Marketing the dead

Marketing the dead is actually a billion dollar industry. A dead product….uh  a dead celebrity! has all attributes that are required to form a hot brand. They have a fan following, they are idols, they are memorable, they are likable, they are valuable and above all, as they are no more present to pamper their fans with their performance, their very names are cash cows for smart entrepreneurs.

Recently, MJ’s death has given the way for a fresh lease of life to the dying Hollywood economy. Anyone who is associated with him, may be too remotely, is trying to encash the opportunity. Everyone is busy buying his name to build up their respective bank balance. Just a couple of hours after his death, music industry re-launched jackson’s album and overnight a few of his songs booked the top slot of the chart. Using death of celebrity as a short term marketing policy is not a new trend, but the same phenomenon was observed with Princess Diana’s funeral event.

Memorial event are too a part of this strategy of marketing and branding. Fans are ready to pay $50 for a photo shoot with a cutout of king of pop. A tribute magazine with 132 glossy pages is also in the line which will be available for around 3 pounds. A sale of 2 lakh copies is expected within next month. Street market is full of Jackson merchandise, which is full of T-shirt, coffee mugs, caps and other things with his photo.

Media and IT are also in the fray to join the mammoth race of money collection. Jackson cremation was witnessed by around 750 million people, which was telecasted live and was full of endorsements.  Social networking sites were in no mood to let-go the opportunity and have done everything possible to update their users in real time.  They are in rivalry for the copyrights of the promotional images, videos and other materials to boost up the TRP or hits.

True! Dead celebs make for hot brands, hotter than even the living ones. May their soul rest in peace.

Expanding world of Twitter

From being a status update tool, twitter has evolved into a much sought after communication platform. The twitter phenomenon reverberates across cyber space and is being embraced by a number of segments including business, politics and education.

Gone are the days, when businesses used traditional methods of marketing. Today, they use new marketing strategies each day keeping themselves in pace with technology. They use it to send alert to team members, keep in touch with customers and the like. A web savvy customer today, expects a string of twitter updates from business firms. The landscape of twitter is unavoidable today.

Twitter is being widely used as a presentation aid as well. Educationalist uses twitter to post the live links and other search commands, which can be used from twitter web page directly. Twitter has come up as a way to engage aid for students. Twitter is a place for extensive discussions and interactions among students and related communities.

An educational video (Http://www.mbavid.com) site is another extension to twitter which host a short video of 14 seconds pertaining to business management. Twitter database is a information goldmine. If you wish to follow the latest development on a particular event, then search that with a appropriate string and get thousand of results as millions of customers are using twitter at any instant and on different topics.

National ID Project

Nandan Neilkani, chief mentor and founder member of Infosys, stepped down from BOD of software major after getting an invitation from prime minister to head the national ID project. The project will be open soon, and infosys, satyam are the front runner for the project bid.

Today we Indians have multiple ways to identify ourself, whenever we interact with state. It may be passport ID, ration card number, PAN number, voter ID etc. This cause not only the flaws related to identity crises but it paved a way for many other problems like interaction between citizen and state.

Lets see how a unique ID may prove beneficial for  Aam  aadmi.

1) We will get rid of redundancy and triplicating of  forms by  the  common register  for  all citizens while applying for government schemes.

2) Faster governmental procedures  and  access to  information  will  increase.

3) Acknowledging the  existence  of  every  single  citizen will compel the state for a better quality of service.

4) Use of IT will be boomed up which will in turn ensures a growth of a nation.

India knocked out of T20 world: is it so important?

India is mad about cricket industry. It was a game, then business was added to it, recently it was victimized by politics but now you can unhesitatingly call it an industry, self sufficient and on the rise. Indians overdo everything related to cricket, from watching and supporting the team to burning of effigies of Indian captain openly in the market.

Latest drama played was the London fiasco, India lost all the matches of super-8 of the Twenty 20 world cup attributed to the fatigue, overplay, and tiredness. Though there were a lot of speculations and qualms about the decisions made, approach taken and team selection. The media criticized the team and captain with open heart and unparliamentarily words. They even demanded the captain to step down from captaincy for the upcoming stints of team India.

But should we really blame the team and captain for the loss. Come on! It was just a series and moreover cricket is just a game, not a question of honor, poise and war. It is not acceptable that we expect only win for our side. We have to accept the loss as well. It is just a part of the game. Moreover, we will lose the very essence of a game, if we are over consistent and wining every match played.

And one more thing which must attend in this regard is the undue glamour, we attached with the game. When India won a game, we and media make them super hero and treat them as god. On the other side, if we lose a match or two, we start to burn the effigies, throwing stones to their houses, blackening posters and lots of other irrational acts.

So where will this cycle stop?

New search engine

Topsy, a new search engine launched on 26 may 2009,  powered by Twiter may proved to be one of the revolution in search engines world. Earlier, the searches were used to be based on key words in a document. Then came the google, which saw the internet as a network of documents and give search results based on page ranking. But none of these gives result through community based, social networking websites.

Topsy’s approach is an attempt at solving these problems with a range of new technologies – and initially, a dataset based exclusively on the conversations taking place in the wonderful Twitter community. 

The social web is not a network of documents. It is conversation in a network of people. The social web generates a stream of citations of things – documents, videos, pictures, etc – that people are talking about. Searching through this stream of citations means separating the network of people from the things they discuss. Being able to do this is key to Topsy’s approach.

 

So go and try TOPSY