Author Archive

SEM, Applications development & social media

Phonethics now handles some serious clients from the Auto, Travel & Education sectors. Our services have expanded to include SEM (something that i’ve come to personally enjoy a lot) and social media management. We seriously think that our ‘tech’ business and application development will have to be hived into another entity altogether and our content store is in beta

An exciting time. Full of challenges.

No Comments

C&binet

‘The Creative side of technology and the technology side of creative’ – its not how usually people respond when you ask what they do for a living!

But earlier this year I met 9 other entrepreneurs, communications and media business – people from all over the world and I was delighted to meet someone who did exactly ‘that’. Crisscrossing The UK, on an insightful tour of the Creative businesses across the country, we chatted about the opportunities and business scenarios back home and compared notes. Inspite of the general doom and gloom (this was Mar 09, the nadir of the financial meltdown) all of us were extremely positive about the business we were in. Each one of us had great conviction in what we did. Some of us used digital tools to deliver unique products that were commercial and some used digital media as a tool for social change. The magic lies somewhere in the combination of the two.

If you think of digital delivery as a lens that can scale the reach of critical information the problem (of finding sustainable business models) suddenly becomes an opportunity. In the context of a large and diverse emerging economy glamorous digital businesses like news and music pale compared to the demand  for educational and health based content. The Creative Economy program by the British Council creates the type of mini network and more importantly awareness which is needed for entrepreneurs to re-focus on ‘digital needs’ as opposed to ‘digital desires’ of their consumers.

Traditional news and music businesses have (much) bigger demons to fight, than the internet, to survive in the new world-media order. All that the rest of us have to do, is meet up! See you at C&binet :)

, ,

No Comments

Blog on TV = Blog.telly (another cool client of ours)

Medianama has this insightful coverage of a new interactive feature from DEN. Essentially a service that broadcasts user comments to a wider TV audience. We are beginning a Social Media promotion for them now and the initial response is quite healthy though one does wish it would provied more than the warholian fleeting minutes of fame! We’ll be watching the campaign response quite eagerly since this project also marks Phonethics’ entry into the domain of ‘Media Consultancy’. Exciting times..

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

, , , ,

No Comments

Social Media Campaign for Cadbury Bournville by Phonethics

As far as Social Media marketing goes, content is intent. www.the-dark-truth.com is a content led campaign for Cadbury Bournville. We created a character called the Old Hound who blogged and also featured in a comic that took the audience through the Legend of the Bournville in action. The mystery led blog posts and curated content from across the web that was posted on the Facebook profile of the character Old Hound kept up the stickiness quotient of the community. It was fun to see people post their paranormal experiences online to share with the Old Hound. The audience participation was tremendous with folks also posting their own stories of ‘earning it’ ['you don't just buy a Bournville, you earn it - the brand's theme & catchline].
The blog has rec’d over 125k views uptill now and continues as one of our most successful content led campaigns (in terms of user participation) ever!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

, , , , , , , , , , ,

No Comments

Viral for Mak Lubricants

Animation still remains a hot favourite with digital marketeers when it comes to making Viral videos, And Cricket and TV/Bollywood based characters rule the roost! This project was executed for Mak Lubricants (agency – Saatchi & Saatchi) under the creative supervision of Vishal Kashyap (Creative Director, Phonethics) and technical and ops support from Vikram Russell.

Watch it here
mak

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

, , , , , ,

No Comments

ASK – Wealth has a Shape

ASK Link Click to see

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No Comments

How will you know when you’re successful?

At the International Young Communications Entrepreneur’s forum in London, earlier this year, I was asked a simple question by Sir Chris Powell (the founder of DDB London & Worldwide), “How will you know when you’re successful?”

The question had me stumped. I gold-fished my way through the answer but the question stayed with me.

“How does one know when one is successful?”

100 more clients? 20 offices? Global product? Networks? million followers on twitter? A boat? private planes? Two divorces and three alimonies?

What?

How was I to know when I was successful? Would there be a sign or waving flags at the finish line? An invisible red tape that I could chest proudly? The problem is an enterprise is not a 100 metre run, it’s not even a marathon, more often than not its an entrepreneur’s lifetime. It’s a long enough time to get lost chasing short term goals and lose sight of the ‘big picture’.

The question had me thinking and prompted me to take another look at what we were doing and where we were headed.

To imagine ‘success’. What it would look, taste, smell, feel like!

The answer came to me as i prepared a case-study presentation for the National Entrepreneurship Network. I went through the entire story of how Phonethics was set-up, how our office got sealed off in Delhi, how folks did good and bad by us and how we went from a -40L to a 2Cr+ set-up in 15 months. It struck me that the journey is the reward! The very attempt to strike out, to do something different, challenge the status quo, create is an extremely powerful emotion! (the money helps and frankly there’s more of it chasing you when you no longer chase it)

I’m proud of this journey and of our goals, thankful to my co-travellers and the entire eco-system and determined to never confuse ’success’ with ‘intent”

, ,

3 Comments

great letter announcing very good news!

C&binet (www.cabinetforum.org), a not-for-profit network created by the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was launched in 2008 to foster international dialogue about the creative economy focussing on the four main themes including access to finance for creative industries, new business models for online content, developing talent and securing creative rights.

The first annual C&binet forum on Nurturing Creative Content in the Digital Age is taking place on 26 – 28 October 2009 at The Grove in Hertfordshire and will bring senior creative business leaders together with policy makers and investors to identify and support the most effective means of protecting, producing and commercialising creative work.

The opportunity to attend this forum was opened up to several members of the International Young Creative Entrepreneur (IYCE) network.

I’m happy to say that Saurabh Gupta, Founder & CEO, Phonethics from Mumbai has been selected to attend the forum next month.

Saurabh was the India Finalist of the International Young Communications Entrepreneur Award 2009 and was awarded a special commendation at the UK ceremony for his commitment to innovation and his strong sense of the global potential of his business.

No Comments

No FEAR

People pay for content with money OR their time*
From a consumer perspective, ‘paying’ for content has to emerge as a problem solver and not another problem to deal with.
Consider the scenarios in which a consumer pays / is willing to pay for content –

  • to save money
  • to save time
  • to save effort: curated bundles of content along interest based verticals (value addition)
  • unbundling of complex (and expensive) media packages (like selling ‘singles’ in the music business)
  • on the move access
  • language services (translation, text to speech)
  • budgeted institutional media / content purchase

Consider some of the challenges (at least in the Indian context) –
1.    Lack of a digital (monetisable) identity like credit card etc
2.    Language (local language content is in short supply)
3.    Access (awareness and availability)
As a Creative Individual and a mildly puzzled entrepreneur I find myself asking a few key questions:
a.    Creation – why are we creating what we are? Is there a precedent/gap/trend that we’ve identified? Can we collaborate/use online tools to reduce the cost of production? Do we know the target audience well enough? Can we collaborate with other online destinations (where our audience is) to identify and access the audience?

b.    Distribution – are we optimally using ‘free’ platforms we can leverage to increase discovery and impact of the content? How do we separate the discovery and consumption? Is there a regular social media outpost that we can manage to inform and update our loyal customers? Do we allow them to bring their friends to the party?

c.    Billing – have we passed on the benefits of reduced distribution, advertising and delivery costs to the consumer? Is the content ‘cheaper’ because of it? Is it easy to access? Have we hobbled paid content with rights management softwares? (reducing the effective value of the purchase) Is the content bundled? Can the customer pay for smaller bundles of content? (micro-payment friendly)

TWO SECRET WEAPONS (well, not so secret actually but effective all the same)
1.    Mobile phones – we imagine it as a key element in the ‘paid content’ ecosystem both as a payment gateway and a delivery channel. ‘Text to pay’, ‘pre-pay’ and ‘micro-payment’ are only just being used to pay for content but are simple enough and available in a great scaled environment so as to make it (payment through mobile phones) feasible.

2.    People pay for content with money OR their time* – We have to figure how to monetise the latter.  Advertising still remains the best way to monetise the time users spent consuming your content, the question is how innovative can we be about it. At what point does it become feasible to sell your own advertising deals (which maybe smaller and more painful to service) that allow the advertiser to FULLY UTILISE the scope and audience offered by your business?

SUMMARY: Build platforms, ‘ease’ and ‘simplicity’ score big – bigger than we imagine, collaborate to create industry standards with peers: tying up with even one more company like yours is a ‘collaborative’ effort! And the biggest thing – DON’T BE AFRAID TO CHARGE FOR WHAT YOU CREATE

No Comments

Shooting stills

No Comments