Jai Ho for Union Budget 2012

Digital friendly Union Budget
A budget tells us what we can't afford and what will be limiting us the coming year, but the latest is telling us what we can really afford and how much more we can spend. There is good news for those who love, play and advertise with digital, by digital and for digital. The budget indicates positive news for developing sectors like digital and outdoor. Service Tax exemption on Digital and Outdoor media (are you going gaga over it??) is already generating a big news. Well it would not only benefit the big & small advertisers, but could also result in availability of few hundred crores more to advertisers for spending on their marketing campaigns. Digital media in a way is again beating the traditional media; making it prominent that you just cannot do without those keyboards (am also contemplating the touch screens). After hearing Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announcing in the Budget for 2012-13,"selling of space or time slots for advertisements other than advertisements broadcast by radio or television" will come in negative list and will be exempt from 12 % service tax, I’m sure the digital gurus want to gift our very own Finance Minister a brand new Apple or Samsung tab (no hard feelings against other brands pl.).

Digital on its Wheels
With the ongoing digital craze, we are all at par to it. I think we receive news alerts faster than those high rise billboards that catch our flickering sight. We spend 1/3rd of our day’s time in front of those digital gadgets (wasting time playing those hidden chronicles on the famous social networking site is also taken into consideration). So promoting brands online is a huge plus. We do almost everything by taking help of this medium, starting from basic communication to connection to content cum entertainment and finally your decisions on commerce (read it e-commerce). Life has changed for everyone after we have access to Mobile and the World Wide Web; by the grace of this digital medium (some definitely consider the search engines like God), it’s really obliging and helpful in our day to day life, for anyone and everyone. Be it a student, a teacher, an astronaut, any professional, the corporate executive, a farmer or a vendor selling fruits and vegetables on the streets, everyone carries Mobile phones. Hence each one of us is connected in this big Global Digital Ecosystem. So, we can really sing the song "Jai Ho" for the UNION BUDGET 2012-13 to help this medium grow and make it much Bigger & Better:)

Eat, Pray and Love Digital

Eat, Pray and Love: Well the trend goes like Eat Digital, Pray Digital and Love Digital (yes can be celebrated as another V-day). So much so that even toddlers of hardly few months are chanting the same hymns. The other day I was waiting on the lounge of an automobile servicing center (most of the time where you have to wait quite long cause the servicing team takes you as a jobless fellow), something interesting caught my eyes. A tot, barely few months old relaxing on his dad’s lap (interestingly who was wasting time like me), was eating or was licking the blackberry, his dad reluctantly gave, to keep him engaged. It may not be interesting for many, cause its quite a natural sight for kids to do such acts, but going digital on the period of babyhood gives another outlook to it. Out of sheer nosiness, I handed over the baby my spare handset: dabba (as I refer to my cell phone), and I was not disappointed by what he did. He took my dabba (a non-android phone is often considered as dabba these days), observed it and clicked all the possible keys, had a look at the pre-existing handset and returned it with full grace and vigor, continuing to nibble the digital fruit. This gave me immense pleasure (or should I say fear, that world’s every species is turning out to be digital savvy), as it proved that the blackberry is much more ahead of my spare handset, is successfully differentiated even by the kid who hardly can have (eat properly) the same fruit.

Evolution should act like tinkerer: Yes, evolution should reflect the versatility of ‘tinkerer’, the fictional, super villain character (no offence against his baddie approach), who can invent urbane gadgets from nothing more than spare parts left over from ordinary household appliances (quite eco-friendly I tell you). Evolution is healthy and growing when it works for the species race not against it. Human beings are the only species that have evolved significantly from the caves and have slumped on digital mainframes. And the evolution has affected the tiny generations so hard, that its way to impossible to fix them on those parks. The age-old toys are getting replaced by high-end play-stations and none of them have any resemblance to bio-degrability. Play and reside to the world of digital is what the young generation believe and worship. They are pro at picking even the most complex function of those play-stations (way better than the grown-ups who they consider as dumb). In the weekends they no longer plead their parents to take them to a picnic, instead they hop to the nearest mall (sometimes even without their parents) to get hooked on those video-games and car races (which I consider as mere gambling). I think the next generation (XYZeee, whatever we name it) would even feel free to sit back home and enjoy digital schooling, wherein the teacher would appear on those web screen, while the students (in their pajamas) dawdle about on the bed (hilarious situation even to visualize). Well long live digital world as long as it gives back the usual and normal childhood of a kid because the soul of a grown-up is healed by being just with children.

The New Taste of Life - Blackberry & Apple

As she gets back from office, Sneha is greeted by her maid while all other members are engrossed in their virtual world. As she passes by the drawing room, Sneha finds her spouse Vikram updating his status from his Laptop. Her 9 year old daughter is peering into the LCD TV screen, whereas her 11 years old son is busy with his PlayStation.

The picturesque was to be quite different 5 years back, when people was not so tech pro. Not only the grown ups but also the kids are becoming so gadget friendly these days. Gone are the days wherein the kids would be craving to go to the adjacent park or play area to get into outdoor activities and spending hours in the open air. Today, this is how technology is driving our needs more than we drive them.

Living digital is the trend of the new school in town where the LCD TV screen is replacing the old school black-boards. The crowd in the joggers park is lessening day by day (thanks to the motorized treadmills). Everything is turning out in a mobile state, with the number of mobile phones in the country is growing more than the number of private toilets available for use. Scenario have also changed for the book readers, they no more prefer printed books, instead they have turned E-readers. The entire generation cannot think a life without the Blackberry and Apple iPods/iPads. But life was much simpler and easy going when they were just considered as fruits.

No Social Media, Back to Basics

Today, everyone is talking about Social Media strategy, hence decided not to talk about the same as of now. The approach of this article is giving less of Gyan and share more of Experience led Digital media insights. As a Digital Enthusiast, have tried to make a comprehensive capsule about the basic rules any Brand Marketer should follow, when a Brand is ready to think of trying this New, Interactive & Dynamic medium (Now it's no more considered to be new). Hence this article may help the Brand marketers to utilize this piece of information in a judicious way and hope they will find it relevant for their Brands.


Healthy Media Investment: Any marketer should have a healthy budget to try out, ranging from INR 3,500,000 to 6,000,000 for a month long digital marketing campaign to be excuted in the Indian subcontinent. This will give the brand a decent exposure as well as reach in the digital space and the budget will also allow to try various permutations and combinations of reaching out to their audience through various relevant touch points. Another point any marketer should always keep in mind is that the media budget allocated will not be wasted at any point of time. This medium being dynamic in nature and accurately measurable, media money not delivering the estimated results, can be optimised with the help of creative changes to achieved the desired results.

Scientific Strategy Planning: The brand team and the agency, which has strong capabilities of working out a brand favourable digital marketing strategy, should be designing a comprehensive strategy to best fit the objectives decided for the brand both in short as well as in the long term. The designed strategy needs to be implemented flawlessly and within the decided time frame. The basics like a Website or a WAP site of the brand should be in place before going live with a digital media campaign.

Digital Friendly Creative: One should not think that this medium is going to work like any other medium, it surely does not due to the dynamic nature of this medium and secondly this medium can be measured accurately to the last point of a dollar or rupee spent. But generally most marketers does the mistake of using the same offline creative assets like the Print or the TV assets for digital media, hence they fail to achieve the desired results. Digital creatives should be more in tune with, what the audience in the digital space is looking out for, like communicating the compelling reason to interact with the brand's marketing stimulus.

Tools for Measurement: Before planning and executing any digital media campaign, one should make sure that the planned campaign can be measured in terms of keeping a track of media deliverables as well as how the response of the campaign is helping the brand in achieving the desired objectives. Say for example one should be able to say by checking the dashboard, how many people became aware of the brand message during the course of the campaign or how many people landed on the brand's website during a month long web campaign. There should be mechanics to track the basics like IP addresses of users, so that one can analyse the authenticity of the clicks generated during the campaign.

Pre and Post Campaign Evaluation: This aspect helps to evaluate the executed campaign in terms of what was planned or estimated as deliverables and results vs what is actually achieved. Experienced digital experts can often over deliver in terms of the planned deliverables and results, this always comes from a scientific digital marketing strategy and media planning approach for any brand, supported by data and consumer insights. Hence it is imperative to know waht the brand stands for and what the target audience is looking from the brand in the digital space.
Happy Reading!!!