Hoping the Knight Riders upset a few more apple carts along the way….one
always lives in hope

The information in this transmittal is privileged and confidential and is intended only for the recipient(s) listed above. If you are neither the intended recipient(s) nor a person responsible for the delivery of this transmittal to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any unauthorized distribution or copying of this transmittal is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmittal in error, please delete immediately.

Text to Speech

The article was on a software called Text Aloud2, which got some good reviews. These are the free reviews that came through.

clipped from www.giveawayoftheday.com Free Alternatives: Mary TTS Natural Reader Free TextToWav Text2Speech Free Voices: http://smart-butler.com/download.html#voices

trends -entertainment

clipped from www.nationmultimedia.com What about entertainment in difficult times? People will look for diversions, for (affordable) experiences that will make them temporarily forget any kind of misery that has come their way. Will cocooning or “insperiences” boom? Of course.

Trends – Navigation

clipped from www.trendwatching.com Will this year be the year in which all things ‘contextual’, ‘app’, ‘local’, ‘urban’, ‘tags’, ‘lidar’, ‘smartphone’, ‘convenience’, ‘Cell ID’, ‘spontaneity’, ‘infolust’, and ‘GPS’ finally come together in one orgasmic celebration of map-based tracking, finding, knowing and connecting? Embraced by eager consumer masses who will flock to anything from friend-finders to lowest-gas-price-locators? Aided by services that already know which street users are on? Judging from increased levels of MAPMANIA, we’re nearing that destination. As the Googles, Nokias (who expect half of their handsets to be GPS enabled by 2010-2012), MapQuests, Navteqs, Openstreetmap.orgs, Apples and TomToms of this world continue to build the necessary infrastructure, devices and apps, any consumer-focused brand would be stupid not to be partnering or experimenting with map-based services.

Trend – Nicheattributes

clipped from blog.nola.com “Nichetributes” — Attributes and features added to existing products to “cater to distinct (if not niche) consumer lifestyles and situations, ” according to Trendwatching.com. The site gives Estee Lauder’s Super Flight Creme Continuous Hydration for Face as an example of a nichtribute for frequent flyers.

Positioning

Hi read something interesting over the weekend on Positioning which made quite a bit of sense and hence wanted to share the same. The article from the Kellog Business School mandates that any  Positioning statement needs to essentially include the following :

1. The Target Consumer definition

2. The Reference Framework – essentially an understanding on  how the brand is likely to benefit the consumer. In order to establish the Frame of Reference , the Brand needs to either slot itself within an existing category ( e.g. fast food), the benefits of which are clearly understood by the consumer, or, it can also align itself against a major player/competititor in the category ( say Mc Donald’s), whereby again the consumer is aware of how he/she is likely to benefit from the brand usage. Any fuzziness in the Reference Frame often leads to confusion in the consumers’ mind in terms of slottin the brand.

3. Points of Difference – the reason why the Brand is different from other brands within the category

4. Reason to believe – why should the consumer believe the assertions in points 2 and 3 above

The article goes on to talk about how Line or Category extensions are dependant to a large extent on the Brand  Positioning and especially on how closely the Brand is linked to a category as a Frame of Reference. The more strongly it  is linked , the lesser the possibility of a Category extension. For e.g. Coke is linked strongly to the beverages category, so extending to clothes or shoes would not possibly work for it. In contrast, Virgin is not tied to any category. Its reference is to an underdog fighting against the establishment and since this can be true of multiple categories, hence Virgin has been able to extend to Airlines, Radio, Mobiles, Record labels and the works.

Would like to have views on this and any other interesting insights on Positioning.

Good Nite

Relevance of Social Media on the Net

As with all marketing professionals across the world, I think I am also trying to understand the relevance and the likely impact of using Social Media on the web as a marketing tool. Being on the wrong side of 30 sure does not help the cause, as the significance of wanting to share your life with the world often escapes me, however, who am I to judge if the world at large believes in power of web 2.0.

On a slightly serious note, while I am still to fathom the depths of networking sites on the web, what seems certain to me is the following:

1. Simple banner ads and plain product placement on the site/s will not serve any meaningful purpose for the brand
2. The activation of the brand needs to be perhaps more subtly interwoven with content that would be relevant to the consumer on the site. This I would believe would be more relevant for business networking sites like Linked In and Ryze, perhaps more so than the Facebook and the Orkuts of the world.
3. Content also needs to be interestingly packaged and preferably also in an AV format, thereby rendering it viralable.

While all the above is possibly challenging in itself, I think there is a greater challenge in the ability to quantify the impact of activating the social networking medium.

In the alcoholic beverage marketing space, given the restrictions of talking about the product directly, one wonders if the net can provide a means to actually be able to do so, since the restrictions imposed by legal boundaries within a certain geographical limit will not be applicable here. 

But , what I have been trying to understand is what kind of content should one focus on and where should one focus one’s energies in this space to be able to make an impact….at least an impactful beginning.

Any thoughts on the Social Networking medium perse as an effective Brand Buiding tool in general and its use in the marketing of spirits will be welcome.

 

Hello World

Guys, this is the first ever post on my blog. Thought of sharing a few things about myself. Am a marketing professional who has been in the beverage marketing space for the last decade. For reasons known to only the powers that be, my fortunes have always been associated with the number of cases of coloured water sold, in either the “soft” or the “hard” form.

Currently I find solace in managing a portfolio of alcoholic beverage brands.

I find the marketing of spirits a rather interesting activity in itself. Apart from the normal challenges of a brand marketer, the category in itself lends itself to some peculiar difficulties, given the legal and mandatory restrictions that exist. Thought would use some future posts to not only let you know of some of the more interesting stuff from the spiritual world, but also discuss interesting possibilities within the broad ambit of the Marketing universe.

Besides, Brand Marketing,  which interests me immensely, I am also quite fascinated by the world of investing and digital photo editing. Read quite a significant amount of literature on the method of value investing, practiced Technical Analysis and also dabbled quite a bit with Photoshop. My reading today has become more skewed towards business literature, just finished Freakonomics, and it plainly worries me at times that my reading is getting too uni dimensional at times in the absence of literature and fiction. Love music and am pretty broad in my musical tastes and preferences. Listen to Vangelis, Kitaro, Black Crows, Marvin Gaye, Cole Porter, Shakti and the works….