Mumbai Indians getting sponsored for 2-3 mn USD

So even in times of recession you can find and net that elusive advertiser! Mumbai Indians have almost confirmed that Idea Cellular will be investing between $ 2-3 million in the team. This is great news because even though Mumbai Indians had a dismal performance in last years IPL, they seem to be able to attract marketing spend. Like I've mentioned in earlier posts theres just wayyyyyyy tooo many similar if not same messages hitting consumers. Everybody is trying to differentiate himself in this crazy croweded market. Sports offers this opportunity. Now to get an ROI on such an investment letsee if Idea can ideate well enough to get fans to become consumers. Even tho India is a cricket crazy nation, that level of passion may not translate into marketing success. If Idea can manage that through a pure ROI number it would boost investment in sports (hopefully not just cricket) and this in turn will better sporting infrastructure and play calibre.

Corporate sponsored sports training camps

I was reading a management thesis written by the proponent of the company we're working with for the Google Online Marketing Challenge on Sports Consultancy in the Philippines and I realized that humans are more of 'feelers' than 'thinkers'. For instance we do things because we usually 'feel' like doing them and not because its a well-thought out plan. What does this have to do with sport... well... I think that this is precisely the reason we like sports so much. Watching sports tournament is an emotionally charged activity. It's probably one of the few things that keeps you completely occupied while you watch or play.

Every participant in society has something to gain from sports. With an increase in spectators, the sport itself gets attention, better players, more money ---primarily making it even more emotionally charged. Players play better with a more enthusiastic audience... everybody loves putting on a show. And with fantastic players and crowds going crazy corporates won't be too far behind. In fact I think corporates benefit alot from encouraging sports. If they organize training camps for whichever sport they feel is in sync with the company, they get loyalty from consumers both potential and existing and also increase the market size for their products. To give you an example, if Dettol sponsors a sporting event, obviously consumption of their product / consumer will increase coz obviously the players get dirty. Now why Dettol... coz Dettol cares enough to organize training camps ... so the sportsperson who's benefiting will most likely buy Dettol.

In fact I feel sporting goods companies should have a company policy to conduct training camps, and not just for mainstream popular sports. This strategy in itself will give them direction for product innovation which is something every manufacturer lavishly spends on.

Philippines Baseball

Philippines Baseball is the Philippines Baseball League equivalent of the MLB. You can get information about the league, players, merchandise et al here. The main focus of the website currently is to give people info-access. The management also has interactive features which can make the site more exciting!

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.