Aamir Khan is Jhingalala for Tata Sky

Khan has been in the news these days, heavily promoting his latest production, Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na, which is also his nephew, Imran Khan’s debut film. Recently, he has started endorsing Samsung and Parle Monaco. He has been the Titan brand ambassador for a while now.

 

Tata Sky is a joint venture between the Tata Group, STAR TV. In this venture TATA owns 80% and STAR TV owns a 20% stake. Tata Sky was incorporated in 2004 but was launched only in 2006. The company uses the Sky brand owned by British Sky Broadcasting.

Tata Sky, has roped in Aamir Khan as its brand ambassador. Bollywood star Aamir Khan has entered into a long-term contract with Tata Sky. Aamir Khan will be used extensively for communicating the benefits of Tata Sky to the Indian consumer. It is definitely a strategic move as the rival dish TV has signed Shah Rukh Khan. Tata Sky would use Khan to take the brand forward. He is not the first brand ambassador for the 21-month old DTH service provider. Hrithik Roshan was used during the Cricket World Cup in 2007 for select campaigns and other film stars like Kiron Kher and Paresh Rawal were also used for some campaigns which basically testimonial ads.

 

Khan will feature in all the Tata Sky ads in print, TV, outdoor and radio with the popular Tata Sky tag line Isko laga dala, to life jhingalala.

 

Rediffusion DY&R is the company’s creative agency.

Hrithik Roshan is Magic for M2-Magic Moments

M2-Magic Moments Vodka, a Radico Khaitan Ltd. brand, has recently launched its seven flavors for Indian market. The flavors are raspberry, ginger, lime, lemon grass, green apple, chocolate and orange.

 

The new brand is targeted at youth. The M2-Magic Moments Vodka has unique packaging which draw consumer attention. The bottles have graphics directly printed on to them, and Radico Khaitan has invested in the latest packaging decoration technology currently being used in Europe.

 

M2-Magic Moments  Vodka promises everything that a person’s life should have – enjoyment, fun, zest and zing. It’s a product which stands for excitement in life.

 

Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan has been signed on as the brand ambassador for M2 – Magic Moments vodka. The energy and stylish modern appeal of Hrithik fits well with the international, young, energetic Magic Moments vodka brand and the experience that it promises its consumers.

 

Internet In India At A Growth Path

All internet loves must thanks comScore Networks on releasing the survey result which claims that the India has emerged as the fastest growing country of Internet users, surpassing the growth rates in the US, China, Japan. However, India is not there in the top 10 countries in terms of average monthly hours online per unique visitor.
comScore Networks also reports that India ranked eighth in terms of number of internet users as of January 2007. The US has the largest internet population of 153 million followed by China ( 86.8 million), Japan (53.6 million), Germany (32 million) and the UK (30 million) in the top five. The growth in the internet penetration can also be attributed to the fact that India grew at 33 per cent, while the world average was 10 per cent. I believe that the Indian Internet market is still at nascent stage and we hardly have any Internet success story. Indian Internet space needs a few Indian internet brands. I believe that its not enough to have just rediff, Indiatimes, and naukri. In current business scenario the Indian Internet market one needs a path breaking indigenous idea, two a local idea with global standard execution, three experimentation with local content. In current market scenario I can only see that the market is mushroomed with too many me-too ventures. I believe that Indian market is yet not explored well and needs experimentation.
 

No wonder VC firms from Silicon Valley now focusing on India and several Indian companies as part of their portfolio. The global VC films like Sequoia India, Helion, Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, NEA IndoUS Venture Fund , and KPCB in last few years have funded various Indian internet ventures. The internet companies which got vc funding are Guruji, Travelguru, MingleBox, ApnaLoan, Shaadi, Komli, MakeMyTrip, seventymm, Yatra, Sulekha,  bharatmatrimony, cleartrip, naukri to name a few. A close look on these internet venture tells yet another story. These internet ventures can be classified into lifestyle, travel, or existing, prominent portals. All these internet ventures with low internet population are managing the revenue is a commendable task. A close look on these entire ventures also indicates that they are playing in the field which is closely linked to corporate world. Naukri is a job board; Travelguru, MakeMyTrip, Yatra are travel portals with focus on corporate or office goers.

Emergence of Multiplex in India

In 1979, world’s first multiplex ‘Eaton Center’ in Toronto, Canada was opened for the general public. The Eaton Center has 18-screen movie theater complex. Eaton’s movie centers, which were a craze during the 1980s and 1990s, faded slowly and closed finally in March 2001.

 

In 1997 PVR established, first multiplex in India – PVR Anupam at Saket, New Delhi. The PVR Anupam changed the Indian movie exhibition landscape. Movie exhibition till mid nineties was dominated by Cinema halls – the traditionally single screen halls. Cinema halls witnessed a surge of customers mostly during the festive season and on weekends. The emergence of multiplexes changed the movie exhibition business in India. Today, all eyes in the entertainment industry have turned towards multiplexes, as they generate a larger share of revenue though they accommodate less number of seats per theater.

 

The emergence of new multiplexes has reduced the audience for traditional cinemas, thereby prompting some of them to transform themselves into multiplexes. The multiplex business is not only prompting traditional cinema theater owners to convert their property into multiplex but in recent times has also attracted many international players to venture into the business. No wonder the multiplex business is so lucrative that foreign entertainment giants like Time Warner, South Korean multiplex operator Megabox, and Australia’s Hoyts are in talks with real estate developers such as the DLF group, the Raheja Group and Sobha Developers to set up chains of multiplexes across the country. We should not forget that roughly a dozen Indian players have entered in the business in small or big way.

 

New players are trying to enter this sector and the existing players are busy expanding their horizons. In recent times the multiplex has gone beyond the metros to redefine entertainment in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities like Lucknow, Indore, Nasik, Aurangabad, Kanpur, Amritsar. The good news for most of the movie exhibitors is that at present roughly 70 percent of the total box office collections in the country come from non metros.

 

These multiplex has multiple screen movie theater complex which also offers lifestyle shopping. It offers brand new experience of watching movies. Today multiplex are considered not just a part of the entertainment, it is an opportunity for family outing which include movies, shopping, eating out, gaming parlors, buying books, buying groceries, etc. Most of the multiplexes malls in India have common structure, which I believe is structure of the ideal multiplex. Ideal multiplex malls have a four to five floors with various leisure and recreation options for customers. The top floor has multiplex and rest of the floors offer facilities like shopping, eating out, gaming parlors, book shops, groceries, etc. The structure of the multiplex mall explores the consumer psychology, where customers who come with the intention of watching a movie are made to pass all the floors in the shopping mall. It increases the possibility of their making some impulsive purchases. I don’t know about other but I end up buying something every time I go to watch movies. Moreover, the multiplexes do not allow outside food and beverages into the movie theaters which offer them opportunities to sale of their own products at a premium.

 

The decade old Indian multiplex industry has definitely changed the movie exhibition industry in India. The multiplex industry, in India, is still in an early growth stage, and is way behind the size and scale reached in the developed countries.

Shah Rukh Khan The King of Endorsements

In 1993, Shah Rukh Khan first appeared in three ads for tea brand Brahmaputra. The ads heralded the arrival of Shah Rukh Khan as a brand endorser of some stature. The very next year, he ended up endorsing three more brands – Hero Puch, Cinthol and Mayur Suitings. The series of his hits not only established him as a super star of film industry but also positioned him as a bankable endorser.

In 1996 he was signed by cola giant Pepsi, which can be seen as the turning point of his endorsement career. Shah Rukh Khan since then, has endorsed Bagpiper, Hyundai Santro and i10, Top Ramen noodles, Jeanne Arthes, Clinic All Clear shampoo, Emami-Sona Chandi Chyawanprash, Lux, Omega, Airtel, Nokia, sunfeast, Compaq, Home Trade, Videocon to name a few.
The superstar Shah Rukh Khan has 34 brand endorsement deals for year 2008 which is down from 37 endorsement brand in year 2007. I believe that other celebrity like Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Akshay kumar have not shown great interest in the endorsement market. In the given scenario it is important to understand what makes him the most popular celebrity brand endorser around?

Shah Rukh Khan has been around for a long time, and has become a bankable name. He is the only one who has proved to be consistent for last fifteen years (since the release of his first movie in 1992). In recent past we have seen that the actors like Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Akshay kumar are also consistent and bankable name of the Indian film industry but they are not the corporate world darling. In my views corporate world not only look for these two factors there are something more than this. The other important factors are – corporate friendliness, image of celebrity, brand personality of celebrity.

Marketers claim that Shah Rukh Khan’s appeal cuts across age, gender, and class, and blends the characteristics that mirror multiple identities – the ordinary middle class guy who went on to became the King. The king is a traditional and family loving Indian.

The biggest plus about the actor Shah Rukh Khan is that he holds self-made man image. The common Indian man associates with him and aspires to become Shah Rukh Khan. In last few years Akshay kumar has also attained status of self-made man which is challenge to the king. The other plus about Shah Rukh Khan is his image of down-to-earth, approachable person and his ability of straddling the classes and the masses. He is not niche actor like Aamir, and not even a down market actor like Govinda. In this parameter also Akshay kumar has taken a lead. This new image of the Bollywood star Akshay kumar can be a threat to the Shah Rukh Khan’s endorsement kingdom.

The fact that Shah Rukh Khan has been so overexposed by advertising leaves little room for credibility among consumers. I can’t imagine Shah Rukh Khan driving Huandi Santro or i10 but the fact that the Shah Rukh Khan’s fans still associate him with the products is doing wonders for him.

Amitabh Bachchan – The Biggest Celebrity Endorser of All Time

The celebrities are super achievers like Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan. The celebrity has a life cycle. Among all Indian celebrities, Amitabh Bachchan is an exception. He is beyond the normal life cycle of a celebrity in terms of endorsements. Amitabh Bachchan is popular with possibly all demographic, psychographic, geographic. He commands respect across the length and breadth of India, cutting across the barriers of age, income, region and language. Today he is not only one of the successful actors but also one of the most successful endorses. Having said this I must talk about the fact that during the first two-and-a-half decades of his acting career when he was called the one-man Hindi film industry never endorsed any product.

Amitabh Bachchan
Amitabh Bachchan (Amitabh Harivansh Srivastav), born on October 11, 1942 in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh is one of the most prominent Indian film actors of Bollywood. Amitabh Bachchan is known for his deep, baritone voice. He before entering the film industry applied for a job with All India Radio for the post of a news announcer, for which he was rejected – probably a destiny’s call. The actor also did Playback Singing for many Indian movies. The actor has also endorsed many brands and is one of the leading celebrity endorsers for Indian corporate world.

Birth of Endorser Amitabh Bachchan
In year 2000 Amitabh Bachchan, anchored Kaun Banega Crorepati (popularly known as KBC ) which positioned him into the league of the most expensive endorsers. The phenomenal success of KBC helped marketers realize that Amitabh Bachchan single-point attention-grabber. He is one Indian celebrity who could not only command attention but also lend his credibility status to the brands. He has been brand ambassador of products across industry and categories including Pepsi, Mirinda, ICICI Bank, Parker Pens, Reid & Taylor, Maruti Versa, Cadbury’s, Nerolac, Hajmola, Navratna tail, Emani Boroplus, Eveready, Dabur, Sahara city Home, D’damas, Binnani.
Amitabh Bachchan, before success of KBC had probably endorsed just one brand in mid nineties which was a corporate branding exercise for BPL. The campaign managed to position BPL as an aspirational Indian brand. After success of KBC he has endorsed brands in product categories as diverse as banking, soft drinks, batteries, paints, chocolates, automobiles, writing instruments, apparel, diet supplements, personal care and real estate.

Challenge for Endorser Amitabh Bachchan
It is believed that if the endorser is associated with many brands, exclusivity can no longer be associated with the celebrity. The audience gets confused when the same celebrity plugs many brands and hence the endorsement value gets eroded. In recent times, Amitabh Bachchan endorsement list has come down but he still endorses brands in double digits. And in my view most of his brands he endorses are doing good. I believe, if it was not Amitabh Bachchan the marketers would have been struggling with the ideas. Marketers can position Amitabh Bachchan as an action hero; an energizing personality; a jovial character; an advisor; a spokesperson; Mr. dependable and not to miss a passionate endorser – there is lot in Amitabh Bachchan which is unexplored. Having said this strongly advocate that marketers needs to use the celebrity power of Amitabh Bachchan judiciously.

Idea of Positioning and Differentiation

The two different books positioning and differentiation says the same thing. The book by Jack Trout on differentiation – Differentiate or Die is repackaging of his book coauthored with Al Ries on positioning – Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. In my views when Jack Trout separated from Al Ries wrote Differentiate or Die to position Trout & Partners Ltd. Truly a positioning genius. I strongly believe that it hardly matters what you call the activity of buying share of consumer mind – positioning or differentiation you are doing same thing.

Brand managers across globe are busy differentiating their products or say working hard to position them. However, the major problems with most of the companies are that they don’t understand the concept of differentiation or positioning. In most of the cases they work on differentiation for the sake of differentiation. The situations in a few cases are so grim that some brand managers really don’t know the difference between a name and a brand. Addressing similar situation, Sergio Zyman, and Armin Brott says that If you don’t keep giving customers reasons to buy from you, they won’t. Awareness is absolutely worthless if it doesn’t lead to sales. In my views one can’t blame the brand manager solely for the problem. The problem of positioning also depends on the proliferation of me-too products. Today any company can come out with almost similar product that their competitors have within a few days.
The brand managers of successful brands take their brand for granted. They don’t work on them regularly and as a result the charisma of brand goes down. It is vital to remember that even the strongest brands don’t stay their way without working on them regularly. They need repositioning or for your convenience you may call it brand maintenance. The brand needs to be renewed or redefined constantly, else it will die.

The market analyst firm also correlate branding with the data analysis and ROI of marketing; and few other marketers believe that it’s advertising which position products. In my vies branding is not only about advertising and data analysis – it’s also about understanding how consumer lives are changing and how is it impacting consumer preferences. I believe branding is also about developing and implementing strategy which is grounded on a deep understanding of consumers that connects companies. Authors, Sergio Zyman, and Armin Brott in their book The End of Advertising as We Know It says that Advertising is a lot more than just television commercials – it includes branding, packaging, celebrity spokespersons, sponsorships, publicity, customer service, the way you treat your employees, and even the way your secretary answers the phone.

Celebrity endorsement – Cricketer’s loss is Bollywood’s gain

Bollywood Rising

The cricket celebrity brand endorsement is declining. The number of brands endorsed by Sachin Tendulkar has dropped from ten to six over a period of five years, Rahul Dravid endorsement list has come down to six from twelve and Sourav Ganguly is endorsing barely has a couple of brands today. The only exceptions among cricket celebrity are MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh, who have grown their endorsements year-on-year. at the same time the film industry has gain importance in recent years. The silver screen celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham are few of the celebrity who has gained prominence in recent years.

Shah Rukh Khan’s endorsements have gone up from 6 to 18 in the same period, Hrithik Roshan’s have increased from 1 to 11 and Saif Ali Khan’s deals have doubled from 4 in 2003 to 8 now. Amitabh Bachchan, who has gone down the power list in the last two years, has managed 10 endorsements deals. Other Bollywood stars like Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham have between 3 and 7 deals in their pockets.

Cricketers were the favorites of PepsiCo till last year has signed up movie stars including Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif.

Among women celebrities Kareena Kapoor endorsement count has gone up from two to five, while the number of brands Katrina Kaif, Kajol, Priyanka Chopra and Bipasha Basu endorse has risen from almost nil to about six to seven each. The new celebrity such as Deepika Padukone and Vidya Balan are endorsing three to four brands each. The new celebrities are in demand and they are expected to sign a few more. The best part about the silver screen is that the senior actors like Hema Malini and Juhi Chawla have multiple endorsement deals.

End of cricket (sports) celebrities as we know it

Gone are the days of senior cricket players like Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, and Anil Kumble from the list of trusted celebrities. The number of brands endorsed by Sachin Tendulkar has dropped from ten to six over a period of five years, Rahul Dravid endorsement list has come down to six from twelve and Sourav Ganguly is endorsing barely has a couple of brands today.

The young Indian team is popular and happening. Advertisers believe that audience follow performance and they put their money on players who are showing results. The T20 team after 24 years won a world cup and they are the real heroes. Now advertisers trust young and happening players like Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni. In current scenario, Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni commands over INR 2 crore each endorsement deal. While the younger players like Rohit Sharma and Uthappa are charging around INR 30-40 lakh per endorsement.

MS Dhoni endorses 7Up, GE Money, TVS Motors, Videocon, Titan besides a plethora of other brands. Moreover he is one of the few cricket celebrities who are endorsing brands in double digits. Today advertisers prefer the silver screen celebrities over cricketers.

Brand Endorsement – Rise of New Celebrity

Katrina Kaif has replaced Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as the brand ambassador of Nakshatra Diamonds is one of the many replacements of senior queens by new celebrities in endorsement race. The bollywood queen such as Rani Mukherji, Preity Zinta and Aishwarya Rai – who were towering till recently are suddenly finding themselves out of the reckoning.

The growth of the new celebrity is also evident from the fact that senior actress such as Rani Mukherji, Preity Zinta charge between INR 85 lakh and INR 1 crore per endorsement, which is much less than what Kareena Kapoor or Katrina Kaif charges which is around INR 1.5 crore.

New celebrities such as Asin, Genelia DSouza, Katrina Kaif, Imraan Khan, Harman Baweja, Kangana Ranaut, Jiah Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone and Farhan Akhtar are attracting advertisers attention. In recent time these new celebrities have signed various endorsement deals. These new celebrities are not only signing new endorsement deal but also replacing veteran celebrity in most of the cases. The demand of the new celebrities is so high that that have option to choose from the list of brands. Jiah is said to have recently turned down INR one crore offer from the brand Miss Bikini India 2007. She refused to pose in a bikini for the brand.

No doubt this is the best phase for newcomers in Bollywood but they have to sustain themselves for another three-four films before they become a big endorsement star. A stars brand value remains intact if he or she delivers hits. It is important to maintain a high success rate to negotiate for the next big deal in terms of remuneration. The senior actress such as Rani Mukherji, Preity Zinta and Aishwarya Rai in recent past has not given any big hit and hence their brand value is depleting. The failure at the box office has also impacted the celebrity endorsement deals. In last one year Nestle India dropped Rani Mukherji, as its brand ambassador for the Munch brand of chocolates. Nestle ended a four- year association with Rani Mukherji and signed South Indian actress Trisha. The actress Trisha has also replaced Preity Zinta in the Scooty Pep advertisement. Preity Zinta in recent times has lost her association with brands such as Perk, Liril, BSNL, and Santro.

Brand Endorsement – Power of Two

In recent years advertising world has discovered power of two. The celebrity couples are manipulating their publicized relationships to rake in the moolah at a professional level. The star couples Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, Ajay Devgan and Kajol, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone, John Abraham and Bipasha Basu, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor are signing multi- crore contracts for lucrative advertising campaigns. Moreover, the celebrity couples are signing endorsement deal together to prove the point that they are together. The advertisers are enchasing the couple power to promote the brand. In recent times the celebrity couple Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor has signed endorsement deal with two brands Head & Shoulders and Airtel.
In the Head & Shoulders ads the couple – Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor is shown first time together. Though Kareena Kapoor is shown just for a few seconds in the shampoo advertisement but it is already attracting eyeballs. In other cases Ajay Devgan and Kajol have been seen in ads for Whirlpool and Tata Indicom, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone are seen in the Clinic All Clear campaign and Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone shared smallscreen space in an ad for cola giant Pepsi. Companies are often ready to pay an arm and a leg to get real life couples on reel. Ajay Devgan and Kajol, command INR 6- 8 crore per deal, while Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, command almost INR 10- 12 crore for a campaign. Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone easily commands INR 6- 8 crore per campaign while John Abraham and Bipasha Basu command INR 5- 6 crore per deal.

Idea Cellular new campaign “Education for all”

Idea Cellular has launched its new Ad Campaign with its Brand Ambassador Abhishek Bachhan. The ongoing campaign with a spotlight on “education for all” has attracted many eyeballs. It is one of my favorite advertisements.The campaign highlights the power of Mobile telephony to address the socially relevant theme of education. Campaign has been promoted through print, television, out of home, digital and on ground activities.

Storyline

In the campaign Abhishek Bachchan has played the Head of an educational institution – a priest and the principal of the school. When challenged by the traditional, physically bound classroom methodology that prevents reaching out to many who are in need of education, he uses mobile telephony to overcome the barrier.

Campaign Phase One – Teaser: In the first phase which is a 10-second teaser Abhishek Bachchan is shown as sitting and wondering how to educate the country’s children who can not manage to go to school. He suddenly looks up with a confident smile on his face and says ‘Idea’.

Campaign Phase Two – The Message : The second campaign which is a 90-second TVC opens with a village girl. The commercial shows that the village girl did not get admission in a school as there were no vacancies. The priest and the principal of the school, Abhishek Bachchan, looking for a solution suddenly comes up with an idea of starting mobile classrooms where teachers have mobile phones with them on their desks and children are shown in the ground and listening to the classes through mobiles. The campaign came to me as a great idea with strong social message. Idea Cellular, as a company, in its previous campaign also focused on social issues with the theme of bringing people together like in the campaign’s of caste war, and cultural differences SMS.

Campaign Phase Three – Impact : The third phase of the campaign has impact of education for all. It shows how the parents of the school going students are behaving. They are also learning through their children.

Idea Cellular as a company believes that an Idea can change lives and this is the central thought of the brand which they have been following since beginning. The company to increase the impact of the campaign has tied up with Nanhi Kali, an NGO and NDTV to promote this campaign of education for all, especially girl child.

Company – Idea Cellular
Brand – Idea Cellular
Theme – Education for all
Creative agency – Lowe IndiaFilm – Chrome Films

Deepika Padukone new BSNL brand ambassador

Deepika Padukone who is brand ambassador of Kingfisher Airlines, Levi Strauss, Parachute hair oil, and Tissot SA has been signed by State-run BSNL as its new brand ambassador. She has replaced the squeaky, bubbly girl, Preity Zinta.

BSNL, country’s largest telecom operator with 74 million customers, has not renewed Zinta’s contract of Preity Zinta which ended last week as it was eager to associate the brand with a younger face.

Among the handset companies, BSNL’s rival Airtel has cine stars like Vidya Balan and Madhavan as ambassadors. Spice has hired Katrina Kaif, Nokia has Shah Rukh Khan, Idea has Abhishek Bachchan, and Amir Khan endorses Samsung Mobile phones.

BSNL has off late been very aggressive in its marketing exercise in order to shed the typical PSU image and be seen as a lively brand for all categories of users.

The company is learnt to have a Rs 100 crore ad and marketing budget.

Aamir Khan is the brand ambassador of ‘Incredible India’

The ‘Incredible India’ campaign launched in 2002, showcasing the country’s unique heritage and cultural aspects, has been a major hit and made considerable impact on its tourism sector.Now, the Bollywood hero has been roped in by the tourism ministry to be the face of its brand campaign ‘Incredible India’ to showcase the country’s rich heritage and culture and the message, Athithi Devo Bhava.

The ministry is yet to finalise the type of campaign it wants to do for the coming year. However the tourism ministry will be coming out with an ad campaign and a road show to promote India’s tourism.

Aamir Khan is the new brand ambassador of the ‘Incredible India’ campaign. Aamir Khan has accepted the invitation to be part of the ‘Incredible India’ campaign and he is very happy to be part of ‘Incredible India’.

Pranesh Misra to launch Brandscapes Worldwide

Pranesh Misra, is in the process of setting up a knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) venture to be titled Brandscapes, which has been registered as a private limited entity in India and is getting registered as Brandscapes Worldwide in USA, UK and Singapore. The KPO venture would focus on the marketing data analytics and insight mining area, servicing Fortune 500 clients in the developed countries.

Pranesh Misra, an IIM product, has over thirty years of experience in communication, marketing, marketing research, brand planning and international client management. Pranesh Misra is Chairman & Managing Director at Brandscapes Worldwide. Pranesh before starting Brandscapes Worldwide served Lintas at the capacity of President & COO at Lowe Lintas India, and International Client Director at Lintas Jakarta. He also headed Pathfinders, the marketing research and consultancy division of Lowe; initiated VALS research and Ad Tracking into India in the mid 1980s. As Lowe’s international client director (Asia) on Unilever, he was responsible for leading eight regional advertising centres across Asia.

Marketing in a new world

Marketing is the invention of the 20th century, and for last 80 years, its goal has been to infiltrate consumers’ mind and change their thinking. Since the beginning marketing’s goal has always been to build the relationship between buyer and seller. This relationship is more important in this ever dynamic business environment. Today, technology is playing an important role in building a better buyer and seller relationship.

Caught in the interlacing Web of interrelationships, traditional marketing is evanescing for simple reason that its tasks are being automated and assumed by the mysterious and hidden power of information technology. All traditional marketing functions are replaced by the technological functions by creating an impression that marketing has turned out to be a technology.

Origin of Marketing
Marketing as an element of business originated in early 20th century, but its roots reach back to the industrial revolution. It idealized the importance of relationship between producer and consumer. McKenna says development of marketing has gone through three distinct ages viz., the age of reach, age of push and age of total access.

Age of Reach and Age of Push
No one knows who first coined the term ‘marketing’. In early 20th century, marketers identified the term with distribution, wholesale and retailing. Later in 1920s Procter and Gamble established ‘Brand management system’, which can be identified as a period of branding at very same time Edward Bernays was working on the concept of ‘Public Relation.’ The 1950s has established and popularized the concept of 4Ps which was followed by segmentation, mass production and mass marketing.

Role of Technology in Marketing
Technology has always played an important role in the development of marketing. In early 20th century, development of rail-roads and Henry Ford’s invention of ‘model T’ has helped companies reach their customers better and faster. In 1920s, Radio emerged as the major technological breakthrough to create a perception that marketing as a function can change consumer behavior. It remained an efficient broadcast medium for two American generations. Post World War, Television came in as a new technological development changing the marketing landscape. Post 1950s, advertisers relied more on television than radio; This new push medium has consistently influenced viewers with a repetitive, consistent and entertaining message. This helped marketers change consumer behavior from ‘I need factor’ to ‘I want factor.’

Total Access
Just like an era of reach and push, new technology, new marketplace, new consumer and competition are once again changing the assumptions of customers and marketers. Now customers are telling what they want companies to do instead of companies suggesting their customer what they need. Total Access is not a broadcast model. Rather, it is an environment where consumer experiences multiple and simultaneous competitive buying opportunities. Internet is seen as one of the greatest technological innovation of the last century. It has made availability of information easier and cheaper. Internet has successfully laid the seeds of Total Access which flourished with mobile technology. Mobile market has improved customer’s comfort level and once again changed the customer behavior. These two technological break throughs have not only changed customer behavior but also changed the way market behaves. It is evident from the changed classification in era of Total Access. In the era of Total Access, customers can be divided by four parameters—the information explorers, the information active, the information followers, and the information passive. Technology has changed at an unprecedented pace in the past few decades. It has changed business landscape many a time in last twenty-five years. It has enabled farsighted business to outpace their competitors by creating new products and services, by managing business process and by operating business more efficiently. Law governing these technological innovations is also seen as the law of new marketplace.

Every business is wired today, marketers and academicians in this increasingly networked business environment is writing the new rule of marketing. These new laws of marketplace are playing on important role in developing marketing strategies.

Branding Lost its Meaning!
The marketing function disappears into a network of relationships and responsibilities between man and machine throughout the value chain. For marketers, the end goal changes from creating brand awareness to satisfying customers. In today’s network economy, brand itself becomes a ‘persistent presence’ which sustains the customer dialogue whenever the customer chooses. Branding is all about customer loyalty. It is always seen as a result of customer-producer relationship. In the era of total access, this relationship is becoming more transactional than personal. In total access environment, many consumers will choose a brand for pragmatic reasons rather than emotional. The ever changing marketplace and shifting consumer loyalty is creating challanges for producers. Few of the challenges for producers are:

Changing Symbol: Technology has changed the way people perceive things, which in turn, has changed business practices. Today, ATM has emerged as a symbol of trust in consumers’ conscious mind replacing old economy bank infrastructure.
Impact of Technology: Building brand in technology business is building alliances and relationship. It is seen that in technology market, developing brand is all about developing industry standard.
Hidden Choices: The component of the end product is mostly unknown to the end consumer. Consumers often do not know with which producer they are dealing with. Intel and Visa are the diffusion distributors of Dell, Compaq, and Bank of America. The erosion of brands has evolved from technology, social and cultural influences. An easy access to information and power of choice has converted one-time “brand loyal” to “brand switcher”. Today, consumers have choice to select from wide variety of offerings, hence user preferences vary from situation to situation. In the last two decades, consumer preferences have changed.

Few people confuse preferences with values. Preferences change with time and vary widely with the changing social and economic context of a particular market. It changes with changing technology, but values do not. These changing preferences give marketing a new dimension of mass customization and self service. The business is looking for lasting market presence and sustaining brand. There are two keys to it: Point of access and marketing architecture network.

Persistent presence
Market is changing its dimension at the speed of thought. This dynamic change is changing consumer’s preferences and perceptions. Today, every business has persistent presence. In fact, in this competitive market, it is a must for the very survival of any business. Persistent presence is consumers, consistent and reliable experience with the producer or retailers. A logistical system that focuses on operational system and communicational system of any company is the backbone of the persistent presence. Natures of business, market condition, company’s competitive position are few of the factors which help any company in achieving persistent presence. It is possible in many ways:
• Presence through digital network e.g., ATM, e-broking
• Physical presence: Location, Access e.g., Starbucks has more than 3,000 points all over the world.
• Embedded presence e.g., Intel
• Presence through services e.g.,E*TRADE, Yahoo!, Citibank

Company can establish persistent presence in many ways. It all depends on the nature of the business and environment the company is operating in. McKenna suggests a few key points to establish persistent presence:
• Market Architecture Approach to Total Access e.g., Dell, Wal-Mart
• Beef up your customer’s support infrastructure e.g., Coca-Cola
• Think Total Access e.g., AOL as a total Internet venture to AOL as an entertainment and media company which provides total access option.
• Invest in Time, Money are customer Relationship e.g., CRM initiatives

The Market Architecture
Market architecture is the functional relation of inbound and outbound functions. In transactional working environment with shortened product life cycle, changing technology and shifting channels, and increased competition, marketing architecture has become dynamic. Apart from technological innovations, human interactions also play the key role in defining marketing architecture.

Shared Creativity: In the B2B market place, to gain market share, companies work closely with their customers to know their needs and demands better. Few of the innovations driven by customer needs are Apple II personal computer, Microsoft MS-DOS.

Keeping Customer Trust: To build or sustain customer trust, marketing architecture must perform as per acceptation of the customer and respond consistently to their queries and problems. Business earning customer trust can retain it either by meeting or exceeding expectations.

Nurturing Change: The Organic Factor- Marketing architecture is dynamic. The ability to respond to the new customer information and changing business and social need is yet another important aspect of marketing architecture. IT is playing an important role in the development of dynamic marketing architecture, and also in the relationship development between the producer and consumer. In a situation, when information related service has shifted from retailers or distributors to producers enterprise architecture approach in marketing becomes important. Marketing architecture by learning how to better interact with itself in response to the environment and in connection with the customers’ needs and wants. The important factors for successful marketing architecture are: Customer satisfaction, developing different channels for different needs, identifying value of connected partners, and developing the strategic framework.

Total Global Access
Internet has changed the definition of the market infrastructure. Effective communication and transport methods have narrowed down the gap between the supply and demand time giving a new dimension to the global marketing. Growth in market economies, deregulation, privatization, and new global consumers has all created a new global market.

The focus in this wired world is changing from ‘think globally but act locally’ to ‘act globally connect locally’. World Wide Web helps business in connecting all channels. It also connects people across border and helps them come closure to market and increase their interaction. Internet has helped developing total global access environment. With total global access, it is felt that the world has become more culturally diverse. In this changed business circumstances, marketing executives need to take a comprehensive world market view to respond to increasingly competitive environment where customers have access to all possible information and are looking for local source and solutions. This global connectivity has increased with mobile commerce giving birth to a new set of consumers, ‘mobile global consumer’. The global e-commerce is focusing more on establishing global persistent presence and developing global brands.

Roles and Responsibilities
The rise of Internet and total access has created a self service model for marketing known as ‘production by masses’. This model works by providing customer with information database and allowing them to design their expectations consistently and reliably.

The rise of Internet and total access has made marketing as everyone’s job. It is the matrix of responsibilities shared by—CEO who is seen as chief strategist, who also work as a chief marketing executive of the organization. He integrates all the resources that enterprises need to invest and design to build a global infrastructure strategy.
• CIO is seen as chief total access architect. He possesses required skills, to be the interface between the customers’ needs and company’s response.
• Director of R&D is seen as the chief novelty officer. Customer preferences change fast in total access era and it is the duty of the Director, R&D to come up with innovative products.
• Vice president of operations and logistics helps meet customer delivery expectations.
• Vice president of marketing takes care of demand and supply factors and other traditional marketing functions.

Corporate Creativity
Market impatience, competitive intensity, volatile market reaction and high expectations from customers and investors are few of the factors which have created competitive environment. In this competitive environment, to gain edge over other players, companies have to work on corporate creativity. More creative the company is throughout its entire enterprise, the more successful the company will be in sustaining the growth.

BOOK SUMMARY
Book: Total Access, Giving Customers What They Want in an Anytime, Anywhere World,
Year: March 2002
Author: RegisMcKenna
Pages: 240
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press

A New Brand World – Book Summary

Bedbury, who headed advertising and marketing divisions of Nike and Starbucks during their phenomenal growth, argues that now is the time to build a brand that evokes trust among its customers. In A New Brand World, Bedbury draws from his extensive experience and provides practical advice to develop brands to their full potential and build lasting value. Bedbury sets out the principles that helped these companies become leaders in their respective industries and offers battle-tested advice for keeping any business at the top of its game.
Scott Bedbury was instrumental in developing global brands like Nike and Starbucks. A New Brand World extensively covers inside stories on Nike and Starbucks and presents lively anecdotes from the experiences with most of the global brands like Harley-Davidson, Microsoft, Disney, and Pepsi.
Bedbury’s book is a solid refutation to The Fall of Advertising and Rise of PR written by Al Ries and Laura Ries. Ries partners argue that so many ad dollars yielding such uninspiring results mean that advertising is ineffective; however, Bedbury has a different idea on creating and developing a brand.
He says, “Unless your brand stands for something, it stands for nothing.” Bedbury’s words effectively convey the fact that it is time to build a strong brand that evokes trust from customers. Brand building is more than a responsibility of marketing managers or CEOs. Bedbury says that building and supporting a brand is everyone’s job—from CEO and down. Brand building becomes more important in current business environment for three reasons:
• To win customer trust and love.
• Brand is the only asset which can’t be copied and outsourced.
• Recognition in society.

Bedbury proposes eight principles for ‘A new brand world’.
Principle 1: Relying on Brand Awareness has Become Marketing Fool’s Gold Brand awareness and recognition have lost their significance in the changed business environment. Bedbury believes that brand has a karma, which in his view, will emerge as the ultimate definition of brand strength in future.
What we experience in our daily lives is the idea of that thing, which gives it lasting meaning—this is the fundamental essence of branding. A brand is the result of a psychological process. Branding is about taking something common and improving upon it in ways that make it more valuable and meaningful. Today, who doesn’t know of Nike and Starbucks? Sneakers were sneakers until Phil Knight came along to brand them as a sports and fitness product and coffee beans were just coffee beans until Howard chuitz branded them. These brands stand successful even today because they consistently evoked (and are still evoking), positive feelings with each new product, service, or marketing campaign. Bedbury says, “Brands are living component that we hold in our mind for years. What goes into them is both logical and irrational.” He adds to it by saying, “Products and services will continue to come and go. But, the residual experiences of customers who consume them will ultimately define the brand.”

The journey of most of the successful brands started with the focus on building a profitable product or service and an organization that can sustain the product. If the product or the service in offer has no great attribute, no amount of advertising will help. Bedbury comments on the situation, “Even the best advertising cannot create something that is not here.

Table 1
Brand Brand Mantra
Nike Authentic athletic performance
Disney Fun family entertainment
Starbucks Rewarding everyday moments
Chrysler An engineering company
Apple Computer Daring to be different

Principle 2: You Have to Know it Before You Can Grow it No two brands are alike. Every brand has in its core a substance that gives it strength. The management needs to understand the core substance —‘Brand-DNA’ before they grow the brand. Brand DNA defines the source of strength of the brand. Better understanding of DNA helps to grow the brand in future. Brand DNA is not the only key; every brand has brand mantra—an essence and ethos which defines product and company to the core customer. It is the touchstone that helps companies in shaping products and services, how they conduct their business. It has provided a useful mechanism which concisely expresses brand’s ‘generic code’. The wonder term ‘Brand Mantra’ was originally coined at Nike. At Nike, brand mantra is ‘Authentic Athletic Performance’ (Refer Table 1).
Branding must start inside the company before taking the flight to the undisclosed horizon of the turbulent world. If everyone in the company knows and understands what the brand is all about, then it will become easier to communicate that message to the world at large. Bedbury comments, “Though it is important to demonstrate consistently to the outside world that you know what A New Brand World your brand is (all) about, ultimately, it is even more important first to demonstrate this internally and to continue to do so at every opportunity.”
Principle 3: Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should To survive in the market, business needs to grow. One of the ways to grow is to broaden the company’s brand portfolio. This calls for striking the right balance between the necessity of growth and the need of brand preservation and conservation. Brand preservation and conservation in this changed environment have become the main challenges of all brand managers. The managers should always be diligent about assessing the impact of additional ‘brand-width’. Bedbury proposes six methods for building intelligent brand-width:
• Co-branding and strategic alliances
• Brand extensions
• New distribution channels
• Excel product categories
• Sub-branding
• Acquisitions
Growing and nurturing any brand is a continuous process. Bedbury proposes three things, which the managers should avoid while growing a brand. First, he suggests that the marketplace in this era is dominated by customers who are information seekers. This has increased the competition in the marketplace, where if you lose sight of your customer’s changing needs, you are out of market. Second, never ignore the impact of “profit improvement programs” on your brand. And third, it will be foolish on the part of companies to expect success in one business field to guarantee success in another (Refer Table 2).
Principle 4: Transcend a Product-only Relationship with Your Customers Harley-Davidson owners don’t just buy a Harley; they have also become the proud owners of the HOG (Harley Owners Group), which is bound by ethos and shared set of values that cross many social and economical strata. Emotional potency gives the proud owner of any great brand (not only Harley-Davidson) opportunities to leverage a brand. It has been proved, time and again, that the great brands always fulfill the emotional needs of their customers. It is believed that the more skillfully marketed product captures a better emotional state of the target group. In fact, there are arguments that the successful brands are ranked higher on Maslow’s scale of needs, like Volvo uses security and BMW focuses on status.
Principle 5: Everything Matters “Brand environmentalism means accepting the responsibility to protect your brand and present it in the best possible light whenever and wherever it may be found. It means undertaking a commitment to constantly improve and safeguard the integrity and associative value of everything that surrounds the brand in all phases of development,” says Bedbury. Brand environmentalism is of critical value to any organization. At Starbucks, brand environmentalism is seen as its greatest strength.
Principle 6: All Brands Need Good Partners The human form of branding is reflected very well in the growth of branding. Both brands and small children flourish in an inspiring and learning environment where they are appreciated, respected, protected, and sometimes rejected, when not performing as per acceptation. Brands are not only influenced by people, they also influence people.
Table 2
Strategies Examples
Co-branding and strategic alliances
• Pepsi-Yahoo!: In this high profile co-branding effort, Pepsi agreed to promote Yahoo! on 1.5 billion bottles and displays at some 5000 stores nationwide. In turn, Yahoo! agreed to promote Pepsi’s product on the all-new co-branded website, ‘Pepsistuff.com’.
• Starbucks-United Alliance.
Brand extensions have proved lucrative in many situations (Today, it is a separate here is that every brand has its limitation).
• People initially emerged as a section of (The point to remember Time Magazine publication).
• Frappuccino, bottled and blended in the café, ‘Starbucks’.
New distribution channels—The catch is analyzing core product positioning before taking a brand in new distribution channel.
• Starbucks started selling its own branded line of espresso.
Excel product categories—Leveraging core brand strength.
• Caterpillar licenses its brand to the shoemaker Wolverine WorldWide, which markets Caterpillar boots.
Sub-branding takes a subset of the qualities of the original brand to establish a new brand.
• Miramax, a sub-brand of Disney.
• Lexus, a sub-brand of Toyota.
Acquisitions to acquire company’s brand value.
• Success: Chrysler acquired Jeep.
• Hiccups: Daimler acquired Chrysler.

As brands evolve over time, they absorb the environment and karma of any organization. If developed and nurtured well, they can be the only constant in the organization development. The responsibility of developing brand can be shared by the CEO and front-line employees. Though the importance and layer of operational efficacy is different in both the cases, the contributions are equally important. The CEO represents the brand at higher level of business pyramid i.e., investors, stockholders, and media. Front-line employees hold strongly the bottom of pyramid, i.e., the customers. They come face-to-face with customers and, in many ways, they epitomize and personify the brand for most people.
Though the committed CEO and frontline employees do their part of job sincerely, the creative staff remain critical for the customer mind penetration. The creative staff like product designers and copywriters should work on three key attributes:
• Concise—No more than two pages; one, if you are really good.
• Tight—Containing two separate focused statements, of where the A New Brand World business and the brand are today and where they must be tomorrow, in order to achieve success.
• Loose—Let them figure out how to get there. Though branding is the responsibility of everyone in the organization, there should be someone (preferably one) accountable for brand strategy. The company should have, preferably, one promotion department and one agency to deliver the promotional needs of brand (Refer Table 3). In the current situation when companies run more complex operations than their predecessors, the role of the CEO is more critical and challenging. It calls for the new position—Chief Brand Officers who manage the branding initiatives and coordinate with the CEO.
Their job includes:
• To review brand-sensitive research and insights.
• To review the status of key brand initiatives.
• To review brand-sensitive projects.
• To review new product and distribution strategy.
• To resolve brand-positioning conflicts.
Bedbury comments, “In the New Brand World, companies that aspire to distinguish themselves above all others must spare nothing in their leadership effort to make everything tie together, to make everything they do a refreshing extension of something timeless and valued, and to do it where it matters most—even if it means turning the entire enterprise upside down.”

Table 3

Brand Brand Form of Emotions
Kodak Idea of family
Disney Idea of family
Guinness Place of heart; culture
PepsiCo Emotions and Necktie products
Snackwell’s A mother and child are only an emotion away
Montblanc Writing instruments
MasterCard Priceless emotional relationship
Nike Forging emotional ties with women to expand the business

Principle 7: Big Doesn’t Have to be Bad The bigger the business grows, the more it is subjected to scrutiny—from the justice department, other anti-monopoly regulators, and media. The rule applies not only to companies, but also to the big brand. Big brand is perceived as the Goliath of its industry and attacked for everything it does. Today, consumers are looking for real deal—they are looking for substance, not hype; and, honesty rather than hypocrisy.
Customers are looking for:

• Purity in message: The idea is not to create a false image; instead, it is about building a quality product and gaining customer acceptance. Nike didn’t set out to become cool or hip—much less admired by young urban teens—but, it simply set out to provide the best possible footwear to champion athletes.
• Grass-roots marketing: Nike sponsored athletes instead of becoming the official sponsor of the Olympic Games. It never evoked the word ‘Olympic’ in its marketing efforts, but the company gained recognition as one of the most visible sponsors of the 1984 Olympics.
The advocating organization acquires a heart and soul by investing money on social cause: For example, Nike supports kid’s sports; Starbucks supports a cultural literacy program; and Pfizer supports AIDS drug donation. Moreover, alter-image is dangerous— when cool becomes too hot to handle.
Principle 8: Relevance, Simplicity and Humanity—Not Technology—will Distinguish Brands in the Future Technology is not changing the meaning of branding completely—it is about altering the value of branding.
The core values of any brand are:
• Simplicity
• Patience
• Relevance
• Accessibility
• Humanity
• Omnipresence
• Innovation
Some of these seven core values have already benefitted from new technology and some are undermined by it. In any case, it is unlikely that the new technology will change the value of a brand. These seven core values can be applied to any company regardless of the size and structure.
Large corporations have enormous influence on our personal life. They also influence our quality of life. A great brand foundation is built with many different bricks by many different people over many years. It gives employees a common understanding, not just for what they do for a living, but also for how they must do it. Over a period of time, a brand that is universally understood, inside and outside the company, will create a spirit whose value to the company cannot be overestimated. Bedbury says, “Let’s all become better, more respected, more meaningful, and more trusted brands—not just bigger and better.

Title: A New Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Scott Bedbury, Stephen Fenichell
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (February 25, 2003)
Language: English

Business Finance-Oriented Brand Valuation Models

There are many finance-oriented-brand valuation approaches such as capital market oriented valuation approach, market-oriented valuation cost-oriented valuation, brand valuation based on the concept of enterprise value, earning capacity-oriented brand valuation, license-based brand valuation and customer-oriented brand valuation to name a few.

“The market value-oriented brand valuation” approach is the method in which, the value of a brand is established by referring to the fair market prices of comparable brands. The other approach “capital market-oriented brand valuation model” was pioneered by Simon and Sullivan. They defined brand equity as the present value of all future earnings attributable solely to branding. Thus, from a financial markets perspective, brand value can be calculated from a company’s stock market capitalization or market value. But, this valuation method can be useful only for stock exchange-listed companies as the model is based on the idea that the stock price of a company will perform to reflect the future potential, its brands provide.

In the case of a single-brand company, brand value will therefore consist the company’s capitalized or realized market value. Brand value of a company can be calculated by using simple formula:

Brand Value = (stock price x number of shares) – (tangible assets + all remaining intangible assets)

If a company has more than one brand, the calculation is done pro rata for each brand’s share of total revenues or profits.

Brand valuation can also be based on the idea of the net asset value approach that is frequently drawn upon in the field of corporate valuation, which is called “cost-oriented brand valuation”. In net asset value approach, depending on the time perspective chosen, the assets may be valued either at their historic cost or at replacement cost. Brand valuation with the replacement cost method is done on the principle—what it would cost today to build up an equivalent brand from scratch. Whereas historic cost assumes that brand is an asset-based on resources that have been invested in it. Not only net asset value but enterprise value is also seen as a base to value brand equity. It also involves the aggregation of marketing and R&D expenditure relating to a brand. This method is used by Cadbury Schweppers for brand valuation. Historic Cost method, involves the aggregation of marketing and R&D expenditure relating to a brand. The problem is the isolation of costs specific to the brand alone, which may require the capitalization of costs incurred decades ago. Sander, Crimmins and Herp have proposed models based on price premium. In price premium-oriented approaches, the brand is seen as generating an additional benefit for the customer, for which they are willing to pay a little more. Sander proposed “Hedonic brand valuation method”, which is based on hedonic price theory. It explains product prices in terms of various product characteristics, or rather the extent to which they are present. On the other hand, Crimmins points out three dimensions of brand value: Actual amount, band breadth, and content of brand value. Herp builds upon the brand valuation model on conjoint measurement. In this model, brand value is defined as the sum of all incremental revenues earned as a result of branding a company.

It is seen that advertising support varies hugely from industry to industry. BBDO’s brand valuation model also considers the advertising in brand valuation, which most of the other models do not considers and present a distorted picture. The Brand Equity Evaluation System is a multi-phase factor model of brand valuation, which takes into account the differences between industries and solves the basic problem of the advertising support. This model also takes forward-looking variables to establish brand’s development potential. The model identifies eight determinants of brand equity.

The constituents of brand environment—sales performance, net operating margin and development prospects are aggregated into a joint factor of brand quality. The new brand quality factor is channeled together with the remaining four weighting factors (international orientation, advertising support, brand’s strength within its industry, image) to form an overall factor value. It is subsequently used as a multiplier of earnings before taxes. The monetary value of brand equity is the product of the average pre-tax earnings in the last three years and this combined the weighting factor. The detailed processes involved in implementing the BEES model are summarized in Figure.

There are few other methods to calculate brand value like “customer-oriented brand valuation model”, which is based on customer contribution margins. “Kern’s x-times-model” which is based on earning capacity, establishes the monetary value of a brand by capitalizing the value of potential earnings. License-based brand valuation proposed by Consor is yet another model which values a brand on the basis of the license rates typical of the industry and earned by comparable brands. It focuses on brand licensing, and the value calculated is the sum of money, another company would be willing to pay either to purchase the brand outright or to obtain a license for it.

Behaviorally-Oriented Brand Valuation Models

Some 10 years ago, among both marketing practitioners and theoreticians, criticism grew louder that financial models were failing to do complete justice to the essential qualities of strong brands, since they concentrated on quantities such as stock market capitalization, earning-capacity value, license revenues, acquisition costs, price premiums or the customer contribution margin, when brand is not the only calculation of value in quantitative terms. Aaker defines brand equity as a set of assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm customers. Aaker identifies five determinants of brand equity: Brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and other brand assets. It is seen not only as determinants but also as outcomes of brand equity. These parameters, with help of few other important factors, give a new concept of incorporating brand strength as a demand-oriented component. They endeavor to explain what goes on in customers’ hearts and minds and what determines the value of brands from their point of view. Almost on the same lines, Keller defines brand value as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. That is, customer-based brand equity involves consumers’ response to an element of the marketing mix for the brand in comparison with their reactions to the same marketing mix element attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service.

Calculation of brand value based on Price Premium method, compares the revenues of an unbranded competing product with the brand. Revenues of an unbranded competing product are deducted from the revenues of a comparable branded product to establish the excess or premium revenue of the brand. This excess or premium gives the value of brand. BPL, Nike, United Color of Benaton, Lotto and Bata, for example, are able to command a higher price even when the product is outsourced. The suppliers to these companies cannot charge the same price if they sell their products directly to the consumers.

Based on the principle that consumer commitment is at the foundation of brand equity and loyalty, the Chicago research firm Market Facts has developed a “Conversion Model”. This model is designed to measure the psychological commitment between brand and consumer. The model segments users of a brand into four groups: Entrenched, Average, Shallow, and Convertible. This model also predicts brand’s future fortunes. Walker and Chip in their paper ‘how strong is your brand’ discusses example, “in measuring the carbonated soft-drink category in the summer of 1991, Market Facts detected weaknesses in consumer commitment to Coke and Diet Coke. At the same time, growth potential was found for several non-cola soft dinks. By the first quarter of 1992, Seven-Up’s shipment volume climbed 8%, and other brands showed directional strengths and weaknesses as predicted.”

Prominent among ‘Behaviorally-oriented’ brand valuation model is, the Young & Rubicam model which is based on the principles of behavioral science. The Young & Rubicam brand model, Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) can be used as a diagnostic tool. The BAV model is the result of a large-scale study Y&R conducted in 1993-94, encompassing 30,000 consumers and 6,000 brands in 19 countries. It is an attempt to value brand by breaking consumer connection into its two parts—brand stature and brand strength, the marketer can assess the health of the brand. Brand strength is a measure of brand distinctiveness that measures how distinctive the brand is in the marketplace and brand relevance measures whether a brand has personal relevance for the respondent. Brand stature, on the other hand, is a combination of brand esteem, which measures whether the brand is held in high regard and considered the best in its class and knowledge is a measure of brand understanding, which measures as to what a brand stands for.

Walker and Chip in their paper “How strong is your brand” discusses brands in the study with high familiarity include Coca-Cola, Jell-O, McDonald’s and Kellogg’s. Brands with high esteem include Rubbermaid, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Reynolds Wrap, and Band-Aid.

BV = f {[Brand strength (differentiation, relevance)] and [brand stature (esteem, knowledge)]}

McKinsey defines the three Ps of the brand and gives a function “Quantitative brand strength elements = f (the 3 Ps of a brand)”, when three Ps stand for performance, personality, and presence. McKinsey’s method for determining brand value operates on the assumption that brand strength is definitively quantifiable. However, the system does not determine aggregate brand value, but rather
quantifies as target values for individual benefit components of brands from a brand management perspective and can be viewed as a model based on behavioral science only in terms of the drivers of the three Ps of the brand.

Other consumer-focused models essentially value brands along similar lines with varying degrees of sophistication. Some of the measures used are: Price premium, customer preference, replacement cost of brand, and the price premium that the name supports. The Icon Research and Consulting Brand Trek approach is yet another model for determining brand value based purely on the tenets of behavioral science.

Composite Models of Brand Valuation

A group of brand value measurement indicators has established itself parallel to the focus on psychographics values. Consultancy firms and academicians have proposed many composite models of brand valuation. The Interbrand’s brand valuation approach, AC Nielsen’s brand balance sheet and brand performancer, Gfk brand power model, Semion brand value approach and Sattler brand value approach are a few of the famous composite brand valuation models.

Interbrand consulting firm’s brand value system considers an earnings-based approach. The Interbrand model seeks to estimate the risk and inflation-adjusted benefits—the current and future earnings or cash flows—flowing from brand ownership. Under this model, the value of a brand is a function of two factors: its earnings and its strength. While the brand’s earnings are a measure of potential profitability, the brand’s strength is the measure of its reliability of its future earnings. The greater the brand’s strength, greater is the reliability of its future earnings and lesser is the risk. Since it is difficult to attribute all the earnings to the brand per se, adjustments need to be made to the earnings estimates.

In this model first of all the unbranded profit i.e., earning that would have accrued on a basic unbranded version of the product is eliminated and the historical profit at present day value is restated and adjusted for taxes. To calculate the actual brand earnings the profit attributable to other intangible associated with the business of the brand is deducted.

The model calculates the brand value by multiplying brand earnings with the brand earning with the brand strength multiple. This brand strength multiple is a function of multiple of factors like leadership, stability, market, internationality, trend, support and protection. These factors have been evaluated on a scale of 1 to 100 to calculate the brand multiplier. Some of the IT companies like Infosys, Rolta and Satyam are following a similar practice of valuation for their brands.

The seven determinants of the brand value are:
• Brand leadership—which stands for the ability of the brand to influence the market;
• Brand stability—the characteristic that has made the brand the inherent “fabric” of the market;
• Market—the structural attractiveness of the market, its projected growth, et al.;
• International presence of the brand—the brand’s attractiveness and appeal in a multiplicity of markets with a view to distinguish between regional, national and international brands;
• Brand trend—the brand’s ability to remain contemporary and relevant to the consumers;
• Marketing support—the quantity and quality of the investments made to support the brand and
• Legal protection enjoyed by the brand are the protection received from the legal system, patents, trademarks, etc.

Based on these parameters, Interbrand consulting determines the value of brand. Interbrand has given weighting to all these seven parameters like brand leadership has 25% weighting, brand stability enjoys 15%, market 10%, international presence of the brand 25%, brand trend 10%, marketing support 10% and legal protection enjoyed by the brand has 5% weighting.

Measurement of the seven variables, based on a detailed audit would determine a brand’s strength. This provides the discount rate that needs to be applied to the adjusted estimates of the brand’s earnings for determining its present value.

BV = Brand profit x Brand multiplier

The Interbrand approach while being valuable, especially in an acquisition and merger context, suffers from an accounting focus. This stems from the desire to ensure that the value arrived at is auditable. Further from a marketer’s perspective, the Interbrand approach does not explicitly measure consumers’ perception of the brand, which is critical for marketing decision-making, especially on brand extension.

Schulz and Brandmeyer, of AC Nielsen have used scoring model to develop a brand valuation model called “The AC Nielsen brand balance sheet”. The brand balance sheet relies on six criteria groups containing a total of 19 individual criteria that are deemed good indicators of brand value. The fundamental idea of the brand balance sheet is to relate a correlation between complex market environments, the significance of long-term brand cultivation and successful brand management. AC Nielsen felt that the brand balance sheet is not the absolute model for brand valuation and in search of better brand valuation model, it has developed an advanced model based on Brand Performancer.

The Brand Performancer attempts to deliver an integrative consumer and company-oriented brand valuation system. It provides tailor made data to the decision-makers for any specific information needed. The modular structure makes it possible to supplement gauges of brand value with analyses for the purpose of brand steering, financial brand valuation and tracking of brand leadership. The four modules are brand steering system, brand value system, brand control system, and the central element – brand monitor.

BV = [Annual sales of respective brands x Net operating margin x Relative brand strength x Perpetual annuity NPV discount factor]

One approach, which relies strongly on behavioral and image data in addition to financial values, is ‘Semion brand value approach’. He defines four brand values – financial value of the company, which is determined by earning before taxes and earning trends, brand strength that is determined by market share, market influence, marketing activities, distribution rate degree of familiarity, identity and potential, brand protection determined by product classification, brand environment and intern protection and brand image determined by consumer association, image position on market among consumer and vis-à-vis product.

BV = financial value x [financial value factor + brand protection factor + brand strength factor + brand image factor]

The market-oriented system of brand valuation, which combines a consumer-based perspective with a company-based perspective is proposed by Bekmeier-Feuerhahn model that operates on the assumption that brand value is derived from brand strength and brand earnings, both assessed on the basis of market prices. It is a comprehensive, integrative approach to build brand valuation that takes into account the special requirements of brand appraisal and yields a tangible monetary value.

The other well-known composite brand valuation approaches are Sattler brand value approach, Gfk brand power model and brand rating valuation model.

The Seven Golden Rules of Cult Branding

Harley Davidson, Volkswagen Beetle, Star Trek, Apple Computers evokes passion in their customers and command loyalty. They are called a cult brand. The cult brand stood the test of time, which includes adverse market conditions, merely through the support of loyal customers.

Matthew W. Ragas and Bolivar J. Bueno in his book, The Power of Cult Branding goes into depth to distinguish between harmful and benign cults. The authors outlines The Seven Golden Rules of Cult Branding which postulates the basic rules that cult brands consciously follow to build and sustain their status in the minds of their followers:

Rule 1. The Rule of Social Groups: Cult brands give people the opportunity to become part of social groups – groups of like-minded people who prefer being different Just like HOG.

Rule 2. The Rule of Courage: Creators of cult brands tend to be fighters and winners. It helps brand knock people’s general attitude and liking to be associated with winners. The owners of the cult brand portray an attitude of brazen courage and adventure.

Rule 3. The Rule of Fun: nothing can match the taste of freedom and independence. Cult brands offer their customers an opportunity to pursue and satisfy their innate passions, thus taking their minds away from the serious responsibilities of life.

Rule 4. The Rule of Human Needs: Cult brand focus on the needs of their existing customers and give regard to their feedback, rather than expending energy to win new customers. Cult brand work on enriching the customer experience and treat the customers as King. The cult brand offers every person wants to be heard and feels happy when their opinion is valued.

Rule 5. The Rule of Contribution: Cult brands believe in giving back to their customers the profits they generate to develop and support customer communities, thus forging lifetime relations with them.

Rule 6. The Rule of Openness: Cult brands are open to one and all i.e., they are indifferent to caste, creed, socio-economic backgrounds of customers, etc. they do not discriminate among customers. They fulfill the human desire of caring, sharing, bearing and belonging.

Rule 7. The Rule of Freedom: Cult brands promote the underlying themes of freedom and non-conformity with memorable sensory experiences.

Through meticulous research and scores of interviews Matthew W. Ragas and Bolivar J. Bueno have uncovered the remarkable and untold stories behind nine very successful cult brands. The nine brands are Star Trek, Harley-Davidson, Oprah Winfrey, World Wrestling Entertainment, Apple, Volkswagen Beetle, Jimmy Buffett, Vans Shoes, and Linux.

Film insurance in India

In December 1998, after signing the deal for Taal with Mukta Arts Pvt. Ltd, United India Insurance had approached a few London and Tokyo based insurance companies to re-insure the film. The re-insurer refused to re-insure Indian films, citing the complete lack of accountability in film production in India. The re-insure were looking for a commercially viable project, backed by detailed reports regarding the risks involved, the financing of the project and completion schedule etc. However, the issue of financing was found to be the biggest stumbling block for the development of the film insurance industry in India. The hesitance of the foreign insurance companies was completely justified as the Indian film industry was completely unorganized. Those were the days when the distributors, music companies and financiers were the major sources of funds for the film industry. The other prominent source of financing were financiers such as diamond merchants, brokers, builders and other cash rich businessmen, charged very high interest rates, generally in the range of 36-48% per annum. The cheapest source of financing for the film industry was underworld mafia.

The problem ended In December 2000, a Joint Institutional Committee on Financing Entertainment Industry submitted an interim report that laid down certain norms for offering financial assistance to the film industry.

The Cine Mukta Policy
In the history of Indian Film Industry, Mukta Arts Pvt. Ltd produced Taal was the first Hindi film to be insured. United India Insurance drafted the policy from scratch and honored producer-director Subhash Ghai with naming the policy The Cine Mukta Policy. The film insurance can not be standardized it is dynamic. The structure of the film insurance mostly depends on the film. A production house can take part insurance or can also insure entire film.

The insurance premium also depends on various factors. A film where large sets had to be put up, the policy would be heavy on insurance for properties and sets, a film shot in a single room/bungalow etc., insurance on the properties and sets could be completely avoided. A film where the actors performed dangerous stunts, extra insurance had to be taken. The insuring companies do not cover pre and post-production problems, box office results and the loss of profits.

Aishwarya Rai Effect
In June 2000, Aishwarya Rai met with an accident. The accident costed United India Insurance, a sum of only INR 1.6 million but it attracted substantial media coverage as it was the first instance of the Hindi film industry availing the benefits of film insurance. The film insurance was the in thing for the film Industry. United India Insurance, piggyback on the Aishwarya Rai Effect by July 2001, had insured around 8-10 films, for sums varying from INR 25 million to INR 220 million. The insured films included YashRaj Films – Mohabbatein, Aamir Khan Productions – Lagaan, Farhan Akhtar – Dil Chahta Hai, Karan Johar – Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and Dreamz Unlimited’s – Asoka.

The credit for pioneering the film insurance business in India goes to the producer-director Subhash Ghai. He was the first Indian filmmaker to insure his film Taal. The landmark film Taal was insured for a sum of INR 110 million with United India Insurance in 1998. The move was welcomed by both media and film personalities as opening of a new chapter in the Indian film industry.

Factiva – search engine

Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters company provided global content, including newswires from Dow Jones & Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. Factiva has unrivaled collection of more than 14,000 authoritative sources includes the exclusive combination of The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times™, Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press, as well as Reuters Fundamentals, and D&B company profiles. It offered a personalized single content solution with multiple language interfaces from archives of 9000 news sources. Thus, an engineering team got highly technical results while a marketing outfit got consumer friendly documents.

Factiva boosts of an innovative, XML-based and Web services-enabled technology platform provides access to this rich content collection via role-specific products or through customized enterprise, group or personal solutions

Eurekster – search engine

Eurekster is a company based in Christchurch, New Zealand, with an office located in San Francisco, California, that builds social search engines for use on websites, the search engines are called swickis.

The co-founder and chief scientist of Eurkester is Dr Grant Ryan, who is also the co-founder and chairman of Christchurch-based company, SLI Systems, who specialize in search engines that learns from the users.

Eurekster a startup launched in January 2004, specialized in providing highly personalized search results to users through its proprietary SearchParty technology. Its search engine was capable of analyzing the search behavior of its users and supplied results based on their preferences and interests.

Vivisimo – search engine

Vivísimo was founded in 2000 by a trio of computer science researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. The name was taken from the Latin root viva for “life,” with the Romance suffix – issimo indicating a superlative.

Vivísimo is a privately held enterprise search software company in Pittsburgh that develops and sells software products to improve search on the web and in enterprises. The technology that Vivísimo uses could classify search results based on clustering and metasearch technology. The company made active use of business intelligence and data mining techniques to explore its database and to bring out the veiled and hidden relationships therein.

Vivísimo technology is available to enterprise in the form of a cohesive search suite, Vivísimo Velocity, which includes the Velocity Search Engine, Velocity Clustering Engine and Velocity Content Integrator. The technology is also freely available to the public in the form of Clusty. Vivisimo , despite a negligible share in the search engine market, was able to achieve high quality results on any type of textual content with little or no customization.

Ask Jeeves – search engine

Ask.com formerly known as Ask Jeeves is a search engine was founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. Three venture capital firms, Highland Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, and The RODA Group were early investors.

The original Ask Jeeves software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. The technology provided smart search features that lent access to weather forecasts, stock quotes, news headlines, etc. The search site offered various specialized search options apart from effective categorization facilities. It also offered the options to edit, to categorize and to annotate both saved searches and search history.

Ask Jeeves had its own search engine Teoma, which is now defunct. Ask Jeeves again on February 27, 2006 disassociated the character Jeeves and renamed the firm Ask.com and later in 2007 Ask.

Cuil – search engine

Cuil is a brand new search engine created by former Google and IBM veterans. Cuil, an old Irish word for knowledge, was co-founded by Tom Costello, CEO; his wife, Anna Patterson, president and Russell Power, vice president of engineering.

Cuil may succeed where others have failed and give powerhouse Google a run for its money. Cuil has developed new architecture and algorithms and that its search engine has indexed 120 billion Web pages. Cuil’s robot Web crawler, Twicler, supports the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive robots.txt to help small sites that are bandwidth-limited. Moreover, unlike other search engines Cuil’s privacy policy states that it does not store records of users’ search activity or IP addresses.

Yahoo– search engine

Yahoo pioneered the online commercial directory concept when it first launched the service in 1994 but did not pay much attention to search services during its initial days, preferring to source it from other parties like Open Text, Alta Vista, Inktomi and eventually, Google. Yahoo realized the importance of search engines in the late 90s when they
gained prominence and started affecting e-commerce to a level that almost a third of online ad revenues were generated through them.

Yahoo started focusing on search engine business starting October 2002, by outsourcing the service to Google. The purchase of Inktomi for $235 million in late 2002 and subsequently Overture in October 2003 (for $ 1.6 billion) made Yahoo the owner of two of the largest and the oldest of the commercial paid search services. This also gave Yahoo 100 billion new users and the capability to promote its own internal search engine through innovative advertising solutions that competed with Google’s AdWords and AdSense programs.

In February 2004, Yahoo scrapped its relations with Google and began using its own search engine instead. The Cable News Network (CNN), the leading media giant, replaced Google for Yahoo in May 2004 to provide algorithmic and paid results to its users.

Google – search engine

Google was the largest and the most versatile search engine on the Internet. The search engine had a robust workload and query-processing abilities. Realizing the importance of a fast, scalable search engine, Google employed linked PCs to quickly find the results of a query. This resulted in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. Google used PageRank10 and Hypertext-Matching Analysis11 technologies to provide fast and accurate results. Besides, it employed special software robots called Spiders that built a list of important key words found in the millions of websites on the Internet. This process of automated listing was called web crawling.

About 95% of Google’s revenue came from advertisements, primarily through its two popular offerings, AdWord and AdSense.

Consumer Generated Media

Consumer Generated Media describes a variety of new and emerging sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other on products, services, brands, personalities and issues.

– Neilson Buzz matrices.

Pete Blackshaw, CMO for Nielsen Buzzmetrics, coined the term “consumer generated media” (CGM) to describe the evolving consumer-created space on the internet. CGM refers to posts made by consumers within online venues such as internet forums, blogs, wikis, and discussion lists, on products that they have purchased, questions they have or problems they are trying to solve. CGM is constantly evolving in terms of form and content. A few prominent websites used for CGM include: Brickfish, Dailymotion, Digg, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Picasa, Revver, Second Life, TripAdvisor, TypePad, Wikipedia, WordPress, YouTube, bigadda

The most common consumer hangouts in the CGM spaces are: Discussion boards, Blogs, Wikis, Social networking sites, News Sites, Trip planners, Mobile Photos sharing sites, Videos sharing sites, Customer review sites, Experience or photo sharing sites. The CGM supporting sites can be divided into five different categories for better understanding. They are,

Blogs: A Blog is the collection of web log where publisher shares his stories, fantasies or experiences. The wordpress, blogger, bigadda are the famus platforms which offer blogging experience.

Message Boards or Discussion Forums: Interest-focused message forums and discussion boards like citehr, are the most prominent content sharing tool. This concept was evolved from the Tech World where techies discuss their problems and experts offer advice to the fellow techies. Now this concept has become common across verticals.

Review Sites: This is a popular place where an excited customer spread positive word and an irate customer vents his frustration. Mouthshut is one of the famous review site.

Groups: These are highly focused and specialized groups or communities where the members exchange ideas in the virtual world. These clubs are an offshoot of the Mail groups where one can connect with their friends through group mails like Yahoo, Google offers platform to create groups.

Communities: Communities like Orkut, facebook, you tube, Flicker, linkedin offer networking and socializing opportunities to the Internet savvy individuals. Started as a socializing tool, these communities grew as an influential media for marketers.

The idea of CGM has evolved from its early roots of consumer feedback via online letters and email to encompass new media such as video, pictures and social networking sites. The phenomenon, CGM is a nightmare as well as an opportunity for marketers. It is a nightmare since the marketer has no control over the media or the message, an opportunity because if used wisely, it can turn out to be a new medium and an invaluable source of customer information.

Mobile Advertising – Fair & Lovely

Reliance Communications mobile ad campaign – Fair & Lovely Scholarship programme 2007 has been adjudged winner by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Annual Global Awards jury at a glittering ceremony held in Los Angeles in November 2007.

Fair & Lovely is a leading and one of the best-selling skin care brands of Hindustan Unilever Limited, had launched an ad campaign of ‘Fair and Lovely scholarships for women,’ using short code (51234) and instant voice from mid-August to mid- September, 2007. Reliance Communication executed a pan-India ad campaign on Reliance mobile phone network. Fair & Lovely Scholarship programme 2007 mobile advertisement was powered by clickable banner ads in various languages. These banners were linked to a micro-site where interested candidates were asked to provide their choice of course, annual family income, etc.

Reliance Communication also created a special Fair & Lovely Scholarship Zone on ‘R World’ to promote the campaign and generated around 50,000 leads in which 60% came from tier II and III cities and 40% from urban cities. The Fair & Lovely Scholarship programme 2007 campaign got great response from the semi urban and rural India, which also break the myth that the mobile advertising can only be targeted to the urbane India.

The innovative mobile ad campaign has been voted as the Best Use of Mobile Marketing in the Direct Response Category of the awards. This is also the first time in the world that a scholarship programme has been advertised on a mobile platform. The other nominations were, Affle Limited & Aviva (India) Pvt. Ltd. for Aviva – Cost of Postponement; MindShare Interaction India for Mobile Test Saves Time and Lives in India; Mobile Dreams Factory for Renault Twingo; SendMe Inc., MobiTV, Fathom Online for Discovery Channel Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and Vibes Media for Dumped were nominated for the

Mobile Advertising Case – Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare

Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare (IAPA)

Successful messaging doesn’t always need a big media budget. What it really needs is a media channel that compliments a powerful creative idea. Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare to launch a campaign on child adoption used a MMS campaign. The campaign uses the viral nature of MMS (video message on mobile) to spread awareness about abandoned infants who need a caring home.

The Indian Association of Adoption and Child Welfare campaign was titled “The hottest MMS ever – If you don’t like it, pass it on.”

In the 25-second video Indian Association of Adoption and Child Welfare tried to create awareness about abandoned infants and convince people for their adoption. This campaign was a huge success. The promoters were reconnected in three days from all parts of the nation with the same message. The discussion forums also generated a very good response. In fact, the first week witnessed all of 1,210 downloads and clips were traced to eight other servers.

Mobile Advertisement to touch INR 500 crore in 5 years

Reliance Communications, is pioneer of mobile advertising in the country, has effectively offered mobile advertising solutions for more than 20 clients over the past four years. In my understanding, the mobile advertising, started with LG during World Cup Cricket in 2003. Reliance Communications has also handled Cadbury’s, Coke, Maruti, Hyundai, ICICI, Kotak and HDFC. The mobile advertising in India is at nascent stage it is roughly INR 40 crore industry but advertisers in India are looking to cash in on the mobile advertising as potential tool of advertising. Experts predicts that advertising spend on this medium is expected to jump more than ten to twelve-folds to touch a size of INR 500 crore in next five years.

Mobile advertising can attract advertising spends from integration with below-the-line budgets, retail budgets and the digital budget. The bottleneck, however, is the unreasonable cost of Internet on mobile and also disproportionate sharing of revenue between telecom service providers and advertisers. The mobile advertising is demanding even playing field from internet and mobile providers. The operators, at present, are acting as a gatekeeper and commands control over the revenue distribution. Currently mobile advertising revenue is split at 70:30 ratio between operators and the companies, which gives very little scope for the growth of the mobile advertisers. Moreover, the operators have to stop acting as gatekeepers to the Internet and allow consumers to access content and services on the Internet easily and cheaply, using their mobile devices.

The mobile advertising market which is currently valued at INR 40 crore can grow more than nearly twelve times provided the telecom companies offer open Internet access at low rates along with standardization of regulations.

Reference: http://www.business-standard.com, Mobile ads to touch Rs 500 cr in 5 yrs: Experts, June 22, 2008.

Mobile Advertising

The business of encouraging people to buy products and services using the mobile channel as the medium to deliver the advertisement message
                                                                                               — Internet Message Access Protocol

Mobile advertising is an innovative and a customer-centric approach to reach promising customers. It includes advertising in the form of Short Message Service (SMS), mobile alerts, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), mobile games and videos. Mobile advertising can be divided into two main categories: Mobile Push Advertising and Mobile Pull Advertising. Mobile Push Advertising, can be in form of solicited or unsolicited advertising News alerts, job alerts and cricket score alerts are a few examples in this category. Mobile Pull Advertising, on the other hand, is defined as advertising when users request for the services from the service-provider for instance daily horoscope.

Mobile advertising is the latest buzz in the field of advertising, since it is a cost-effective way to promote and inform the target customers. With the advent of new media, mobile advertising has become one of the most demanding and integral part of marketing mix.

Benefits of Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising is cost-effective and offers flexibility to inform target group as and when required. In the case of mobile advertising the advertising message can be personalized with respect to Target Audience. The mobile advertising is interactive in nature and advertiser gets feedback immediately. Though mobile advertising offers flexibility to contact target group as and when required. It also gives option of permission-based advertising, which is also governed by telecom rules and regulations. The mobile advertising is still not brand creator but it is more helpful in brand recall and brand interactivity. The benefits of mobile advertising include: flexibility of content, speed of reach.

Limitations of Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising has limited message content. It is mostly driven by key words and target audiences in most of the cases take mobile advertisements casually. Moreover it still has very limited reach as compared to other conventional tools of advertising. The visual display is not as impressive as TV advertising. Though the advertiser has more control on the mobile advertising but still cant calculate ROI of advertising more accurately. Most importantly, mobile advertising is often criticized for intrusion of target audience privacy.

Guidelines for Mobile Advertising
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published guidelines for mobile advertising. These guidelines are designed specifically for the Asia-Pacific region to encourage the use of mobiles for advertising-related purposes as well as its acceptance by marketers and consumers.

As of now it is not in practice. There are companies, and advertisers violating the defined guidelines but we are moving in the direction where the advertising world will take it seriously.

Conclusion
Mobile Advertising is at infant stage of the life cycle. The share of advertising spend on mobile advertising is minimal but when advertising spend is seen from the lenses of life cycle it is a good start.

Amazon: Earth’s Biggest Selection TM

Early 1994, Internet usage was growing at a phenomenal rate of 2300 percent per month. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, recalls that he felt need of doing something immediately. When something is growing that fast, every second counts.
Bezos quit his lucrative job at DE Shaw to start an online venture. His initial plan was to sell a low priced product, which customer would not hesitate to purchase online. After weighting several factors, he decided to concentrate on books.
“unless you could create something with huge value proposition for customer, it would be easier for the customer to do it old way.” Books, with low price and more than three million titles worldwide, seems to be an ideal product for selling online. Mail order book catalogs were not feasible, as they would have to carry thousands of titles, making them very bulky and expensive to mail. On the other hand, the Internet could provide such information economically and efficiently.
In June 1995, Amazon.com Books Inc. commenced its operations. The name Amazon drew inspiration from largest river in the world, signals Bezos’ clear intention to develop the biggest bookstore in the world. The name Amazon is short to remember, it captures the spirit of the site, and conveys its vast size and offering. Infact, Bezos had chosen the name Amazon also because it short, simple and easy to remember. Moreover it also captures the spirit of the site. He also wanted the same to start with letter A so that it appear at top of the search engine list.
Brand building initiatives
Online, the balance of power shifts away from company and goes towards the customer. Our strength is that we have not been competitor obsessed.
–Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com
Bezos identified it very early that customer is the king. He proposed customer value proposition for the Amazon which is evident from the initiatives at Amazon. Amazon provide value added features to increase the ease of shopping viz. product search, gift click, wish lists, gift reminders, and ‘Amazon.com Anywhere’ which support access from wireless device. Amazon has successfully created one-to-one relationships with its customers by customizing features and service based on customer purchase history. It has also added community feeling among customers by soliciting and posting readers’ comments on book displays. Amazon also introduced Amazon.com discussion board to further enhance the community feeling. It allows customer to share information on their topic of interest. Amazon Associate program is help develop better customer interaction. The customer interaction is reinforced with the personalized communication model. Customer centricity is evident from all online and offline activities of the Amazon.
Amazon’s promotion program can be divided into three distinct phase. It started with word-of-mouth publicity among online communities. Second phase was beginning of advertising in online, print media and outdoors. Third phase of promotional program started with inauguration of Associates Program in 1996. The associate program offers other website to display the Amazon.com hot-link and offer specific books of interest to their visitors. Amazon has developed alliance and partnerships with high traffic web portals and sites viz. America Online, Yahoo!, Geocity, Alta Vista, Excite, Prodigy etc. The associates program has been phenomenally successful, attracting member sites of all size. Amazon has also used viral marketing technique through customer reviews, free e-Cards, and gift certificates.
Changing Focus
Amazon is an early mover on the internet and the first mover on the online bookselling. This has helped it build a strong brand at relatively low cost. Thanks to extensive hype and coverage across media.
The online book company received strong criticism when it started expanding its product line. Marketers and academicians across geography said that Amazon is diluting the value of its association with books. A report in time magazine mentioned: “it’s incredibly risky. How elastic is the Amazon brand name? how much can you stretch it until it simply explodes and become meaningless to consumer? And how long can the money hold out? Bezos has alreadt burned through a bank’s worth of ash with no sign of slowing down. If any thing he is upping the ante – according to estimate, the company’s net loss could be $350 million in this year (2000) alone.” Bezos, however felt otherwise: “No, see we are not book company. We are not Music Company. We are not Vedio Company. We are not Auction Company. We are customer company.” He started line extension with some other valid logic – brand to certain degree is quick-drying cement. When they are young, they’re stretchable and plaint, but over time they become more and more associated with a particular thing and hart to stretch. His views were absolutely right which was evident from Amazon music store initiative. June 1998, Amazon unveiled a music store, which within six month propelled Amazon to one of the leading online music retailer.
Conclusion
Amazon has successfully built a strong brand and loyal customer base.

CDNOW (Amazon.com – buy an old story)

Jason Olin Knew there had to be better way to buy music– phill Carpenter

Leading music store CDNOW was one of the most popular shopping store sites since 1994. It had mammoth selection of music-related products. It boosted of excellent coverage of music reviews, cover art, daily music news, features, guide to music genres, and exclusive interviews. It also involved in digital distribution of music. CDNOW was the first site to offer the sale of music downloads. Armed with successful implementation of innovative ideas, CDNOW aims to make every visit to the site a valuable and rewarding experience.The CDNOW was very easy to navigate and quick to load. Strong content alliances, music reviews, cover art, daily music news etc. had made the content of the site attractive and useful. It had made the process easier for customers to explore new music and make informed purchase decision. It also offered customer to customize site as well as music CD as per user performance. At CDNOW, customer had option to maintain and Address book online making it easier to send music to friends and family this innovative technique of viral marketing helped strengthen loyalty and deepen customers’ commitment with brand. It developed strong community feeling among the users through Jazz club or classic club. It reaches out to its customers with personalized e-mails from Jason Olim and e-mail newsletters informing customers of news and releases relevant to the preference.
CDNOW was able to maintain its first mover advantage. It constantly added new functionality to the site and was very innovative in its offering. It ensured that its activity reinforces customer commitment and promises offered to customers. it was one of the first website to develop multifaceted, integrated communication strategy. It used online advertising, word-of-mouth communication and public relation to attract customers. Founders of CDNOW strongly believed that word-of-mouth powerfully influence online purchase decision.
The company began its marketing effort focusing on the web admirers in the early days of the business. It did not use any traditional marketing tools in the beginning of the venture but viewed online advertising as the way of both generating sales and building awareness it also appoint i-traffic as its online ad agency. On the one hand it had banner ads on the major internet content and service providers including, CNN interactive, AOL and on the other hand it had banners place on the more specific music-related sites like Billboard. It also stuck exclusive alliance with high traffic companies like AOL Yahoo!, Excite. It helped CDNOW generate both traffic and visibility.
CDNOW since inception had made public relation one of the highest priority tool in the brand building exercise. Mario Zoda, the public relation manager designed most of the public relation programs at CDNOW. They also realized very early that in the high-tech business, word-of-mouth is in particular is very important tool as it influences the purchase decision. Public relation helped generate word-of-mouth communication and influenced sales. They banked on the story how CDNOW was founded in the basement by two twin brothers with little money reflected the ‘American Dream’. The story helped them as Americans started associated themselves with the CDNOW venture which helped increase business.
CDNOW with development of the internet venture and competition realized that to build brand and grab share, it has to invest substantially on the traditional tools of marketing. It first turned to tool such as TV and radio. It also examined with print advertising in publication like Rolling Stone, spin, and variety.
Conclusion
CDNOW exploited its early-mover advantage and keeps ahead of competition. They developed a detailed understanding of its customers’ need that has enabled the company to create better product and effective market campaigns. CDNOW had personalized its product offering which was managed by the capable service team. The team was instrumental in building a reputation of excellence that is core factor of a successful Internet brand. CDNOW was one of the first website which understood the economics of online business. it reflected in its business model and media communication strategy.
——————–
Once a leading music store, CDNOW was one of the most popular shopping stores since 1994. It was founded in February 1994 by twin brothers Jason Olim and Matthew Olim of Ambler, Pennsylvania. In the early days CDNOW was a telnet (text-only) service which was re launched in September 1994. In 2000, CDNOW was bought by Bertelsmann. In late 2002 Amazon.com purchased the rights to CDNOW from Bertelsmann and began operating the CDNOW web site. Although the CDNOW brand is still visible by accessing the web site at www.cdnow.com, it immediately redirects to www.amazon.com.

Yahoo! built on Acquisitions

Yahoo! was founded by Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo in January of 1994 and incorporated on March 1, 1995.
Yahoo provides a range of products and services including a web portal, a search engine, Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail. It has grown through continuous innovation and acquisitions. Here is the list of acquisitions which helped Yahoo! grow.

1997Net Controls, Web search engine which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! SearchFour11, Web-based email which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Mail

1998Classic Games, Online game, which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! GamesSportasy , Fantasy sport, which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Fantasy SportsViaweb ,Web application which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! StoreWebcal , Calendaring software which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo CalendarYoyodyne,Direct marketing which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search MarketingHyperparallel, Data analysis which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search

1999Log-Me-On, Digital identity which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo!Broadcast.com, Internet radio which helped Yahoo develop LAUNCHcastEncompass, Internet service provider which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo!GeoCities , Web hosting service which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! GeoCitiesOnline Anywhere , Content delivery network which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! TV

2000Arthas.com, E-commerce payment systems which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! StoreMyQuest , Internet service provider which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo!eGroups , Electronic mailing list which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! GroupsKimo, Web portal which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo!

2001Sold.com, Online auction tools which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! ShoppingLAUNCH Media , Online music store which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Music

2002Hotjobs.com , Job search engine which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! HotJobsInktomi Corporation , Internet service provider which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search

2003Overture Services, Inc., Search engine marketing which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search Marketing

20043721 Internet Assistant , Browser Helper Object which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! AssistantKelkoo, Price comparison service which helped Yahoo develop KelkooOddpost , Web-based email which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! MailMusicmatch Jukebox , Audio player which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! MusicThe All-Seeing Eye, Game server browser which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! GamesStata Labs, Web-based email which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! MailWUF Networks, Mobile media which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Mobile

2005Verdisoft, Computer software which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! MobileStadeon , Online game which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! GamesLudicorp, Image hosting service which helped Yahoo develop FlickrTeRespondo , Advertising network which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search MarketingDialpad, Voice over Internet Protocol which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Voiceblo.gs, Weblog software which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! 360°Konfabulator , Widget engine which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! WidgetsUpcoming.org, Calendaring software which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! LocalWhereonearth, Web mapping which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Mapsdel.icio.us, Social bookmarking which helped Yahoo develop del.icio.us

2006Webjay, Online music store which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! MusicSearchFox, Web search engine which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! SearchMeedio, Digital video recorder which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! GoJumpcut.com, Online video editing which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! VideoAdInterax, Online advertising which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search MarketingBix.com , Social media which helped Yahoo develop BixKenet Works, Mobile software which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! MobileWretch, Virtual community which helped Yahoo develop Wretch

2007MyBlogLog, Social network service which helped Yahoo develop MyBlogLogRight Media, Online advertising which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search MarketingRivals.com, College football which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! SportsBlueLithium, Advertising network which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! Search MarketingBuzzTracker, News site which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! NewsZimbra, Collaborative software which helped Yahoo develop Zimbra

2008FoxyTunes, Browser extension which helped Yahoo develop FoxyTunesMaven Networks , Video on demand which helped Yahoo develop Yahoo! VideoInquisitor, Browser extension which helped Yahoo develop Inquisitor

The growth of the Yahoo is function of acquisition or innovation or innovation backed by acquisition is matter of debate.

Yahoo! built out of Alliances, Acquisitions (and looking for Merger)

In 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo, the two young PhD computer science students from the Stanford University, started compiling list of their favorite websites as a hobby. They also listed them on websites. They developed Web-searching software which helped in web search and indexing sites. They categorized and subcategorized their websites for better search result. The website in the early days was categorized under Art, Business, Computers, Economy, and Education and also subcategorized each of the categories soon became too cumbersome, as the number of websites in their list increased. Jerry Yang and David Filo named the search list Yahoo.
By January 1995, Yahoo, had 10,000 websites and was getting one million hits a day. However, the indexing was still done by humans. During the same time, Yahoo had to be moved out of the Stanford University server where it was hosted.
By this time, Yahoo had gained fame and respect and venture capitalists showed interests in investing in Yahoo against a pie of Yahoo. The industry had recognized the potential of Yahoo and AOL wanted to buy Yahoo for $2 million. However, both Yang and Filo declined the offer. The media covered these events in detail which helped Yahoo gain visibility. The feature story in Newsweek during that time coined the expression ‘did a Yahoo.’ This coinage was later modified to become the company’s famous slogan ‘Do You Yahoo!?’
LaunchIn March 1995, Yang, Filo and Tim Brady (a friend of Yang) wrote the business plan for Yahoo. The business plan put forth the vision of Yahoo; to become the ‘TV Guide of the Internet.’ The business plan also focused on advertisers to help generate its revenues, without charging any fees from the users.
The plan also stressed the importance of Yahoo’s independence, editorial impartiality, brand equity and free service for the end users. The business plan also listed that the second-biggest source of income should be through licensing deals.The business plan announced Filo as president and CEO, and Yang as chairman and CFO.
In March 1995, Yahoo was incorporated and in April the company got its first $1 mn venture funding from Sequoia Capital. As soon as venture funding was received, the founders put an interim management in place at Yahoo. Yahoo launched its website in early August 1995.
Yahoo Expansion
In April 1996, Yahoo launched Yahoo Japan as a joint venture with Softbank, with Yahoo and Softbank owning 40% and 60% respectively. However, in all other cases it always held the majority stake. In Europe, Yahoo launched as Yahoo Europe in United Kingdom, Germany and France along with rest of Western Europe with Ziff Davis Yahoo held 70% of the equity stake while Ziff Davis held only 30%.
Yahoo forged strategic alliances with different companies like Procter & Gamble, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Nabisco, Pepsi, Microsoft, and Real Networks. To improve its pure search capability, Yahoo licensed AltaVista’s search engine and to broaden its distribution, Yahoo forged deals with Compaq and Gateway which allowed Yahoo to put its button on the desktops of Compaq and Gateway PCs. However, Yahoo and MTV alliance to create, a music search engine failed soon after its creation.
Yahoo initially started as a search engine, but with alliances and joint ventures it slowly developed as a portal. Mostly growth happened through acquisitions. Some of the companies acquired by Yahoo were Flickr, Konfabulator, Upcoming.org, Del.icio.us, and Webjay. The new Yahoo search engine was built on the acquired technology from Inktomi and Overture. The new search engine created the best search technology for consumers and an effective advertising platform for the advertisers. Yahoo also launched Yahoo 360, a social networking service.
In long run, Yahoo has become a victim of success. The company had adopted the model of being a one-stop portal, offering all the services on its web site. Yahoo’s homepage had links to a host of products and services like e-mail, music, mobile, small business services, health, finance, games, movies, personals, etc.
Acquired Companies
2002 Hotjobs, Inktomi2003 Overture,2004 3721 Internet Assistant, Kelkoo, Oddpost, The All-Seeing Eye, Music Match, Stata Labs Inc, WUF Networks2005 Verdisoft, Ludicorp Research, (Flickr), Stadeon, TeRespondo, Dialpad2005 blo.gs, Konfabulator, Alibaba, Upcoming.org, Whereonearth, del.icio.us2006 Searchfox, Meedio, Gmarket, Jumpcut.com, Adlnterax, Right Media, Kenet Works, Bix.com, Wretch
Strategic Alliances and Joint Ventures
During the same time, Yahoo initiated strategic partnerships. Yang’s objective of strategic partnerships was, to leverage relationships for future financing, rather than raising money. They zeroed on Reuters, and struck a distribution and revenue sharing deal with Reuters. The success of the yahoo – Reuters deal led Yahoo to bring together a pilot program of six advertisers like GM and Visa, each of which paid $20,000 per month.
As the number of paid advertisers along with the daily visitors in Yahoo’s website increased, few companies showed interests in investing in Yahoo. Reuters, computer-magazine publisher Ziff Davis, Japanese software publisher and distributor giant Softbank invested in Yahoo against a portion of its equitystake. Reuters invested $1 mn for a 2.5% stake, Ziff Davis and Softbank each invested $2 mn for 5% stakes.
In 1999 when the dotcoms started to collapse in 1999, and the advertising market shrank, Yahoo had to search new ways other than advertising to make money. Yahoo started charging for some of its existing services, like auctions and personals and introduced new paid services, like extra storage space for email and photos, registration of personal domain names and tools for building personal Web pages. In 1999, Yahoo also entered the ecommerce business by introducing Yahoo Shopping where 9000 merchants joined. Yahoo also partnered with Kmart’s retail website, BlueLight.com, to provide free Internet access to the users, with the objective of attracting large number of new Net-savvy customers.

Brand Google

Google, the largest search engine, besides restricting itself as the number one search engine globally has become a one stop shop destination for many other offerings. It offers G-mail, the fast e-mail service; Google Earth replaced, atlas; Google News replaced newspapers and magazines. Google digitize all books available on the planet to offer e-versions of books. With so much to offer, it was no wonder that starting its journey as a humble search engine in late nineties, the company had emerged as one of the most powerful brands by 2006.
Beginning of Journey
Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University. Larry Page and Sergey Brin planned to develop a new way for online search. The idea behind the setting up of the Google was to organize all the globally available information and make it accessible and useful to all people across the world. Google was incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998.
In 2000, Google was answering 18 million queries daily and maintained a repository of one billion URLs (Uniform Resource Locator). Unlike other search engines, which relied on servers to answer the queries, Google linked PCs to answer the query fast and in accurate manner. This technology leads to a faster response time, greater scalability and lesser cost.
Google offers search facility on different subjects, in different languages, and users could search information on Google Toolbar, Google Deskbar, and on mobile through WAP and i-mode phones. Along with search facilities, Google also provided images, pages in different languages, airlines information and phone numbers, spell check and translation of web pages. Google to stay ahead in the competition and to become one of the most innovative companies, Google used PageRank and Hypertext-Matching Analysis technologies to provide reliable, fast and accurate information.
Google – NameWhen Larry Page and Sergey Brin established Google, the prime focus was on developing a ‘perfect search engine’ as Larry Page, defined Google as some thing that, ‘understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want’.
The name ‘Google’ was derived from the word ‘googol’ which meant a mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeroes (Googol means 10100). The company was named by nine year old Milton Sirotta, nephew of noted American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Edward Kasner and James Newman. The name Google itself portrayed the company’s mission to organize information available on the internet. The name and meaning of the name reflected the company’s mission to organize virtually all the information available on the web and make it easily available free of cost. The word Google portrayed both technological and scientific supremacy and not an improbable, silly word.
Google – USPThe unique selling proposition of the Google brand was its searching specialization. Contrary to other search engines, which was evolved as media portals, Google remained a search engine. The four elements based on which Larry Page and Sergey Brin positioned Google differently from the rest of the companies were speed, accuracy, objectivity and easy usage. The easy usage and benefit transformed Google from a search engine to one of the most successful global brands.
Google – Logo
In 1998 Sergey Brin designed the logo of the company, to portray the essence of a cheerful, innovative and technical brand. Sergey Brin wanted Google to carry the fancy and fun Image which reflects in its name, image and logo of the company. The colorful rounded edges depicted that the company is approachable and friendly but at the same time means business and was serious about its work. Google, backed by a great idea and concept, supported by a service that delivers and portrayed by a fun logo and a relevant name, the company enjoyed high brand loyalty.
Google – Brand ExpansionBy 2000, Google piggyback on the four elements – Speed, accuracy, objectivity and ease of use became the largest Internet search engine. With time only one aspect of Google brand changed, which was done in a careful manner. It extended its philosophy from online internet search to easy availability of information, without considering the mode of delivery. Google retained its core online search engine as a separate brand identity and launched a separate brand for its different product category. (I will discuss Google – Brand Expansion in detail soon)
In 2004, Google created new product categories and forayed into unrelated areas viz. social networking, email services, Google earth, Google mini. The Google Search Appliance, the new hardware of Google also signified the brand image of Google.
Google – word-of-mouth wayIn 2006, Google became Generic brand with its unique model of service. Google also became synonymous for online search. Google became a household name and attained a power brand status without any advertising expenditure. The company did not spend anything on print or electronic media or online banners. Google, instead of developing the brand through the traditional way of advertising, focused on experience – user experience, customer experience or searcher experience. Google is a classic example of a power brand built on word-of-mouth. Google has strong word-of-mouth because it delivers on its uncomplicated promise. Its reputation spread with word of mouth from millions of satisfied users of Google as a search engine and helped the brand building process.
Google – Marching Ahead
Google has developed an emotional character that transcends cultural, geographical and language barriers. The inherent strength Google has built with time helped it in surviving and competing with industry power house like Yahoo and Microsoft. Google has focused on its strength by constantly projecting solutions to problems first rather than making money.
Google with a simple and uncomplicated business model which was supported by a simple brand and logo was the main prerequisite for the company’s success. Google portrayed itself as a company of 21st century and amazed many companies with its meteoric success.

Google built on Acquisition

Google built on Acquisition
It is a popular believes that Google is born and built on innovations, which is true. The making of Google is not only based on innovation but acquisitions also play a critical role. Google bought companies and worked on their properties to develop better product. The end goal of acquiring a company may be aligned with Google’s overall mission. Google bought companies to grab global database, make that data useful and accessible, attract users attention and loyalty towards the database, and most importantly to increase profit from ads displayed with the data.

2001Deja , Usenet which helped Google develop Google GroupsOutride , Web search engine which helped Google develop Google Personalized Search

2003Pyra Labs , Weblog software which helped Google develop BloggerNeotonic Software , Customer relationship management which helped Google develop Google Groups, GmailApplied Semantics , Online advertising which helped Google develop AdSense, AdWordsKaltix , Web search engine which helped Google develop iGoogleSprinks(a division of Primedia) , Online advertising which helped Google develop AdSense, AdWordsGenius Labs , Blogging which helped Google develop Blogger

2004Ignite Logic , HTML editor which helped Google develop Google Page CreatorBaiduA , Chinese language search engine which helped Google developPicasa , Image organizer which helped Google develop Picasa, BloggerZipDash , Traffic analysis which helped Google develop Google Ride FinderWhere2 , Map analysis which helped Google develop Google MapsKeyhole, Inc , Map analysis which helped Google develop Google Maps, Google Earth

2005Urchin Software Corporation , Web analytics which helped Google develop Google AnalyticsDodgeball , Social networking service which helped Google develop Google Mobile, Google SMSReqwireless , Mobile browser which helped Google develop Google MobileCurrent Communications Group , Broadband internet access which helped Google develop Internet backboneAndroid , Mobile software which helped Google develop AndroidSkia , Graphics software which helped Google develop AndroidAkwan Information Technologies , Search Engines which helped Google develop Internet backboneAOLB , Broadband internet access which helped Google developPhatbits , Widget engine which helped Google develop Google DesktopallPAY GmbH , Mobile software which helped Google develop Google MobilebruNET GmbH , Mobile software which helped Google develop Google Mobile

2006dMarc Broadcasting , Advertising which helped Google develop AdSenseMeasure Map , Weblog software which helped Google develop Google AnalyticsUpstartle , Word processor which helped Google develop Google Documents@Last Software , 3D modeling software which helped Google develop Google SketchupOrion , Web search engine which helped Google develop Google Search2Web Technologies , Online spreadsheets which helped Google develop Google SpreadsheetNeven Vision , Computer vision which helped Google develop Google MapsYouTube , Video sharing which helped Google develop YouTubeJotSpot , Web application which helped Google develop Google SitesEndoxon , Mapping which helped Google develop Google Maps

2007XunleiC , File sharing which helped Google developAdscape , In-game advertising which helped Google develop AdSenseTrendalyzer , Statistical software which helped Google develop Google AnalyticsTonic Systems , Presentation program which helped Google develop Google DocumentsMarratech , Videoconferencing which helped Google develop Google TalkDoubleClick , Online advertising which helped Google develop AdSenseGreenBorder , Computer security which helped Google develop Internal usePanoramio , Photo sharing which helped Google develop Blogger, MapsFeedBurner , Web feed which helped Google develop Google ReaderPeakStream , Parallel processing which helped Google develop Server (computing)Zenter , Presentation program which helped Google develop Google DocumentsGrandCentral , Voice over Internet Protocol which helped Google develop Google MobileImage America , Aerial photography which helped Google develop Google MapsPostini , Communications security which helped Google develop GmailZingku , Social network service which helped Google develop Google MobileJaiku , Micro-blogging which helped Google develop Google Mobile

2008DoubleClick , an online advertising
Historically, the focus of Google while acquisition is on technology and data acquisitions, which helped it emerge as the Power brand.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org

The Google Economy

Google has come a long way; from one of the Internet search engine to the worlds most popular search engine. It is preferred over search engines which are one among the pioneers of the search engine such as AltaVista, Infoseek, Netscape and Lycos.
Google piggyback on its innovative strategy to generate revenue by placing advertisements on sites which contain information related to those ads has indeed made Google highly profitable. The revenue model, almost since beginning, has been successful in giving its competitors a run for their money. In a short span of time, Google has become the best search engine by eating into the market share of Yahoo AltaVista, Infoseek, Netscape and Lycos.
Google always focused on product development which is user friendly and offers great customer experience. No wonder, Google, since inception came up with innovative ideas like Blogs, AdWords, video search and many other features on its search engine, which offered great user experience. It also helped, Google developed an emotional character that transcends cultural, geographical and language barriers. This inherent strength of Google in initial days helped survive in industry which was dominated by industry power house like Yahoo and Microsoft and later on helped it emerge as the winner. Google has focused on its strength by constantly projecting solutions to problems first rather than making money.Google hasThe BirthThe beginning of the story, Google started when Sergey Brin and Larry Page were doing their Ph.D. at Stanford University in computer science, as a part of research group called MIDAS (Mining Data at Stanford). Sergey Brin, with his Professor Rajiv Motwani started experimenting on finding ways to extract information from large chunks of data. Larry Page, at the same time spent time with the search engines (Altavista, Yahoo etc.) on Digital Libraries Project to find how they analyzed data.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, after teaming up started downloading the web onto his desktop and even devised a method he called PageRank that would assign priority to websites with quality links. The PageRank, going forward would be backbone of the search engine Google.
In 1997, Page developed a primitive search engine called BackRub which was later renamed Google. The duo left Stanford University in the fall of 1998 moving their search engine to a nearby garage. On September 07, 1998, they established the Google Inc. The duo started experimenting on the Google’s web design to make it look more polished with high speed.
The Early DaysThe search engine became quite popular through word-of-mouth, e-mails and instant messages. In 1998, PC Magazine had chosen Google as the top 100 web sites. By 2001, Google was on its way to become a lexicon in the dictionary continuing to offer 100 million searches per day making it one of the top notch quality services to people across the world.
Google started with difference and positioned it as no-nonsense search engine. Google, unlike traditional search engines which place search ads mixing them with search results to make money, started delivering accurate results to the keywords placed in search. They found the idea of placing ads in the site more commercialized and will ultimately dilute the main purpose of the search engines.
In Search of Revenue ModelThe duo realized that only great product will not generate revenue they have to work on the revenue model. But at the cost of revenue generation they were not in favor of compromising on the search results quality. The duo after much brainstorming with Google team finds out a source to earn revenues. Google develop its business around two revenue streams – online advertising and search services. Google has been generating enough revenue from its AdWords, AdSense and Gmail service. The revenue model was well received by the viewers and the users.
The difference between Google and Yahoo is the revenue factor. Yahoo gets its revenue from Yahoo mail, ads, and some other features where as Google gets almost 85% of its revenue from ads. Google’s success has incited Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo to develope their own commercial search offerings
Google – More than a Search Engine
In early days of search engine growth when most of the online search engine companies spent a lot of money on marketing to build their brands, Google, focused solely on building a ‘better’ search engine. Everything Google did from the development of advanced technology to the design of user interface was focused on delivering the best search results. The effort to develop a better search engine help Google develop a brand.
When Google entered the online search market, Yahoo was the market leader. Their persistent efforts towards that objective proved fruitful as, in a span of five years, Google placed itself ahead of Yahoo in the search engine market. In 2002, Google pioneered the concept of AdWords and AdSense, and thus created a sensation in the field of online advertising.
Now, Google is much more than a search engine, it offers various other features for its users. List of the services which Google offers to its users apart from the search engine are:
Google Desktop : Search and personalize your computerGoogle Earth : Explore the world from your computerGoogle Finance : Business info, news, and interactive chartsiGoogle : Add news, games and more to the Google homepageImages : Search for images on the webGoogle Maps : View maps and directionsGoogle News – now with archive search; Search thousands of news storiesGoogle Scholar : Search scholarly papersGoogle Video : Search for videos on Google Video and YouTubeGmail : Fast, searchable email with less spamGroups : Create mailing lists and discussion groupsOrkut : Meet new people and stay in touch with friendsPicasa : Find, edit and share your photosReader : Get all your blogs and news feeds fastSites : Create websites and secure group wikisGoogle Talk : IM and call your friends through your computerGoogle Translate : View web pages in other languagesGoogle YouTube : Watch, upload and share videos
Google is increasing its revenues with introduction of new features.
Google – growing with Strategic Partnerships and AcquisitionGoogle has served various strategic partnerships with companies like Yahoo!, AOL, Earthlink, and Ask Jeeves. The strategic partnership in place, its ad business was showing signs of good growth.
Read: Google built on Acquisition to know more about Google Acquisitions in past.
Google grew to such an extent that it was very tough replicating its network or business for its competitors. The constant innovation at Google is the real motive for its services.
ConclusionGoogle will remain the best and popular company both electronically and emotionally. The company employs brilliant mathematicians, engineers and technologists to tackle all the problems. The Google team, have developed a firm that doesn’t need any introduction or promotion. It has replaced Microsoft with its rapid pace of innovation and mantle of leadership. Google has placed itself in a special position in the hearts and minds of many people throughout the world.

Dasavatharam: India’s most ambitious film

The release of Kamal Haasan’s magnum opus Dasavatharam was probably the most awaited event after Rajinikanth’s Sivaji – The Boss. The release is also important as Kamal Haasan has no release since August 2006. Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu, Haasan’s last released in August 2006 was a huge hit.

Dasavatharam is India’s most ambitious film in terms of budget and scrip. The film was released on June 13 2008. Ravichandran decided on the project in 1996. It took a lot of time to get the film together. Almost after twelve years it was released world-wide on June 13, 2008 in the Tamil language, with a simultaneous dubbed version released in Telugu. The film is set to be dubbed into Hindi and released later in the year.

Role

In the movie Haasan appears in ten different roles, breaking the record for an actor’s portrayal of the most different characters. The movie also has Asin in a dual role and Mallika Sherawat, who plays lead role. Kamal Haasan has played ten different roles in Dashavatharam – US President George Bush, Balaraman, a brahmin, a tall Afghan, a Lankan Tamil, an old lady, a doctor, a police officer, a Japanese, and a Daler Mehndi look-alike.

Music

Himesh Reshammiya has composed the film’s soundtrack, and Devi Sri Prasad has given the background score. The soundtrack to Dasavathaaram was released on April 25, 2008, which became the largest audio launch for a film in the world. Prominent film personalities across the world including Jackie Chan, Amitabh Bachchan, Mammooty, Vijay and Madhavan attended the function

Distribution

In the recent past, most big-budget films be it Hindi, or any other regional film, producers have adopted a revenue model where the investments are typically recovered before the release of the film. The producer of the movie, Ravichandran, took the different route and decided to distribute the film himself. He has ensured that the film is released in as many screens as possible. The film overall will have 1,300 prints which will include the Hindi version as well. Tamil Nadu alone had 275 prints with Kerala and Karnataka accounting for 85 and 80 prints respectively. The Telugu version of Dasavatharam had as many as 260 prints. Around 1,100 prints will be released domestically while the rest will go abroad in countries like UK, US, Europe and Singapore.

Revenue
In terms of money that came Ravichandran’s way before the release of the film, it was Rs 2 crore from Sony-BMG for selling the music rights and another Rs 4.5 crore for Kalaignar TV for the satellite rights. That adds up to just Rs 6.5 crore. The Ravichandran has distributed movie himself and is confident that the movie will do business worth Rs. 300 crores.
Reviews

Dasavatharam has been declared as the Blockbuster of the year due to its huge and mega opening worldwide in Indian film history. The film is anticipated to rake in close to Rs. 100 crore as its theatrical revenue at the end of this week, as Chennai theatre owners state that the bookings for the next 10 days are house-full. If compared to Rajnikant’s Sivaji the film grossed over 25 crore in its first one week. Given the current figures, Kamal Hassan is currently one up.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com, www.dasavatharam.info, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Saregama to produce films

The film industry is growing and undoubtedly is the sunrise industry of India. The corporates are venturing into the film industry in various verticals viz. multiplex, film production, film distributions and those who already have presence is expanding their horizon like PVR are venturing into film production, film distribution a migration from film exhibition Reliance Big Entertainment is consolidating its position not only in Bollywood but also in Hollywood.

Latest in the offering is the music distribution company Saregama venturing again into film production. Saregama India Ltd, the entertainment arm of the Rs 13500 crore RPG Group, would invest up to Rs.150 crore in film production and other businesses over the next two years in producing seven movies. RPG has plans to pick up a minority stake in one of the event management companies in India. The event management vertical will help Saregama popularize its movies and the characters in the movies post release.

Saregama India for its film production venture has tied up with Rituparno Ghosh to direct Bengali movies. Apart from theatrical releases the company will also bring out CDs and DVDs of the movies.

Hoping that this is yet another new beginning of the Indian corporates venturing into film industry. The other corporate houses evaluating the option of either venturing or expanding the horizon in industry are Reliance Industries, A V Birla Group, and Tata’s.

Reliance Big Entertainment and Amitabh Bachchan

The $1 billion deal between Reliance Big Entertainment and the production firms of Hollywood
stars Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt and film-makers Chris Columbus and Jay Roach to make films was the beginning of the Anil Ambani’s journey towards transforming his company into global filmmaker. It seems the hunger of Anil Ambani is getting bigger by the day.

Reliance Big Entertainment, just after negotiation with Hollywood bigwig Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks where Anil has planned to infuse about $600 million he also convinced the legendary Amitabh Bachchan.

The deal could be worth $200m-$300m (final figure is not yet known) and would include film production, television series, reality shows, internet and mobile content besides live shows. Reliance Big Entertainment will look after managing marketing and the distribution of projects, and the Bachchans – Amitabh, Jaya, Abhishek and Aishwarya would come up with the creative inputs and would be handling the entertainment aspect of the project.

The joint venture will use brand Bachchans in films, production, TV series, internet, reality shows and mobile content. The other directors who have been signed up to direct films for the joint venture are Balakrishnan, Sujoy Ghosh, Rohan Sippy and Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi. No wonder the deal is in line with Reliance Big Entertainment strategy to tie up with the leading Indian and international creative talent, to build a new-age, future-ready global media and Entertainment Company.

The creative genius – Bachchans and the business genius – Anil will create magic and take entertainment to a different level. The joint venture and our strategy to tie up with Indian and international creative talent will help the company build a new-age global entertainment conglomerate.

Multiplexes: the latest craze

The journey of multiplex which was started in 1997 with inauguration of first multiplex Priya Village Roadshow (PVR) Saket in New Delhi is currently at crossroads roughly a dozen players have entered in the business in small or big way. New players are trying to enter this sector and the existing players are busy expanding their horizons. The multiplex has gone beyond the metros to redefine entertainment in Tier 1 and 2 cities like Lucknow, Indore, Nasik, Aurangabad, Kanpur, Amritsar. The good news is at present roughly 70 percent of the total box office collections in the country come from non metros.
Understanding Multiplex Business
In last few years, strong economic growth, fall in interest rates, increase in real estate price, and increase in consumption levels, are constantly fueling multiplex boom in India. Moreover, multiplex operators are attracting movie enthusiasts, by combining movie viewing with food courts, branded food and apparel outlets and gaming that provided high quality viewing experience.

The multiplexes are often characterized by a good ambience, comfortable seating, air-conditioning, modern infrastructure. The multiplex has various halls with different seating capacities ranging between 200 to 500. This allowed the Multiplex operator to choose a theater depending upon the movie’s potential which help them utilize higher capacity utilization. Multiplex also help utilize show timing based on the screening duration, the number of shows could be maximized. Moreover, depending on the movie’s performance, the exhibitors had the option of moving it to theatres with different seating capacities and show timing. The multiple movie options also offer moviegoers the opportunity to see the movie of their choice.

Multiplexes offer several economic like better occupancy ratio, greater number of shows. They make more revenues in the first week of release by showing movie on more screens and reduces the number of shows with decreasing demand. The other multiplex advantage comes out of sharing facilities such as the basic amenities, F&B and manpower.

The multiplex model was built around a primary anchor – movies, though the revenue flow also happens through several income-generating channels other than box-office collections. The other revenue generation channels are food and beverage, product launch rentals and various other promotions by companies. In the recent past luxury multiplexes have come up with new experiences like partying in the theaters while the movie is running.

Multiplex owners, try and increase their income and reduce the expenses to increase their profitability. On the one hand the primary sources of multiplex income are: Patron’s spending viz. ticket sale, F&B, and parking, Advertisement Income, Management fee and Revenue sharing. On the other hand the prominent components of expenses are: Cost incurred for the working of a multiplex are: Distributor Share, F&B Cost, Lease Rentals, Other Operating costs, and Entertainment Tax. The multiplex owners are working on different business models to increase their reach and profitability. Business models are:

Ownership Model: In the case of fully owned model the multiplex owner buys the land and constructs a multiplex or buys a part of a shopping mall and sets up the multiplex within. In the ownership model, capital cost is high but the multiplex operator benefits from escalating real-estate prices. This model works where lease rentals are very high and capital costs are low as the escalating realty prices could force higher rentals adding to fixed costs.

Leased property model: In Leased property model, an operator invests in only fit-outs and not in the whole property and pays a fixed rent to the mall owner. This model is more prominent in areas where mall development is slow but the property location is ideal for movie exhibition. In the lease model multiplex operator has mostly variable expenses but company shells out more money on rent, thus decrease profitability. Majority of the multiplexes are coming up in leased properties, they can expand at a faster rate with less capital requirement and break even faster.

Theater management model: In this model the multiplex operator provides management services to the third party operator. In this form of business both the parties work on revenues sharing or fixed fees for property management or a combination of both.

The Major Players
Multiplex, in India is witnessing unprecedented growth. A few big corporate house have already entered the business and others are planning to venture in the business through acquire existing players. However, industry experts rule out any consolidation in the industry. They believe market is still in the growth stage and there are enough opportunities for the existing players. In current scenario competition is heating up among the existing players. Adlabs, PVR, IOX, Fun, Fame , DT Cinema, Satyam Cineplexes have chalked out big expansion plans to increase the number of screens in the next few years to get better share of movie revenues.

PVR Limited is the oldest player in the multiplex business in India. Ajjay Bijli, Managing Director of PVR Limited, after bringing the multiplex concept to India, has created the largest multiplex chain in the country. The company currently operates 24 cinemas with 95 screens across 14 cities, and expects to have another 50 multiplexes operational by end of 2008. They are developing five multiplexes in association with Prestige Group at Bangalore, Kochi, Hyderabad and Mangalore.
PVR works across spectrum from PVR Premiere which is designed for the urban elite, with ticket prices ranging from Rs 150-750 to the PVR Talkies which is low-cost multiplex in towns such as Aurangabad and Latur, where tickets are priced at Rs 40. The various multiple formats that straddle across income segments enable them capitalise on increasing footfalls and revenue. What makes PVR special is that it has been profitable right since inception.

INOX (Indian Oxygen) Leisure Ltd was a diversification venture of the INOX Group, a 100% subsidiary of Gujarat Flurochemicals Ltd. INOX has 24 multiplexes with a total of 84 screens in 18 cities – Pune, Vadodara, Kolkata, Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore, Jaipur and others. They have plans to expand into other cities like Chennai, Hyderabad, etc. by the financial year 2008. Inox has one of the highest ticket prices per seat in the country and, yet, has one of the best occupancy rates in the industry. No wonder Inox is the most profitable player in multiplexes business.

Adlabs Films Limited is India’s leading motion picture processing laboratory, set up the country’s first IMAX Dome Theater in Mumbai. Adlabs has 163 screens spread over 61 cities in India besides an international network of 220 screens spread in the East, mid-West and some parts of the United States. They are actively looking at expanding its business in countries like the U.K, Australia Malaysia, Nepal, Mauritius, and Singapore.
Adlabs Cinemas has launched 6D cinema experience at Agra, which is designed to cutting-edge visual and audio effects allowing audience simultaneous experience of sight, smell, sound, touch and motion.

Fame a part of Shringar Group which runs single screens and multiplexes. Fame has 14 properties and 48 screens operational. It plans to take the total screen count to 75 by 2008. They have plans to have presence in 60 sites with 250 screens by financial year 2011.

Fun Multiplex has uniquely positioned their cinema properties as epicenters of new economy suburbs in each city. Fun Multiplex offers the finest entertainment experience provider, enabling superior cinema viewing and real time leisure experiences to its patrons by combining the best in technology, comfort, leisure and hospitality.
Fun Multiplex holds a leading position in the Indian multiplex market. It operates 53 cinema screens in 13 cities and sixteen locations – Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Agra, Jaipur, Bangalore, Panipat and Gulbarga. The company was planning to construct 35 multiplexes with 140 screens and these were expected to begin operations by the financial year 2008. In addition, the company has planned to acquire additional screens and increase its screen count to 1500 by 2011.

Satyam Cineplexes, another popular chain, is part of the Superior Group. Satyam Cineplexes is planning to infuse around Rs 250 crore to set up 104 multiplexes across the country. The 104 screens planned by Satyam will be in cities like Indore, Ludhiana, Dehradun, Kolkata, Rohtak, among others. Satyam is targeting tier II cities in the country instead of having more screens in the metros. This is mainly because of the high real estate prices in the metros.

CineMax, the Kanakia Group theatre, is one of the largest exhibition theatre chains in India operating 19 multiplexes with 56 screens. CineMax has strong presence in Mumbai and they are planning to expand nationwide rapidly. CineMax offers premium services with recliner seats, massage chairs, any time tickets machines, luxurious and expensive interiors and the best of customer service. CineMax to enhance the customer experience started a call center hub at Mumbai called “Noline” to provide information about screenings at its theaters, enable telebookings, etc.

DT Cinemas, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DLF Group, operates multiplexes in Delhi, Ludhiana and Jalandhar and Gurgaon. DLF planning to set up another 120 malls in different parts of the country, and DT Cinemas would be the chief attraction in most of these malls. Today DT Cinemas has seven operational multiplexes with 22 screen and they have plans to invest Rs 1,250 crore to open 500 screens in the next 4-5 five years. DT Cinemas has presence in NCR Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Chandigarh and apart from the north Indian cities, DT Cinemas also plans to set up multiplexes in Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Goa and Kolkata.

Apart from the existing multiplex chain the industry veterans like Mukesh Ambani is also venturing in this sector. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail and Yashraj Films may float a 74:26 JV to set up multiplexes, run entertainment channels and produce content for television channels. The will use the upcoming malls of Reliance Retail nationwide to set up multiplexes. Wave cinemas, yet another multiplex chain promoted by the Chadha group, had multiplexes in Lucknow, Noida and Kaushambi has aggressive expansion plans.

Sustainability
Technology improvements are likely to be at the forefront in driving the growth of the Indian Film Industry into the future. Going Digital would be the mantra for s industry over the next two-three years. It will help multiplex deliver quality content to consumers at a faster pace and at a more economical price. Though multiplex has favorable environment for growth but there are a few negatives working against the growth of the multiplex industry in the country.

Entertainment Tax withdrawal is one of the biggest concerns for the multiplex industry as success of a multiplex business model in terms of financial viability hinges to a great extent on the entertainment tax exemptions being received by them. The other serious concern is risk of timely execution of planned projects. PVR, Fame, INOX, Adlabs in past have faced problem of delay in handover of the completed civic shell by the developer and delays in getting the necessary clearances from the government. The other big concern is movie piracy, which has reduced the theatrical window period. The movie piracy eats film industry revenue by almost 14%. This has encouraged the industry to reduce the theatrical window period and release the film faster on other movie viewing platforms like satellite, DVD. Moreover, Multiplex revenues are seasonal in nature as the production houses prefer to generally release big-budget films during the summer holidays or during the festive season to attract maximum umber of patrons to the cinema halls.

Conclusion

Multiplex, in India, is the new business model for the film exhibition industry. It is transforming movie viewing habits in India. It is set to take over a significant slice of the entertainment market of India. Today multiplexes constitute just 1% of the total number of cinema halls, and 4-5% of the total screens in India. The industry experts believe that it is beginning of the end of single screens in India as the multiplexes with certain advantages such as multi-screen potential, flexibility in operations, scope for other commercial viability will rule movie exhibition business in Indian.

Plagiarism in Bollywood – Ethics of Bollywood

A few writers and musicians in bollywood have been known for plagiarism. They copy ideas, plot, tunes from sources close at hand from other Indian films or Hollywood or other Western movies. This has lead to constant criticism towards the film industry. The Indian classic like The Burning Train released in 1980 was inspired by Shinkansen Daibakuha; 1988 release Khoon Bhari Maang was inspired by Return to Eden. The movie which made Shahrukh Khan the Hero, Baazigar was inspired by A Kiss Before Dying. There are many more such movies here I present a list of movies produced post 2000 which are inspired by the Hollywood or other Western movies or we can say a list of movies alleged to contain plagiarism:

2000
Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega was inspired by While You Were Sleeping
Dhaai Akshar Prem Ke was inspired by A Walk in the Clouds
Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jaaye was inspired by The Wedding Singer

2001
Ajnabee was inspired by Consenting Adults
Kyo Kii… Main Jhuth Nahin Bolta was inspired by Liar Liar

2002
Humraaz was inspired by A Perfect Murder
Kaante was inspired by Reservoir Dogs
Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin was I nspired by Analyze This
Chor Machaaye Shor was inspired by Blue Streak
Deewangee was inspired by Primal Fear
Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai was inspired by My Best Friend’s Wedding
Raaz was inspired by What Lies Beneath

2003
Ek Chhoti Si Love Story was inspired by A Short Film About Love
Footpath was inspired by State of Grace
Inteha was inspired by Fear
Jism was inspired by Body Heat
Qayamat was inspired by City Under Threat and The Rock
Saaya was inspired by Dragonfly

2004
Aitraaz was inspired by Disclosure
Hum Tum was inspired by When Harry Met Sally
Mujhse Shaadi Karogi was inspired by Anger Management
Phir Milenge was inspired byPhiladelphia
Paap was inspired by Witness

2005
Black was inspired by The Miracle Worker
Sarkar was inspired by The Godfather
Ek Ajnabee was inspired by Man on Fire
Zeher was inspired by Out of Time
Main Aisa Hi Hoon was inspired by I am Sam
Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya? was inspired by Cactus Flower
Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena was inspired by Confidence
Garam Masala was inspired by Boeing Boeing
Bunty Aur Babli was inspired by Bonnie & Clyde
Chocolate: Deep Dark Secrets was inspired by The Usual Suspects
Deewane Huye Pagal was inspired by There’s Something About Mary

2006
Naksha was inspired by The Rundown
Zinda was inspired by Oldboy
Phir Hera Pheri was inspired by Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
I See You was inspired by Just Like Heaven
Tathastu was inspired by John Q
Malamaal Weekly was inspired by Waking Ned
Aap Ki Khatir was inspired by The Wedding Date
Taxi No. 9211 was inspired by Changing Lanes
The Killer was inspired by Collateral

2007
Awarapan was inspired by A Bittersweet Life
Bheja Fry was inspired by Diner de cons
Naqaab was inspired by Dot the I
Fool n Final was inspired by Snatch
Partner was inspired by Hitch
The Train was inspired by Derailed
Welcome was inspired by Mickey Blue Eyes
Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal was inspired by Green Street

Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Bachchan (Amitabh Harivansh Srivastav), born on October 11, 1942 in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh is one of the most prominent Indian film actors of Bollywood. Amitabh Bachchan is known for his deep, baritone voice. He before entering the film industry applied for a job with All India Radio for the post of a news announcer, for which he was rejected – probably a destiny’s call. The actor also did Playback Singing for The Great Gambler, Mr. Natwarlal, Lawaaris, Naseeb, Silsila, Mahaan, Pukar, Sharaabi, Toofan, Jaadugar, Khuda Gawah, Major Saab, Sooryavansham, Aks, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Aankhen, Armaan, Baghban, Dev, Aetbaar, Baabul, Nishabd, Cheeni Kum, Bhoothnath.

Amitabh Bachchan has been a narrator, a playback singer film producer, presenter for numerous programmes, and Television anchor. He was also elected member of the Indian Parliament from 1984 to 1987. The actor Amitabh Bachchan holds the record for the most number of Best Actor nominations at the Filmfare Awards and has won three National Film Awards and twelve Filmfare Awards to date.

Mile stone 1 – Saat Hindustani and Anand

Bachchan made his film debut in 1969 in Saat Hindustani, a film directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas. Though the film was not a financial success but Bachchan won his first National Film Award for Best Newcomer. In 1971 was awarded Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award for his performance in Anand. In 1973 director Prakash Mehra cast him in the leading role for the film Zanjeer as Inspector Vijay Khanna which established Amitabh as the angry young man of Bollywood. Later Bachchan played the role of Vikram in the film Namak Haraam, a social drama directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and scripted by Biresh Chatterjee addressing themes of friendship. In 1975 he acted in a variety of film genres from the comedy Chupke Chupke, the crime drama Faraar to the romantic drama Mili. However 1975 was the year when he appeared in two landmark films of Hindi cinematic history – Deewar and Sholay.

Mile stone 2 – Sholay and Amar Akbar Anthony

After the phenomenal success of Sholay, Bachchan had consilidated his position in the industry. In between 1976 and 1984 he receive an unprecedented number of Filmfare Best Actor Award Awards and nominations. Sholay cemented Amitabh status as Bollywood’s pre-eminent action hero but he was flexible with roles. He played the romantic lead in Kabhie Kabhie and comic in Amar Akbar Anthony and Chupke Chupke. In 1977 he won the Filmfare Best Actor Award for his performance in Amar Akbar Anthony. 1978 was possibly the most remarkable year of his career and he starred in all four of the highest grossing films of India in that year. In 1979 for the first time, Amitabh was required to use his singing voice for the film Mr. Natwarlal. His performance in the film saw him nominated for both the Filmfare Best Actor Award and the Filmfare Best Male Playback Awards.

Mile stone 3 – Injury during filming Coolie

The fatal injury of 1982 while filming Coolie was the turning point in Amitabh’s film career. Amitabh while shooting for the film had taken the liberty to perform his own stunts. In one of the scene he was required to fall onto a table and then on the ground. However as he jumped towards the table, the corner of the table struck his abdomen. He was operated and remained critically ill in hospital for many months, and at times was close to death. This was the time when world realized Amitabh’s star power.

The film was released in 1983 and partly due to the huge publicity of Amitabh’s accident the film was a great boxoffice success. Amitabh’s illness made him feel weak both mentally and physically and he decided to quit films and venture into politics.

Mile stone 4 – Politics and Retirement

In 1984, Amitabh took a break from acting and briefly entered politics in support of long-time family friend Rajiv Gandhi. He contested Allahabad’s Lok Sabha seat against H. N. Bahuguna, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and won by highest victory margin in general election history (68.2% of the vote). However, in 1987 he resigned after three years, leaving his term incomplete.

In 1988, Bachchan returned to films after a three year stint in politics and played the title role in Shahenshah, which was a box office success but his subsequent films failed. In 1990 he won his second National Film Award for Agneepath. In 1991 Hum looked like it might reverse this trend, but it did not happened and after the release of Khuda Gawah in 1992, Bachchan went into semi-retirement for five years.

Mile stone 5 – Producer and Actor

Amitabh Bachchan turned producer during his temporary retirement period and setup Amitabh Bachchan Corporation, Ltd. (A.B.C.L.) in 1996 with the vision of becoming a 10 billion rupees premier entertainment company by the year 2000. ABCL’s operations included film production, film distribution, production and marketing of television software, celebrity management, and event management. The first film produced by the company was Tere Mere Sapne which failed to do well at the boxoffice. ABCL produced a few other films viz. Ullasam, Mrityudaata, Major Saab, Aks, Viruddh none of which worked at boxoffice. ABCL was the main sponsor of the 1996 Miss World beauty pageant, Bangalore and lost millions due to the poor management of the event. Bachchan later attempted to revive his acting career and had average success with Bade Miyan Chote Miyan and received positive reviews for Sooryavansham.

Mile Stone 6 – Television career and Return to prominence

In 2000, Amitabh stepped up to host, Kaun Banega Crorepati. The program piggyback on Amitabh’s charisma gained intense success. It strengthened Amitabh and his family financially and morally after the ABCL’s collapse. In 2000, Amitabh regained his prominence when he appeared in Yash Chopra’s box-office super hit, Mohabbatein directed by Aditya Chopra. The films like Ek Rishtaa, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham,Aks, Aankhen, Khakee, Dev, Black, Bunty Aur Babli, Sarkar, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, Baabul, Eklavya, Nishabd, Cheeni Kum and Shootout at Lokhandwala were few of he film which established him again. As an actor, he continued to exploit a range of characters suiting with his profile, receiving critical acclaim for his performances. His first English language film Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2007 for which he received positive reviews from critics.

Family and Friends

Bachchan is married to Jaya Bhaduri also an actress. They have two children, Shweta Nanda,and Abhishek Bachchan, who is also an actor in Bollywood and is married to Aishwarya Rai. He sees great friends in Anil Ambani and Amar Singh.

Amar Singh helped him during a financial crisis due to the failure of his company ABCL. Anil Ambani’s Reliance Big Entertainment and Amitabh Bachchan got into the deal which could be worth $200m-$300m (final figure is not yet known). The new venture would look after film production, television series, reality shows, internet and mobile content besides live shows.

Kamal Haasan

Kamal Haasan is an actor, producer, director, screenwriter, lyricist, playback singer and choreographer has won a total of 172 awards which is more than any other actor in the world living or dead. He was named as “kalaignani” – an idol of art, by M. Karunanidhi for his classical work towards Tamil cinema. The kalaignani was born on November 7, 1954 is the youngest of four children born in to an Iyengar family to Rajalakshmi and Srinivasan.

Early career: 1960s – 1970s

Kamal Haasan began his career as a child artist at age of six. In the 1960s, he made his screen debut with film Kalathur Kannamma, produced by AVM production and directed by by A. Bhimsingh, and won his first National Award for Best Child Artist. He acted as a child actor in five other Tamil films in the subsequent few years.

In 1972, after completing his education, Kamal Haasan returned to films and played supporting roles to more estblished actors. In 1974, Naan Avanillai final establishing him as a lead actor and in the same year he received a regional Filmfare Award for his role in the Malayalam movie Kanyakumari. The next four years, he won six regional Best Actor Filmfare Awards, including four consecutive Best Tamil Actor Awards.

Kamal Haasan in most of his late 1970s films, was usually the hero, with Rajinikanth as the villain. He reached stardom in 1979 with multiple classics and mass blockbusters. A huge factor behind Kamal’s success is his versatility.

Growth career: 1980s – 1990s

In 1981, Kamal Haasan’ acted in 100th film Raja Paarvai, which also marked his debut in film production. The portrayal of a blind session violinist earned him a Filmfare Award. In 1981, he incidentally ventured into direction. This was his first attempt at direction, which came through an unfortunate turn of events with the demise of director T.N. Baalu during the filming of Sankarlal. Kamal Haasan’s next acting role, in Ek Duuje Ke Liye, became his first Hindi-language film. In 1985, his performance in Saagar, won him both the Filmfare Best Actor Award as well as the Best Supporting Actor Award, making him the first actor to win both awards for a single film in the award’s history.

In 1987, Mani Rathnam’ directed him for Nayagan, commonly referred to The Godfather of Tamil cinema. The film helped Kamal Haasan bag a Indian National Award. The film was nominated by India as its entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards in 1987. in 1990, Kamal Hassan received India’s fourth highest civilian honour, the Padma Shri for his services to Indian cinema.

Unlike the eighties, Kamal Haasan films in the nineties lost sheen and were unsuccessful, barring Thevar Magan, Michael Madhana Kamarajan, and Avvai Shanmugi. The 1990s saw Kamal Haasan breaking out of the romantic hero mould to explore some more gritty, unconventional roles. In 1996, he acted in the police cop story, Kuruthipunal, which met with a strong critical reception. The success in Kuruthipunal, was followed by Indian which helped him bag him third National Film Award for Best Actor. Kamal Haasan’s second attempt at direction came through another unfortunate turn of events when the original director Shantanu Sheroey failed to do a good job while filming Chachi 420 in 1997.

New century – A new beginning

In 2000, Kamal Haasan filmed his second directorial venture, Hey Ram. He also donned roles of the writer, the lyricist, the choreogrpaher and the producer for the movie Hey Ram. The decade also saw his third directorial venture, Virumaandi. In 2006, Kamal Haasan’s long delayed project, Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu became a blockbuster at the box office. Kamal Haasan latest release, Dasavatharam has got positive response of audiences. He is set to direct his fourth directorial venture under the production of Walt Disney Pictures. The film tentatively titled Marmayogi, is believed to be set in the 7th century and feature several leading stars in the lead roles alongside Haasan. The film was announced with a higher budget than Dasavatharam.

Hollywood Inspiration

Kamal Haasan’s remakes are usually inspired by Hollywood originals, but the story and screenplay are customized for Indian Audiences viz. Nayagan was inspired by Godfather, Avvai Shanmugi and Chachi 420 were inspired by Mrs. Doubtfire, Anbe Sivam was inspired by Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Sathi Leelavathi was inspired by She-Devil, and Magalir Mattum was inspired by Nine to Five.

Awards

Kamal Haasan is a three-time winner of the National Film Award for Best Actor for the films Nayagan, Moondram Pirai and Indian. He also won the national award for Best Child Actor for his performance in Kalathur Kannamma. Six of his movies have been sent as India’s official entry to the Oscars. He has won the Filmfare awards 18 times. He was awarded the Padmashri in 1990. He has won a total of 172 awards which is more than any other actor in the world living or dead. He was named as “kalaignani” – an idol of art, by M. Karunanidhi for his classical work towards Tamil cinema. In 2007, he was conferred with “Living Legend” in the film business by FICCI, India.

Source: http://www.chakpak.com, and http://www.imdb.com, http://www.screenindia.com, http://www.apunkachoice.com,

Indian Premier League

The Indian Premier League is cricket competition created by the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India). According to the IPL format each teams play two times in a round robin system – equal number of home and away matches. The top four ranking team of the league matches will progress to the semi-finals and the winner of the semifinals will play the final match. 18 April 2008, was the starting date of the first season of the Indian Premier League. It lasted for forty-five days and ended on 1 June 2008 with the victory of the Rajasthan Royals in the final at the DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai.

The eight teams which participated in the first season of The Indian Premier League are Kolkata Knight Riders, Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, Hyderabad Deccan Chargers, Rajasthan Royals, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Delhi Daredevils, and Kings XI Punjab. The Indian Premier League. after the success of the first season, has proposed to add two new franchises based in Ahmedabad and Kanpur. The new franchisee will join the IPL in 2010, increasing the total number of teams to 10.

Television and Sponsorship Rights
BCCI is known as the richest board in world cricket. The IPL has brought the BCCI a sum of US $1 billion, which makes it more powerful and lucrative. The sponsorship revenue is part of the Central Pool. The sponsorship revenue will be divided among IPL, franchisee, and prize money in the ratio of 40:54:6 till 2017.

A consortium of Sony Entertainment Television Network and Singapore based World Sport Group bagged the global broadcasting rights of the Indian Premier League for the period of ten years at a cost of US $1.026 billion. As part of the deal, the consortium will pay the BCCI US $918 million for the television broadcast rights and US $108 million for the promotion of the tournament. The Sony Entertainment Television Network and World Sport Groupthen re-sold parts of the broadcasting rights geographically to other companies. Apart from this deal The IPL negotiated a contract with the Canadian company Live Current Media Inc. to run and operate its portals. The minimum guarantee has been negotiated at US $50 million over the next 10 years. The IPL has different revenue sharing formula for the money it earns from the media rights.

Team Rules
The IPL has defined team rule, and the rules of competition, which offers equal playing field for all the teams. Some of the Team composition rules are:

The IPL teams is constitute of 16 players plus one physiotherapist and a coach. The team can have foreign players, at most four players from the playing XI, minimum of four local players must be part of the team, and not less than four players from the BCCI under-22 pool in each team. Moreover, team can have maximum of eight foreign players. The IPL board has also accorded icon status to five indian players, they are – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag. Icon players are to be paid 15% more than the highest paid player in their respective teams. The IPL apart from the team structure the franchisee have assigned budget to spend on buying players. The total spending cap for a franchisee in the first player auction was US $5m. Under-22 players are to be remunerated with a minimum annual salary of US $20,000 while for others it is US $50,000.

To know more about the rules please visit http://www.iplt20.com/rules-of-the-competition.htmla

There were a few instances when the teams had difference of opinions; otherwise the IPL was a huge success. All teams played the game well within the defined IPL rules.

Franchises
24th January 2005 The IPL announced the winning bidders for the eight franchises. The official list of franchise owners announced and the winning bids were as follows.

• Mumbai Indians  - Reliance Industries – $111.9 million
• Royal Challengers Bangalore  - UB group – $111.6 million
• Hyderabad Deccan Chargers  - Deccan Chronicle – $107 million
• Chennai Super Kings  - India Cements and N Srinivasan – $91 million
• Delhi Daredevils  - GMR Holdings – $84 million
• Kings XI Punjab  - Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, Karan Paul, and Mohit Burman – $76 million
• Kolkata Knight Riders  - Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla Mehta and Jai Mehta – $75.09 million
• Rajasthan Royals  - Emerging Media: (A.R Jha, Lachlan Murdoch, Suresh Chellaram) – $67 million

Franchise Earnings
The first season that concluded on June 1 2008 was a huge success for the IPL. It should be noted that during the first season no one had expected the franchises to break even since most of them had invested huge amounts, but even then the table below shows that some of them are already profitable from Season one. Commenting on the financial performance and success of The Indian Premier League, Lalit Modi, Chairman & League Commissioner says: “I’m no financial analyst, but given the huge success of the league, and its future potential, I would venture to say that franchisees bought assets that were heavily under priced.”

All Figures are in crores
Mumbai Indians – Net Loss – 16 Crores(To be profitable in season 2)
Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 20
c. Gate Receipts – 14
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 69
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 45
b. Team – 20
c. Advertising & Admin – 20
Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 85

Royal Challengers Bangalore – Net Loss – 43(To be profitable in season 4)
Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 0
c. Gate Receipts – 10
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 45
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 48
b. Team Expenses – 22
c. Advertising/Admin – 18
Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 88

Hyderabad Deccan Chargers – Net Loss – 18 Crores (To be profitable in season 3)
Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 17 ;
c. Gate Receipts – 12
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 64
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 45
b. Team Expenses – 24
c. Advertising/Admin – 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 82

Chennai Super Kings
Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 25
c. Gate Receipts – 12.8
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 72.8
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 36
b. Team Expenses – 24
c. Advertising/Admin – 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 73

Delhi Daredevils – Net Loss – 6.6 Crores (To be profitable in season 2)
Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 20
c. Gate Receipts – 15.4
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 70.4
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 34
b. Team Expenses – 23
c. Advertising/Admin – 20
Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 77

Kings XI Punjab – Net Loss – 2.4 Crores (To be profitable in season 2)
Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 22
c. Gate Receipts – 9
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 66
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 30.4
b. Team Expenses – 25
c. Advertising/Admin – 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 68.4

Kolkata Knight Riders – – Net Profit INR 13 Crores
Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 34
c. Gate Receipts – 20
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 89
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 31
b. Team Expenses – 25
c. Advertising/Admin – 20

Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 76

Rajasthan Royals – Net Profit INR 6 Crores

Revenues
a. Broadcasting Rights – 35
b. Team Sponsors – 16
c. Gate Receipts – 8
Total Revenues(a+b+c) – 59
Expenses
a. Franchise Fees – 27
b. Team Expenses – 13
c. Advertising/Admin – 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) – 53

This is how the franchises made money in IPL season one, to discover it better please refer to Business Today May 14 -July 03, 2008 Issue.

End of Season One
Modeled on English Premier League, The Indian Premier League season one was great success. The over all success of the concept in long run is dependent on the creation of club culture. Creating club culture is not a one day exercise. It will take some time. The Indian Premier League organizers and franchisee are looking forward for the similar success of The Indian Premier League in season two. Lalit Modi, Chairman & League Commissioner, Indian Premier League, with high expectation announced that the tentative dates for the second season of the DLF Indian Premier League. The second season will start from April 10th, 2009. The format of the tournament would remain unchanged from the 2008 season format. The eight franchisees will first play against one another in a league on home-and-away basis. The top four teams will then figure in the two semi-finals and a final.

Akbar Birbal remixed

Rajshri Media

Rajshri Media is the digital entertainment arm of the 60-year old Rajshri group, one of India’s oldest, largest and most successful Film and TV Studios. It also has successful operations in TV production and music publishing. The group has produced over 50 films till date many of which have attained significant commercial and critical success.

Rajshri Media is one of the leading Internet and Mobile Studios of India. The company runs India’s leading broadband video streaming and download portal http://www.rajshri.com their Internet and Mobile videos are also available at their Youtube channel – http://www.youtube.com/rajshri.

Akbar Birbal remixed: A new beginning

Gone are the days of TV serials; its age of Internet and mobile serials. Rajshri Media, India’s leading Web and Mobile Studio, has launched Akbar Birbal remixed. The Akbar Birbal remixed is 3 minute a piece 90 episode series. The Akbar Birbal remixed, set in the by-lanes of Bhendi Bazar in Mumbai.

The show revolves around a loud and brazen don – Akbar Anna, and his intelligent , witty and ever-bankable sidekick – Birbal Bhaiya. Each day, to them, begins with it a new nut to crack. Doesn’t it sound like Akbar-Birbal, and Muna Bhai – Circuit combination? The first 10 episodes are live on http://www.rajshri.com and their Youtube channel which is http://www.youtube.com/rajshri. In addition, it will be launched soon on MMS and SMS via Idea Cellular.

Rajshri would reformat the content for audio and text and will be distributing it to Idea for 3 months, thereafter going live across other operators. The content will be released initially on Internet and mobile and subsequently formatted for TV, home video and Radio.

Mobile Value Added Services demands Level playing field with Telecoms

The value added services industry has contributed significantly to the growth and adoption of mobile telephony in India. It has also helped telecom sector clock additional revenue. Hence, it is imperative to have a level playing field between large telecommunication and small Mobile Value Added Services companies. Based on the fact the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has sought a level playing field between the telecom operators and the value added services companies. They strongly believe that it is imperative for the growth and sustainability of mobile telephony in India.

IAMAI has asked for a faster process of obtaining shortcodes, standardisation of the terms and conditions of access and interconnection and a transparent revenue sharing model between operators and Mobile Value Added Services players. IAMAI has also said that there should be some additional obligations on the current licensees in terms of maintaining a level playing field, otherwise, the MVAS industry should be treated as the single largest users of telecom services and their rights should be protected.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

ACL Wireless Limited

ACL established in 2000 is a privately owned company funded by IAVM, with strategic investments from Naspers/MIH. It employs over 240 people and is headquartered in Delhi.
ACL Wireless is a mobile VAS player in managed mobility and community messaging service across 21 countries. It works with Airtel in India, MTC-Vodafone in Middle East, Claro in Brazil and AIS in Thailand. ACL Wireless offers interactive SMS & voice response along with permission based SMS broadcasts & alerts. ACL wireless offerings also includes service creation and operation for enterprises and operator VAS, billing & content aggregation. Its community & messaging services suite includes: mobile chat, mobile social networking, mobile photo sharing and internet messengers on mobile available across GPRS & SMS mediums.
ACL has partnerships with Gemalto, Smart Trust, Eposs and Unified Communications which enable it to develop cutting edge products and distribute them globally.

Bharti Telesoft

Bharti Telesoft, established in 1999 is owned by Bharti Enterprises, venture capital investors Sequoia Capital and Cisco. Bharti Telesoft offers software products and services to wireless and wireline operators.
In 2002, Bharti Telesoft acquired CellCloud Technologies, a leader in the field of prepaid recharge solutions and in 2007, acquired Jataayu a leading player in the mobile Internet space, to bolster its portfolio of Internet and VAS applications for mobile operators and handset manufacturers. Bharti Telesoft has deployed solutions for over 100 mobile operator customers in more than 60 countries worldwide. Its solutions help power services to over 500 million mobile subscribers globally. It has a strong sales and marketing focus in the Asia Pacific region, Russia and the CIS, the Middle- East, Africa, Europe and Latin America. It has its R&D facilities at New Delhi, Banglore and Mumbai.
Bharti Telesoft is works on number of services including SMS router, voice SMS, SMS chat, and Live video services, P2P transactions including balance transfer, music sharing and videos sharing. mCommerce and Live TV to mobile are the key focus areas for future growth.

Indiagames

Indiagames Ltd is India’s benchmark mobile and online gaming company The Company is engaged in publishing and developing games across various platforms including Online through its portal www.indiagames.com, and Mobile. Majority of Indiagames revenues comes from international markets as in India industry is still in its nascent stage. The company plans to tap the growing mobile market in India and is investing heavily in generating awareness about games among mobile users. Indiagames is targeting 50% market share in mobile gaming business by 2010.
Indiagames has over 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, London, Los Angeles & Beijing. Indiagames’ distribute its product through partnerships with mobile operators in over 75 countries. The key investors of Indiagames include UTV, Adobe Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.

Mauj

Mauj established in 2003, as a digital media entertainment company. It is the wireless division of the People group with interests across very well known internet businesses in India like (Shaadi.com, Fropper.com) and Film Production (People Pictures). MAUJ has developed partnerships with more than 25 operators and portals worldwide. The Company specializes in Mobile games both in the domestic as well as international markets. The company currently develops over 20 original titles every month and also has marketing rights for 800 international mobile games. The company has one of the strongest management teams as well as infrastructure in this industry and employs approximately 150 people in its offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Dubai, London, and New York.
Mauj offers services in three areas: Mobile Content & Applications aggregation and repurposing which includes Games, Wallpapers, Ringtones, News, Matrimonial; Mobile Software & Services which provides Middleware Solutions, Roaming Applications, SMS Gateways; and Mobile Media Solutions which includes Advertising and Branding Opportunities.

OnMobile

OnMobile, Incubated at Infosys in 2000, is headquartered in Bangalore. It is the first Indian telecom VAS company to go public. OnMobile also has offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore, Paris, Jakarta, London, Kuala Lumpur, Seattle and Sydney. OnMobile is India’s largest white labeled VAS company for Mobile, Landline and Media Service Providers. OnMobile offers integrated platform across various technology silos traditionally found in Telco’s infrastructure for up selling and improving user experience. On Mobile services include: Managed Services like infrastructure, operations, SLA management, fault management etc. for telcos; Marketing Support Services which include Mobile 1-to-1 marketing, Event based opportunity analysis, execution of marketing services, Content Aggregation and Management for their enterprises customers; and Mobile Media, and mCommerce.
The acquisition of French data products company Voxmobili has further strengthened the product portfolio with products like Phone Backup, Network Address Book & Mobile Paparazzi – deployed with many global carriers like Orange, AT&T, France Telecom, T-Mobile, Wanadoo, & Turkcell.

Phoneytunes

Phoneytunes offers mobile content services, content management solutions, premium billing platforms. Phoneytunes has a state-of-art technology development center in New Delhi. Phoneytunes is among the top and most respected players in the Telecom VAS domain with a series of highly innovative, high feature and revenue generating services and platforms helping carriers and operators globally with powerful technological solutions. The key values while designing solutions include helping operators with increase in revenues and reduction in costs. Phoneytunes focus on: Development Platforms which include BREW, SMS, Symbian MMS platforms, online charging platforms, portal frameworks; Content creation & aggregation which offer mobile content and interactive voice recognition systems, Customized polyphonic and monophonic ringtones creation, wallpapers, video downloads; Application Development that include Utility applications like SMS gateways & SMS applications. Fun Applications like SMS / WAP Games & Chat/ Dating engines; and Other services including mobile secrets, phone tricks, lost mobile reporting board and a discussion forum.

Webaroo

Webaroo established in June 2004 has developed several market leading products. Some have already achieved significant market attraction. Webaroo employs approximately 150 people in its offices in India and USA. Webaroo’s founders include Silicon Valley based experienced serial entrepreneurs Rakesh Mathur (founder of Armedia, Junglee, Stratify) and Beerud Sheth (founder of Elance). Webaroo’s management includes world-class, highly-experienced executives with decades of experience in building and managing high-growth companies. Webaroo has offices in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Mumbai and Delhi. Webaroo develops mobile software and services for consumers across the world. With a large and rapidly growing user-base, it offers advertisers — unprecedented mobile reach and targeting. Its core offering include SMS GupShup service that enables creation of groups of any size and allow communication with all group members at a cost of a single SMS sent by the group creator; Webaroo Software enables users to browse and search web content offline which is compressed for consumption on laptops, PDAs or smartphones. Since these features are built on an SMS platform, it can be used even on the most basic and low-end phones.

Cellebrum

Spice Mobile VAS (formerly Cellebrum)
The spice group promoted company has recently gone through rebranding and is now called as ‘Spice Mobile VAS’. The company is headquartered in Parwanoo in HP. Spice Mobile VAS has presence in 10 countries and employs around 450 people. Its corporate office is in Noida and registered office is in New Delhi. It also has regional offices in Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow and Bangalore. Spice Mobile VAS is a technology enabler in wireless application space. The company develops applications for three main segments – voice based services, messaging and roaming.

PayMate

PayMate established in 2006 is a Mumbai based wireless transactions platform provider. It spin-off from Coruscant Tec, to on wireless content. PayMate has created a viable ecosystem to enable wireless transactions connecting banks, switches, merchants and customers using a simple, secure and seamless technology.
PayMate portfolio includes products like GiftMate, FlyBuySms and many more value added services which go beyond just payments to stuff like mobile shopping and gifting. The primary offerings of PayMate are : one, Payment Services where consumers can use their credit card via mobile phones for in-person and remote purchases and transactions like shop online, buy movie & airline tickets, pay bills at restaurants and retail stores, etc. Two, Gift Mate, a mobile voucher, which enables one to gift money to anyone with a mobile phone which can then be spent at over 3,000 online and offline stores.

Mobile Value Added Services

In the early years telecom revolution piggybacked on booming Indian economy, increased disposable income, proliferation of mobile devices, and reduction in call rates. The scenario has changed; Indian mobile users are very comfortable in using their phones and want to exercise option other than the basic voice applications. Today, the mobile phone has become a truly personal device and Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) has become an extension of persona. Currently Mobile Value Added Services accounts for 10-12 percent of the operator’s revenue. Industry research on MVAS suggest that, in the next 10 years it will contribute around 60 percent of the telecom operator’s revenue. They believe innovative mobile content and applications are the only way to keep a subscriber glued to particular services. In India, the revenue from MVAS is expected to increase to USD 348.8 M in 2009, at a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 percent. The prominent players of the industry are ACL Wireless, Active Media, Air2Web, AOL Mobile, Cellebrum, Cellnext, Hungama Mobile, IMIMobile, Indiatimes Mobile, Jataayu, Mauj, Mobile365, One97, OnMobile, Phoneytunes, Roamware.

MVAS in India has grown from the early days of SMS to host of other services including wallpapers downloads, ring tones, caller ring back tones, SMS contests, and games. For better understanding of the MVAS, it can be divided into basic and advanced services.

Basic MVAS includes SMS and Mobile music. Growth of SMS traffic is a direct result of high voice traffic with SMS as it is priced substantially below call tariffs. This has led to extensive use of SMS based services by the operators, especially the reality shows. Indian Film Industry, electoral campaign, and Sports sponsors. The other prominent basic MVAS is Mobile music. It comprises ring tones, caller ring-back tones, and music clips.
Advanced MVAS include mobile TV/video, full-motion videos, wireless teleconferencing, multi-player online games, and m-commerce. These services typically require high bandwidth and a superior level of support technology. The introduction of 3G will help operatrs enhance features of SMS based IM’s, Stock Alerts, Chat Applications, Examination results, Movie Ticketing.

VALUE CHAIN
There are multiple stakeholders playing across the MVAS value chain many with overlapping roles and functions. A well demarcated value chain of MVAS is yet to evolve. The main stakeholders involved in the vas value chain are:

Content owners: At the first level of the MVAS value chain are the content owners, which develop original copyright content. There are different forms of content providers. First in the list is the original copyright content developer like music production houses – Tseries, BIG Music, SaReGaMa, Sony; bollywood production houses – Adlabs, Yash Raj and other media houses – Star, NDTV, Zee, and TV18. There are other set of players who are customized content creators for the mobile value added services. They are the companies who generate customized content for users through their own portals like Mauj, One 97, and Hungama Mobile.

Mobile operators: They provide transport and support mechanisms for delivery of mobile content. Most operators are now trying to innovate their Value Added Services offerings and create sharper differentiation for their offerings. Most of the basic content available to the end users revolves ringtones of popular bollywood songs, wallpapers of movie, and games developed around movie themes.

Technology enablers: They provide technology platforms that enable access to MVAS. They are content portals or content aggregators. These are organizations that gather web content and distribute content to suit customer needs like hungama Mobile, Indiatimes , OnMobile, Bharti Telesoft, Webaroo, etc.

Handset manufacturers: Mobile handset manufacturers also play an important role by including embedding software links in their handsets, allowing direct access to content portals, creating services customized to the need of certain regions, etc

BARRIERS TO GROWTH OF MVAS IN INDIA
In India, the VAS industry is still don’t have a proper process or common benchmark. Furthermore, the revenue sharing is a major issue. It stems from the fact that the operators charge low revenue from the end user leading to lower revenue share with MVAS. The industry has attracted many players, leading to the competition which is driving down the revenue share. Few other challenges are to show the customer value beyond mobile entertainment, establish MVAS standards, copyright protection initiatives. The challenges that need the immediate attention of key stakeholders are:

Copyright protection: In India, the regulatory framework for copyright protection continues to remain weak despite the extension of existing copyright laws to content. The MVAS industry requires a stringent regulatory framework in place, to encourage the flow of branded content to consumers. The protected MVAS content will lead to increased revenues from data services, stop customer churn and motivate MVAS provider to investment in innovative.

Low feature handsets: In India, the mobile subscriber base is growing, a large chunk of the market is opting for basic low feature handsets in spite of the fact that handset prices are coming down. According to the India Mobile Handset Usage Satisfaction Study 2006, an integrated digital camera, FM Radio, and speaker phone features remain the most likely upgrade drivers. The poor penetration of feature-rich mobile handsets is a barrier to the growth of MVAS in India.

Transparency in revenue sharing arrangements: In Indian market the biggest area of concern is the skewed revenue sharing models where the content providers have to share revenue with content aggregator and service provider. The Indian MVAS industry needs to take a close look at best practices in developed markets like China, Japan, and other European nations to design a fair revenue distribution system. There is a need to create a transparent framework with a fair system of payouts to different stakeholders across the value chain.

Focus on youth and entertainment: The MVAS market in India continues to be focused on entertainment – movies, music and sports which cater to the needs of the younger consumer segment. There is a need to focus on information VAS and transactional VAS (M-commerce), which will ensure uniform growth among all consumer segments. MVAS should create applications for niche segments, which will create real value for the subscribers.

Absence of utility services: The cost of Entertainment VAS, which has a high perceived value, is high but over a period of time as customers get used to it, the willingness to pay high amounts may come down and then MVAS will have to shift focus from Entertainment VAS to other utility services. These are the services which have a high practical value. They services mainly fall in the category of mCommerce and to some extent Infotainment. The future belongs to services providing value to the customer exploiting the mobility factor.

Lack of Infrastructure: There are a lot of services which cannot be introduced in India because of lack of supporting infrastructure. The major roadblock in providing quality content to the end user has been the availability of bandwidth. Most of the applications are not able to provide the optimum user experience due to bandwidth issue, which makes streaming and downloading practically impossible.

THE FUTURE OF MVAS IN INDIA
In years to come MVAS will see a lot of structural changes, consolidation and emergence of cutting edge services. At present biggest pie of the MVAS revenue goes to the mobile operators but in years to come they will lose prominence in the value chain. The market for Content Aggregators will consolidate and with their better bargaining power, this will ensure a revenue shift from Operators to Aggregators in the value chain. In MVAS content there will be shift from entertainment MVAS to interactive MVAS. However mobile gaming will continue to grow and will contribute a higher share to the VAS pie. The other big change is emergence of regional content. The regional content is giving a significant boost to the content market especially in the entertainment category. With all these changes the MVAS industry is about to mature.

Bollywood

The beginning of journey
July 7 1896, the Lumiere Brothers’ Chinematographe unveiled six soundless short films at Watson Hotel, Esplanade Mansion, Bombay. This was the first rendezvou of celluloid in camera with the Indian audience. It was followed by Harishchandra Bhatvadekar two short films exhibition in 1899. The other vetran film makers of the time were – Hiralal Sen, F.B. Thanawalla, J.F. Madan, Abdullah Esoofally, N.G. Chitre and R.G. Torney. May 18, 1912 the film maker N.G. Chitre and R.G. Torney released a silent feature film Pundalik which was half British in its make.

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (Dada Saheb Phalke) produced India’s first fully indigenous silent feature film Raja Harishchandra with titles in Hindi and English. The film was realeased on May 3 1913 at the Coronation Cinema, Bombay. The twenties witnessed emergence of many new companies and film makers viz. Dhiren Ganguly, Baburao Painter, Suchet Singh, Chandulal Shah, Ardershir Israni, and V. Santharam.

Bollywood got the voice

The first Indian talkie Alam Ara produced by the Imperial film company and directed by Ardershir Irani. Alam Ara was released on March 14, 1931 at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay. The year 1931 also marked the beginning of the talking ear in Bengali (Jumai Shasthi), Telugu (Bhakta Prahlad) and Tamil (Kalidass). The thirties also witnessed the release of the first talkie films in Marathi (Ayodhiyecha Raja) in 1932, Gujarathi (Narasinh Mehta) in 1932, Kannada (Dhurvkumar) in 1934, Oriya (Sita Bibaha) in 1934, Assamese (Joymati) in 1935, Punjabi (Sheila) in 1935, and Malayalam (Balan) in 1938. in 1937 Ardeshir Irani attempted colour picture Kisan Kanya bur color picture became reality only in sixties.

In the 30’s three major film centres developed which were based in Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata) and Madras (Chennai). Of these centres, Bombay became the centre of the Hindi-Urdu film, while the other cinemas began to be regarded as local or regional films. The thirties also witnessed emergence of three big banners – Prabhat, Bombay Talkies, and New Theatres. These theaters took the lead in making serious but entertaining films. The studio system thrived in Bombay until the late 40s. The independent producer, identified potential of the star as the critical box-office factor, and began to chase them for their movies. The stars also realized their value and hiked their prices to unheard of levels. The changed trend continued to the present Indian film industry.

The fourties saw the emergence of the ‘playback singing’. With emergence of playback singing music became an important ingredient in Indian cinema. The playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Muhammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar dominated the Hindi film industry for decades. This was the historic decade for cinematography all over India. Some memorable films were produced during the forties such as Shantharam’s Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, Mehboob’s Roti, Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar, Uday Shanker’s Kalpana, Abbas’s Dharti Ke Lal, Sohrab Modi’s Sikander, Pukar and Prithvi Vallabh, J.B.H. Wadia’s Court Dancer, S.S. Vasan’s Chandralekha, Vijay Bhatt’s Bharat Milap and Ram Rajya, Rajkapoor’s Barsaat and Aag.

Shaheed (1948), Barsaat (1949), Mahal (1949), Andaz (1949), Kismet (1943), Sikander (1941), Pukar (1939), Achut Kanya ( 1936), Devdas (1935), Toofan Mail (1934), Alam Ara (1931).

Golden Age of Bollywood
The fifties was the era of neorealism, which was evident in some distinguished films like Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin, Devadas and Madhumati, Rajkapoor’s Boot Polish, Shri-420 and Jagte Raho, V. Shantharam’s Do Aankhen Barah Haath and Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje, Mehbood’s Mother India. The importance of 1950s in history of bollywood can’t be ignored. This was the dacade of growth and recognition. The first International Film Festival of India held in early 1952 at Bombay which was followed by the Satyajit Ray’s classic Pather Panchali in 1955. The Pather Panchali bagged the Cannes award for best human document followed by an unprecedented crop of foreign and national awards. The decade also witnessed transition to colour and the consequent preference for escapist entertainment and greater reliance on stars brought about a complete change in the film industry. In 1959, Guru Dutt makes India’s first cinemascope film, Kaagaz Ke Phool. The transition to colour and the consequent preference for escapist entertainment and greater reliance on stars brought about a complete change in the film industry.

The sixties began with a bang with the release of K. Asif’s Mughal-E-Azam which set a record at the box-office. It was followed by notable productions which include romantic musical and melodramas of a better quality. But over all the sixties was a decade of mediocre films made mostly to please the distributors and to some extent, meet the demands of the box office. The 50s and 60s are regarded as the “Golden Age” of Indian cinema, in terms of films, stars, music and lyrics. This era saw the emergence of director/producers such as Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Mehboob Khan, BR Chopra and Bimal Roy; great actors like Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand – the holy trinity; and film musicians like Shanker-Jaikishen, Naushad, S D Burman. During the same time a new group of film makers emerged on the Hindi cinema. Notable amongst them are Basu Chatterji, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Avtar Kaul, Basu Bhattacharya, M.S. Sathyu, Shyam Benegal, and Kanthilal Rathod. In Calcutta, following the trend set by Ray, Ghatak and Sen, Tapan Sinha and Tarun Majumdar also made some note worthy films. Among actors Rajesh Khanna becomes new boxoffice god with Aradhana.

Aradhana (1969), Do Raaste (1969), Khamoshi (1969), Padosan (1968), Ram Aur Shyam (1967), An Evening in Paris (1967), Jewel Thief (1967), Farz (1967), Upkar (1967), Teesri Manzil (1966), Mera Saaya (1966), Waqt (1965), Guide (1965), Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), Sangam (1964), Haqeeqat (1964), Bandini (1963), Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), Ganga Jamuna (1961), Junglee (1961), Kanoon (1960), Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Sujata (1959), Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), Madhumati (1958), Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958), Pyaasa (1957), Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957), Mother India (1957), Chori Chori (1956), Jagte Raho (1956), Kabuliwalla (1956), C.I.D. (1956), Devdas (1955, Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje (1955), Shree 420 (1955), Aar Paar (1954), Do Bigha Zameen (1953) Aan (1952), Baazi (1951), Awaara (1951)

Next three Decades
The seventies started with Pakeezah – a cult classic. Indian film industry, during the decade, got sponsorship from government which allowed Indian parallel cinema to gain strenghth. This gifted Indian film industry a few finest actors of all time viz. Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Om Puri, Naseerudin Shah. The new wave cinema seems to have reached its peak towards the end of the seventies with film makers like Govind Nihalani, Saeed Mirza, Rabindra Dharmaraj, Sai Paranjpe, Muzafar Ali, and Biplab Roy. The decade also saw the rise of India’s greatest superstar, Amitabh Bachchan – the angry young man. The majority of the films of the decade were action oriented with revenge as the dominating theme.

The eighties belong to working-class audiences, mostly to male audiences. The decade saw largely action movie, disco dancing, and rape-revenge movies. The increasing availability of the audiocassette during this decade led to a revival in film music and the return to popularity of the teen romance. The 80s and 90s also belongs to new generation of younger stars – Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan – who dominated the bollywood.

The emergence of colour television, videocassettes, and penetration of audiocassette in the 1980s changed the landscape of the bollywood. The audience during this decade mostly preferred watching movies at home. The trend changed once again in the ninties, which saw return of threaters, despite popularity of satellite and cable television. The family audience was coaxed back into the cinemas by a policy of video-holdback and the refurbishment of the cinema halls.

A new wave of film makers from South Indian studios began to release dubbed versions of their films. These films were major commercial successes in the north. At the forefront of these was Mani Ratnam’s Bombay. By the end of the 1990s it was clear that the only films which could compete with Hollywood at home and abroad will survive.

The decade saw emergence of the Shah Rukh Khan who revolutionises negative hero in Baazigar and Darr. He once again sets the trend of urbane, feelsmart movies with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. The decade also discovered a new teenage heart-throb – Hrithik Roshan.

Sargam (1979), Gol Maal (1979), Don (1978), Trishul (1978), Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), Dharam Veer (1977), Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin (1977), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977), Kabhi Kabhi (1976), Chitchor (1976), Julie (1975), Chupke Chupke (1975), Aandhi (1975), Sholay (1975), Jai Santoshi Maa (1975), Deewaar (1975), Roti Kapda Aur Makaan (1974), Garam Hawa (1973), Yaadon Ki Baraat (1973), Abhimaan (1973), Zanjeer (1973), Bobby (1973), Jugnu (1973), Shor (1972), Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), Pakeezah (1972), Caravan (1972), Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971), Kati Patang (1971), Anand (1971), Guddi (1971), Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971), Purab Aur Paschim (1971), Sachaa Jhutha (1970), Mera Naam Joker (1970), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Chandni (1989), Parinda (1989), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Salaam Bombay (1988), Mr. India (1987), Naam (1986), Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), Saagar (1985), Betaab (1983), Hero (1983), Masoom (1983), Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983), Woh Saat Din (1983), Nikaah (1982), Prem Rog (1982), Satte Pe Satta (1982), Arth (1982), Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981), Kalyug (1980 film) (1981), Kranti (1981), Naseeb (1981), Umrao Jaan (1981), Qurbani (1980), Biwi No.1 (1999), Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Soldier (1998), Border (1997), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Gupt (1997), Pardes (1997), Raja Hindustani (1996), Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi (1996), Rangeela (1995), Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Karan Arjun (1995), Coolie No. 1 (1995), Mohra (1994), Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994), Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke (1993), Aankhen (1993), Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander (1991), Aaj Ka Arjun (1990), Aashiqui (1990), Dil (1990), Ghayal (1990). Taal (1999), Sarfarosh (1999), Dil Se (1998), Hyderabad Blues (1998), Virasat (1997), Maachis (1996), Khamoshi: The Musical (1996), Bombay (1995), 1942 A Love Story (1994), Roja (1992), Prahaar (1991).

The Indian film Industry

The unorganized Indian film industry got industry status in 2001, which helped it grow faster. The growth in this decade is fueled by the more professionally approach in financing, production and other allied activities. It helped the new age film makers produce films like Dil Chahta Hai, Dhoom, Black, Bunty aur Babli, Rang De Basanti. Some of the largest production houses like Adlabs, UTV Movies, Yash Raj Films, Dharma Productions were the producers of these new modern films which touched new heights in terms of quality cinematography, innovative story lines, and technical quality advances. Moreover the hunger for cinema amongst the expatriate Indians encouraged film producers and distributors to produce and distribute films for them. Consequently, there have been a series of films like Mississippi Masala, Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding, and The Guru. Few of these films did very well internationally and helped Indian cinema connect globally. It not only attracted global audiences but also global film makers, distributors, exhibitors.

The current practice of movie making in India viz. contractual relation, industry regulations, piracy and copy right laws is distinctly different from the global norms. In current scenario it becomes important for the Indian film industry to upgrade their regulations matching the global norms.

Race (2008), Jodhaa Akbar (2008), Om Shanti Om(2007), Welcome (2007), Chak De India(2007), Partner (2007), Bhool Bhulaiyaa(2007), Heyy Babyy (2007), Taare Zameen Par (2007), Guru(2007), Life In A… Metro (2007), Gandhi, My Father(2007), Johnny Gaddaar (2007), Eklavya (2007), Dhoom 2(2006), Lage Raho Munna Bhai(2006), Krrish (2006),Fanaa (2006), Rang De Basanti (2006), Don (2006), Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), Vivah(2006), Dor (2006), Corporate (2006),Omkara (2006), Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006), Bunty Aur Babli(2005), Salaam Namaste (2005), Black (2005), Iqbal (2005), Parineeta(2005), Sarkar (2005), Veer-Zaara(2004), Main Hoon Na(2004), Mujhse Shaadi Karogi(2004), Dhoom(2004), Murder(2004), Yuva(2004), Lakshya(2004), Dev (2004), Swades (2004), Phir Milenge (2004),Koi… Mil Gaya(2003), Kal Ho Naa Ho(2003), Baghban(2003),Munnabhai M.B.B.S. (2003), Andaaz(2003), Pinjar(2003), Devdas(2002), Raaz(2002), Kaante (2002), Aankhen(2002), Saathiya(2002), Company (2002), Gadar(2001), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham(2001), Lagaan(2001), Chandni Bar(2001), Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai(2000), Mohabbatein(2000), Mission Kashmir(2000), Kya Kehna(2000), Hera Pheri (2000), Astitva (2000), Fiza(2000),

Changing face of Indian advertising mascots

Air India’s Maharaja which came into existence in the year 1946 and the Amul girl in 1967 are the mascots which captured the hearts of one and all in India. These mascots caught the attention of the consumers as they were charming and connected well with the consumers. Indian corporate have also seen few other mascots like Fido the cool swanky doodle of 7 Up, doughboy the sweet little butler of Godrej Pillsbury, Gattu who build brand Asian Paint, Chintamani who endorsed ICICI, Sunny who is creating magic with Sunfeast. The success of these mascots can be qualified by, the increase in the brand value of these brands consumer connect.

Decline of mascot power
The Indian market grew at a fast pace in nineties everything from pencils to cars, salt to luxury goods required an advertising campaign this was the time when we saw emergence of celebrity advertising and mascots lost their appeal. We also lived in a time when there was no argument regarding the fact that a celebrity can make or break a brand. The pampering and recognition given to the celebrity in the marketing of the product in some cases was even greater than the product itself. The advertising world, during this time strongly believed that the celebrities transfer their success, personality, status and power to the brand. They attributed reasons for the growth of celebrity endorsements to:
• Create great brand awareness for product
• Sustaining the brand image
• Stimulating and reviving brands
• Product association

However, the advertising world also realized that many brand ambassadors does not practice what they preach and sometimes controversies and unpleasant incidents connected with the celebrity causes damage. It is also observed that over exposure and multiple endorsements too can damage the image of product. The Indian market which is saturated with celebrity endorsements has seen emergence of the mascots.

Emergence of the mascots
The courage and optimism that common man of R. K. Laxman portrays and a middle-class Indian, that Chintamani portrays is certainly unmatched but the new age mascots are more attractive, and trendy. The advertisers have become more creative with the use of animation. The new age mascots have a lasting appeal and create a whole new persona for the product. They manage the product as efficiently as a celebrity. Moreover, in the current marketing scenario when the celebrity charisma diminishing away the world of advertising is turning back to mascots.

Celebrities get associated with too many products and therefore it is difficult to relate them with one particular brand, which is not the case with the mascots. For an example Shahrukh Khan endorse brands such as Pepsi, Airtel, Santro, Emami , and many more but Fido is just associated with 7Up. The strength of mascots lies in its uniqueness, and its power of effectively communicating the ethos of the brand like, Chintamani solves all our worries related to tax savings and good returns paving a new way for no chinta, Share Khan tell us how to smartly invest in stocks and reap rich dividends, Gattu with the brush in his hand and the smile on his face passes the message that a bright coat of paint will brighten up the house. Moreover the mascots are not as expensive as celebrities. The cost of creating these characters is as low as development of a normal commercial. Lowe Advertising creative director Delna Sethna claims that the first Chintamani ad cost around Rs 7 lakh. Moreover, the animated characters also give more scope for creative-flexibility.

Mascots are dynamic and they adapt with changing times. We should acknowledge how the Amul girl in polka dots has changed overtime, and Fido has makeovers with the changing time. The advertising world has also observed that the popularity of any mascot is not only based on the response they get, but also depend on the fact that these faces have a higher recall value.

Conclusion
The Amul girl was born in 1967 is still a popular mascot. She may soon enter into the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest campaign to survive in the market. This goes on to prove that the mascots are more appropriate brand ambassadors. The impact and success of the mascot, depends on how effectively it conveys the brand values and the ideals that consumers would associate with.

Mobile Phone – The Fourth Screen

Birth of Fourth Screen
2007, Barcelona, Spain hosted the 3GSM World Congress. It marked the entry of the Indian film industry into the GSM communication arena. At this event, Indian film industry showcased its first film specially created for mobile phone users across the world. No wonder the 3GSM World Congress also witnessed the birth of Fourth Screen (the Silver Screen, TV, PC, and now Mobile screen) in India. This move is expected to have a huge impact not only on the Indian mobile phone market but also on the media industry. The emergence of the Fourth Screen can be seen as the first step towards Indian film industry‘s foray into the mobile entertainment market. It also marked the emergence of the mobile phone from merely a communication device to becoming a major source of entertainment.

First Movie on Fourth Screen
The movie showcased at the 3GSM World Congress was Dus Kahaniyaan. It is one of innovative story telling initiative which was tailored for mobile devices. Dus Kahaniyaan was produced by one of the leading Bollywood producers Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay Gupta’s entry in the mobile entertainment market was supported by GSMA, Roamware Inc., and Hungama Mobile. MVAS company, Roamware helped producers of Dus Kahaniyaan. in integrating the film content into the mobile phone through its ‘Media Call’ technology. Hungama helped in publishing the mobile phone content. The mobile VAS providers – Roamware, and Hungama Mobile saw tremendous potential in Bollywood movies. They believed that formatting the content for the mobile audience would increase the reach of the movie. The features like simplicity of delivery ease of use, and accessibility provides the fourth screen edge over others.

The fourth screen has also hit serials. This is the age of Internet and mobile serials, Rajshri Media, India’s leading Web and Mobile Studio, has launched Akbar Birbal remixed. The Akbar Birbal remixed is 3 minute a piece 90 episode series. The Akbar Birbal remixed, set in the by-lanes of Bhendi Bazar in Mumbai. (Read report on http://chaturvedibraj.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/akbar-birbal-remixed-a-new-beginning/)

MVAS to play critical role in development of Fourth Screen
The MVAS market in India is fragmented and each player have unique value offering. These MVAS providers can join hands and develop a pool which jointly offers complete entertainment package. In the case of Dus Kahaniyaan two different MVAS players – Hungama Mobile had experience in content publishing and Roamware had global reach, collaborated to develop the offerings.

Handset Manufacturers role in development of Fourth Screen
While mobile entertainment companies have been developing interesting content for the mobile phone users, mobile handset companies have tried to come out with the latest technologies that support such offerings. In late 2007, Nokia entered into an agreement with leading Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan for making movie clips, ring tones, wallpapers for his film, Om Shanti Om.

Conclusion
Mobile entertainment is poised to drive not only mobile entertainment industry in a big way but also attracting advertisers who are also viewing it as an attractive new media channel.