The Indian Navy Adventure Team is at it again. Did you know that the Navy's Adventure Teams also climbs mountains, goes trekking and conquers the skies... among other things? I didn’t! Not until a few years ago! Read on..

It is not for nothing that they call themselves Mavericks. Led by Cdr. Satyabrata Dam, a three member team from the Indian Navy – Vikas Kumar and Rakesh Kumar being the other two - successfully completed their ski traverse to the Geographic South Pole yesterday, making them the first team to have done so and also among those very few who have done two of the three poles. Cheers!

The launch of www.blogworks.in is a significant milestone in the ‘blogs for business’ journey that I embarked upon a couple of years ago – thanks to Prema,Kishore and Guru (who has also designed blogworks.in and this wonderful blog) - thanks all. I wanted the launch of Blog\Works™ to reflect the collaborative power that the Internet, and more significantly blogs - as the new flag-bearers of the Internet - empower us with. Blogworks™ - Blog the Talk discussion series was thus conceived and will feature the best of learning from the blogosphere and otherwise, through panel discussions, talks and one-on-ones – mostly conducted online.

Edition 1 discusses the Impact of blogging and social media on Indian business and marketing. It was remarkable that each participant, from the heavy-weight (figuratively speaking) panel, confirmed within an ‘Aye’, within hours of my writing to them. Thanks all. The entire discussion happened over an internet messenger – apt, wouldn’t you agree? – both, the message and the method. Our panelists -in no order of preference! :) -

1. Toby Bloomberg: "A real live blogger", "Business blog evangelist" that's what people have called Toby. Toby is president of a strategic and social media consultancy based in the U.S. She has been a real live blogger since the spring of 2004 when she launched Diva Marketing Blog. As one of the most recognised consultants in this space, Toby's passion now is helping organizations navigate the blogosphere and developing social media/blog strategies that support their business goals. Toby is based out of Atlanta, USA
2. Govindraj Ethiraj: Journalist-writer, a keen watcher of the social media and technology space, Govind is the New Media Editor for Business-Standard. A keen blogger, he writes a popular blog at Dateline Bombay. Govind is based out of Mumbai, INDIA
3. Anurag Batra: A dear friend, Anurag is the Editor in Chief & Managing Director of the exchange4media Group - a special interest publishing company which publishes five titles including three titles in advertising, marketing and media domain- Exchange4Media.com , PITCH , Impact and two consumer titles Franchise Plus and Realty Plus . Anurag is based out of New Delhi, INDIA
4. Yours truly moderated the discussion. I too am based out of New Delhi, INDIA.

Without any further ado, edition 1 of Blog the Talk. Cheers!

As 2006 nears closure the mandatory countdowns and 'best of' have already begun - I too would like to remember the 'best of', but I don't want to think of macro events, I would like to think of tools, books, activities that made a difference to my life this year.

Let's begin with a 'tool': "You Tube for Powerpoint" - for me, the beauty of Slideshare is in its simplicity. After years of struggle to reach across presentations in PPT, Acrobat and whatever formats, this one enabled me to, by allowing me to simply 'upload and share' - simple as that. Once can also embed in your blog or share a link etc. There are that they could do better, of course, but I can see that they are working on them - they are fairly small and therefore reachable - you leave a message on their site, they bring about change.

To me, as an executive, the value of this tool even surpasses that of You Tube (not to be confused with the much larger impact that You Tube indeed has. ). It's amazing to see the different uses it is being put to. Sample this:

Dear friends, Urmila died.. and you are still holding your old woolens, blankets & shawls in your Almirah? Don't ask me who was Urmila ? Thousands of Urmilas die every year because of cold. VASTRADAAN, our nationwide movement is primarily about making this basic need of clothing a matter of concern. Go to the best development sector websites or pick up any funding agencies brochures and you will find a range of issues right from domestic violence to global warming.Unfortunately clothing is never there in this list. Thus our task is to first draw attention to this issue.As a part of VASTRADAAN, we have been highlighting winters as an annual disaster for countless people who do not have enough to cover themselves. We are motivating people for our annual campaign RAHAT-WINTERS. Please contribute as much as you can..

Read more about Goonj's VASTRADAAN initiative here.

It's Friday Fun at Toby's Diva Marketing Blog and she's tagged me to join in. The theme being "What 5 Things You Don't Know About Me." Now, let me think:

1. My best soccer kick came in a classroom (just before Mexico '86). I was in class 11 - the whole school heard the window pane shatter
2. I like imperfect noses (on women :) )
3. As a child (6 years old perhaps), I wouldn't drink water until I had ascertained that the water was 'chilled' to my satisfaction and I would do this by putting the tumbler to my cheek (emulating the little boy on the Kwality ice-cream packs/ ads, who did the same with an ice lolly). Very often, the tumbler would be returned many times before I was satisfied with the results, driving my mom and uncles mad - wouldn't dare try with my dad then :).
4. My favourite non-commercial fragrance is simple sandalwood oil - dab on a little to get your very own 'unique' signature
5. I haven't read ANY of the classics that EVERYONE is expected to read.

Toby, this is fun. Thanks. Tagged are you: Amita; Rekha; Nikhil; Aishwarya; Govind; Rajaram

Earlier this morning, I was reading this article by Govind, most likely inspired by an experience that he had recently, and decided to punch in a post, mostly as a 'notes to myself' reminder, about very logical behaviour by consumers (including myself), the understanding of which marketers (including myself again) perhaps find so elusive that we spend a considerable amount of time, effort, money on paid research, rather than just closely observe ourselves and our surroundings:

Customer expectations are Dynamic

• One of the young executives in my previous office was disappointed that his client score on the service quality index was stagnant for the last 2 quarters, where the team had consistently delivered better results. Smiling, my CEO explained to him that having delivered excellent service in the past, the team will now need to surpass that as the client expectations too had kept pace - the existing high service having become just STANDARD
• Sometimes, the score can actually go retrograde for seemingly vague reasons - I found the customer relations team of my credit card company to be consistently exceeding my expectations, this continued for about a year or so. One day, delighted, I decided to speak with the floor manager and asked him who I could write to/ speak with, to communicate my feedback and congratulate? Obviously happy (how many happy customers actually call?), he asked me to be on the phone for a minute and managed to get the head of customer service to speak with me. The gentleman too was very pleased to learn that his team had done well and gave me his email id, upon asking. I told him that I would write the team a letter of praise - I did. I never got a reply or an acknowledgment from him. From a score of 10:10, I brought them down to 9:10.

Right now of course, they have earned my huge displeasure, for some other reasons. As you gain height, the climb become Steeper

• In one of my previous assignments we found that real journey had just begun, as we touched guest satisfaction of 90% - moving from 80% to 85% was a breeze; the jump from 85%- 90% took twice as long. To wow a customer is not that easy...

Unhappy customers need to be recovered Quickly. Will Govind fly the same airline again, by choice? That would also depend on what Jet did to control damage

• At my aforementioned place of work, in hospitality, based on a daily audit of customer feedback forms, the head of quality would personally call up all cases of critically dissatisfied guests, the very next morning and offer apologies and corrective measures taken by the organisation. Remaining complaints would be mailed a letter, within 24 hours of feedback received, informing guests corrective measures taken
• I rarely mention brands by name, but I think I need to mention my experience with Airtel and how I think they managed to retain me as a customer - this was a few years ago- I was 'furious' with the atrocious quality of connectivity, and handling customer care executives that Airtel offered. The list of complaints just kept piling. One day, simply livid, I somehow managed to get the head of customer care on the phone - we spoke for about an hour. Not just did she listen to me patiently, she made notes, thanked me for the feedback, gave me her personal hand-phone number, in case required for any future assistance and THEN, in about two weeks time, went on to actually execute many of the suggestions I had offered (a significant one, to protect user interest, was my request to display 98 100 98100 (instead of private/ blank/ etc) when a call actually emerged from their network (I had just had an experience, at that time, of someone trying to derive personal information, using a number that proved to be unreachable upon trying to call back). I called the lady on the handphone number she had given me, expressed my thanks, but she thanked me again in turn. I continue to be with Airtel - the general service of course is much better and so is the quality of customer care executives (though I wish they would quit reading the entire 1 minute goodbye spiel: "Thanks for calling customer care. Is there anything else I call help you with? I hope you have a pleasant evening!" even as I am saying...I have gotta ruuunnnn.

The world has moved on. From just a checklist that needed a communication to be evaluated on whether it covered '5 Ws and the H', the very dynamics of crafting a media release have changed in the last few years. Not just is it pertinent to create specific media messages for specific audience, emergent media has brought about the need for new formats in which we need to deliver media material, say the press release. The importance and value of Hyperlinks, Tags, Social Bookmarking, User Vote on Content, for online content to be found through search and otherwise, has been understood.

I was with a client yesterday, sharing the idea of a community concept on the blogosphere, and we were discussing pros and cons about a marketer's participation in a 'community' concept, over limiting the presence to just a blog 'owned' by the marketer.

There are, in my opinion, a couple of compelling reasons, favouring the community logic:

The first, is the simple concept of 'you scratch my back, I will scratch yours' - media is becoming prohibitively expensive and as against spending precious dollars promoting just your property, marketers stand to gain from a collaborative effort - everyone benefits, more.

Second, the community usually sees bigger participation of/from users, than what an individual brand may be able to garner, as it caters to many different needs, tastes etc.

Third, analytics - this is the decisive reason in my opinion - consider this...

I write about FM/ Radio quite often on my blog and at this moment 8 of the 9 FM stations, except Fever 104 (and that got mentioned just now, so all 9) feature on my blog. Given that I sometimes feature high on FM related searches, many of these queries land on my blog.

Now using simple tools, I can tell you which one among these is the most searched radio channel; where are these searches originating from and much more. This is valuable information for a marketer. Possible because ALL stations are mentioned on my blog. The same rule applies to a community blog - you can learn much more about your competitors, by being in a community. Simple!