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by exchange4media Mumbai Bureau

The impact Roundtable conference, held in Mumbai on July 31, turned the spotlight on ‘advergaming’. Over the last few years there has been a significant increase in the use of wireless devices as also broadband Internet in India. With 3G services slated to be introduced in the country soon, the digital medium is poised for bigger things.

Though at a nascent stage, advergaming is beginning to make its presence felt. The impact Roundtable stressed that now was the right time to innovate and demonstrate the value of this medium to the brands. This would help in the growth of in-game advertising or advergaming further.

The theme of the impact Roundtable was ‘Winning customers with in-game advertising.’ The participants at the Roundtable included, Karl Gomes, NCD – Digital, Rediffusion Y&R; Raghav Anand, Sector Leader – New Media and Convergence, Ernst & Young; Akshay Garg, Co-founder, Komli Media; Hrishi Oberoi, Studio Director, Indiagames; Manoj Malkani, VP, MPG; and Mahesh Murthy, Founder and CEO, Pinstorm. The session was moderated by Pradyuman Maheshwari, Group Chief Editor, exchange4media.

Highlights of the Roundtable:

• The discussion touched on the factors that will drive the growth of advergaming in India.
• Mobile gaming: How profitable is the business for operators and media owners.
• How receptive are media planners to this medium.
• The roadblocks – Where do we stand in comparison to other key markets?
• Measurability, visibility and reach
• Apprehensions of marketers and media buyers

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by Lhendup G Bhutia & R Krishna

It was July 14, ‘09 and looking out of his window, Asfaq Tapia seemed worried. It had been raining incessantly, offices were closing early and people were leaving for their homes. Reporters on TV were predicting that a repeat of the 7/11 Mumbai floods was possible.

Tapia logged on to Twitter. His first tweet was: ‘Take stock of the rains’. In a few minutes, his Twitter profile was inundated with tweets, from people who had read his tweet, telling him exactly how flooded or not, parts of the city were. He forwarded those tweets to his other friends who planned to take the road. In a few hours, Tapia had sent more than 250 tweets. “TV news is not instant enough,” he says. “A lot of exaggeration happens; many of the footages shown are of the worst-hit areas and of the times when the rains were the heaviest.”

Mumbaikars are swiftly discovering the new uses of online social media as a commercial or communication tool, or indeed as a way to gather people. According to estimates, in India, Facebook has around 70lakh users, Orkut 1.6crore and Twitter around 8lakh. “The number of people who visit these sites daily and the time they spend on it is far greater than what they do watching TV programmes or reading newspapers,” says Mahesh Murthy, CEO, Pinstorm, a digital marketing agency.

Companies have latched on to the possibilities. When Lenovo India was launching seven products this year, apart from the conventional launch, it decided to hold meetings with bloggers. Karthik S, Text 100 Public Relations’ account director, which handles the public relations and online communication of Lenovo India, says, “Earlier, PR would be done through mainstream media. Today, we have many micro-influencers online. It is essential for any brand to reach out to them”.

Not only are large firms tapping into online social media, smaller enterprises have been quicker to adapt to them. Blue Bus Tees, a Mumbai-based enterprise that sells T-shirts, shunned conventional modes by opting to sell their products online. Advertising solely through Facebook, they managed to sell 100 T-shirts in the first month. By the third month, their sales had tripled. They have a Facebook group page, fan page and a Twitter account.

“This helps us get the word out about Blue Bus Tees,” says Pranav Kapur who founded the company with his friend, Abhir Khanna, “We have hired a company to manage our fan pages. But it’s never direct marketing. For example, we have a Bollywood group on Facebook where we discuss tees that we would like to gift to our Bollywood stars,” says Kapur.

The social media is poised to be a bigger part of our lives. The best part is that once you start contributing, you get to play a role in shaping this medium as well. If you need help getting started, just tweet for it!

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by Sruthi Krishnan

Efficacy lies in the larger impact it has on voters

Chennai: With political parties wooing voters online and using social networking sites to recruit activists, cyber space is becoming critical to campaign agendas. But how effective is a campaign that you join with a click?

“Before we start measuring the efficacy of an online campaign, we need to determine the context within which online campaigning works,” says Nishant Shah, Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

For instance, the efficacy of a campaign such as ‘Jaago re’, which encourages people to vote, cannot be determined by looking at the number of people registered on the site or daily traffic; rather, its efficacy lies in the larger impact it has in terms of visibility, transparency, and other such factors, he says.

But numbers do matter and what is considered “merely signing up” is a significant activity, argues S. Shyam Sundar, co-director, Media Effects Research Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. “In social networks, an important piece of currency is the strength of a given node in the network.” Hence, by signing on, users are sending a signal of endorsement, which is similar to people showing up at a political rally — it is a measure of success, even though not everyone participates actively.

An online group is a platform to gather people, but that is not enough. People have to be commandeered on the platform to do something concrete to generate value, says Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm, a digital advertising firm. “The Indian political party online groups seem to have gathered people but are not directing them to action except in stray cases such as Meera Sanyal in South Mumbai. I would largely discount the BJP and Congress online groups for now as mostly valueless.”

Whether or not a campaign fulfilled the objectives it set out to accomplish is a measure of its efficacy, says Mr. Murthy. This can be measured with metrics such as engagement (amount of time and depth of user’s involvement in the message), brand impact (visibility of the message to target user), clicks, sign-ups, ‘viralness’ (how much users spread the message) and persuasion scores (measuring how persuasive the message is), he adds.

“In the specific case, say, of the BJP’s campaign, it seems to have several objectives,” says Mr. Murthy. He outlines three of those — to negate the impact on youth of Narendra Modi and project L.K. Advani as the sole BJP leader; to project the 81-year-old Mr. Advani as a relevant leader to an audience of urban 18 to 35-year-olds; and to project the BJP as the ideological choice at the polls.

He adds that the campaign has done really well on the first two but failed in the third objective. “The campaign merely projects a leader and doesn’t tackle the issues the audience cares about — from Babri to Ram Sene and more.” In advertising terms the campaign has established high reach and frequency levels and is very visible online – but it probably has done very little in the persuasion scores,” he says, adding that it had succeeded in neutralising Modi’s appeal among a section of the public and projected just one leader of the BJP.

by Kapil Ohri

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Idea Cellular has extended its recent television commercial, which shows a politician asking for public opinion before finalising a development project, to real life. The MyIdea campaign uses the Internet, TV and radio media to engage people, demonstrate the power of collective decision making and the usability of mobile phones in that process.

A website, myidea.co.in, has been created, which allows users to raise or submit questions related to issues in their cities or districts, politics, society, economy, entertainment and sports in 150 words. Users are also allowed to upload pictures to support their questions and can forward the questions submitted by them to their friends.

Users are also empowered to garner support and votes for their ideas. A user can also submit his vote on questions raised by others.

Ideas such as ‘Criminals shouldn’t stand for elections’, ‘Should LK Advani stop his online campaign?’, ‘Save the girl child’ and ‘Ban plastic bags’ have been entered by users.

Within three weeks of its launch, the website claims that a total of 1,29,758 votes have been received for 1,806 questions raised by users, with 755and 479 questions submitted under the politics and society categories. The website has received 3,06,896 page views.

The Lintas Media Group, in association with Pinstorm Technologies, has conceptualised and managed the creative, media planning and technology part of the campaign.

Speaking to afaqs!, Mahesh Murthy, chief executive officer, Pinstorm, an interactive agency, says, “Idea Cellular wanted to demonstrate the participative democratic process in reality and that’s why we were briefed to develop an interactive application or website which will engage and enable users to submit their opinions.”

A spokesperson from Idea Cellular tells afaqs!, “In a mobile market, where the call rates offered and the technology available to all mobile operators are almost similar, Idea wanted to differentiate its communication from the other players. That’s why, it has opted for the participative decision making route to demonstrate the efficient ways of using mobile telephony.”

He adds, “Idea Cellular is not doing the campaign for any social cause. The website has been created to amplify the communication put forward by the current television commercial.”

Apart from the website, the mobile operator is also using TV and radio platforms to engage users with the MyIdea campaign.

Idea Cellular has tied up with TV news channels such as Zee News, STAR News, CNBC Awaaz, CNBC, NDTV India and NDTV 24×7, and FM radio stations such as Radio Mirchi, Radio City, Big FM and My FM to execute the campaign.

Every day, the news channels pick up a topic and ask a question on the same. Viewers are requested to vote and send in their replies via SMSes. The results are announced on the news channels at 8-9pm.

On radio, radio jockeys ask a question of the day and invite listeners to call and discuss the issue.

Sathyamurthy NP, president and chief operating officer, Lintas Media Group, tells afaqs!, “Everyday, 18,000 people participate on TV, while 3,000 people take part in the MyIdea questions through radio.”

Idea Cellular is using search engine marketing (SEM) and display advertising across all major portals such as Yahoo! and Rediff to promote the MyIdea website. It has even developed special applications for Orkut and Facebook to gather ideas.

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by Kapil Ohri

If you happen to search for the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, on Google, the landing page with results on Sonia Gandhi will also display a message by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – “Do You Know Why Advaniji is a better leader, BJP a better party? If you don’t, visit Lkadvani.in.”

This message is a part of the search marketing technique adopted by the BJP for many political leaders. The political party has used search marketing and contextual advertising tools on Google (AdWords and AdSense) so that whenever anyone searches for Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or even Mayawati, the landing page will have sponsored links from the BJP.

For instance, when you search for Manmohan Singh, the sponsored link on the landing page says, “Do you share the dream? 21st Century India’s Century, Advani for PM – Lkadvani.in.”

This strategy is also called brand-jacking on Google.com. The BJP has actually bought 850 keywords, including the names of its rivals such as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Mayawati, Congress and Samajwadi Party to run search ads on Google.com.

“Already 619,695,254 ad impressions promoting the LKAdvani website have been served on Google.com and its network of sites since the inception of the campaign on January 2,” Prodyut Bora, chief, IT, BJP, tells afaqs!.

Speaking to afaqs!, Ansoo Gupta, head, global business, Pinstorm, says that the practice of purchasing keywords related to the competition is not new in the world of search marketing.

A Google search for ‘Taj Hotel’ results in sponsored links of ‘Oberoi Hotels’. Similarly, a search on Go Air leads to sponsored links related to Jetlite.com and SpiceJet.com, the rival airline brands.

However, a Google search on Jet Airways only generates sponsored links for JetAirways.com. JetaAirways.com is registered as a trademark. If an advertiser owns a trademark on its name or brand, it can ask Google.com to block the usage of its trademark keywords by its competitors. A complaint can also be filed with Google in case any advertiser uses a particular keyword owned as a trademark by its competitor.

“Usage of keywords such as ‘Sonia Gandhi’, ‘Rahul Gandhi’ and ‘Congress’ implies that these words are not registered as trademarks and that’s why the BJP is exploiting and capitalising these keywords in their SEM campaign,” says an industry observer.

Interestingly, the US President, Barack Obama, owns copyrights on his name.

It seems that search marketing strategy will work for BJP, as the search volume patterns derived via Google Insights for Search, clearly indicates that ‘Sonia Gandhi’ and ‘Rahul Gandhi’ keywords received 1.5 times more searches than LK Advani.

This means higher number of searches for Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi can help BJP to drive traffic to the LK Advani’s website. Bora claims that on an average basis, LKAdvani.in receives 20,000 unique visitors daily.

Google.com is managing the SEM campaign of BJP.

© 2009 afaqs!