The festival of lights – Diwali was celebrated across our India offices on 24th October, 2008 and in keeping with tradition, the workplace was decorated with traditional oil lamps, lanterns and rangoli – patterns made out of coloured sand.

In the Mumbai office, the day started off with teams enthusiastically decorating their corners; there was a prize to be won, after all! Everything from flower garlands to lanterns to festive lights was used and teams spared no effort in their prize winning objective to enliven the festive spirit.

The main draw of the day however was the Fashion Show, which everyone was looking forward to. The PinChicks and PinDudes were seen strutting down the ramp in all their traditional finery, even the bosses and the house-keeping guys got involved, which made the Pinstorm family event all the more exciting.

We have been on quite a recruitment spree since the last month and the new Pinstormers seized the occasion to entertain all who had assembled to dancing, mimicry and some more of the ramp walking. We must say that the current lot of new Pinstormers are quite sporty! All in all, it turned out to be a very happy day for all.

In keeping with this state of happiness, here is wishing all of you a very happy Diwali from all of us here at Pinstorm!

Images at gallery.pinstorm.com.

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by Nitin Sharma

Geodesic Ltd, a developer of innovative products in the information, communication and entertainment space, has roped in Pinstorm to handle the global online launch of its undisclosed new product. The company has also brought on board Lintas Media Group as its global offline media agency of record.

Thought the company has refrained from disclosing the size of the account, sources close to the development believe it to be a multi-million dollar deal. Other agencies in the fray for the media account included GroupM, Starcom and Interactive Avenues.

Kiran Kulkarni, Managing Director, Geodesic Ltd, said, “The selection of Pinstorm and Lintas Media Group as our new agencies on board followed a comprehensive, competitive pitch. Pinstorm could understand our product and its potential and came up with a strategy that really brings our new product to life in a unique and powerful way. Pinstorm’s branding and creative recommendations were on the mark and their pay-for-performance model is extremely attractive for an aggressive marketing-driven company like ours. We are thrilled by their fresh approach and very much look forward to working with them.”

Ansoo Gupta, Head – Global Business, Pinstorm, said, “We worked really hard on the branding, creative and digital media for the launch. This win is sweet vindication of our integrated digital marketing approach. We are really excited about launching this stunning new product from Geodesic and delivering the required branding, awareness and results where and when it counts around the world.”

NP Sathyamurthy, Joint President, Lintas Media Group, added, “The LMG-Pinstorm partnership is already bearing path-breaking results – we work together on Idea Cellular, Sony, ITC, Tata Capital, Career Launcher and other clients. Our strengths are complementary and we look forward to the combined team working seamlessly to deliver the media and creative impact that Geodesic needs around the world.”

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by Shivani Shinde

Presence in the digital space is emerging as a crucial strategy for creating brand awareness and reaching out to the young.

The current slowdown and the resultant cut in advertisement budgets is making companies look at other options like the digital space which has shown 100 per cent growth at the expense of traditional media.

According to the 2008 Ficci-PwC report, the advertisement industry in 2007 was

Rs 19,600 crore. Online advertisement grew by 69 per cent year-on-year and touched Rs 270 crore in 2007 and was the fastest growing segment. The segment is expected to reach Rs 420 crore by 2008 and grow by 32 per cent over the next five years. Of the Rs 270 crore online advertisement market, the social media advertisement market is just about Rs 20 crore, again the fastest growing. The exact percentage growth is not available.

Social media optimisation (SMO) or advertisement makes use of online platforms like social networking sites, blogs, podcasts, widgets and RSS feeds.

An agency created an online presence for its client — a leading telecom services provider — by having an account on twitter, and posting close to 20 videos on YouTube. The videos received 100,000 views in the first month. The numbers went up to 200,000 in the next month. Each video had a viewership of 5,000-6,000.

Jet Airways, too, had a target campaign for promoting its special fare for students. Blogs, forums and communities, sites like Facebook, Orkut and Yahoo Answers among others were used. The conversion rate for Jet Airways from visitor to booking, from social media was higher than the conversion rate from search engine marketing (SEM).

Bollywood has also taken to this medium. Rajshri Media, the web and mobile arm of Rajshri Group, used the SMO route for the internet release of its movie Vivaah. The company had 100,000 views of the trailers in the first two weeks.

The cost is low as compared to a similar campaign on TV or print. The one-time cost of creating an online presence could be between Rs 30,000 and Rs 80,000 and the retainer fees starts from Rs 1 lakh per month and can go up to Rs 2 lakh.

Amardeep Singh, vice-president, Interactive Avenues, said: “SM sites has 53 per cent share of total online users & 11 per cent share of total time spent online. It places SM just below email & search in terms of usage and therefore marketers cannot ignore it.”

However, social media advertisers feel it is still a push-based mechanism.

Rajiv Dingra, Lead Consultant, WatConsultant.com, said: “In India we have media companies running technology applications. And social media is driven by technology use. Instances being Google and Yahoo. So the traditional media houses can get users to watch videos, but cannot engage the viewers. For that they need people who cater to this segment.”

One of the reasons for the slow adoption of this media apart from low penetration of internet and lack of understanding among companies, is that traditional media houses cannot cater to this audience as they do not have the skills. Mahesh Murthy, founder and CEO, Pinstrom, said: “Digital marketing needs a different set of knowledge and skills — from media knowledge, to knowledge of technology and ad options to an approach that is not ‘do-it-and-forget-it’ but ‘do-it-then-optimise-it-forever’.”

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by Marcus Chhan