Scenario, Afterthoughts & Prompts

Few days back, I had posted an update on Facebook, which had criticism for a particular state government and more so, a popular leader of the country. Though, I keep a different outlook about that leader than how he is being perceived outside the state. Coming back to the status update, I got very stinging response from my audience; some flatly disagreeing, some trying to make fun of my other updates, but the hardest one was not on my facebook wall but over telephone from an elder, from whom I seek personal and professional advise. He went on to tell me that my updates are showing that I am being unjust and negative without reason, may be because something negative might have happened in my life. I was told that the personal updates I am posting on Facebook are trivializing me as a person and I should refrain from doing so. I am in the field of digital media marketing from last few years and advise people on content as well; as expected. These kind of remarks made me t...

I may not be competent enough comment on the merits of any national level campaign but everything happens of that or even lesser magnitude does leave a string of lessons for me to learn. It has been around two year now, when Anna Hazare and his team started a civil movement under the banner of ‘India Against Corruption’ to end corruption in the country with the support of common people’s movement. This campaign was launched with the objective, or at least we were made to believe, to bring in ‘Jan Lokpal’, who will have investigation as well as prosecution power to try and punish the corrupt. ‘Jan Lokpal’ is nowhere in the picture but this entire civil movement has now become political with Arvind Kejriwal and few others has started their political journey with naming and shaming the big and mighty in political power circle leaving Anna Hazare sulking in his village Ralegaon Siddhi. Despite knowing the fact that this ‘Jan Lokpal’ can’t solve the problem of corruption in the countr...

The advent of social media in India has given birth of many experts in this field. Sometime my friends and colleagues also tries to call me by either suffixing or prefixing this word, but I make it a point to stay away from this temptation and remain an ever eager to learn digital media enthusiast. Over a period of around two years of digital media profession, I have learned that I disagree on some of the points with many experts here. These points are given below: 1)       Only ‘Content’ is King in Digital Media : Many experts still make us believe that only content is the king in digital media and by content, they mean the words written. I somehow disagree with them on this point. Had words been only powerful armoury   in digital media sphere, we would not have seen billions of photographs and videos uploaded on different networking and sharing sites and commanding ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’. Meteoric rise of Instagram,   Pinterest and photo and v...

I happened to be the part of a meeting last week, where a project head was reviewing is his digital media campaign progress among other things. Despite digital media marketing being my topic of interest, I was not playing any role, because I was not supposed to. But I was helping the lady responsible, to make some head and tail of this entire campaign. I assume, she, to her dismay had not done such campaigns in her prior assignments. So, it was bit tough for her and negative review from the senior had put her in bad mood. Now, I won’t lay blame on anybody for the right or wrong in this exercise. I am putting my observation, which I feel that normally goes wrong in any digital media campaign and here also, it was the same story. Digital media requires dedicated manpower : Social media is something which thrives on scheduling and broadcasting transparent content to engage your audience. It is not one time exercise. It requires time, it requires schedule, it...

Every Business case is unique : This world has seen metaphor of entrepreneurship success in Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos; back home Sunil Bharti Mittal, Dhirubhai Ambani, N.R.Narayanmurthy and many more. Almost everyone has a book written on their life. But is there any similarity in their business, entrepreneurial journey; probably not. Similarly, your case is also unique. You are stuck with your own set of resources and constraints and there can’t be any copy cat answer of your problems. Though, there are numerous books with cookie cutter solution for every problem, but believe me, you will have to solve the problems yourself and others can only be a guiding force. Had there been any readymade formula to solve every problem, as many writers of the different book makes readers to believe, then this world would have been the happiest place, without any kind of strife. I also read lot books and journals on entrepreneurship and never...

The news of how Twitter is planning to take on Facebook in social media turf was appeared on www.mashable.com . As the fight to challenge the supremacy of Facebook is heating up, different social networking sites are revamping their looks and offerings to stay relevant to the users. In order to do that, they are borrowing each other’s ideas, albeit with different name. Facebook came with ‘Lists” and “Real Time Feeds”, heavily borrowed from Google Plus and Twitter respectively. Similarly, twitter had added photo and video sharing features. Now Twitter is adding on more features to make it more relevant to the end users, breaking out of their 140 character identity. Brand Pages : Marketers can customize their headers which makes their logos and taglines more prominent. They can also choose a tweet to stay at the top of their page and that tweet will automatically expand, even if the visitor doesn’t click on it, to show a photo or video. Profile Pages : Twitter profile pag...

I need not to write how important food is for all us and so the point, from where we buy it. It is as important, if not less than agriculture, because it provides an outlet to it for value realization. Moreover millions of Indians are dependent on it for their employment. There has been a lot of debate and criticism, some positive and lot negative about allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail in the country. I personally believe that foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail is very much required due to following reasons: It will help in reducing discontinuity in marketing information : Food inflation, as we all know, plays a very crucial role in bringing or dissipating smile from common Indian’s face. And this inflation is caused by discontinuity in market information about the availability of agricultural produce (Carry Over Stock + Production + Import – Export- Stock Kept for seeds – Wastage) for sale, along with other factors. This...