Jas Business Blog

Just in case you were out hibernating and missed out on the big news, Google  (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced on Aug 15, 2011 that they have entered into an agreement to  acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion, a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday, August 12, 2011. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies.

Now lets step back and think of the cultures that is embodied by these companies. If we think of Google, it brings up an image of an technology innovation major, dedicated, sincere and one who is eager to friend us. If Google decides to develop something today, we will keep hearing bits and pieces of how they are progressing and then one day they just announce of their new product or service. Whether it fails or pass, but most of us do comment on the new product or service fairing against “Google standards”, which means that they do have high standards.

Lets focus on Motorola now, this piece may have different image in different minds. For me, it reminds of again a technology major where innovation happens but once a few years. It also strikes a dedicated and since image but when it comes to reaching out or communicating to me or users, it would draw a blank. They haven’t been really engaging the consumers, atleast to what I have seen. Talking about standards, I do feel they have high standards. But it seems they struggle a lot to come out with new ideas and seem like a blast from the past.

These differences in images in the latter part of the above attributes is where a big gap is staring Google. Google is a company of people who are passionate to create, they are young and do not really care if they do not get it right in first try. Motorola on the other hand does not count flexibility anywhere in its strength. They are process oriented, professionals who want to ensure right processes is followed, even if it takes longer or is arduous. Typical to process-oriented people, they genuinely believe that some core principles cannot be compromised away and that sometimes nothing is worse than something.  So if they cannot get a handset with a robust public response, then they are better off with not launching that product.

So the question comes will Motorola change under the new management? Will Motorola become more flexible, focusing on the Android platform or will the entity be as separate as told by Google spokesman to Wall Street Journal’s reporter, “As we have said repeatedly, we intend to run the company as a separate entity.”

But a former Motorola CEO, who said that updating Motorola’s company culture was his most difficult career challenge, believes that Motorola is going to have to change, or else. “They are going to have to stand alone and win in the marketplace, or Google will shut them down and just focus on the patents.”

Whether Motorola really changes or will continue as a separate entity without any culture osmosis from Google is the question which will get only get unfolded with time.

There has been a huge uproar on the fuel price rise suggested by Pranab Mukherjee, Indian FM, in the annual budget presented by him. Though many would want to bring out the daggers and shout against him, I would like to support the league of these sensible men. Knowing that Pranab was rated as one of the best five Finance Ministers of the world for the year 1984 (in days when nobody knew about India, and reforms was a word yet to be discovered), I do like to understand him before I pass any judgment on him.

To understand the rationale behind this, let us have a quick look at the macroeconomic indicators of India and government policies in last few years which are precursor to this. Indian economy is already ailing from the “populist policies” and tons of economically misaligned subsidies. The projected fiscal deficit of 2009 has been put at 10.3% of our GDP which would be among the highest in the world. The consolidated debt-GDP ratio is estimated at 76.6 per cent in 2009-10 compared to 61.0 per cent in 1995-96 and 70.6 per cent in 2000-01. This clearly points out at the widening gap in debt and GDP which would be one of the top priorities for any FM of a country. Mind it that Greece, which  was in news recently for sovereign debt crisis, has  2009 budget deficit at 12.7% of GDP. The debt to GDP ratio defines the ability of a country to service its external loans and tweak its production to have more exports if needed. Needless to say, we are in red or orange at best.

One would argue that India is not a capitalist country and hence it has to bear the burden of the social debt to subsidize the basic necessities and also spend more on social projects as no private sector would do anything in non profitable options. Infact the power, water and fuel (automobile as well as cooking) subsidies have been there on this account itself. Many would argue that the India has 42% of its population below the international poverty line, hence these subsidies are necessary; but then along with any subsidy we need to also calculate what actions need to be taken to eradicate the problem and define the deadlines to remove these subsidies. The surging economic growth in pockets has already created a differential development rates in India. The people who should ideally use these subsidies would be poor, most of whom are in villages. Ideally the subsidies should have lessened the woes of these villages but the reality is far from this. Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry, logging and fishing employed 60% of the total workforce in 2007, whereas they accounted for a meager 16.6% of the GDP (same year). The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Committee in its latest estimates has projected that during the current financial year, agriculture sector could experience minus 2 per cent growth.

Subsidies have had more political background than economic. The Indian government subsidizes many industries and products, from gasoline to food. Loss-making state-owned enterprises are supported by the government, water is free and paid by the state and farmers are given electricity for free. Overall, a 2005 article by International Herald Tribune stated, Indian subsidies amounted to 14% of GDP! At the core of subsidies is kerosene which is supposed to be a poor person’s cooking fuel. But reports confirm that as much as 39 % of subsidized kerosene is stolen. The stolen kerosene goes to small industries, into petrol adulteration and some also use it for liquor, subsidized one!

On the other hand, India spends relatively a little on education, health, or infrastructure. Urgently needed infrastructure investment has been much lower than in China. According to the UNESCO, India has the lowest public expenditure on higher education per student in the world. No wonder that India’s vast subsidies have been severely criticised by the World Bank as increasing economic inefficiency.

And the consequences? The oil marketing companies are likely face a loss of Rs.40,000 crore in this fiscal year for selling auto and cooking fuels at a subsidized rate domestically. The huge subsidies of power has resulted in rich farmers exploiting it, people using motors to pump out the water in huge quantities, hitting the water table. The groundwater levels are plunging at alarming rates in Punjab and Haryana. The storage of water in the Indus basin reservoirs was a massive 39.12 per cent below the storage figure on the same date last year.

PSU retailers are projected to lose Rs 45,571 crore on selling petrol, diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene below cost. State-owned Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum sell fuel below cost on the orders of the government and expect a revenue loss of Rs 46,030 crore on that account this year. Of this, the government will be meeting only Rs 12,000 crore, petroleum minister Deora has explained. In case the fuel price is not increased, the above PSUs are in danger of getting bankrupt.

To avert bankruptcy, the Kirit Parikh panel has suggested freeing auto fuels from government control along with a steep hike in cooking fuel. The experts group, headed by former Planning Commission member Kirit Parikh, recommended deregulating of petrol and diesel prices, while raising kerosene and domestic LPG rates by Rs 6 per litre and Rs 100 per cylinder, respectively; which ofcourse would not happen.

Prime Minister has already said  that the impact of the rise would not be much anyway on inflation. The current inflation is not demand driven but supply driven, hence there would not be a proportionate increase in inflation. Monsoon would play a very important role to increase the supply. Still if the power is misused and spent away unwisely, the irrigation sector would not get its fair share and that will again decrease water supply; not to mention already lowered water table which would necessitate water pumps and capital for it, making it all a vicious circle.

The only way out is to remove subsidies with a defined time line and state governments, especially Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, to get some common economic sense and a sense of nationalism too instead of greed for political power.

Simply put, to remove the mess we are creating we need this price increase for now and much stronger economic policies, esp at state level, to reach the development growth we all are already thinking of having attained.

Sources of data:

• http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Govt-talks-fuel-price-hike-with-allies/578092/
• http://netindian.in/news/2010/02/19/0005416/pms-panel-economic-growth-exceed-72-2009-10
• http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Indias-Inflation-Blues.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidies_in_India

This is the ideal stuff that one would imagine for year 2044 A.D – You are holidaying in Paris and the only French you know is “Bonjour” which you anyway spell with a rustic accent, taking count to zero. You are lost, need directions and communication being a roadblock here, you take out your phone and point to the buildings around you. The phone starts giving you information on the area you are in and maps you on an interactive map. You ask for some nice Italian pizzeria and it gives you a list of options and on selecting one of these, you get choice of routes to the selection. On the way a Greek restaurant catch your attention and you target your mobile, and you get all the reviews of it. You decide to try it out and ask for menu, point your phone on the menu and get the image results of the dishes and decide on your order. Just then you see a friend standing at the far end, you decide to play a prank; point your mobile to her and  voila! Your phone gives you an option to call, SMS him, post message on his Facebook page, blah blah… So what is the story? Just that all this is not 2044 stuff, it has become possible as we speak! May I have the pleasure of introducing you to Google Goggles in case you two haven’t met already!

Background
Image recognition has been attracting lot of R&D efforts since late nineties and biggies like Google, Microsoft and Nokia etc are pouring millions into the research. Google has been focusing on non text objects since 2000; one would remember about patent filed by Larry Page in 2004 titled “Method for searching media“. They bought Neven Vision in 2006, which was into “next generation” face and object recognition technologies, and hence got handful patents too  which were owned by Neven Vision. Google also brought Transformics in 2006 which enabled it to index the pages its Google crawlers were not able to – basically the unstructured information. Google then integrated this technology with its homegrown Picasa, and launched Face detection, though in primitive form, in 2008. With launch of Android phone, Google got the base on which it could bring out its future technologies and capture the feedback in legal and cost effective way. And a look into Google Labs would introduce this next generation image recognition application – Google Goggle.

Google Goggles was developed for use on Google’s Android operating systems for mobile devices. While currently only available in a beta version for Android phones, Google has announced it plans on making the software capable of running on other platforms, notably the Apple iPhone and Blackberry devices. See the video below to get the gist of Google Goggles-

Competition

IBM (Direct competition)
IBM came up with SAPIR (Search in Audio-Visual Content Using Peer-to-peer Information Retrieval) in 2009 which analyzes photos, sound files and even video queries. It has created its database by extracting data from Flickr’s ginormous archive and index features such as color structure, color layout, shape edges and texture. It also allows one to combine text with media to refine down the search.
Demo: Click here for YouTube demo video

Nokia (Can be a direct competition)
Nokia announced its Point and Find app for its handsets in April 2009, which can recognize barcodes and cinema posters.  The software uses the phone’s camera, internet access and GPS to call up pre-programmed tags; that can then bring up local movie times, the ability to book tickets, and – eventually – price comparisons.
Demo: http://pointandfind.nokia.com

Microsoft (Indirect competition)
Microsoft has not come up with something as sensational in image detection as examples listed above as they have been focusing more on gesture recognition and object recognition. I have already blogged about Microsoft Surface, read the post at http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2009/12/microsoft_surface. You will also hear about the project Natal which is being used to develop XBox‘s next version to challenge Wii. As I mentioned earlier, focus of Microsoft is in enterprise and commercial sector rather than consumer side.

Like.com (from Riya.com, the start-up which introduced the concept of face recognition in personal photos)
Riya was the first website to introduce the feature of tagging friends in photo using face recognition. As Google and Microsoft made the inroads over here, Riya CEO Munjal Shah decided to become niche player by venturing into Like.com. Like.com is image search and takes images and text as inputs which only IBM has been able to replicate as of now. Say a user likes the watch that Megan Fox wore in some party then user can use it as an image query and Like.com will return results showing watches that look very similar. Right now it supports only shoes, jewelry, hand bags and clothing but it plans to expand over time to include other categories.

If you have seen the last earnings presentation of Microsoft, you would have seen the biggest optimistic line in that presentation – strong product pipeline. We will see in couple of posts under this series – Emerging Technologies that in which all baskets is Microsoft putting its eggs. One such strong market is the (multi) touch based devices which has been betting on gesture recognition technology. And Microsoft is betting its next few devices, including XBox, on gesture and speech recognition. One such technology which Microsoft announced in 2008 is Surface. Codenamed Milan, Microsoft Surface is a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user(s) to manipulate digital content by the use of gesture recognition and has ability to interact with living as well as non living entities.

To keep things geekly simple, Microsoft Surface is a surface computing platform (where GUI is intuitively placed on a touch-sensitive screen and user interacts directly with it) that responds to natural hand gestures and real world objects. It has a 360-degree user interface, with a projector underneath the surface which projects an image onto its underside, while cameras  record reflections of infrared light from objects and human fingertips on the surface. The surface is capable of object recognition, object/finger orientation recognition and tracking, and is multi-touch and is multi-user. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving placed objects. This paradigm of interaction with computers is known as a natural user interface (NUI).

Enough of geekness, lets see what it can do. Surface lets you literally grab digital content with one’s hands and move information with simple gestures and touches, something which was revolutionized by Apple’s iPhone. Surface also sees and interacts with any object placed on the screen, allowing one to move information between devices or adding or accessing the information on those objects. Say one wants to order a hot cappuccino from 20 odd favors offered by a cafe chain, one can choose between the options using Surface, see calorie or ingredient information as one would see in internet, then place a customized order. Once the order arrives, Surface can understand when waiter places Coffee on it. Now you may want to leisure your time away, creating your play-list of your favorite songs on Surface, and browsing through the historic details of how coffee is made, see the videos of plantations from where your Coffee beans were plucked etc. Or say you just had a trip to Himalayas and want to share your images from camera to the Smartphone you are carrying. All you need to do is place compatible camera and phone on the Surface and it will recognize them giving you an options menu, you can then select to transfer the images to your phone without even touching any of these two, just by placing them on Surface! To be frank, this is one technology product which is still looking for the areas where it can be applied to, opportunities are endless but commercial viability and idea limitation are to play the devil’s advocate. Click here to see the sample applications which Microsoft showcases on its Surface website.

The idea of surface came when Microsoft in 2002 undertook a project to ensure that the company expands its role as a major player in the consumer market by creating, developing and marketing a new software platform. Microsoft hired Cheskin, a …., for ideation and to generate additional concepts. Each member was then issued pretend venture capital dollars to fund the concepts given by Cheskin that most appealed to them. This “VC investor” exercise had each team have only 10 minutes to pitch their concept to “potential investors.” PlayTable (now Surface) was the clear winner.

Microsoft is mainly looking at B2C market for acceptance of this product, hence is all set to woo businesses, and is creating enough noise about the product so as to increase the consumer acceptability once installations are done by businesses. As of now Microsoft has entered into partnerships with Harrah, Starwood Hotels, T-Mobile and International Games Technology (which produces Microsoft games).  T-Mobile is planning to use Surface at its sales terminals. Surface will recognize a phone placed on the tabletop and provide the phone’s characteristics and a price list. Customers will be able to drag icons that represent parts of a service plan onto the phone and place an order for purchase. Starwood explores the possibilities of using the computers for photo sharing, music play-list browsing, food and beverage ordering, games and game-related activities, and as a ‘virtual concierge’. Harrah’s wants to use the Surface tables to let people access maps of its different properties, find out the details about events and venues, as well as create their personal itineraries.

The consumer version of the product is expected to come in 2015, in case the product picks up. So lets see what is in store for Microsoft Surface.

Am starting a new chain of blog posts on the emerging technologies, the ones that have come in at least Alpha phase of development or which have a high probability of being next revolutionary technology. You may have heard about the technology already, in that case bear with me. And in case I have got some thing wrong in explanation or concept, please feel free to comment on it, they are more than welcome.

The main problem an emerging technology faces is the tough task of making followers out of people who sample it. If an early adopter finds the technology useless or lacking,then the technology has lost a string of customers already from that one single person. And even if the technology appeals with Early adopters, the visionaries will pass the judgment on whether the technology can be utilized fully (see Product Life Cycle diagram below). Hence the crucial area called Chasm, which is the make or break phase for a technology. Emerging technology markets often stall when they reach this phase. It is too late to attract new Visionaries , who are not interested because they can’t be the first to adopt the technology, and too early to attract Pragmatists, who are too risk averse to invest in solutions from anyone but established market leaders that have been referred by a trusted source. (Pragmatists invest in solutions, not technology, and consider Visionaries to be risk takers. Therefore, they are not inclined to consider them trusted references.)

I shall discuss the technologies which are yet to pass through the Chasm phase.

The first technology that I will be blogging about is Microsoft Surface.

A month’s ordeal and here am back with my blogs. My both blogs had been down thanks to a virus which infected the server and left me perplexed as I tried few options from my understanding, which only worsened the situation. That was the reason some of you would have noticed a 404 error on one of my blog.

For WP Geeks: Where all complex ways of copying database, creating new installation, dropping tables from new database and inserting old tables in it left me with a scratched down versions of my blogs but still with issues, a simple reinstall on same location and updation of wp-config file made the day (night infact, its 1:02AM right now!) for me.

Well, all is well that ends well. So I will look forward to be in touch with you again through this channel.

Aloha!

~Jas

The story of Phoenix may be a myth, but its alter ego reflections in brands is not. State Bank of India (SBI) is one such rare brands which have come back to life from its ashes. Though many may counter that SBI was never facing extinction, but nevertheless one has to agree that five years back the SBI brand was looking at the last leg of evolution cycle, desperately in need for some fresh idea or a fresh vision or pure luck. Well as luck would have it (no pun intended) the latter two happened for this massive amalgamation of nationalized banks cluster. The fresh vision came in form of Om Prakash Bhatt and the luck came in form of 2008-09 world recession triggered by the collapse of financial system worldwide.

Bhatt started off as a probationary officer in the State Bank of Indian in 1972 and worked his way up the ladder. Ironically, banking was not his first choice for a career. He joined the bank only after he proved to be “underage” to appear for the Indian Administrative Service. After that it was a dance of his skills, within an year of taking over as chief general manager of the bottom-ranked north-eastern circle of SBI, Bhatt lifted the circle to the No. 1 position. In his next assignment as the managing director of the State Bank of Travancore, Bhatt changed the profile of a traditional traders’ bank into a retail bank and aggressively sold mutual fund and insurance products.

Bhatt was later elevated to chairman in July 2006 . The first thing he did was to stop the roll-out of core banking solutions in SBI branches. TCS was implementing the computerization of SBI banks and Bhatt made them do about 700 changes to the project they were already rolling out as he felt it was just a “mechanical roll out of technology without checking of it was benefiting customers”, which seems to true for image of SBI at that time! Bringing a new word AUDACITY to SBI he opened about 955 branches in just 5 months. He plans to use ATMs for issuing cheque books and bill payments apart from cash dispensing. Results? “Our home loan portfolio has grown 27% this year, higher than the competition. Similarly, the auto loan portfolio’s growth has been 30%. You can’t call SBI a sleeping elephant any more,” said Bhatt with a wide grin in his interview in May 2008.

With him at center-stage of aggression, SBI has managed to come up with campaigns such as Surprisingly SBI. Although this campaign caught people unaware and many wondered why such an old and reputed bank went for “surprising” campaign, but it did a huge publicity of banking facilities to the younger generation. Thanks to great execution, some of the ads like “Chiman lal Charlie“, guy with no pants etc made a strong mark in mind of customers. The brand recall of SBI shot through the roof! It had just to connect old  faith with new customer and these ads did brilliantly. It was backed with elderly couple ads. Stage was set for the luck to come and make the party louder for SBI.

Sep 2008 saw the unimaginable sublimation of Lehman Bros empire, and with it eroded the reputation of and trust in the financial world. Suddenly the private banks saw their liquidity drying up. The strongest competitor and the only other bank apart from SBI in world’s top 500 financial services brands, ICICI, suddenly was again caught in bankruptcy rumors which erodrd the trust to great extent. People were now chanting PSU banks and running there. And with high brand recall guess who came to the mind? Yes, the war was won by SBI.

Bhatt has become businessman of the year, 2009 and is now in race for the Indian of the Year award instituted by CNN-IBN. HDFC chairman and member of the jury Deepak Parekh said of Bhatt: “OP Bhatt has proved that given the constraints of working in the public sector one can move forward….he has improved the results of the bank and has put State Bank of India on the global map.”

Since he took charge at India’s largest public sector bank in 2006, he has raised the banks market share and loans from 15% to 16.5% and deposits from 15% to 17.5%. He has also regained the top slot for market capitalisation, a position it lost to ICICI in 2007. And SBI has also taken over HDFC  in home loans. The State bank of India is now 29th most reputable company in the world according to Forbes.

Some stories make much great read once completed, you just read one of them. All the best SBI!

This one is a real puller from Shanghai J&J Advertising Co. The idea is brilliant and it may not compel a buy decision but it surely will result in better brand recall. In logistics business, the majority of the money is spent to assure the timely delivery and with zero damages; basically translating to two words – fast and reliable.

DHL hits the nail right on the head with this creative advertisement insert in a magazine. The advertisement includes a piece of transparent PVC paper placed into a magazine and having a DHL worker printed on it showing on both sides. This PVC paper is placed between the other two pages showing a guy on one side with Japanese backdrop and a lady on other page with Chinese backdrop. Therefore, when one turns the paper, the worker delivers the express mail between a guy (in Japan) and a lady (in China) effortlessly. Only a sentence is printed on top of a page reading, “International courier service express delivery guaranteed.” (see ad below)

And not only this, we have been witnessing many more such creative activities in paper magazines. Marketing is like creating a noise which right consumer can hear, and there is no point shouting in a fish market.

Magazine advertising is a definitely a different ball game as compared to other offline media. Just check how much time do you spend on reading a newspaper and a magazine. With television media, the problem is that the advert will be shown as per timing and the targeted customer does not have any control on this. The magazine medium’s essential strength lies in the active way in which readers choose and use their magazines. Magazines are an active medium, with the reader in control. Readers become deeply engaged with their magazines. As a result a strong relationship, a bond of trust, grows up between the reader and his or her chosen magazines. The time spent reading is substantial, and the copies are read thoroughly. Copies tend to be read repeatedly, often picked up more than once during a day and on more than one day. Then research has shown (and common sense strengthens it) that people are more likely to remember and recognize advertiser if they have repeated impressions from a regularly appearing ad. And as always, too much advertising leads to clutter.

With these points, I can now tell you why I really liked this ad! The ad involves two senses of consumer rather than one – sight and touch, which makes it stand apart. The use of plastic instead of paper has added to the novelty of the idea. It builds a small excitement in the mind of consumer and hence ensures a brand recall tomorrow when consumer has to use some logistics service. The magazine as a medium made sure that the consumer has all the time needed by him/her to relish the idea and absorb it. Remember one doesnt need to impress all, just the targeted audience. So over here there is nothing in advert which makes the right consumer to be pulled specifically. It people who will get excited by the idea would have no correlation with the intent to buy. Hence the success of advert will depend a lot on the kind of magazines DHL chooses to advertise.

Here are another two fine pieces of magazine adverts breaking the clutter of the noise and making a dent in reader’s mind.

Eye donation, by National Association for the blind
Advertising Agency: DDB Mudra, India

Styx Underwear, Czech Republic

‘Below the Line’ (BTL) campaigns are always dear to my heart as they show how innovative the brand manager can get. With so many virals, TVC, print media blasts, the idea of a fresh campaign surely makes one notice the brand with a concentrated attention. And compared to an advertisement, a campaign is based largely on a strategy and needs more planning and prediction.

Baci Perugina, an Italian chocolate brand, has been branding itself on love and romance to make its offering get associated with sweet, romantic and tempting (word Baci means ‘kisses’ in Italian). In its integrated campaign, the chocolate brand decided to sell some sentiments, unleashing an unusual love story. Target of the campaign was to capitalize on Baci Perugina’s awareness during Valentine day period. The company spun a story of one shy Giovanni who has fallen in love with his beautiful neighbor Gaia and went to its target audience – youth, via social media and then SMS.

On 4th Feb, a YouTube video came online uploaded by a guy called Giovanni telling viewers that he is in love with his neighbor, Gaia. He explains that he keeps asking her out but she is not interested. Now finally she has presented a yummy, unique offer to Giovanni- she will kiss him, if 50,000 people would ask her to do so. So that is why Giovanni has made the video, loaded it on YouTube and even then he opens a group on Facebook asking for help. Two days later on 6th Feb, the brand Baci Perugina comes into the scene  as an “independent supporter” of Giovanni’s initiative. They create a page on their website  where people can mail their request.

9th Feb – 3rd video is uploaded on YouTube where Gia tells audience that 20,000 mails have arrived and in case 50,000 mails come, she would kiss this guy.

Meanwhile outdoor campaign starts, videos are plated in a busy plazza asking for people to help the guy by SMSing their request.

On 12 Feb – Giovanni uploads a video thanking people for the 20,000 mails and says if 50,000 mails come he can kiss on Valentine Day (and public goes bersek). Finally on 13th Gia uploads a video saying the guy got 50,000 mails so she will kiss the guy the next day.

On 14th Februaru there is a big event in Piazza Duomo (italy) where the campaign details are unvieled. A video is uploaded on website showing the kiss being ‘delivered’. People realise it was an advertising campaign.

Performance/ Results:

The campaign was planned on different media: viral videos, the community engagement through YouTube, Facebook and the Perugina community, an interactive outdoor and a local event. People soon became fond of the story. In 10 days it recorded more than 50,000 mails; 151,841 visitors to the Baci Perugina site; 26,678 contacts on YouTube and 5,400,000 impressions on MSN. Sales went up by 11% in an A-8 market. Giovanni’s story was spontaneously talked about on TG1, the most important national TV news (italy).

Credits:

Advertising Agency: ARMANDO TESTA Turin, ITALY

Media Agency: MAXUS Milan, ITALY

About Company/Brand : Baci Perugina is one of the most important brands of chocolate in Italy, belonging to the Nestlè Group. It is also famous gift on Vday.

A good piece of technology and a bad piece of branding – that is my view on Adobe Acrobat Connect.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today introduced the Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ software product line, the first web conferencing and collaboration solution to offer “always-on” personal meeting rooms. The product line, consisting of Adobe Acrobat Connect and Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional, enables knowledge workers to instantly connect online with nothing more than a web browser and the ubiquitous Flash® Player software.

Source: Adobe press release

With Connect, Adobe had introduced a new (re-branded) product line: Adobe Connect (hosted) and Adobe Connect Professional (hosted and on-premise). This product was part of Macromedia paraphernalia when it was acquired by Adobe in 2005-06 with the name Macromedia Breeze, which further was acquired as Breeze technology by Macromedia from Presidia. The product is based on Flash technology which has already made a mark and commands high availability paving way for higher acceptability.

The (re)branding though is a concern for many factors. First of all the product had already a decent acceptance in market as ‘Breeze’ so may confuse current users or people who know about it. Secondly the product has come out as an extension of Adobe Acrobat, a product which is widely known and has a very clear keywords attached to it – static page, non modifiable, preview file etc. All these keywords are not even closely related to this product. The very idea of a meeting or a discussion results in a document either modified or created, which is not possible with Acrobat. So it can be only used for plain discussion or presentation. If Adobe can integrate the solution with Photoshop or Illustrator like products of its, it may help production and print houses. Also Adobe may like to extend the Connect link to applications like Microsoft Office and browsers rather than just Acrobat.

For some brighter side points, unlike traditional web conferencing solutions, the Acrobat Connect products enable users to choose a simple and easy-to-remember web address for their online personal meeting room that is unique to them, much like a phone number or e-mail address . Accessing a personal meeting room is easy and instant, requiring little more than a web browser. Because there is no cumbersome software to download, knowledge workers can easily hold spontaneous, ad-hoc meetings that are virtually hassle-free to join.

Connect will have to fight for market share with products like webex and live meeting. According to Frost & Sullivan, Breeze had a 0.3% market share in 2007.

Below is the snapshot preview of Connect with various menus expanded to show case its features (which I have photoshopped to reflect features in single pic).

Though a nice product with great features, I must admit that though am a fan of Adobe’s thought process on the products, innovation and branding, the Acrobat -Connect combo doesn’t go down very well in synergy.