This Blahg Is Mine

There are many like it, but this one is mine!

[thisblahgismine]

New Term: PARAMARKETERS

How about It?

I mean in other professions like medical & legal they have para-medics and para-legal then why not in marketing?

Especially now a days when marketers have lesser and lesser clue about marketing or the advertising. Who we encounter more often than not are these people working in marketing departments who are actually the accountants at best. All they do is negotiate the CPC, they don't want to discuss the brief, need ideas or the strategy or the media or the audience or the impact but only the mighty Click at lowest CPC besides living in this illusion of the perfect world where consumers also wants to have conversations with the brands they represent :-?

So the smarter one's not only need the lowest CPC but a Click to also drive traffic to their twitter or facebook accounts where they setup a trap for consumer to like or follow their accounts.

Now let's be honest, this is not marketing, nor it is the advertising.

I mean I could possibly be not the only one who is not lonely enough to start having a conversation with brands or am I?

And it just never ends with these para-marketers, most of them also talk smooth about the fragmentation and segmentation and hence the targeting as if they understand it.

So now if I am on NDTV app I am a different person according to them than the same me playing the Angry Birds. As a NDTV app user I suddenly qualify for a brand advertisements from likewise of BMW & Tag Heuer, while I totally get degraded when I am on say Angry Birds and the offer is Free Pizza with the one I order or just another free app download :-/

By defining me these para-marketers have created these several other *me* and that confuses the FUCK out of me and irritates me because I am actually exposed to all advertisements running at any given point of time, just on different apps.

Did I tell you, how this other me walked out on me the other day when I bought myself a BMW, because the other me as defined by other para-marketer was pitched a VW Polo :-/ I don't know about you but I hate it when me walks out on me...

And Growth of Video Advertising, Alas!

It is only them who can't seem to understand that the real growth is coming because more and more people want to consume the video content, they don't want to watch the video ad per se but it is called pre-roll for a reason, users are forced to view it and if given the opportunity they skip. And those who don't skip are really the one's who don't give a fuck really.

I mean sometime I start the stream wait for skip button to go active if it's not available then I shift my focus totally away from video for next 6-10 seconds till my content starts playing.

Now will the real slim shady please tell me that how I am not a true representative of the human behavior in response to advertising?

But no, we are the para-marketers, the video was made for TV and we have it. Run it on web, run it on mobile. we don't need no strategy beyond that, it works and it is growing is all you get to hear.

Client: I have the proof

Me: Show me

Client: Last time we bought 10 million video pre-rolls on youtube and got 40 million seconds of video views!!!

Me: That's because every body skipped you...

Client: Say what?

Me: :-/

So as you may not agree but you must see that we have an invasion from para-marketers already. Coining a term is only a necessity or shall I urge to do it for a Vanity reasons :)

[thisblahgismine]

Falling Rs. & How God can save us!!

Yes literally!!

Let me draw your attention to Tirupati Trust Foundation which has well over 1,000 tonnes of Gold. In fact the count is at least 1700 tonnes if not more.

But lets only take into the account the 1000 we need :p

Now to get really excited, multiply that 1000 tonne of gold by $48.5 million (the value of a tonne of gold at $1,350 an ounce) which comes to between $1.5 trillion and 1.7 trillion - that’s right, TRILLION.

Now imagine if this Gold is sold in the domestic market, with the price risk on the sold gold hedged off-shore (at a cost of around one per cent a year).

And even if 30% of it gets sold (300 tonne), the profit that SBI makes is whooping 85,000 Crores. Which SBI could deploy in lending or, till demand picks up, in government securities.

However, more critically, gold import demand would collapse, taking the current account deficit down with it.

The best part of this plan is the government probably needs only to announce the plan for it to work. On announcement itself, the global gold price will fall so sharply that the rupee will strengthen to better than 65 to the dollar.

But then we have politicians in between you have stashes billion abroad which needs to come back and hence…

Lets pray!!

The post is extract of article read earlier, can’t remember where and by whom. So this is the recalled version as I walk through the memory lanes…

[thisblahgismine]

Life's like that

A while back I saw this man dressed as a clown handing out flyers to people walking past him. Occasionally he would also make a proactive effort to make kids laugh by going closer to them and making poses.

That should be all but only not... My mind made up this additional piece to ride on it.

It started to add:

This was his job! to make people smile!. Someday he actually filled up the application form, met the employer who determined that he had the required skills to be a pretend clown eight hours a day and got hired amongst many others. Great day!" Another such day, after another such 8 hours of spreading smiles, he walks into his house to announce "Honey! I am home".

To which loving wife responds by asking "how was your day, sweetie?".

He wanted to say "fine!" but he instead paused to consider the days' events, and while he was at it, he started to see these all the other events that had led him to this point in his life. So then he walks to the closet, pulls out the shoe box from the lower shelf, removed a small caliber pistol that he'd bought several years earlier, and the prime reason for him to become a pretend clown, and BANG!

He immediately blew his brains out all over the badly painted walls in his room.

[thisblahgismine]

Another Dumbastic Study - Mobile Videos are delivering on 'brand impact'

These findings, studies never fail to impress me enough to hit the person on the face who concludes it taking into the account some miniscule data points as if it fucking matters.

Most of the times the facts are simply ignored or are presented in isolation so that dumbnuts (that would be us) of the industry can start taking clues from it and act as if that is the obvious course going forward.

You might be dumb enough to read and share such news on your linkedin, facebook or anywhere else possibly without even reading it, that still doesn't mean, I let go of my love for you dumbnuts and not attempt the explanation.

So here's the scenario 1:

How data is presented: "Shopping via mobile devices increased 81 percent in 2012."

OhMyEffingGod: 81%!

What it actually looks like: Mobile devices accounted for 11% of all online purchases last year. And all online purchases accounted for 5.2% of all retail sales. 

So in turn mobile purchases accounted for a whopping .57% of retail sales - No, not even 1% :-(

If that represents an 81% increase from the previous year, then it rose from 0.32% to 0.57%.

So that's your real clue which really is not so 'Effing, OhMyGod', right?

Now the Videos:

It is more or less the same. I had covered it earlier in my post "We are number dumbastic" in which I explained that how almost 100% of the audience on TV is consuming video :-D so why not brands divert 100% of their funds to address this 100% audience which on purpose is consuming video?

The study: "Online Video Ads Have Higher Impact Than TV Ads", the very reason that every word is capitalized alone should disqualify the study. Is it even legal?

The long and short of it is that no one wants to watch ads on mobile, talk time & data packs are still expensive and most important currency in the mobile ecosystem especially in emerging economies which by the way is most of the mobile internet users.

Every time I am viewing a video on mobile and it has a preloaded video ad it's a sheer pain considering that most of the content shared and consumed is short-content in nature.

Bundle this with the fact that ads are preloaded I as a user is forced to view it at least for 4-5 seconds and that what adds up to conclude that people love Video Ads. Not to mention that how there are numerous occasions then you don't have the option to even skip the ads.

10 minutes on Youtube mobile, 5 Videos (average 2 minutes per video) with 1 non skip-able ad and 3 skip-able leads to

15 seconds + 3 seconds x 3 video ads = 24 seconds of forced viewing :-(

Leading to what? A Brand Impact.

Ha!

"How do you measure the brand impact on a media vehicle that pisses me off to begin with?", "It consumes my paid data pack of which I don't even drive any value?", "Why would I spend money on viewing an ad when all I want is content?", and more importantly

WHERE THE FUCK IS ADTUBE? (youtube > porntube > adtube)

which lists the video ads only, after all people love it and it delivers the fucking brand impact.

Brands can just pay and upload the video on ADTUBE, users consume it because they love Video Ads on their Mobile.

Is this a BILLION DOLLAR IDEA OR What & ME? - A FUCKING GENIUS!

Remember, how "clicks" use to deliver the brand impact when the fact remained that 84% of the audience on Internet never click ads? And yet campaigns were optimized only for 'clicks'

Or then how 'Likes', 'Followers' and 'Fans' were the Godly people/tools who would deliver the brand impact? Then the inevitable happened that all social media giants themselves changed the strategy to deliver ad formats optimized for 'clicks'?

And now the Video Ads on Mobile, I am told they are already selling it on CPC, 'clicks', nothing more nothing less just the 'click', a unaccounted 'click', a fake 'click', or user generated 'click'.

Hence! There will be no brand impact whatsoever.

That saddens me too :-(

[thisblahgismine]

2013: Year of Content

Every time I write a post in this blog, never in my wildest of thoughts it occurs to me that so few a people are going to visit it or how it is not going to be a top destination for random, poorly articulated, half researched articles that obviously would get a much traction it deserves. But it ain't happening, it's like a sex tape released to go bacterial, shot in a poorly lit room, bad audio, non HD version, no celebrity or look alike, and there you're, buried. But then it doesn't matter, does it. Because, I am the content con. More conversations with marketers these days lead me to believe that the new black of digital advertising is now CONTENT. All the champions who sold us "the conversation" and "social media marketing" for the past two years have suddenly evolved to "content" experts. However the good thing is, it's anything you want it to be conveniently favoring the "content producers" like me :) You can upload anything on web and boom, Content! However how smart a man would it take to figure out that 99% of it is garbage and that it will die anonymously without getting any attention whatsoever. Of course before this smart man figures it all out there are going to be good cheers for few winners, a tiny fraction that will have everybody else jump in and make it almost a success before it all will fall apart on its own but not before they would have next buzzword. This is obviously the content come back because last time around it didn't really work. Remember blogs? and how every company had a section on their main corporate websites getting updated regularly for keeping it fresh, I guess it had something to do with SEO but look how it turned out: - over 25% of "fast-growing" companies identified by Inc magazine who had blogs, dropped them.

- only 23% of Fortune 500 companies have a blog anymore, reports USA today these numbers were alarmingly high, unto 63% back in 2008-10 but then kaboom, quiet! The comeback is of course Facebook and Twitter, the lazy man's blog. And why not? I mean doesn't everyone else has one? Plus it is much easier to update a Facebook stays or write a tweet than updating a blog requiring a post. A lot of content goes in there that would require lot of research or understanding or stuff you don't have. But tweets and fb updates are simple, right? Here is Coke's tweet: For your to-do list today: “pay a compliment to one friend and one stranger” #HappyMonday

and Pepsi's Facebook update One way to make this the best week EVER is to ____. (With a picture of a Pepsi can.) drew over 4,000 likes. (The pure content con) As user-generated-content was almost becoming the standard, the marketer's took the control (too much negativity around the product/brand/services etc.), and in trying to emulate the user-generated-content, they are relentlessly dumbing it down, devolving into empty platitudes. 2013, It will be the great year of content without the content.

[thisblahgismine]

Obligatory Post: Super Bowl 2013

I hate it when I miss doing these mandatory posts as if I care any less about making a point on events/people as they would happen, be a part of the trend and make fun of the clowns rising up and/or above me :p

This super bowl however did it well on it's own with the #blackout raising the bar for the worst outage ever and setting it so high that it's not even funny.

Keeping this advertising related is gonna be tough but I shall attempt:

- The biggest loser is clearly Pepsi with blowing millions on Beyonce and there was not even a wardrobe malfunction, what was that about?

- That Pepsi Next spot actually said "real cola taste". That alone should be a disqualification of some sort or even better a crime.

- Kia - "Where do babies come from?". Is anyone doing some sort of survey to determine how many people remember the beautiful ad but couldn't recall the brand it ran for? Repeat after every 24 hours. I am giving you Whack Award but it's not the biggest yet!

- Mercedes-Benz beats Kia to that, for paying billions to huge stars and the rights to Sympathy For The Devil when all they could have done was just show that beautiful fucking car and then the price. It would have saved millions & would have been twice as effective.

- By the way whatever amount GoDaddy paid to Bar Refaeli to kiss that guy, it wasn't enough.

- Dear Subway - how hard is it really to say February?

- The Audi prom spot was wonderful and didn't comply with any strategy whatsoever and that by the way was nice. But bravery? Please!

- Hey Blackberry - "Where was the phone?" - 1 blurry second shot of the actual device, really :-? That spot is reserved strictly for nip-slips, dude! Well and for that matter "where is the fucking phone?".

- Well Budweiser, Super Bowl ad wanting you to call up your parents and say I am sorry. Don't!

- Tide with "Miracle Stain" - Winner!

- Just when I was starting to like the ad folks for being sane enough to not include Gangnam style in every other commercial, there it was :-/ What the eff Wonderful Pistachios, ...did you crack your nuts, gangnam style?

By the way Facebook has audience that is three times the size of the Super Bowl's audience and that's every day, not just once a year. Yet, it turns out that not one person has ever mentioned or discussed or remembered a single fucking ad they've ever seen on Facebook.

I guess that was the reason why none of the brands mentioned the profound "LIKE US ON FACEBOOK", Well, whatever happened to that?

Facebook's 15 minutes are over already? I only hope, not!

The best Super Bowl Tweet came from Steve Martin -

"I didn't realize there would be commercials."

[thisblahgismine]

We are number dumbastics!

In the recent times I have interacted with agencies only to hear their demand to run video ads on mobile platforms of any form and the logic is of course that such content is consumed more and more by users online and has better brand impact.

However, I insist that it is because the Mr. Dumbnuts at agencies can't really think of any execution beyond running the video ads created to be consumed via mainstream media.

Some even have some vague study reference to make & establish the power of video ads on mobile devices.

I ask,

- that the guys are not willing to pay for apps; how is streaming the video ads on these platforms even justified, ha! is it even legal to do so?

- The talk time still remains the most powerful currency when it comes to mobile phones than why would any one want to spend their money rather on streaming ads?

Let me give you another perspective because no one loves you Dumbnuts like me, and I am going to use some real data:

Just imagine for a moment that the world had Internet before the television. Then look at these charts in that context.

Can you envision how intensely the cheering crowd would be telling us to dump the web/mobile and be all over the TV?

The fascinating aspects of these numbers is how out of touch advertisers and their agencies are with reality. But the constant drumbeat of web zealotry has left others in the ad business believing any nonsense presented in whatever fashion.

So, What am I gonna do?

I am evaluating the options to give advertisers what they want instead of educating them what they should ask for.

That saddens me yet here I am :-|

[thisblahgismine]

With every passing day, I realise more and more that I am becoming part of this reality show I never signed up for. I am under this constant observation, being judged basis whatever feels right by whomsoever. I don't understand the rules, not sure if there even are any, and pretty much hate every second of it. I have been hoping and praying that it would end. But it just wouldn't and game is still on! So "what is wrong with being judged?", I asked and answer is "nothing! Well! only not". Because not only people are constantly judging but communicating with each other too building this other Anubhav who is just not me. They are comprehending what they can't understand and then telling it to others who couldn't comprehend either. So now there is not just one another version but several other me. All contesting without any rules in a reality show they never signed up for. But then sometimes I begin to understand it, and I try hard to fix one of these versions, that's when judges usually bark back saying the show has been cancelled. And somebody else is a winner. Sorry. Whoops. Live and learn. Move on. Game over. And I am suppose to be just allright with it, because it's fine and I should move on. I must display signs of maturity as they must comprehend in there own assholliness... I would, because I must but there's just one small problem though: Those voices inside me, and that thing which died? Now it's a ghost and It walks the nights. It's angry. It's hungry. It needs the drink or two and worst of all... It refuses to shut up! And there are now several of such alter egos dead and talking, all at once and want to analy rape your guilt, but only that you don't have one. But you are an asshole so there is still no escaping the (anal)ysing you... and I would do it on your face, in front of the live audience and that's when I win! for I was scripted so many times that one had to win. You trained me well so I must win. One or other me, but I do get to win. And when I do win, now don't be a bitch and cry foul, or be a bitch and a half and start complaining, you knew it's coming, after all thanks to you, there were so many of me.

[thisblahgismine]

Facebook's 1 Billionth User

I found him!

He is so cool that its only what the surprise that how did he survive for so long without having a Facebook profile. He is 30 something, smokes weed, drinks rum straight out of bottle and has been living out of the box when one day in his own words-

“I saw this fucking chair and I just wanted to sit on it, but that chair wasn’t mine and yet I could. It was very comfortable to sit on that chair and think of myself as some one really important, who people cared about, wanted to connect with, so there was this immediate urge to create my profile on Facebook too.

Now I was on chair and had Facebook so that people could like my status updates, and I could judge and I could absolutely like brands (who would not wanna do that?), I was so God like and they even had a term for it, thanks to Max Gladwell I was suddenly the INFLUENCER.

I didn’t have anything to do with the brands or to buy or sell anything to become such an important person to be called ‘influential of social media’.

I am almost loving it.

All thanks to the fucking chair, it reminded me that I am a human and with a need to connect with others, which is not really great by the way because well who the fuck are these people anyways?” He also told me that what he likes about these relationships is the constant reminder that people want to have the conversations with each other and the brands. They don’t like to be sold anything to unless first the conversation.

So he created a fan page for weed and fan-base is been ever growing, he was however disappointed that none of them seems to be interested in buying it too. But conversations are on and he doesn’t like that either :-/ Well, mostly because there are people writing negative stuff about weed and he is not figured out how to filter them out :-? His vision includes sitting on that chair, mostly passed out, flowing through the deepest galaxies which he said “it is so Awesome, that their must be a Facebook like for it” He thinks:

“Facebook is divine, I have seen a rectangle on the side, that is constantly asking me to find out how to lower my electricity bill which is a clear sign that I am going to have a house soon”

“I don’t even exist and yet I am Influential because scripts and BOTs and brands and mindless users, if this not divine, what the fuck is?”

GET A CHAIR TO FIGURE IT OUT!

[thisblahgismine]

Getting laid on Linkedin

Linkedin is becoming more and more Orkut then ever before largely because they are trying to make professionals go social (who the hell came up with that?), follow companies (why?), consume company's related content (wtf!), more connections etc.

and the

n we have these Anonymous users visiting our profiles while wanting to hide their own identities as they do it.

Now who would wanna do it? Who the fuck are these Anonymous people? Everyone has been fooled to think that they are the recruiters however something deep inside tells me loud enough that these trolls are your ex or random new people who want to fuck you.

So now that there is a possibility of getting laid by these random anonymous people I think its only fair to pimp up the profile and enable the process to grab the opportunity we missed with Orkut.

Profile Pic: That's an easy fix with instagram filters, so I am not even going to get started on this one. Just take a pic and fix it to look attractive enough to these trolls. Don't be too professional about the whole pic thing, just be cooler than you actually are and you're in the game friends.

Profile Content: This is tricky part unless well, the BuzzWords! You need to keep it irrelevant like you in general would, non-threatening, and subtle. Pimp up your title, you don't have to be an intern when you could be "reblogger-in-chief" or "executive producer - powerpoint". You also need to slide-in the subtle hints like "deep drive", "jack your strat" or "driving it hard" to establish the value proposition.

Connections: Hunt, hunt real good. Connect only with people who bring the real value unlike you would do on linkedin in-general. Look for other good looking pimped up profiles to start with add as many as you can so that if you're not hot enough for the troll to do then the motivation is that you would help them go around.

Bait: Create Job Opportunities that allows you to gather additional details on people. Looking for a model for a lingerie photo-shoots, top e-commerce website, salary is not a constraint for a right fit :p or looking for a in house social media experts which clearly expands your reach, everyone's out of college is social media expert to begin with.

Recommendations: Get them to endorse you. It's a cycle, if you give out recos you get recos, recommendation engines by nature become gamified working in your favour as you start recommending others. The natural reciprocation is a recommendation in return.

Happy hunting! Let me know if it works for you?

[thisblahgismine]

#newrule now that Facebook is 1 billion user strong and is decided to dump social strategies to rather focus on "clicks" to generate ad dollars, social media experts across the world need to shut the fuck up and start concentrating on delivering conversions. Now that Conversations are not conversions any more while it still tasted like a media success, giving poor but lots of content to many so called social media experts, it's time someone beat the real "clicks" back into the system.

#newrule

[thisblahgismine]

Digital Advertising - Such a *sigh*

Working in a digital advertising domain for over last 9 years have been tough, mostly because it never became as cool as it was meant to be. Though everything about it grew except for things that matter like say CTRs which have constantly been dropping while CPCs kept on growing expensive making it extremely difficult to operate with any reason-ability or business sense in most operations.

All this happened because for some unknown reasons the industry shaped up to deliver clicks, only clicks, nothing really before or post clicks, just the clicks at the lowest possible price and demand for clicks obviously led to ever increasing costs per click.

Suddenly the industry needed no strategies, no learning, no well thought end-to-end executions and anybody could be a digital marketer. All you needed to do was to sell or buy a click.

Before we could fix this, came along the Social Media pitched as greatest tool ever and that also didn't change a thing. People who were involved in buying or delivering clicks replicated similar short thought and badly executed schemes to now gain fans and followers, again nothing before or beyond gaining fans and followers, just gaining the fans and followers.

Like clicks to the extent that fake fans and followers are available off the shelf for these media planners to buy.

The strength of Social Media is not even established and we have Facebook behind this whole euphoria going public and then coming under this tremendous pressure to generate revenue and the first thing they do is to strengthen their capability to deliver more clicks, nope, not strengthening the social media based offerings but clicks.

Full Circle or Back to Square One?

Even the Joker knew better

I have been saying this since the beginning... that Facebook should have never allowed these people/brands to create FB pages for free just like Google should not allow OEMs to write crapware on Android handhelds.

Working in digital advertising domain is definitely a new low with first the click experts and now the Social Media giant ditching Social Media Experts across the world succumbing to mighty clicks. Which means we still operate in the same world where anybody and everybody is a digital marketer and also the social media expert at the same time without any accountability whatsoever.

There is nothing cool about it and is never going to be. *sigh*

However, I suggest following to boost the morale of the people working in the industry:

- More conferences, conclaves, round tables where we talk about awesome work we never get to do but that's not enough unless we start getting celebrities to attend these events too. Anybody who attends gets a picture clicked with a celebrity for their Facebook profiles.

- We must not have same speakers all the time talking about same thing over and again. We put everybody on a stage/podium to speak the fuck up. That might actually work because to speak, people might actually have to do something to present which may give much required boost to digital media buying and strategies.

- When presenting a compelling data on how things are awesome such slides needs to have an image of Unicorn on it. That way attendees would know that they have a reason to believe and keep the faith.

- At least one client presentation per conference talking about how digital/social media helped them achieve their goals. If they don't have the content then they just present a slide saying "I am a Unicorn and I am hungry for clicks" #instaboost (hungry for clicks)

MORE AWARDS & RECOGNITION

- If any media planner replicates the plan with same publishers, reduced budgets and yet delivers more clicks than the (same) previous version, he earns a promotion and  "Unicorn of the Year" award

- The brand which doesn't need a click but builds a strategy around getting clicks (click to view TVC, a lousy game that no one wants to play, download wallpaper, click to like us on facebook, click to follow us on twitter, etc.) is "Rainbow Brand of the year"

- Pepsi wins "Social Media is my bitch" without any debate, contenders year after year, this is by law we all should push for

- Levers hands-down wins "Look Ma, no web" award again undisputed, year after year by law of digital advertising

and when everything else fails my personal strategy is to act as if I never even tried.

[thisblahgismine]

Dummies Guide to Google Maps on iOS6

Moronistas who loved it when iOS 6 got released & quickly updated their devices without thoroughly checking if it is of any real value minus the new device or country they live in only to raise hue and cry about not having Google Maps on it.

Here's your quick guide to fix your loss on your iOS 6 updated device.

Step I: Launch Safari

Step II: Get it to launch maps.google.com

Step III: Allow it to use your current location

..

Next Steps:

Enjoy Features:

You're welcome!

[thisblahgismine]

I like Food, I like Beer & I like Advertising

So last evening a friend of mine called me to this fancy restaurant for a dinner and some advise that he needed before he quits his high paying corporate job to start a venture of his own.

There were 3 things that were wrong in this setup:

1) The restaurant was fancy but the food was prepared for the people who don't like to eat food. They prefer decor, lighting, cutlery, sitting arrangements, upholstery, rates on rate card etc. Everything but the food.

2) They served wine and I am not hipster enough.

3) My friend is not really an entrepreneur. He is just been bitten by the bug making him itch and he is assuming that is the start-up itch.

My Advise:

I like food: He wants to start a social-media company which we don't understand the logic to. Just like people in these fancy restaurant, media managers today care less for food (results) but they want to have the conversations with consumers/prospects, they want to build communities, they want people to follow them on twitter, become their fans on facebook without having anything to do with end results...

To achieve these new vaguely defined goals they deploy tactics and not the strategies pushing media vehicle only further down the hill.

Social media company without any passion for social media, passion for art, passion for craft, passion for execution is the restaurant we visit to socialize, strike business deals, become pretentious pricks without realizing that any media vehicle just like any restaurant is there to serve good food, deliver results.

The trouble is my friend understands social media just like the way it is, tactic not strategic, and I believe that may not help him in the long run.

I like Beer: Know your brands, know your consumers, how do you mess it up and hope to achieve anything? He is my friend and he knows that I like beer and yet chooses to take me to a place which serves Wine.

Just like Social Media campaign where you stereotype me as metro alpha male and push lingerie ads on my Facebook page asking me to gift it to someone. The weak data that is gathered substitutes the individuals to plan and target the campaigns and results are hoped for.

No my friend you're not an entrepreneur: And there is nothing wrong with it. Being a thorough professional is entrepreneurship enough. You don't get to call yourself entrepreneur unless you have at least an original idea or an idea that improvises the existing idea by a reasonable unit of measurement.

A copy paste is not entrepreneurship unless you do it and do it really well, better than existing player who originally conceptualized it. Facebook on Orkut not Google + on Facebook. Leaps & bounds and not just the add-on features nobody cares for.

What you have is "I don't like my Job itch" don't confuse it with a "Start-up itch". It is better than "I don't have a Job so I am now an Entrepreneur, delusional but entrepreneur".

And if you must, revisit, plan and execute as if there's no tomorrow, and do it with passion.

I wish you all the best.

And no, I am not in; I like Food, I like Beer and I like Advertising.

[thisblahgismine]

Catvertising - Pitch Perfect

[thisblahgismine]

New Media! Stop living off the Mainstream Media's tits!

How about that?

I mean every time I hear big talks on New Media and how it is a fantastic tool and why brands would die if they don't shift, it grabs my attention and when it does, all I get to see is a toddler suckling on mainstream media's tits.

Would you grow up or is there even a plan?

How about living on your own, making your own strategies which doesn't align to what brand is doing on TV but something that's aligned to audiences online if you can really understand what I mean?

Building a campaign from the scratch that works, not implementing a campaign that may, may not?

How about some #NEWRULES

- You don't get to play with Google Doodles unless you improve the AdWord copies for all your campaigns. The blanket ban on words to include discount, cheap, best, off, free amongst all other synonyms

- You don't get to ask for CPL unless first you do away with a form on the landing pages without anything else of any value to consumers. How about not asking for CPLs unless landing page at least is co-branded so a credit card offer/ consumer durable loan offer with a laptop offer, home loan offer with a property search offer, car loan offer + car insurance offer + a car and so on.

- You don't get to post anything on Facebook unless you have executed a campaign on Facebook to gain fans which was not a contest, ponzi scheme, or a trick, how about that?

- You definitely don't get to post a YouTube video on Facebook unless you have executed a Youtube campaign that was not TV ad running on a channel.

- You don't get to post any adage links on Linkedin without reading them first and you have to post a mandatory comment with it, your thoughts, your ask, your understanding of the same.

- You are not a social media expert unless you have your own Twitter and Facebook account with a Klout score of at least "Expert" level. Here we also eliminate everybody who works with you for one and the people (publishers) like me, we don't get to vote.

- You don't get to like the brands on Facebook or follow them on twitter or view its ads on Youtube unless you tell, why? The real stuff.

Don't tweet from an iPhone saying Micromax/Samsung is best. Don't like Maruti, driving and aspiring to drive everything but Maruti.

Exception: Tell us why you like it, don't just like it! It means nothing, its just like you, absurd, meaningless, and minion.

- You convert at least 1 brand's media buying from clicks to post click metrics which is not number of leads, fans on facebook or youtube views or twitter followers. Something else which is far more valuable to the brand.

[Don't ask me when all this while you have been telling me you're the expert or the smarter one.]

And you stop sucking the tits, you offend me when all you have is a budget given to you by mainstream media guys, no strategy, no game, no plan just the BUDGET.

[thisblahgismine]

Mobile Advertising - Same Con, New Device!

More and more people are talking about this really cool way of advertising, it's about displaying ads on the Mobile phones.

I Know, right!?

Same Con, New Device!

Keep it simple, Stupid! So voila, smaller screen and hence let's fit in the smaller banners to plug the gap and like always just hope for the best.

There is no need to rethink or reinvent the wheel, banners are great. Adapt mainstream communications to fit computer web banner sizes, make web banners even smaller to fit the mobile screens.

Everything else needs to be kept the same because everybody believes in magic and we can capture this magic recorded as "clicks" on an excel sheet, as a number!

After all if it wasn't for "clicks" half the industry wouldn't even exist, magical indeed.

Plus clients, they love the "click" counts; so much so that they only want to buy "clicks", nothing more nothing less, if possible out of thin air itself.

So here we are:

Mobile Advertising = Smaller version of the computer web advertising = Clicks

And now suddenly everybody knows everything about Mobile Advertising. Smart ass questions are the same - you fit in or be left out.

No  one cares if you're an application or a wap pages put together or HTML-5, they need "clicks" but not before you answer few tard-wit questions:

- How many Page Views? Err., I am an application.

But what would you know, so wait for it... <random no.> millions

- How many UUs? Err., I am an application. Can I tell you Active Users? Unique Sessions?

Who the fuck is Unique User? Why is he not dead yet? Is this you tricking me into telling you Monthly Unique Users as well? Do you know how UUs are measured? It's an IP for all that you care you stupid fucks!

Would you shut the fuck up and ask me CPC already?

- What's the CPC? You asked me 2 questions before asking this, so Rs. 2 for all that I care.

- That's high, can I buy at CPC of 50 paise a click? Yes, you fucktards, you can! Why else do you think you exist in the ecosystem? No one expects you to deliver any value, execute kick-ass campaign, or think outside the box. Stay inside the Box, box is for you, you need the box.

- Can you run Video ads on your platform? Yes, why not? That's the adaption from TV to web advertising at best. Did you ever consider running click-able banner ads on TV? Putting interstitial every time users move from one channel to another? Re-targeting as you move from one channel to another to avoid advertisements? 

Just stay inside the box.