GOMCHA - Google Online Mktng Challenge!

I took up a really interesting elective this sem - Online Marketing. Its an AdWords based contest being run by Google worldwide and thru this elective, students are participating in it. So obviously it becomes a live project I can show that I've been working on and more than that, its in a really hot field - digitial marketing!

So what is this whole adwords concept?

Almost every company has a website today. To market the website they can bid for certain keywords which when typed in google show a landing page of that website in the search. Depending on the number of people who visit the website through the keyword search, the company's adword account gets debited by the bid amount*no of individual users.

I think its a great marketing platform and since its in the nascent stage today, expertise acquired to a marketeer would be a humongous boost.

My interest in sports made me choose a sports site for this project - Philippines Baseball. What excites and frightens me is that even though it's online marketing, my team has to study the business model and the market for target customers Philippines Baseball subject to parameters of internet usage! That's like a whole business strategy definition, analysis and recomendation! Very overwhelming at this point of time... but I'm also looking forward to it.

Wine dispenser

www.trendwatching.com and www.springwise.com are really great sites to read about cool, new ideas that people are converting or at least trying to convert into business models. One really good idea I came across was for a wine related set-up! Altho' 'wine related set-up' is probably the shittiest way to describe it, it's a really cool concept.
It's basically a restro-lounge which has special wine dispensers to allow customers to try out different varities of wine before buying a bottle or two. The dispenser also has features recommending wines, which connoisseur prefers which wine and how your preferance compares to it!
http://www.boston.com/ae/food/articles/2006/03/01/at_this_wine_store_try_before_you_buy/
(I couldn't find the same link I used to read about this concept... but managed to find something similar)


Another idea that I've really liked from among a plethora of fantastic ideas is about see-saw power. A British student, Daniel Sheridan, has come up with a way to use playgroung see-saws to generate power. He says that even 5-10minutes of play can power a classroom for a few hours...!
In fact last year I used to wonder why we don't yet have devices that can harness the phenomenal amounts of energy we generate in regular everyday activities.
Imagine the amount of energy generated when two people fight. If that could be harnessed, at least something good would come out of the fight ;-)

http://springwise.com/weekly/2008-04-16.htm

Money flows

Wow! It's been almost 3 months since my last post... I guess the DE project that my team and me had in mind about blogging made easy didn't let me post so regularly... anyway.. details about that in another post...

2 days back I had a case study on (RED) - the organization co-founded by Bono to fight AIDS in Africa. It's such a fantastic concept.. brilliant business model and strategy to make social development a profitable exercise! I don't agree that fighting disease, poverty etc have to be done on a purely philantropic basis...If there's profit to be made and not just charity to be doled out, it becomes easier for more people to get involved... and stay involved!

While discussing the case, we spoke about how helping out in social causes allows an individual to differentiate himself from the rest by adding / showing an additional personality dimension! As Prof. Cruz (our marketing prof) said... if money no longer is the differentiating status symbol, sensitivity, social development can do that for you!

What he says is so true because the true nature of charity is to just donate your money without creating a media buzz about it right... it's great that there's money being set aside by corporate greats such as Bill Gates & Warren Buffet but if we were to take the above mentioned argument forward, that philantrophy is a status symbol - then it amuses me to think.... that corporates who have been accused of exploting resources in the past to make billions are now being exploited to give back to society through things like CSR, status differentiation! I guess karmic theory is at work here ... money is but a form of energy exchange which needs to keep flowing!

Very interesting weblink

I've taken to entertaining myself by watching commercials, awesome, good and crappy alike, on youtube. It's alotta fun and I've now spent almost two whole Sundays doing that. Recently I also found a website I really like and highly recommend whoever reads this post to check it out... it has featured some of the best ads, business card ideas, website ideas, logos etc that are really worth looking at.

http://www.toxel.com/design/2008/11/26/24-beautiful-and-creative-website-headers/

I have decided that I'm going to bug my best friend for more than half my life, Gayle D'souza, co-founder and partner of one of the best design firms - 'And Design' to teach me photoshop so I can doodle and honour you all with some of my awesome doodles ;-).

That day shall come. I just hope my short attention span and low threshold for boredom let me get there soon enough.

Chai Biskut - a steaming success

I've been MIA for a week coz of the walkabout... it was cccraaazzzzyyyyy........ my partners and me were running a full fledged business... almost a restaurant! but it was fantastic... stretched me to the limit with all the college work and moreso the running of the tea stall..

Pre-event publicity consisted of:

• Print media
• Web 2.0 usage - emails, social networking sites like facebook, youtube, videos
• Word of mouth publicity...

Since we'd generated alot of hype, personally I was really anxious about how we'd manage the crowd on the first day... I'd never made tea in such large batches before... a part of me was actually hoping not too many people turn up... but even before we opened shop there was a throng of samosa hungry and tea thirsty people...

what was awesome was that so many people turned up to sample our products and support us in our walkabout....

there were alotta people who didn't know it was our walkabout and since we were doing it for the first time ever and had very limited resources our service was a bit slow... a student from the MDM batch actually thought we were running this as a vocation a la Jessica (the Indian food caterer) and told us off for taking time to serve him his tea...

our classmates helped out quite a bit.. I cannot even begin to explain how crazy the first one and a half hours were... I think I mustve made about 70-80 cups of tea and we sold about 120 samosas... all fried right there....

after that when we took a break and people complimented us on the food, tea and the ambience it felt so great!!!! and that's when I realized something... in an earlier post 'dignity of labour' I'd mentioned 'chottu' chai wala who serves 'cutting chai' by the roadside always with a smile on his face...I could kinda identify with his level of flow coz it feels great to be able to make something, even as mundane as tea, and have people appreciate it... not through words but through their expressions!

This walkabout (although it was more a business venture) has been such a fantastic learning experience... we actually used demand forecasting, accounts maintaing, marketing strategies (of course), experience creation through the ambience. Moreso, we even experiemented with our menu and came to an emperical understanding of what the best business model for the stall... the primary purpose was to conduct a feasibility study to demonstrate the profitability of the venture and I'm happy to say that we reached the best product mix and strategy to make the Indian Tea Stall a profitable venture on campus.

The walkabout got over yesterday and throughout the latter half of last week we kept getting requests to extend the dates... even today people haven't stopped requesting us to serve chai and samosas... in fact some of the seniors jokingly said that they'd take this up as a career option...

I've always maintained that I want to run a restaurant sometime in the future and our venture actually exposed me first hand to what situations I will face when I do so, albeit on a much larger scale... for starters.. I've really learnt to appreciate the good sense in clearly... and by clearly I mean explicitly... defining the firm strategy and more importantly sticking to it...

Conflicts are inevitable and there were a few times all of us (partners) didn't agree on things... I can happily report that we managed to resolve all differences amicably and had a good time doing the same...

Sourcing the raw materials was a great experience... I always thought that when it came to all those nitty-gritties I would buckle and wouldn't be able to go through with such boring activities but it was a plesant surprise looking for deals... looking for places to source the cheapest but best quality items...

Sustainance was another facet I uncovered... I was apprehensive about being able to sustain my enthusiasm and commitment beyond the first couple of days especially because we had limited capital and had lots of variable costs everyday... (fresh raw materials) which had to be taken care of...

Beyond all the visible aspects, maintainence was another area we had to take care of... start the shop before time... have stuff ready, clean up after the shop shut... all of these were extremely taxing coz after standing - whether facing a mob of customers, behind a stove making batches of tea or frying samosas which never seemed to satisfy the demands - for hours we had to clean up the place, wash the utensils and keep things ready for the next day....

My god... what a rush... I loved it... it tired every muscle and more in my body... but it's been a great experience... somehow my self-confidence too has gotten a boost!

Chai Biskut Promo

Have a lookie...

Chai Biskut and more

I feel like we're passing through a weird time-space warp... sometimes time speeds up and sometimes it just stands still... last week was quite hectic moreso coz we had to work out the nitty-gritties of our walkabout - the indian tea stall - christened 'Chai Biskut'.

I was super excited when we thought up the concept, totally oblivious to the fact that what we wanted to undertake was going to be super tough....

Why tough...

well for starters... we, at least me, are broke...

on top of that... milk, the second chief ingredient of our product - chai - is frickin expensive...

third... we're running the stall, very happily, for seven days... I have this nagging worry about the sustainability of our stall...

Due to the budget constraint, we've had to scrap some of our marketing ideas and make do with what resources we have at our disposal....

Well, we managed to figure out where to get what from and have gotten some pretty good deals... more importantly, we've managed to create a buzz on campus about our stall to the extent that everyday, everywhere we go people have started asking us for chai... I've gotten sick of telling them over and over again that it starts on Monday and not before that....

We did a trial run today... initially I was very excited and volunteered to make the first batch... Amit Mathur, our senior at college and a dear friend, agreed to be our tea taster... So I wen ahead and made the chai .... AND IT WAS DISGUSTING!!!

the sugar was whimsical... not matter how much I added the other stuff the sugar kept overpowering every other ingredient !!!

We threw away the batch and Rachna made the next one... it turned out great! In Amit's words, we found our gourmet tea brewer... so we decided to go ahead with Rachna's recepie and Shibani made the next batch... it turned out really good... I went next... petrified what my nemesis, the sugar, would do to my rendition of a good recepie... suprisingly the tea turned out good...

Now you'd think that all of this would've taken about 45 mins to an hour tops.... but we were at this for 2 and a half hours!!! That's when I realized how difficult our next 7 days are going to be.... To be serving an institute full of expectant people tea till 2 AM when we take about 30 minutes to brew a batch is a very daunting proposition!!! Although, in our defense its not the brewing that takes time but the washing coz currently there is no facility next to our stall.. tomorrow we're going to have to work that out....

I'm also worried about standing next to an open stove in the heat (AIM's spoilt us by providing us with round-the-clock AC facilities) for 7 hours!

God help me!