Jai Ho for Slumdog Millionaire at the Oscars

“It felt like an Indian movie awards function”
-Anil Kapoor

And why not?! Slumdog Millionaire – a movie that has an almost all-Indian cast and crew swept 8 awards of its 10 nominations at the Oscar night. It was a moment of pride for every Indian to see Rahman and Resul Pookutty walk the stage to receive their awards. It was heartwarming when Anil Kapoor, Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and the amazing child artists were up on the stage to accept the Best Picture Award, along with Danny Boyle. It was a night that belonged to Indian talent.

Yet the Indian audience’s opinion on Slumdog’s success is divided. While to many it’s a masterpiece, many others found the film to be nothing more than a feel-good movie. Though Slumdog tries to depict the morbid and dark side of life existing in India, yet its underlying theme of “from rags to riches” brings in an element of fantasy to the plot.
On the other hand, some opine, that there are many Indian films which are far better in their depiction of real India than the much praised Slumdog Millionaire.

For instance Parzania, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, A Wednesday – all present to you a slice of life from today’s India. Another film worth mentioning is Barah Aana, which I was lucky enough to watch at the Pune International Film Festival.

Barah Aana is a comedy of real life, set in today’s Mumbai. The story revolves around three unlikely friends - a driver (Naseeruddin Shah), a watchman (Vijay Raaz), and a waiter (Arjun Mathur) – who are pushed to their moral edge by the overwhelming inequality which they face every day, be it social or economic.

A gripping plot, dark comedy, high production values and great performances mark this 97 minutes flick. Naseeruddin Shah is a treat to watch. He doesn't speak through most of the movie, yet his presence fills up the screen. He conveys so much with his eyes and the way he moves. It's a subtle but powerful performance. And when he does speak, what a moment it creates! It’s perhaps one of his best performances ever. Though the film is yet to release in India, you can know more about the movie at http://barah-aana-the-film.blogspot.com/

Already Barah Aana has received a favourable response from the audience and the film critics at the Film Festivals. I only hope that on releasing too, it gets the same if not better accolades and reviews as Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a great year to celebrate talent; starting with AR Rahman and continuing to veterans like Naseerudin Shah for Barah Aana….Amen!

The viral power of Facebook

Facebook has done it again this time with pink chaddi campaign. The attack on girls in Mangalore pub led many bloggers to write against Ram Sene. First it was started as a blog by Nisha Susan, a journalist with tehelka. The idea was to send some ‘love’ to Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik, in the form of pink underwear. The campaign was then extended as a Facebook group. Later on many journalists and online campaigners joined the group and over 39,000 people responded. “The kind of mobilisation we got from our blog and Facebook group wouldn’t have come about if we had staged a dharna,” says Isha Manchanda, Susan’s colleague and campaign officer.

Facebook has created good buzz to mobilise public interests campaign at short notice. Marketers now have realized the power of various internet tools that can generate buzz about the product. The viral marketing is on the roll as it is easier and quicker to generate buzz. The Mumbai campaign and this recent pink chaddi campaign show that cyber activism can make noise on streets and kick up some real dirt as well.

The Twitter Revolution

Social messaging has taken a whole new form with the advent of the Twitter revolution. The most recent and popular examples of how effective Twitter has been can be seen in the twitter activity for Obama’s Presidential Campaign and the Mumbai terror attacks.

As LA Times reported – “During the attacks, users from around the world posted tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of short notes, updates, musings and links to the latest information on Mumbai — many, if not most, of the facts coming from mainstream news outlets.”

Another interesting story is how James Karl, a student , ‘twittered’ his way out of Egyptian Jail. He was arrested while covering an anti government protest. A one word twitter update sent by him got his friends alerted and eventually led to his rescue.

The fastest and simplest way to connect with an audience, Twitter has grown from being just a social messaging tool to a powerful business tool.

Online shoe retailer Zappos has experienced how Twitter has been helpful in the brand building process for the company. To quote Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos – “I've talked a lot in the past about how we've used Twitter at Zappos for building more personal connections with both our employees and our customers. In fact, we recently debuted on FORTUNE MAGAZINE's annual "100 BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR" list, and they began and ended the article talking about our use of Twitter to build more personal connections with people. That in itself is its own reward that has both personal and business benefits.”

The concept of ‘twittering’ has been criticised by many but maybe following certain rules will help in using Twitter to your advantage. Here are some tips from pearlanalytics on how Twitter can be used as a viable marketing tool –

1.Post something useful. You see a lot of people tweeting play-by-plays of what they had for lunch. Quite frankly, no one really cares, and you are simply clogging up my timeline. Tweet a link to an interesting article you found, or a poll question, a new blog posting, or in my case, I like to tweet Website Analyzer scores that were recently run.
2. Don’t spam people. Twitter’s version of spam is you going out and following a bunch of people you don’t know for any reason, and hoping they will follow you back. Your followers will should grow organically. There is nothing wrong with following people with similar interests, but let them know how you found them.
3. Update moderately, but consistently. I think of Tweeting like blogging. You wouldn’t fill up your blog with hundreds of meaningless posts, right? Don’t over-tweet, but don’t under-tweet either. 5-10 tweets per day seems like a good number, and if you are posting meaningful stuff people care about, that is probably a tough goal.
4. Don’t use Twitter to chat. Some get confused between Twitter and chat. Don’t have a one-on-one conversation with your buddy - no one will know what you are talking about, so the more of that you do, the less they will pay attention to your tweets, and will likely “un-follow” you.

So, if you haven’t joined the Twitter bandwagon yet, you might be missing something.

MTV Roadies makes it big on web 2.0

What’s the latest buzz? Do I hear the vroom of a speeding bike or is it the latest marketing strategy of Roadies 6.0? Yes. You read it right. The most popular show on MTV India, Roadies is back in action and boy did it not become the hottest talk of the town!

The credit goes to its seamless use of media that was strategically utilized to create a buzz around the show. The effort began way back in mid 2008 when Roadies 5.0 was introduced at an international platform.

TribalDDB, the marketing and creative agency of MTV India was looking at new media avenues to market the show. And for the first time, the show successfully capitalized on the emerging social media in the country.

The Internet was used extensively to promote the game show. About Roadies’ online strategy Aditya Swamy, vice-president, marketing, MTV India, said “A lot of the youth are online now and we needed to target them on this medium. For the first time, we conducted auditions online, and for the first time, we have created a dedicated website.”

Moving on to 2009, Roadies 6.0 – Hell Down Under has further utilized social media to its advantage. It penetrated the most effective of networking sites to keep the buzz alive about the show.

Spearheading this campaign was Orkut (voted by MTV as the Youth Icon for 2008). MTV came up with its official community in Orkut, which attracted thousands of members. Soon, a dedicated community for Roadies followed it. Today the count of members on both these sites together has surpassed two lakhs! Even Facebook has an official page and fan page for Roadies.

The next step was to introduce the Roadies Battleground – an online and highly interactive model of the main game. Thousands of participants enrolled themselves and tried their luck at the game. Through this Orkut application, the idea was to not only introduce a new twist in the scheme of things but to also generate word-of mouth publicity among youth.

Added to this effort were other things such as Orkut themes, initiating discussions, blogs etc. MTV also tied up with Zapak to introduce micro gaming sites. Another major way to spread the buzz was by uploading viral videos. Behind-the-camera action, uncut scenes, cheat codes etc were made available on social networking sites to keep the youth involved with the show. There isn’t one online channel which MTV India and Roadies have not tapped into, to their advantage.

The Web 2.0 campaign was well backed with MTV’s offline marketing activities. Through a synchronized offline-online communication plan, MTV managed to keep the buzz alive for their hugely popular reality show, even when the program was not running. Constant repeat runs of the show, launching the cheat code, and involving ex-roadies on shows like MTV Splitsvilla help keep the Roadie spirit alive. And not to mention, the cash register ringing!

Social Media has definitely grown in power. Gradually every marketing agency is coming to understand its importance in the field of communication. A bit of creativity and a little of sound strategy is all that it takes to create a BIG BUZZ on the web. And like the Roadies … bigger the buzz … better the results!

Buzzar.tv

Looking for an advertisement of a particular product, log on to Buzzar.tv





At first glance, all you shall find is a collection of advertisements of brands that you get bored of watching, every time they happen to interrupt your regular shows on TV. What impressed me about the site is that they have maintained very good video quality and have put up advertisements of a hell lot of brands, considering the fact that it’s been recently set up. The sections that one might find on the site are Mobile Phones, Fashion Accessories, Financial Services, Kitchen Appliances, Household Products and the likes.

For more info on this site, click here watblog.com

Tips From Rand Fishkin On Social Media Marketing And How To Make Content Go Viral

Rand Fishkin is the CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz (www.seomoz.org).
Here are his tips on Social Media Marketing and how to make content go viral

• Research. Find out who in your industry has had success in this area, and of course who has failed. How have they made it work? Talk to your peers to find how they went about launching viral content and discuss it with marketing professionals who have experience.
• Brainstorm. Getting ideas together at this stage will be a lot easier because you already know what works. Pick some of the best ideas, execute them and show them to a sample audience such as a group of friends, or people you think can be critical of you.
• The Big Push. If your audience is ready to spread it then you have to come up with a strategy that will push the content out. This can be done by emailing bloggers, submitting it on social media sites, talking about it on your own blog, posting a Twitter on it, emailing influential friends. If you can take a campaign wide once or twice, the next time you produce something you won’t have to push it as hard because the audience already recognizes you. It will spread naturally.
• Only kill content if you are getting negative feedback or a lot of criticism. Not all publicity is good publicity. You don’t want to become an online laughing stock.
• Even if nothing is happening, leave it out there. Sometimes a year later it will go popular for no particular reason. That’s the great thing about the web - you can put something out there, think it has failed, and a few months later it turns out to be a big hit. It can be down to bad timing, or the right person not seeing it first time round.
• Keyword Research. One of the things you should always advise your clients is to execute their campaigns intelligently from a search perspective. The links they provide must have the right keywords, and the same thing has to be said when they're optimizing their viral content - such as videos, pod casts, blogs etc.
• Make sure that it’s easy to link to your URL, that you have a link to it, share this, here’s a banner, here’s a badge - ie a piece of content you can talk about. It has to be easy to share and easy to spread.

Make sure the content is kept on your website so that people are linking to your site rather than going to YouTube for videos. Do this to make sure you are earning all the link benefit.

Source - Rand Fishkin Interview

Videos Taken Down From YouTube

Ever wonder exactly how many videos are taken down from YouTube because of copyright violations or other reasons?

Folks at the MIT Free Culture student group created YouTomb to document all YouTube videos that have been taken down.





More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.

According to YouTomb's stats, the companies that have recently taken down the biggest number of popular YouTube videos are: TV TOKYO, Viacom, Warner Bros, World Wrestling and other media companies. "YouTomb is currently monitoring 157340 videos, and has identified 4389 videos taken down for alleged copyright violation and 13330 videos taken down for other reasons."

To read more click here - TechCrunch
To know more about YouTomb, Click here YouTomb