We created a questionnaire to find out about users views about the mobile phone operators in India. We wanted to find out what according to the users were the strengths, shortcomings, and opportunity areas for each operator.

We posted the survey on Twitter and were glad to receive 151 responses. We believe the responses are a fair indicator of the questions asked in the survey.

What we found surprising was that 46.6% would keep the current phone number but change the operator if they could!

As promised, here are the unedited results of the survey, ‘Indian Mobile Phone operators: Your views ’. Click on the images for a larger graph:

Also, thanks to the following people for helping us spread the survey on Twitter: @Maheshmurthy, @Netra, @Asfaq, @Digimouth, @sandiipporwal, @premsankar, @crucifire, @rajamanohar, @Sumeet, @pujamadan, @shefaly, @sachinuppal, @PixTV, @tanushreebaruah, and @rahulvarshneya. You can follow us here on Twitter: @Pinstormer.

For more details, feel free to write to us at info@pinstorm.com.

*While the data from 151 entries suggests that half of them will switch to a different provider when Mobile Number Portability is introduced,  the data cannot be extrapolated.

Fighting the downturn: a conference on accountable advertising on February 25, 2009 in Delhi

Speakers from Naukri, NIIT, Google, Nokia, Lintas Media Group, Pinstorm to address marketers

Given the cut in ad spends across the board following the economic downturn, can digital and pay-for-performance show a road to recovery?

Instead of paying for eyeballs or impressions, would you rather pay for sales or leads? Whither branding?

Google started this trend – can it spread beyond search to all digital advertising, including banners? Should this be the model for TV and print? Will we see the good old days of large allocations to branding again? How do marketers see media spends in this era of unprecedented accountability?

We (Pinstorm & our partner Lintas Media Group) along with the IAMAI are hosting a series of closed-door roundtables on these questions.

The first event was held in Mumbai. You can read more about the event on CampaignIndia, Agencyfaqs or Exchange4Media. Our next event in the series:

“Marketing through the recession: is pay-for-performance advertising the silver bullet?”
is on Wednesday, February 25, 2009, in Delhi, between 6:30 pm - 8 pm.

This open-format discussion will be led by prominent speakers like Hitesh Oberoi from Naukri, Vineet Taneja from Nokia, Santosh Nair from NIIT, Shailesh Rao from Google, and Lynn de Souza from the Lintas Media Group. The discussion will be moderated by Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm.

The conference is by invitation only.

The Kala Ghoda festival is an integral part of Mumbai’s annual cultural festivities calendar and has only grown in stature every month. The Kala Ghoda (which literally means ‘black horse’ in Hindi) festival is held annually between January and February and attracts a very large part of Mumbai’s population along with the many tourist that come by every year.

This year’s festival was a little more special for us as some of the Pinstormers won the events they participated in!

In the Poetry Slam (head here for details), Raamesh Gowri Raghavan, copywriter, participated and came second with a rather interesting poem on a temple as seen from the eyes of the presiding deity.

In the Literary Quiz (details here) spread over two days, Mahesh Murthy, our Founder, and Bala, our Ex-Creative Director, participated and qualified on the first day for the finals. Then on the second day, they topped that and actually won the finals!

As you might imagine, the winners have had to deal with some sore palms today, thanks to all the high-fives happening! We all at Pinstorm are proud of you guys! Ride on!

Pinstorm and Lintas Media Group, along with the IAMAI hosted the IAMAI Roundtable on Advertising in a Recession on January 13, 2009. The event was attended by stalwarts of the industry such as Pradeep Srivastava of Idea Cellular, Rajiv Prabhakar of Sharekhan, Debadutta Upadhyaya of Yahoo, Aekta Shyam of Taj Hotels and Lynn de Souza of Lintas. The roundtable was moderated by Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm.

The discussion focused on the benefits of the pay-for-performance model and how companies can use it to derive value from their advertising campaigns. The panel was equally represented by the buyers and sellers of the advertising service and saw various topics being covered.

Pradeep Shrivastava, CMO, Idea Cellular, during his talk, said, “These are tough and nervous times. The Digital Advertising medium is measurable and allows to even reach out to a very focused audience, especially when the times are tough and the competition is forcing you to be more aggressive.” He went on to mention that, “for the last one year, Idea has been spending on digital, it has seen encouraging results.”

According to Rajiv Prabhakar, VP-Retail Business, Sharekhan, “We have been working with small budgets. We have very clearly earmarked budgets for our Pay for Performance and it is delivering results.” He told the audience that it was indeed the Internet that had built brand Sharekhan.

Debadutta Upadhyaya, National Sales Head, Yahoo! India, said, “The definition of pay for performance needs to broaden up and go beyond just leads and clicks. Pay only if the objectives were achieved, and make the objective set broad, rather than look at lead generation and number of clicks.” Upadhyaya also said that some companies, despite having leads generated, were ill-equipped to respond or deliver. Some wanted leads on their websites without having any interesting content on them.

Aekta Shyam, General Manager – Online Marketing and Technology, Taj Group, said, “During these tough times every penny spent is under scrutiny. We primarily focused on print and television till 2000; however, over a period of time, the Internet has become a significant revenue generator for us. We are also planning to go mobile soon. We follow our customers wherever they go and if they are on social networking sites, we would like to be there with them.”

Lynn de Souza, Chairperson and CEO, Lintas Media Group, pointed out, “The big spenders in digital have always been financial services and travel. Both these are the ones that have been hit the most. Fortunately for them, the digital advertising medium is doing very well. They will not be able to afford to be on TV, with no positive return and therefore, they will not pull back on digital, since the medium is growing, they will continue their ad spends.”

Mahesh Murthy, Founder, Pinstorm, concluding the session, said, “Digital is a measurable medium and is becoming a mass medium. I think the advertisers, more than being educated about the medium; know what they want as results. They have a huge need for accountability. I think the medium can go to them and say this is how we are accountable. If the media doesn’t offer accountability, the advertisers will not stand it.”

A healthy Q & A session followed the discussion and many valid points about the pay-for-performance model were answered and discussed by audience comprising of marketing and advertising professionals. The overall sentiment showed that advertisers are looking at the pay-for-performance model and accountability in advertising seriously.

You may want to read more about the event at Afaqs!, Exchange4Media, Campaign India, AlooTechie or WatBlog.

Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm will participate in a discussion organised by IAMAI on The Conference on Digital Marketing, to be held on 9th September ’08, at Taj Residency, Bangalore. His panel will discuss the allocation of ad spend between digital and traditional media.

You can find the itinerary for the rest of the event at http://is.gd/2lgF.