Jas’ Business Blog

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.

Jas Technology Business, Concept, Emerging Technology, gadget, Launch, Microsoft, New Launch, New Trends, Science

‘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.

Jas Marketing BTL, Business, Concept, Marketing, Viral

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.

Jas Marketing, Technology Brand Check, Business, New Launch, Product LookUp, Rebranding

When a kill is done/cornered by lion, its the hyenas who start crowding for a feast. With Yahoo under hostile bid, one can see lot many hyenas lining up to cater to their self interests. Word leaked out yesterday (Wednesday) that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is looking at taking a stake of 20 percent or more in Yahoo in exchange for MySpace, some cash and other online properties. An infusion from News Corp., the reasoning goes, could boost Yahoo’s stock price high enough to outstrip Microsoft. But as pointed out by BigTech , Fortune Blog, there’s a good chance that News Corp. is more interested in peeking at Yahoo’s secrets at the bargaining table than in actually stealing Microsoft’s prize.
The author has questioned the potential News Corp and Yahoo deal on three points. First, he says, because Yahoo and News Corp. would have to convince Yahoo shareholders that the abstract deal is worth more than the cold hard cash Microsoft is offering. Convincing Yahoo shareholders to embrace a MySpace deal would be difficult enough, because it would assume that MySpace is worth billions of dollars. According to The Wall Street Journal, News Corp. would likely push for a valuation between $6 billion and $10 billion. But then for a harsh fact that much of MySpace’s revenue comes from its $900 million advertising deal with Google , in which the online giant has agreed to pay about $20 million per month until mid-2010. So far, that deal doesn’t seem to be working out so well for Google. In its most recent conference call with analysts, Google blamed its disappointing performance in part on its inability to make the MySpace deal pay off as quickly as it would like. That makes it doubtful that MySpace is really worth billions today. And if investors don’t believe in the value of MySpace, they won’t believe that this deal makes Yahoo more valuable than the more than $40 billion in cash and stock Microsoft is offering.

Second he points out, its’s not clear who would run the MyHoo combination. Third, because there’s a good chance that News Corp. is more interested in peeking at Yahoo’s secrets at the bargaining table than in actually stealing Microsoft’s prize. In business, everybody knows about Rupert’s shrewdness.

Finally there’s the strong possibility that News Corp. doesn’t really want to do a Yahoo deal at all, and is only dangling the MySpace idea as a way to gain information.After all, as a media baron who has struck big deals with both Google and Microsoft, Rupert Murdoch stands to be affected quite a bit if there’s a power shift in online advertising. There’s arguably no better way to prepare for the changes than to get an up-close look at what Microsoft would get by purchasing Yahoo — and that’s perspective Murdoch would be likely to get if he at least pretends to be interested in taking a stake in Yahoo.

But then, its business after all; and all is fair in love and war!

Jas Uncategorized Business, MnA

When a company announces that it is going to do away with one of its key business units it is definite to impact the stock price in exchange. And if the stock rises by something like over 10% then it surely rings a bell (and in case you haven’t noticed, even the trade volume is high). It doesn’t take much of analysis to understand that Motorola had been doing badly in handset business. Its only ticket to cash registers was Razr, except for that one model, rest all just came and were lost in clutter. After grabbing world market share of 23% in 2006 on momentum led by its Razr phone, the company has lost nearly half that as rivals outpaced it with successful new products. So it was not surprising to see Motorola slip to number three spot behind market leader Nokia and now runner up Samsung.

I personally feel that Motorola has been too laidback, they are trying to catch the market based on some engineering innovations and aren’t really able to connect to the normal consumer who can give them volumes. Nokia relies on design innovations rather than engineering innovations in the electronic part. The ease of operation and sturdiness has been two main selling points of Nokia. If you have used Nokia once, you can use almost all Nokia phones as they are similar on usage, unlike other phones which are difficult to learn and the interface change with the handset.

Motorola has come up with another model W230. Looks like the handset was launched after a careful gap analysis of features and market need. With features like expandable memory upto 2GB,MP3 player,FM with recording, large phonebook memory and USB1.1 data connectivity, its loaded with features; I felt the handset was priced quite aggressively at Rs.3,400. The ad for the set is again a very typical of Moto phones with TG of middle class. It’s targeted at youth and boils down to the same word – Attitude. But it is actually a nice ad than the earlier one where father loses his head!

Jas Uncategorized Brands, Business, Launch, TVC

Website: http://www.whopperfreakout.com/

Jas Uncategorized BTL, Business, Funny, New Trends, Viral

• Indicate Credit Level based on past history
• Select Features and Rewards – like if one wants rewards in form of miles/points or cash back; the introductory APR, annual fee etc
• Pick a Design – one can choose from a given set of 9 designs or one can add own image to the card (now thats customization!)
• Review and Apply

The choices are then packaged together to create a card customized to each cardholders’ personal preferences. This concept is being used in the USA for the first time whereas this has been tested before in UK and Turkey.

However, there are some trade offs in this venture. Once the applicant makes a choice, a certain number of other choices are closed for him. So, if you want no-frills, no rewards, you can get a lower interest rate. Want points or air miles? The interest rate goes up. Want a 0% interest rate for a year? Expect a higher ongoing rate. Want two points per dollar charged instead of one? Prepare to pay an annual fee.

From a marketing point of view, it does make an impact on consumers for following main reasons:

1. Empowerment
This concept gives the power in the hand of consumer to design what ever they feel like. This brings in more brand loyalty as consumer identifies more with the product.

2. Transparency
The selection process allows consumer to see the trade offs with every selection, hence consumer can know how the APR or annual fee change on selecting the desired cash back for example. The generic way of personalization was to have an online interview approach and make a product recommendation at the end of the process. This is an abstract way as consumer doesn’t know what is full platter looking like.

3. Personalization
The site not only allows user to choose the features but also the card image, which can be of a memorable sunny day you enjoyed at Las Vegas. This creates an emotional connect with the consumer, an important building block in marketing.

4. Behavioral data
The data so accumulated from online behavior of consumers will go a long way in helping Capital One to understand consumer and help them design things better to command more loyalty and consumer base.

All said and done, this is one initiative a lot of marketers in cards domain will be watching out for.

Jas Uncategorized Business, Marketing Practices, New Trends

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, India
Creative Directors: Anup Chitnis, Rensil D’silva, Piyush Pandey

They did it with Perk about a decade back and they have done it again with ‘Ulta Perk‘ now. Cadbury brought the chocolate coated wafer category to the Indian cocoa confectionary market with launch of its highly successful brand – Perk, then popularized by brand ambassador Priety Zinta.

Perk was launched in the market in 1995 and has seen consistent growth through the years. The cocoa confectionary wafer market is around 35 % of the total chocolate market and has been growing at around 13% annually. Perk has been one of the best sellers in impulse buy market. Priced at Rs5 these days for regular size and at Rs10 for ‘Bada Perk’ (Bigger Perk), the Perk set the trend for Nestle’s Kit Kat and Munch to be followed.

Cadbury has come up with a new innovative product line extension now, by having wafer on outside and chocolate inside. Lucratively priced at Rs.5; the new concept is surely going to pull many consumers. According to Cadbury, extensive consumer research and testing has been undertaken to determine the product taste, format and the communication campaign. ‘Ulta Perk’ has been test marketed in the South Markets – Tamil Nadu & Karnataka (South of India) for over 6 months and has received excellent response from the consumers.

Even the advertisements are really interesting ones. The problem with these impulse buys is that in starting, a good amount of money needs to be pumped in marketing activities before a significant return can be achieved. And Even after you have done, you still need to keep pumping a decent money to make it rememberable on impulse. The TVC is featured below while the print adverts take on the mantra of situations in a totally opposite context than it would be normally. Like man chasing a dog up a tree, a fly complaining about a man in its food, a balloon playing with a child floating in air etc; all going with the tagline -
“Cadbury’s reverse bar. Wafer outside, chocolate inside.“

What is best part for Cadbury is that its a festive time in India and according to the recent urban practices, people have started giving dry fruits and confectionery items instead of traditional sweets / mithai. So in assortment packages, which by the way are quite popular from Cadbury, may be having few Ulta Perks embedded adding to sampling opportunity. This may soon give it desirable sales, provided the taste and texture is nice.

Sources: Cadbury India website, Ads of the World

Jas Uncategorized Brands, Business, Launch, TVC

1. People
2. Planet
3. Portfolio
4. Partners and
5. Performance.

Jas Uncategorized Business, Marketing Practices, New Trends

Jas Uncategorized Business