Am speaking at Brandate ‘07 in Bangalore tomorrow. See you there?
UPDATE 1 July 2007 – 11.00 am
It has been one of my most adventurous talks yet – night before the talk, my presentation – all done, bar some fine tuning – simply disappeared from my desktop and the pen-drive. A near final version, saved per chance on the notebook rescued me though. Any trip to airports is anyway an adventure by itself now – there were delays both on departure and arrival.
I came back with 2 insights:
- India lives in it’s villages airports
- Trees in Bangalore appear to be much bigger than trees in Delhi – weather? likely
Driving towards the event venue, I was engrossed in a conversation with Adarsh from Brand-Comm when I noticed a Rolls-Royce pass us by. A closer look and I saw it was painted red-white with sexy Airtel branding, announcing the launch? of their new mobile store. It was cool I thought and spoke about it at the talk…
The event venue was abuzz with excitement. Anywhere between 120-150 people attended; some interesting presentations; it was interesting to note that MANY presentations before mine had references to blogs, social networks etc; my talk was received well, I hope. Lots of questions ranging from:
- How does one validate credibility of a blog before making, say, a purchase decision
- How are blogs relevant for, say, internal research
- Who is/ should be responsible for blogs – marketing, communication, HR – Sridhar answered this one
I started my talk with the mention of how the game has actually moved way beyond blogs and even within social media tools, the lines are blurring. However we stuck to the agreed ‘Blogs for Marketing’ yesterday and left some actionable points for marketers to consider and the value of a strategic approach – something that we have worked upon as our differentiated Blogworks offering.
I hope more marketers move forward from just talking about blogs, or indulging in tactical initiatives measured by “200 blogs mein hamaara brand mention hona chahiye!” – that’s not measurement; that’s not impact or value for the brand either; and that’s certainly not assignments that we are hoping to bring alive.
Nice weather; was able to catch up with lots of former colleagues, friends; and made new friends – Bangalore was good.
