India at 60: Look at some websites

Everybody is screaming and yelling about India's 61st Independence day celebrations, I thought of adding to it in my own way. I thought I would look at top India portals whoi have cared to brand their website on this occasion.

I was quite shocked to see a vertical manhattan at Sify - trying to get business but nothing in terms of branding and they are supposed to be one of top 10 networks.
Nice big logo at Orkut's India interface

Monster - one of the top 3 search portals and nothing on branding front.

Lot of hype on their news channel - CNBC TV 18 but nothing on moneycontrol.com
Was not expected either and also found nothing on India's biggest rail ticket transaction site IRCTC
Titsy witsy bit of branding on Rediff
Classy one on Indiatimes but again very minor
Awsome logo of Google
Nice one by Yahoo also


AOL - nice one

Basics of service in branding

Motorola:
I had been a big Motorola fan and believed that they deserved to regain their supremacy in mobile phones. But I do not think so it will ever be able to do that unless they get the basics of servicing in place.

Here is my frustrating experience with the big brand.

I bought Motorola A780 phone, which was marketed under MOTO WHIZ campaign in June last year and was pretty satisfied with it. But the battery life started getting worse day by day from 5 months....the buttons started malfunctioning...so I decided to take it to service center. And then I had a shocker of my life. There hardly was any service station in entire Noida but a small dinghy place in sector 18 where hardly 5 people can sit without touching each other. No professionalism at all in dealing with harried consumers.

I waited their for long for my turn only to hear that for checking whether the battery is at fault, they would need 2 days and if its faulty they would send it to some factory somewhere on the planet. When asked for a backup phone they said NO WAY! and when asked if they could tell me how much time it would take to come back from the factory, they again had no answers.

Distraught, I came back to one of the new swanky HOTSPOT outlet (which is now supposed to service and handle retail of Motorola) and I had bought my phone from one of the HOTSPOT outlets. The service lady tells me that she would arrange for the batteries as soon as possible. And would call me to tell about it. I waited and waited and called her back after 1 month only to be told the batteries are still not arrived.

I kept on calling her for 2 more months only to ind the batteries are still not come. And now its going to be 1 year when all the guarantee and warranty on my phone would be gone. My phone needs to be charged now every 6 hours else the battery gets discharged.

I mean its ridiculous....its height of anti-consumerism. I loved the brand but my experience with it is pathetic and am certainly not going to recommend anyone any more to spend even a single penny on it. They might have understood to make a product and sell it but they are certainly far far away to understand that servicing a customer is even more critical.

Goodbye Motorola! You just lost a big fan of yours. I know you would not care as you must be busy making some new hot selling product.

Targeted advertising: Noscruf.org

I had made a cursory mention of Targeted advertising and the need for reaching out to customers in more and more appealing and customized approach.

P&G launched an unbranded viral campaign, Noscruf.org to divert attention from Philips Norelco Bodygroom electric razor (an Amazon.com bestseller) and scare men into being clean shaven by showing thme the consequences of growing hairy stubble.

The campaign has been done by Digitas, boston based agency.

The campaign is quite hilarious. Noscruf stands for National Organization of Social Crusaders Repulsed by Unshaven Faces. The website has been designed on the lines of archaic geo cities type pages. At first look it looks like a crusade by some selected women against men of their lives who do not shave. It is totally unbranded and only by googling you can make out that it actually is a marketing campaign. The entire look and feel of the old and dusty website makes you jump of the bed and shave....

Yahoo has new Mission statement.

Yahoo has been trying to catch up with Google. This seems to be one of the ways to catch up with "Don't be Evil" motto of Google.

Yahoo launced its new mission statement: "Yahoo's mission, is to connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world's knowledge."

To ensure this, Yahoo offers a broad and deep array of products and services to create unique and differentiated user experiences and consumer insights by leveraging connections, data, and user participation.".....Jeff Weiner, EVP of Yahoo's Network Division

They have done a rather good job of pinning down the statement. With the rise of web2.0 technologies and evolution of consumer needs...Yahoo with its products like Answers, Finance, Bix etc can do it. But the big question is whether Yahoo would be able to come up with new products and especially against Google juggernaut? Yahoo mail is not able to catch up with GMAIL. Infact nothing after Answers has been able to catch public attention.

Coming back to mission statement: It is actually a little more focus than its previous mission statement:

"Our mission is to be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses."

How we pursue that mission is influenced by a set of core values - the standards that guide interactions with fellow Yahoos, the principles that direct how we service our customers, the ideals that drive what we do and how we do it. Many of our values were put into practice by two guys in a trailer some time ago; others reflect ambitions as our company grows. All of them are what we strive to achieve every day.

In nutshell, the mission statement is right, Yahoo needs to fulfill it with new products and make better us of its marketing acumen to prove they can sustain it.


Read details:
1. Man on a mission blog
2. CNN News
3. Yahoo docs
4. And for a word by word analysis, read on Search engine blog

Despair, Inc. :-(

All of us have seen those motivational quotes in our offices....those DARE TO BE DIFFERENT notes all over the corporate merchandise. Here is a company, DESPAIR, INC, which produces posters, mugs, souvenirs,t-shirts and lot of other merchandise to play jest over the motivational indoctrination syndrome, all over the corporate culture. Quite contrast and as a mirror image to Successories.

Sample is the pessimist cup.




Logo of the company? you would not believe it. It has trademarked :-( , yes the famous frowning emoticon which we use in chats, mails etc. Next time you use it, beware, they may ask you to pay money for it is usage.

A Caution notice

It is saddening to know how some unscrupulous handful of people try to cash in hopes of people who are looking for jobs...It saddens the spirit of companies like HCL which are trying to make India a much better place to live in...

Blog marketing

I had blogged about Webaroo
on my Tech blog, and I got a mail from a webaroo professional.

Very smart. This is the future of marketing. Relevant and contextual advertising. Sending mesages to those who are actually interested.