Adverisements claim that cannot be verified

Indian Advertisement industry seem to be taking quick & dirty approach towards gaining traction & improving sales... Horlicks used to keep "high standards" for their advertisements, but off late seem to have given up & taking an easy route by using some health reasons or facts (that cannot be verified) for advertising the product.

Regular Horlicks:
Horlicks runs this ad as showing in a school the kids were made in two groups & only one group was given Horlicks, while others regular milk... showing after 6 months, kids taking Horlicks were stronger, sharper & taller. This AD was accidentally telecasted in UK by Nepalese Channel & GSK got into legal tangle with UK government and had to ban the AD:

Youtube Video of Banned Horlicks Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PzL0bIdFYg
News in UK Media - row over Horlicks Ad: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080646/Row-ad-Horlicks-makes-children-tall.html

Why can't the advertising council in India watch out for such ADs that don't make sense & ban them, instead of letting them use false promises to sell their product?


Womens Horlicks
Jan 2009:
Horlicks launched their Womens Horlicks with a nice advertisement, showing how women are busy at work & home taking care of others, forget to take care of themselves... I really loved this launch & I thought it was giving the right message - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWvolkt-FH4

June 2009 :
Horlicks has now launched a new AD for women horlicks that show, one in three women are suseptible to weak bone related joint pains or fracture & recommend them to drink Horlicks. How are the going to prove this point? Is it this easy to make claims about health that does not even require a research backing & detailed explaination... before ADs are approve?

ps: Sorry, could not find a video of this AD on web.

What is the bad in these ADs?
These brand are lacking a long term strategy, perspective & creating advertisements that is creating some form of scare or inferiority complex, if you don't use the product... it only helps people to bond with it, until the deficiency is covered & then people will move on.

Brands should rather consider giving the positive message about the product in the AD, encourage people to relate with the product to their real life.

-Bhaskara

Idea: Webmail, read receipt?

Has there been a time, you sent out a blast email to 100's of your friends or colleagues (mostly to their personal id's - webmail) & wondering, who all read the email?

It seems to be a simple solution that Y!, GMail, Hotmails of the world can implement, by using the same concept as GoogleAnalytics does to keep count of people who have visited a website. Let me describe this in detail below... (hope GMail developers read this & implement :))

1. Every Y! or GMail user should have an ability to enter their GoogleAnalytics (or similar tracking software) code, that should report their email read metrics

2. Email Compose - should have an option, "Do you want to know, if the receipient read the email?" - this option can be chosen by users, who need it

3. Y! or GMail - read email web page (that displays the email), should use the GoogleAnalytics solution, with the senders code

4. GoogleAnalyics - Javascript code will take care of sending the reader analytics, that can be later analysed by the sender on his Google Analytics account.

Good idea... do comment, if you think was a stimulating thought!

-Bhaskara

Data Provider Partners...

If you are building a new software product, say "changing" the way a certain industry works from being manual to be automated, one of the biggest challenges is to show the value in the product to prospective buyers. It's a chicken & egg problem - "no proven data, hence no customers - no customers, hence no data"

I have been thinking about this & found one possible approach to solve this... read along & give me your comments.

• Design / Architect the product using as much possible inputs from the industry experts, do user interviews, work in the domain for a while (if you don't have exposure) etc
• Build a prototype to show, while speaking to the industry veterans, it helps in sharing the idea / concept much easily - than just speaking about it
• Customers may not signup, because of lack of confidence right? Try to engage them as "data provider" partner, collect all their current manual data & upload into your system
• Anonymise (remove the company name, demographics etc) the data - as much possible and use this as base to run through various business flows, make sure the software is working as expected
• Also - use the data collected (anonymous) as suggestions or boundary conditions data to new or trial customers (whom you have been finally able to convince to come onboard) - they would be happy to see, that system is providing some guidance!

It's not the complete solution, but a possible approach that can be useful for enterprise products.

Thanks
Bhaskara

Open Office, is a good alternative!

After using Microsoft Office products for the past 10yrs, I recently started using "Open Office" products in my personal laptop... it's been impressive, able to do pretty much most of the document creation, editing in open office as I have on MS Office.

It provides compatability with MS Office documents & seem an easy transition path, options & toolbars available is different, less in OO - but it's only a matter of time you would get used to it.

It breaks your rhythm from doing the same thing over in MS Office, go ahead & give a try to OO...

-Bhaskara

Next is what? for DVR, TiVo or PVR (as called in India)

I love the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) from TataSky+, television viewing experience has changed & hardly watch any movie or programs with commercials... PVR them & watch it later, still waiting for an unlimited storage or external harddisk facility. But... apart from more storage, what could be next in this space?

• PVR a favorite program, share it with other friends or families - digitally connect different PVR's & ability to browse the recorded programs & play back?

• Watch a favorite program together with friends? - Invite other members, whom you think would like to watch the program, invite them to see with you - watch together, even if you are miles away?

• Create your own video & share to your grandmother or relative far away? - extend the same recorded sharing experience to sharing user created videos, to far away relatives, friends... broadcast those cherished memories of your family with your loved ones!

As Samsung say's it... "Next is what?"

-Bhaskara

Idea : Recycling Plastic Bag

Thinking green in the week of "World Earth Day"

We all use plastic bags - from grocery, apparel, utility store etc... but very few of us recycle them in India. Only way a plastic bag is probably recycled now is through some separation of plastic bags that are thrown into the waste & % of this recycle is very low.

Here is an idea to improve this situation in India, at least to start with metro regions...

• Make recycle quality plastic bags, that can be branded to the retails needs (Spencer, Foodworld etc)
• Print a text on the bag, if the user "returns" these cover back into a designated collection points - he would get around INR 25p or 50p (depending on value of recycling)
• Put up collection points, that would have "recycle bins" at the retail outlets or tie-up with city corporation & setup at Post Offices or government buildings
• We will need smart machines that can accept "clean" - recycle quality covers, count them & dispense money back for the user

this seems a noble way of giving something back to the environment... looking forward for people in this domain of plastic bags, recycle experts to validate this & take it forward.

-Bhaskara

Now, this is called "after sales support"...

I ride an electric bike "Yo Speed" from Electrotherm (http://yobykes.in/) for the past 11 months, I have been happy with the purchase decision & love the bike... doing my bit to save the environment. First week of April, I got a call from the dealer saying... "sir, we have a free service & could you leave your vehicle for service" - I thought it was a routine free service they give within the first year, but was surprised with the free service that was done to my bike... they had replaced some of the vehicle parts with new one...

• front fork
• front wheel rim
• brake pads
• stand for the bike

these parts are at least worth INR 2000.00 or above, for a bike that I purchased for INR 36K, this is a pretty good "after sales" to upgrade the old bikes with new parts... really impressed with this company. We have several other companies in India that don't even come to 10% of this level of "after sales" service... which is a sad story, companies need to understand a "happy customer" means they have a higher NPR score! and higher chances of free advertising by the users of the product.

-Bhaskara

Innovation, G20, Entrepreneurship...

I'm back after a long silence, to share few web resources that I think would be a good read:

1. Interesting model for "Engaging Individuals in Idea Management" (new product development) - "The ORCHID Model" - Observer, Ringmaster, Creator, Helper, Inquisitor, Doer - http://www.imaginatik.com/site/pdfs/Imaginatik%20WP-0503-1%20The%20ORCHID%20Model.pdf - this white paper explains the individual styles of the people & how to build the teams for creating successful products.

2. Interesting blog resource from the CEO of Imaginatik, some of his posts are thought provoking - http://markturrell.wordpress.com/ - read the posts on "Enterprise Crowdsourcing", "Stepping Up" - he basically writes in the space of innovation

3. About current state of the Economy, ET Columnist MK Venu's - has written some great articles over the past few weeks, links to some of them are below:

a) G20 & Epidemic of over production - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/MK-Venu-G-20-and-Overproduction/articleshow/4368049.cms
b) Innovative Ideas required to spur economy - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/MK-Venu-Innovation-must-to-spur-eco/articleshow/4273779.cms

4. Crash Course on Economy & current state by Chris Martenson - http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-1-three-beliefs

Hope you find these resources useful... do reply back with your thoughts to me.

Thanks
Bhaskara