Commercializing a disaster - the Youtube & CBS way.

The earthquake and the tsunami in Japan have thrown up heart retching images and videos of folks caught in the disaster suffering, loosing property, life and hope. 

The coverage of the disaster re-enforced two things;

1. Traditional news media is dead. The traditional field reporters are now completely replaced by the common men and women who are the real eyes and ears. In fact almost all the feed that runs on networks like CNN and BBC is from the social networks. And the newsprint – they are really of no use – they are just a dying habit. 

2. Commercial interests seems to have taken over the new media as much as the old media owners. It is an unfortunate though everyday practice to have the TV coverage of a disaster like the above  interrupted by TVCs. I always found the positioning of these TVCs strange from a “brand positioning” perspective (I have just seen someone’s home being washed away, now let me view a shampoo TVC). While I had come to expect this from the traditional media vehicles, I am very surprised that the new media owners, who otherwise follow all the virtues of social media, are unfortunately following the same strategy.

High on that list is Youtube (read Google) CBS Channel, which is putting up adverts at the start of all uploaded videos – making the viewing experience quite pathetic. 

And the viewer reaction has to be noted and of course respected.  Following were some of the reactions and you would notice that the highest rated comments are NEGATIVE;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj58NpanX3g&feature=related

Related articles

• Japan's Disaster Proves Social Media Is Vital 
• HOW TO: Follow the Japan Earthquake Online 

The modern trade vs The brands - the saga continues.

I read with a lot of interest the series of recent articles carried in Economic Times on the ongoing and perpetual battle between the brands at one end and the modern retailers on the other. It started a few days back with the news that Reckitt was keen on reduction of margins for the modern retail outlets (by about 2% or so).

It followed today with the news that Future Group is "cleaning out" Reckitt from it's outlets. 

What made it particularly interesting for me was that about 2 years back (thats when modern trade was really modern in India), I had a longish meeting with the then brand custodian of one of the Reckitt brands who was spending majority of her marketing funds on "creating"a category for her product at the modern trade. We discussed issues around eventual private labeling, shrinking margins, cost charged towards display,  lack of traditional trade focus etc. however, perceived higher and better quality of consumer engagement ensured that she stuck to her decision of pouring very serious monies in modern trade to create a category - irony was that the largest amount was on the Future Group. 

While modern trade currently represents only 5% of the FMCG trade in India, the writing on the wall is very clear - the FMCG brands will need to take a good hard look at their own shopper marketing strategies and step back to embrace the traditional grocer / kirana store.

If the brands don't - they will be constantly on the receiving end - today Reckitt got taken off the shelves, yesterday it was Frito-Lay and Kellogg's. Tomorrow who knows. 

Another example of AR

AR is the "engagement" which has long been missing in the digital marketing space, though, I am still to get conversion data to back the use.

ANDES TELETRANSPORTER

Part of the Cannes Promo Shortlist.

I thought the creative thinking on this was quite sharp and based on a simple yet universal insight on young men in bars vs their girl friends. Installing a teletransporter in a handful of bars would create enough buzz and engagement even amongst the folks who have not experienced it. 

The Cannes Re-look

Have shared my reactions to the various shortlisted entries at Cannes Promo Category, however, since there have been a number of requests for the entries to be on this blog, I am putting them up here along with my views.