Oct 24, 2009

“Who owns Consumer issues? Brands or Consumers?”

There is always gap between consumer expectations and services they receive from brands and marketers. Brands and Marketers strive hard to service customers and regularly try to connect with consumers through one/more touch points, programs and events. Yet, often consumers receive raw deals.

Consumers of Retail, Telecom services, Financial services, Travel and Hospitality services business face many issues. Consumers resist some, accept some and get ‘used to’ some issues. Sometimes consumers switch loyalty with brands due to one/more issues they encounter. No wonder, consumer confidence in Brands erodes when issues prevail and/or not addressed to, over many transactions. If we address consumer issues, it helps build consumer confidence in brands and help build customer loyalty and brand equity. Conversely it also helps Brands and Marketers to understand consumers better. Consumer satisfaction and/or delight is a unique experience; which consumers cherish and reward. As partners in the service of Brands and Marketers and finally the consumers, we need to work towards creating that unique consumer experience. Because consumer experience will be the key differentiator for businesses in future.

New Media Technologies provide many ways to connect and interact with consumers. We need to continuously innovate and provide ‘New Media technology’ driven solutions to retail consumer issues and consumer wishlist. It’s a proactive approach and not reactive. It’s a journey and not a destination. Therefore, the Interactive Media Worldwide community management team would like to forge Strategic Partnerships with leading Brands & Agencies to find, conceptualize, design technology driven solutions in order to help resolve consumer issues. The benefits are hugely rewarding. Brands and Marketers will have more satisfied consumers and more opportunity to serve them. If you are a creative, interactive, marketing communication agency, you will have more opportunity to forge improved business relationships with the brands and marketers you serve.

Through such initiatives and continued efforts, let’s make the
Interactive Media Worldwide, a truly ‘value’ driven community.

Would you be interested to forge a strategic partnership to continuously innovate and find New Media Technology driven solutions to consumer issues?

Jan 28, 2009

Multiplatform Concept for New Age Media:

New Age Media is diverse and complex. It’s a disruptive media paradigm. The evolution of social media together with semantic web has given rise to new school of thoughts and new approaches to address people’s daily problems. Its freedom for everyone and every individual can listen and at the same time voice concerns. Every person has now transformed into a media entity. The power and reach of social media is enormous. Content clearly rules. Directive advertising messages has no place in the semantic web era. The rules of the game applicable to mass media and legacy media networks won’t hold good.

Every individual will now be part of complex and focused communities to help himself with meaningful services. Brands have to keep pace with customers and present themselves, wherever customers are. As one of the marketing director puts it, if customers are already using it, brands can’t ignore it. The paradigm shift in media space is going to inflict change in the way brands and marketers work with media.

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitters are not the only ones marketers need to look into. The New Age Media is not just about creating Digital Experience within PC. Out of Home media can create deep impressions too. The Video walls, interactive Billboards, Digital Signages, Customer Kiosks, all have the power to create impulsive purchase decision and greatly influence the customer, so much so to convert a shopper into a buyer. So, the spectrum is wider and growing. Consumers are already using multiplatform media. They are in social media networks, mobile, web, channels, kiosks and everywhere. If you cant’ reach them, you loose them!
Brands need a comprehensive digital strategy to leverage the power of new age media.

The current practices to ‘use’ or ‘misuse’ email and mobile channels will be under ‘check’. Email and mobile messaging is considered as intruding and hostile. Many countries have stringent laws which protects the consumers from spam. Brands can not just afford to loose their moral standing. Brands and marketers must realize this fact. Gone are the days when campaign means sending out bulk or unsolicited ‘proactive’ campaign mails/sms. Therefore email and mobile SMS are not an open option for marketers. I am not saying that email and mobile will cease to exist. No, they will co-exist along with other channels.

From the influence perspectives, the good side, as per a recent study that ‘text’ conveys only 7% of a message, ‘voice’ conveys 23% and ‘visuals’ ( such as video) conveys 70% of a message. So video and voice will be the dominating factor of influence in the New Age Media.

The point I am driving is that, the multiplatform EMPs which exist today have become legacy applications and fall short in many aspects and they are not the technology solutions for the brands in the social media world. Its certainly not the application stack, which brands and marketers should continue to use. However certain capabilities like campaign planning and customer response tracking can be used with certain facelift.

In my opinion, a true New Age Media enabled multiplatform should help to create, grow and manage interactive Touch Points; for the majority or the full spectrum of New Age Media. The platform should provide ability to create and publish campaign plans to larger content provider community, bloggers, custom content developers, writers, communication professionals to participate and collaborate in the digital assets supply chain process. Media networks then configure and setup Interactive Touch Points to be able to reach and connect with targeted audience. Customer transactions including responses, purchase transactions, service requests etc are then managed through various Touch Points, which is integrated with a back end system. Its like a Funnel, where interests of diverse communities are channelized and converged to establish a unified view.

This would empower brand managers, media assets companies, creative and content professionals, bloggers and writers, media network operators, marketing and sales professionals, back office agents to work collectively and collaboratively as ‘teams’ to service customers and to continuously realize higher ROI for marketing investments and most importantly acquire new customers and enrich customer loyalty for brands. This would also help brands project a ‘Unified View’ to customers.

The key aspect of the New Age Media enabled multiplatform is the visibility it provides to brands and marketers and true value it provides across the end-to-end customer influence and engagement (I&E) life cycle.

Jan 2, 2009

Make your joy eternal.
Wishing you Joyful New Year 2009 !



As the new year begins, Let us resolve to reach out to people, to serve with love. In my opinion service is the sole purpose of your life and my life too. When you serve people and every from of life with love, you end up making your joy eternal.

Service is not just about serving the under privileged. What ever you are doing, do it with love for people you serve. Whether you are a vegetable seller, cop, postman, teacher ,doctor or dentist, do your duty with passion and love for people.

Interactive Media Worldwide hopes to bring in cheers, peace, harmony and symphony to everyone irrespective of their cast, creed, religion and nationality through Entertainment, Education, Care and Opportunity. The concept is driven by service motive and not revenue objectives.

'Interactive Media Worldwide' is not just about building brand equity, customer loyalty and innovative approaches to connect with people across the eco-system. Its also about Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR), social cause, working for under-privileged and reaching out to all people irrespective of their religion, caste, creed, language, colour, country and community.

We wish to connect with people across all walks of life. We work on ‘Inclusive Solutions’ to connect and serve all people; whether poor, middle level or rich. Inclusive Solutions is not about any technology, its just about innovative and efficient ways to connect with people and serve them. While we directly reach out to poor people through sponsored programs, we enable Brands to reach their targeted segment of people. And the approach covers the entire eco-system.

We, the Interactive Media Worldwide community are fully committed to service with Love. I am confident that the IMW community members share my views and are with the groups’ outlook about social service.

If you are a social worker, CSR professional or one who believes in serving people with love, please join us.

Dec 25, 2008

We are entering The Media Economy:

“The market size of the Media and entertainment is US$1700 billions in 2008” - Price Water Coopers.
“The market is expected to grow massively to US$5700 billions by 2024” -Future Exploration Network.

An increasing proportion of our business and social interactions happen across new age media channels. Today almost every business and social activity is a form of media.

Every organization is now a media entity, engaged in creating and disseminating messages among its staff, customers, and partners to achieve business objectives. As the physical economy becomes marginalized and economic value becomes centered on the virtual, media encompasses almost everything.

Media, entertainment, and related industries are positioned at the center of massive global growth. The current positioning of some media companies in a rapidly changing market means they are not experiencing this upside. Others are doing fabulously well in tapping people’s almost insatiable desire for content and connection.

Dec 1, 2008

New Age Media: We are on a right path!

It’s encouraging to note that, our position on the “New Age Media” is vindicated by none other than IBM’s “Global Innovation Outlook” (GIO) team.

Early this year more than 40 researchers from IBM’s GIO team took a study and research tour around the world and met 142 enthusiasts from 18 countries through a convention held in 9 cities New York, Los Angeles, Helsinki, Seoul, Mumbai, Shanghai, and London. There objective was to unravel the phenomenon of a fast emerging relationship between brands, media, context and content and how its changing the business world and the media world too.

The findings of the study is published as a report titled “ The New New Media- Global lessons on the future of media, content and messaging”. Following are some of the lines and statements made in the GIO report version 3.0.

“The worlds of media, content, branding, and messaging are changing so rapidly that it’s not unrealistic to think a startup could appear tomorrow and rewrite all the rules again by the end of this decade”.

The GIO report 3.0 states further, “ Innovation within the newly amorphous market segment of media, content, branding, and messaging is about much more than just the media industry. Today, the lessons the media industry is learning the hard way are instructive to any organization. Content is quickly becoming the commodity backbone around which contextual services can be built”.

“Change Is Good. In the evolving media landscape, opportunity abounds. The disruptions facing the media industry are instructive to any organization” quotes the report.

Essentially, the New Age Media provides the much required ‘engagement’ capability, which is meaningful to the customers. This context based engagement helps organizations to connect with the customers and provide her what she wants. Karen Becker of Autodesk states that,

“ Viral anti-marketing is engagement, as far as I’m concerned. We’ve embraced our toughest critics, engaged them in a dialogue, and addressed the issues they’ve cited. Our brand is stronger as a result.”
— Karen Becker, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing, Autodesk


So, that's it ! Influence and Engagement goes hand in hand in the process of building brand equity!


About Global Innovation Outlook: In 2004, IBM formulated a high powered team, comprising of researchers, consultants, business leaders to study, research and explore technology and business trends in the future.

The GIO is rooted in the belief that, in the early days of the 21st century, the very nature of innovation has changed. It is increasingly open, collaborative, multidisciplinary, and global. This shift means that the truly revolutionary innovations of our time — those that will create new markets, redefine old ones, and maybe even change the world for the better — require the participation and investment of multiple constituencies. The GIO challenges some of the brightest minds on the planet — from the worlds of business, politics, academia, and nonprofits — to collaboratively address some of the most vexing issues on earth.

Nov 23, 2008


Demystifying Interactive Touch Points:

What is Interactive Touch Point? This is the mother question for this discussion. This is also the cover story. So let me explain what each word means to customers, brands and business. I have also provided some links for further reading.

Touch Point by definition is: Point of Contact. In the CRM (Customer Relation Management) world, Touch Point could be a store, branch office, Call center, Service center, e-commerce web site, Kiosk etc. Except Kiosk and web site, all other points are ‘directly managed’ by staff. Generally, customer experiences a variety of service levels through the ‘manned’ touch points and hence the customer satisfaction levels are varied.

Compared to the above, an Interactive Touch Point is a media based Customer Touch Point and the experience; comprising of both influence and engagement is created by the content. The content type could be a static display (an image), variable display (like Video) or dynamic content ( aspx/java/php page) that are delivered through desktop/laptop, kiosk, web site, Blog, mobile device, IPTV, signage, Videowall and billboard. In the interactive touch point domain, the same or synchronized ‘content’ is delivered through multiple channels. Like petroleum jelly is the base for a pain balm; which ensures smoother and uniform flow of dosage application. And hence customer carries a consistent experience level across Interactive Touch Points. So by using consistent and synchronized content, you can engineer a consistent level of customer experience and hence the customer satisfaction.

The biggest benefit of Interactive Touch Points is that, it can be used not only to ‘Influence’ customers but also to engage them meaningfully. Brands can develop content for pre-purchase, post purchase and during purchase by innovatively using structured content; often referred as ‘Content for the Moment of Relevance’ (CMR). If the content is relevant and suits the moment of touch point interactions, then the decisions to transact are faster, resulting in higher levels of conversions. Further, if the content is useful to customers, they may even choose to preserve them. Like if the content explains how to use a product, then the customer may not like to discard them; which in turn would increase the life of content.

Which touch points are relevant for success?

Popular brands and bigger companies have a lot of touch points compared to smaller brands and companies. For popular brands, this scenario brings one critical question into focus: Which are the touch points that are critical for brand’s success ? Whether a brand or a business can deliver consistent level of customer satisfaction through all these critical touch points ?
Its hard to ensure consistent customer satisfaction levels through ‘manned’ touch points. Whereas Interactive Touch Points can deliver just that and hence can create, promote and build customer loyalty. The Interactive Touch Points not only drives consistent customer satisfaction on its own, but also compliments the customer experience generated by other ‘manned’ touch points. In an article, a senior partner of Prophet ; a San Francisco, USA based leading brand innovation consulting company, wrote:

“With a high degree of customer satisfaction, brands will tend to experience superior loyalty, greater word of mouth, higher price points, high degree of customer forgiveness, (“ Oh! that slip-up was just a one time event”) and, most importantly higher levels of profitability”. –Scott Davis & Tina Longoria in an article “Harmonizing Your TouchPoints”.

So, for higher customer loyalty, brands should deploy higher number of Interactive Touch Points adequately supported by optimized ‘manned’ touch points. The strategy can deliver twin business advantages of increasing profitability and cutting down operational costs.

Nov 15, 2008


Interactive Media:

Abstract: In the times of burgeoning inflation rate and market sluggishness, marketing investments needs to be made with a clear ROI and a strong value proposition to customers. The choice of one or more media options such as TV, Web, Print, Mobile, Billboard, and Signage to reach target customers is purely based on the extent of influence it can make and the engagement it can facilitate with the customers. While more and more people with purchase power stay away from home, the Web, OOH, Billboard, Digital Signage, Desktop and Mobile handsets have become more relevant media options than ever before. There are many questions and concerns around the new age interactive media. Some of them are listed below for your review.

Influence & Engagement – the Two Metrics:

How do the new age interactive media deliver ROI with a compelling value proposition to customers? Is ‘interactivity’ apart from ‘influence’ critical for compelling ROI proposition? How do customers benefit from interactive media? How do brands gain out of interactive media? How do these media influence customers to remain loyal to the brand? What would attract brands to go in for new age interactive media? How brands can achieve ‘cross media lift’? What approaches a brand can adopt to save on marketing investments cost and yet achieve its revenue objectives? How do brand managers ensure that the customer’s concerns and requirements are addressed with least latency?

Content is the King:

Will there be a paradigm shift in the way advertisers reach out to customers? Will there be space for ‘useful content’ rather than mere ‘adv messages’? How will the domain of advertising messages change to useful content? Will ‘Content’ become the ‘King’? How will the brands get free access to ideas pool? How will creative professionals get seamless access to brand’s campaign needs? How brands and its pool of creative professionals can work seamlessly? What role the Content Guru and Creative professionals will play in the new age media?

Role of Technology:

What role the technology will play? How will SaaS ( Software as a Service) and PaaS ( Platform as a Service) based new age media networks evolve and sustain? Will there be standardization in video formats? Which are the technology leaders to watch during this transition? How will the media assets companies evolve into service centric players rather than asset centric players?

Social Cause:
How can brands reach out to the underprivileged people and play its role as responsible corporate citizens? How can people willing to work for a social cause, reach out to people in far and remote villages ? How will brands create ‘trust’ with people from all walks of life? Can entertainment and education become the effective medium to reach out to people eco-system ? Are there better ways to reach out to the entire people eco-system covering the poor, middle level and the rich? Are there ways to work for ‘digitally deprived’ people across the globe? How will ‘inclusive’ solutions work? How can one unleash the joy of service?
Collaborative Efforts:

How do brand managers, media assets companies, creative and content professionals, dealers, franchisees, marketing and sales professionals, back office agents collectively and collaboratively work as ‘teams’ to service customers and to continuously realize higher ROI for marketing investments and most importantly acquire new customers and enrich customer loyalty for brands.

The Interactive Media Worldwide is a global forum to find answers and solutions to all these questions and challenges ahead. The forum also explores ‘meaningful opportunities’ for all the concerned. This is a service oriented forum and this forum should not to be used for promoting any product or service.


This is a professional networking forum for brand owners, media professionals, Creative & Advertising professionals, Marketing & Communication professionals, Chief Marketing Officers, Content Writers, Journalists, Sales professionals, Business Development professionals, Social Development professionals, Entrepreneurs and Executives working in the Retail, FMCG, Telecom, Real Estate, Hospitality, Travel, Automobile, Fashion, Lifestyle, Sports, Healthcare, Entertainment, Education, Finance & Investments, Banking, Manufacturing, Institutions, Public Service and Social Service domains across the globe. We aim to enroll 25,000 members in the first year and grow further @ 20% year on year.