websites.

As marketers, we obediently repeat the mantra “OUR BRAND MUST BE ON DIGITAL.” So while we’re going ahead and taking that digital jump because of the Mass Adoption of Digital, let’s take a look at what’s happening at an Individual Level.

Starting this week, I’ll be featuring individuals of varying demographics and documenting how they & their social circles are using “digital.” This week, I begin with a digital snapshot of my personal usage of "Digital" (digital = web & mobile).

subject nidhi makhija
demographic 18-25, SEC A, Female, Single, college graduate
techno-graphic MacBook/1GB DataCard, BlackBerry/Unlimited Internet (formerly iPhone 2G & 3G)
socio-graphic BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Gmail

PERSONAL USAGE:

- BlackBerry Messenger for personal & social survival. Planning weekends, party invites, general staying in touch as BBM is perceived as "better" over SMS as it is free (post a monthly payment)

- Twitter for long rants, commonly around Traffic, Corruption, Bad Customer Service, Cricket, Movies. Very one-way, and usually in search for Sympathy.

- Facebook for work, work work; to keep in touch with global network of non-Indian friends. Also as a residual habit that is slowly fading away (notifications are merely spam now)

- YouTube – video sharing in groups of 4+, recently inspired by Rebecca Black. Oddly – YouTube only happens in groups of 4+ be it at work, or an IPL party or Holi party. Thereby rendering YouTube ads as mostly un-read.

- Email - as an alternative to SMS to keep in touch with global network, and also bored friends in Mumbai who swap sporadically between Facebook Group messages, BlackBerry Messenger Group messages & Email. Very schizophrenic.

USAGE IN SOCIAL CIRCLE

“Acc. to my 17yr old brother, he and his friends use Facebook less now. Why? You can use BBM for everything [status, pics, groups]”

“My maid just showed me a video of 2 dudes dancing in a cat & dog suit, on her mobile phone. First encounter with MMS, and how!”

“My family & I don’t get the iPad appeal. We’re too used to surfing the web with multiple browser windows open. Typing isn't easy either.”

“My mother needed a photo from a friend. Her friend insisted on BBM-ing it to me instead of emailing it to my mum. Such is technology now.”

*

Marketer's Verdict: BlackBerry Messenger is wildly underestimated as a social network. MMS is a viable channel for Mass Market Reach. Mobile *is* the new game changer.

Stay tuned for our next digital consumption snapshot. Bookmark this blog.

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Disruptive growth is the mantra (published 28/12/10 in Brand Wagon, Financial Express)


Social Networking from mass to niche: Niche networks will regain audience interest, while Facebook will be relegated to being just the mother-ship storing content/profile information and providing universal gateway access to the web.


Disruption of the tablet: Increasing availability of multiple screens (tablets and large screen smart phones), opening of 3G and crashing access prices, will enable audience to consume digital content in ways that could not be imagined till now. The tablet will push digital laggards in India on to the content consumption platform. It will open new retail engagement and media-by-subscription platforms likely to be piloted in year 2011.


The new ‘sponsored’ search: The new search will go mobile and local. Absolute search volumes on Google are already witnessing a slowdown in growth and decline in key markets. “Paid” (and silent) Partnerships between Google and content providers, mean consumers will increasingly access what providers paid for (movie listings, cricket scores, event listings etc).


The new web entertainment era: Indian internet in 2011 will see emergence of new entertainment era, as production houses like Balaji Telefilms wake up to the possibilities of this new mass media.


Smartphones meet PSP: Casual gamers are more likely to be downloading and playing apps on smart phones and stall the demand for portable gaming devices. Mobile gaming will become a bigger habit and consume more time than what is currently spent on social networks. Adults, both urban and rural, will adopt gaming also.


Death of Flash: No – Steve Jobs is not paying us to write this, but the writing is truly on the wall! The top web design trends of 2011, are all ready to trash Flash. Hello HTML5!


Facebook brand pages: Static brands selling unchanging products say some “awful chinese noodles” will fumble big time with their 200,000 strong communities, built with TLC (and lots of money), with nowhere to go to.


Branded mobile apps (2.0): Likely to take more advantage of phones' native features, mobile apps (branded) will serve as gateways to content, tools, services for the average mobile consumer.

Paid content will start coming back: The evolved Internet audience will, willy-nilly, start paying for premium content from trusted providers (news, entertainment, business content). Paid content might be down-loadable movies, web episodes or even music.


Audience behavior: The digital media audience will shift incessantly from screen to screen, often multitasking and challenging new media with little attention. Internet TV will make inroads in Indian homes and we may possibly be browsing YouTube on our LED TVs, and watching TV on our mobile phones.


Location, Location, Location: All new services in 2011 will focus on “location”, as mobile platforms seamlessly bridge access to the Holy Grail for marketers. In 2011, as more people opt in to declare their location, search and advertising will witness the first meaningful change in a decade.

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Two months after developing, content and community bootstrapping, the website sponsored by Kotak NRI services, was ready to be taken to the next level. EC had to hook the NRI consumer in with a viral campaign that would:
1) Increase sign-ups to the NRIM platform,
2) & convert the NRI online audience into regular consumers of the NRIM platform

The goal was to reach 10,000 sign ups withing 45 days, without any preliminary media spend for the discovery of the campaign or the website.

Staring at this mammoth task at hand we quickly started scratching our Grey cells and the EC team conceptualized an international online contest called - The NRI Power Podium.

We found that the "Pravasi Bharatiya Divas" was a wish list event in the minds of the NRIs. The three winners of The NRI Power Podium contest would win an all expense trip to New Delhi and above all the chance to rub shoulders with the top brass of the NRI Diaspora at The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, 2011.

Each contestant had to select their candidature category (Investments, Culture, Legal), build their application and then draw in votes for their application. Based on the voting metrics and an international jury of business and community leaders we deduced the winners on quantitative and a qualitative levels.

To make the campaign a massive all round success we tied up with more than twelve partners under the - Online / Print / Radio Media category along with the other brackets such as Hospitality, Telecom and Real Estate (who would help us in cross-promotions in their own special ways - EDMs, radio spots, print spaces, WOM, facebook content cross pollination, etc.).

This bring back a theory that I had read about when I was in college called the Bullet theory of communication.
There are three ways to hit a target with a bullet.

The first is to aim at the target, and fire. You may hit, you may miss. (Think: Massive spends on Mass Media)
The second way is to go close to the target hold the bullet against it, and hammer it in. Really pain staking and time consuming. (Think: Well targeted, high frequency media. Once again an expensive and messy affair)
The third approach is to bring the target close to you and then fire the gun. (Think: Digital)

We used the third approach for the discovery and sustenance of NRI Power Podium. We narrowed down partners that would be able to help us out in reaching out to the dispersed NRI community. Gave them ample incentives to tie up with a very young website. And the rest is all history.

With the help of our partners, minimalistic media spend (on facebook stamp ads and a few banners here and there), intense social media efforts, we reached the monumental target of 10,000 sign-ups. And obviously that very moment we called for a cake and celebrated our success.



Little did we know that in the remaining few days, the campaign would ultimately lead to more than 13,000 sign-ups to www.nrimatters.com (30% more than our target), receive more than 600 qualitative applications with and average of 100 endorsements for each applicant!

With the NRI Power Podium contest we not only achieved our quantitative goals, generated qualitative leads for Kotak's NRI services, but have also increased the share of voice and the recall value for the Kotak brand among the NRI Finance consumer segment.

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