Life Etc Etc

Its been a roller coaster ride the past few months but completing my MBA and watching India win the cricket world cup were definitely the highs in this otherwise dull period of my life. Yes my dear netizens no prizes for guessing the topic for the next two entries would be the recently concluded cricket world cup. The first time I saw a cricket world cup match was in 1992 when the tournament was hosted by Australia. The 1992 world cup was a revelation and included many firsts such as coloured clothing, floodlit matches and more importantly it was the first time the two group format was discarded with South Africa joining the competition as the ninth team. Since 1992 the format of the tournament has never been the same and has consistently gone through major upheavals. We saw the introduction of quarterfinals in 1996 , the super sixes in 1999 ( 2003 tournament followed the 1999 format with 14 teams competing) and super eights in 2007 (with 16 teams competing). The recently co...

Digital Marketing according to Wikipedia is the promotion of brands using all forms of digital advertising channels to reach consumers. This now includes television, radio, internet, mobile and any other form of digital media. So digital marketing looks like the super class of internet marketing.  But would it still be called digital marketing if we use internet to market the products on the mobile? I am pretty much sure that nobody knows the answer to this question as the lines are being blurred everyday between digital, internet and e-marketing (which is supposed to differ from the other two because of its relation to e-commerce). There have been few major upheavals that have happened in the mobile marketing space over the past one year. Google acquired and integrated AdMob (the leader in mobile advertising for all platforms) with AdSense making it the undisputed leader in mobile phone marketing. Apple who was earlier planning to acquire AdMob launched its own iAd targeti...

I am a movie buff and that is understandable considering the fact that I come from a country which by the sheer number of films produced per year is the largest movie industry in the world. From time immemorial movies have strived to captivate the imagination of audience first through movie effects such as Technicolor, Cinemascope ( The Robe - 1953 would be a good example), stereophonic sound then through over the top red carpet premieres, outdoor media and yes of course trailers (I couldn't believe when I found that the first trailers were produced as early as 1913 ). Here's a simple fact movie trailers rank 3rd amongst the most watched videos on the internet after news and user generated content. Movies have always managed to cleverly use both the online and offline media channels to generate interest amongst the moviegoers. When was the last time that you saw a banner or a poster that didn't show the website of the film? Can't remember? I can't too. Movies ...

The horrors of Auto Correct or "Damn you Auto Correct" is arguably the hottest topic that the blogging community has been talking about lately (other than say Movember). A lot has been said about the unintended humor invoked by the Auto Correct option on the mobile phones (an entire site http://damnyouautocorrect.com/ has been dedicated to this) so there is nothing really new that I can add. But here's an interesting observation gone are the days when people only knew about a product after they brought it. The power of word of mouth or viral marketing has altered people's perceptions about leading brands. While "Damn you Auto Correct" might not (at all) damage the reputation of mobile phone companies the same way that " United Breaks Guitars " did it very humorously points a flaw in the Auto Correct option which the mobile phones could do well to fix in the next models they release (before the option causes major unintended consequences). Thus ...

As the month of November comes to a close I can’t help but thinking about the mustache laden past few weeks. Blessed with excellent facial fair (I meant that as a joke) I was no stranger to a mustache back in India but little did I realize then that the very 'mo' I forsook when I came to Canada last year would grace me once again only this time for a cause.  I was a ‘Mo-bro ‘last year too but I really had no idea about the far reaching global impacts of the movement. Starting with a modest number of 432 Mo Bros in 2004 the movement has grown exponentially to 255,755 Mo bros and Mo Sistas and over a million donors. While the last years’ campaign generated contributions of over $47 million for the beneficiaries this year’s proceeds are on target to exceed last year’s figures with Canada taking the lead from Australia by almost doubling its last year’s contributions from $7.8 million to $15.2 million. Even though at the heart of the Movember movement is a cause (prost...

I have every reason to be motivated especially when it has been only a few days since I was part of something extraordinary. Without any further ado the event was the football game last Sunday featuring UBC Packers (MBA soccer team -> whom I always represent but occasionally play for). At the game’s halftime the UBC Packers were all but out trailing their seemingly indefatigable opponents by a whopping 5-1. The break gave time for reflection and spurned a metamorphosis that would have inspired a Hollywood movie. A super charged and motivated packers team took the field after the halftime and scored five goals in rapid succession and created more than half a dozen opportunities in the last few minutes before finally losing by a heartbreaking 7-6 (a perfect script for an Academy award winning film). If only soccer was like tennis with three sets, they beat us 5-1 in the first we beat them 5-2 in the second and given our (then) current form we would have inevitably won the match ...

Search engine optimization (SEO) has for a decade been the elixir for websites which have meandered aimlessly in internet anonymity. Manipulating the website content so as to appear on top of the search engine results appeared to be the most effective of way attracting the internet customers whose span of attention seemed to be decreasing with every passing hour. However no reign lasts forever and SEO’s supremacy over the destiny of websites was finally challenged by its distant similarly named (somewhat controversial) cousin Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Although SEM (initially known as the less than flattering Pay per click advertising) came into prominence at the same time as SEO it took a while before it could capture the attention of the website owners the same way as SEO did. The introduction of Google Adwords in 2003 really thrust SEM into spotlight and also made the search engines realize they could actually make money out of SEM. Today SEM has become the primary source ...