शाम के लम्हे

हम उनमे से नहीं हैं..
जिन्हें शराब सोने को चाहिए..
करे असर जरा भी अगर वो जाम
तो बस हमें खोने को चाहिए….


दो पल साकी को याद किया..
तीन तुम्हे…
हम तो ऐसे ही हैं...
चाहें के,
ऐसे लम्हे बार बार आयें
और उन्ही लम्हों में
खुद को डबोने को चाहिए….. 

Google Ad Planner Tutorial for Beginners

Google Ad Planner - VGSOM - 4050

Google Ad Planner works as an excellent STP (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) tool as well. It helps you to segment the entire social web sphere based on certain parameters specified by you. You can then choose which segment to target. The advertisements will be shown only to those target audience. This going one step ahead also helps to you design your advertisement strategy or in a way positioning your offering.


Most of the analytics tools present give answers to the questions Why and What. They will tell you the trend, why the trend is like that and all stuff. Google Ad Planner not only tells you what and why but also guides you to use this what and why for your benefit. 

Last moments with a dying star...

A star glowed, 

bright and warm

Always on the zenith, 

spreading a charm

Young was it, 

all to the core

Knew no end, 

no less no more

I watched it at night, 

twinkles galore

Smiled at me, 

to me it waved

My heart jumped beats, 

to see I craved

There that night, 

that darn night

I looked above,

in all the light

No where was it, 

in the sight

In the moment, 

my heart went weak

Then it came, 

like playing hide and seek

I smiled but it did'nt,

thought i even heard it weep

Let out a thin wisp of light, 

was it tear?

What was its plight?

I was desperate,

were we all right?

And then...

Out it went,

with a final flash 

and i wondered

was it there or 

was it my heart?

As the wind blew,

I felt its cold.

And a warm stream from eyes,

down my cheeks rolled.

Did it want to say something?

I can't look up,

it's so dark.

Cries my heart to see,

ol' friend's mark.

Lay my friend,

lay at peace.

Down below,

ain't no ease.....

How selling coconuts infront of software company is better than coding!

I would begin by saying that there was no disrespect meant for the 'great Indian software industry'. It has done an extraordinary job of boosting Indian exports and job market.

But being in the industry for more than two years at the fag end of the IT (Information technology) ladder as a coder helped me develop a certain perspective. This was based on observations made while hunting for eateries around my office. Why so? Yes I know this would be the obvious question as almost all descent sized IT companies have their own cafeteria. But my dear friend when you are in IT and you spend more time in the office than with your family (assuming that your wife works in IT too, this family time could be reduced by a factor of 10). So, you having the same food more than twice a day at same place  for months together does the trick of getting you bored to the extent that 'parathas' (Indian stuffed bread) outside the office below an asbestos sheet taste better than the claimed star service of cafeteria!

No wonder you go to any IT company in India you find a sort of fair going on outside the offices with people enjoying the lip-smacking parathas, chowmeins, chats (Indian savory) and coconuts water or cane juice, depending on the part of India you visit. I write about coconuts as I happened to work in the IT capital of India, Bangalore. The crowd is directly proportional to the size of office space and the one I used to work in was huge, and when I say huge I am thinking of HR numbers in excess of 20,000.

Standard law of demand and supply ruled. Demand was off the charts and suppliers were few so customers were at mercy of those miserable caterers who unlike the ones serving inside the campus did not know English but knew how to make money. During lunch breaks any odd shop would have long queues outside. I have spent many a days waiting in those for most part of my break and hogging all my food ASAP, lest a mail from my boss popped up asking something ASAP. My absence would have reflected pretty bad on my appraisal, which was of no use as such. Anyways that story some other time. Right now let us focus on selling coconuts, shall we?

Once upon a time, three frustrated friends got lucky enough to stand ahead of a meal queue and went through the process in no time as we could not control ourselves once the food came, due to our habit of eating fast (refer the ASAP line). We still had a lot of time as the aforementioned break was not over yet. It was hot outside so we decided to go for the Indian body coolant, the coconut water. While having it we were on with our favorite discussion on salary hike, appraisal rating, boss and job switch. I  was casually sipping from the coconut shell and watching the seller expertly slicing coconut tops with a machete and serving at the rate of around 3 customers per minute and in the meanwhile collecting a cool sum of Rs. 12 per coconut. The same coconut cost around Rs. 5 near my home (in Bangalore itself).

Although limited by my wits, a clever thought ran through my mind. I thought that this person would have bought coconuts from a place that would be like the one near my home where all the coconuts were unloaded from trucks every morning. It was a sort of wholesale market. If the retailers there sell it at around Rs. 5, they must at least have a margin of Re. 1 per piece. That meant our office coconut guy earned a neat sum of Rs. 8 per coconut. Making rough calculations with the number of coconuts (about 150 which he had neatly stacked up below a tree) the figure came to Rs. 1200 per day. He sold all the of them daily and had to work for 20 days a month (to match the IT company work calendar of five days a week) and approximately 6 hours a day give or take. That means a sweet Rs. 24,000 profit without tax and any cost. I mean, come on do you think he would declare his income? He sold coconuts beneath a tree so no investment! Then I compared it with my salary at that time which was Rs. 18K give or take. Full Rs 6K short even after being an engineering graduate and working more than 10 hours a day and more than 20 days a month mostly (the 5 days per week is a myth)!

Then I turned my attention to the burgeoning catering cartel around the place and I could not even begin to wonder how much would they be earning. I was at one point of time seriously contemplated about my next job switch. You don't need three guesses to tell what options I had in mind. OK let me give a clue - outside the office, small shed, parathas, coconuts...

However something else happened and I ended up doing an MBA, spending more money I earned back in those days. After spending the whole two years I somehow find humor in it when I imagine myself slicing coconuts with a swish of a cross between knife and a home made sword. Hope you like it. See you.

Mistakes I believe Kingfisher committed

A lot has been said about the quagmire that Kingfisher airlines has landed into so let me get straight to the point. What I present here is a perspective of a student of subjects of marketing and is based on fundas learnt from there.

• Product Strategy: The first thing that any student of marketing learns are the 4Ps of marketing. Out of all the first P stands for Product. Now from my own limited experience of flying I can say that the flights of 'Kingfisher Red' could have been better and I say from the point of view of a customer who looks for discount coupons even in economy flights and has the bare minimum expectation of getting to my destination on time and safely (well apart from the air sickness that I get sometimes). Things to be noted are as follows:

• Kingfisher started off initially as a premium service, acquired Deccan and changed its name to Kingfisher Red. I think while acquiring apart from the condition of Deccan airlines they would also have thought that customer would now feel more pride in being associated with a premium brand hence the red. Remember there were days when you could even bag a Deccan flight roundtrip for 700 bucks (INR not USD). But then they did not give a thought that on a Kingfisher check in counter at the airport how a customer would feel if there was discrimination based on whether your Kingfisher ticket had a 'First' or 'Red' attached to it?
• What's with the product? O.K. Let us step into the already delayed flight of Red. After a welcome with a forced smile and hassling the alley to my seat you could very well find that the earphone slot is not working or the screen in front is flickering incessantly. Why do you put these stuff there? I did not ask for them. I want to get home. I am tired of waiting for a flight like waiting for a train on the station which never seems to pay heed to something called clock! There goes the aspiration our of the oil stained window of my seat on Red. Yes the other P out of the 4 is for people and people travel in economy too.
• Then I find the company coming out with a glamorous calendar, a cricket team and oh! a swanky commercial complex. There is a clear disconnect.
• If you are operating an economy flight service there should be no frills attached. Why attach a few and make your service look like a partially decorated Christmas tree. (Hey there's something at the bottom, no wait, whoah! I found another one at the back). These seem like vestigial organs. For example what is the point of serving a free watered tea which I did not ask for. It seems like they wanted to do something but they forgot. This is the next P of the 4 Ps which is for Position which brings me to the next point.

• Brand Extension: It seems there is a great confusion about what do we consider the brand Kingfisher to be associated with. Is it a famous brand of alcoholic beverages? Is is an cricket premier league franchise? Is it a premium/economy airline? Errr... Keep guessing but it is all of it. But consumer brain does not appreciate this. It becomes a memory overload. People cannot pinpoint what to expect out of it. 
• Lot of contrasts in the flashy calendar girls and shoddy planes. Brand does only one thing and does it the best.
• No amount of tiny idlis and luke warm tea can wash over the above fact.
• Allow me to use a jargon but Kingfisher has too many things to say but there is a lack of what is called core brand value.

Well as a disclaimer I would like to say that I am not a disgruntled passenger. When it comes to fliers I am at the bottom of the pyramid (thank you Mr. Prahlad). I learn a lot of concepts day in and day out. But as my respected professors say 'It's all about application'. I have tried to critically analyze the situation and that is it. All the best Kingfisher and the readers. Hope you like it.

Google Ad Planner - Mukul Gokhale (10BM60050) & Kumar Abhishek (10BM60040)

For detailed tutorial visit: this link 

Why Social Analytics?

With the news of Facebook launching $5 Bn IPO, worth of social media has touched new limits. There is something unique about social analytics. In other types of analytics, one has to put in huge amount of efforts in generating data itself. The efforts required for data warehousing and then mining are above the basic herculean task of generating data. Social media and social networking websites have done some wonder for the first step of data generation. People are voluntarily sharing their entire life with the world and hence also with data analytics firms.

We no more have to design those complex questionnaires, break our head to figure out what we basically want from user. Instead the user itself comes to you now and tells you what he likes, what he wants, what he does not want so on and so forth. Also, based on the web presence of target user, his/her social circle gives added data which otherwise would be very difficult to get.

Google Ad Planner: It’s different

an·a·lyt·ic[1] : Pertaining to or proceeding by analysis is what the definition of analytic says. All the analytics tools present in market are heavily focusing on the data crunching part to generate some models. Large, scary and hard to remember statistical equations and formulas at background do this work for you. Although this forms the important part of any analytics tool, Ad Planner goes one step further.

Most of the analytics tools present give answers to the questions Why and What. They will tell you the trend, why the trend is like that and all stuff. Google Ad Planner not only tells you what and why but also guides you to use this what and why for your benefit !!!

Google Ad Planner works as a perfect STP (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) tool as well. It helps you to segment the entire social web sphere based on certain parameters specified by you. You can then choose which segment to target. The advertisements will be shown only to those target audience. This going one step ahead also helps to you design your advertisement strategy or in a way positioning your offering. Its feature of providing the estimate of exposure to your marketing strategy is like icing on cake !!

Since the tool works on social media, it not only gives you the current market trends but also the demographics of people setting that trend. Since it is from Google, it has to have something unique. Well, Google Ad Planner gives you an option of choosing the target audience profile and it will give you the list of websites you should advertise on. Not only this but it will also tell you if you can advertise through Google or not !!

The Ingredients

To do any analysis, what we require is huge amount of data. Now Google Ad plannar does not need you to break your head to collect the data. It makes your life simple. You give the websites you want your advertisement to be on as the input and it will gather all the required data from those websites. It will even give you relevant websites which you did not think of.

The second method is to design the demographics of your would be customers and put it in Ad planner. Google Ad planner will then find out the websites which have these types of visitors.

The Recipe

Since this is an advertising planning tool, we intend to demonstrate its usage by choosing one product and developing the essentials for the same. The entire process can be shown as follows

Google Ad Planner will give the analysis of data for chosen social websites. This analysis will include the numbers of people visiting along with their demographics. Based on this data, it will be easy for use to segment this entire population and then choose the one that fits best for our product. Interesting feature of this planner will also suggest me related websites even though they are not in our list.

The Dish

So finally using all the data analysis done by Google Ad Planner and the insights generated along with suggestions given by Ad Planner, we can plan our media campaign for chosen product with an estimation of impressions generate and reach it will have.

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[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/analytic

Problem of Brand name substituting product name

"Please give me some Surf". "Get a Colgate". "Make a Xerox copy". Sounds familiar? These are some of the common phrases I heard while shopping at a convenience store. Now problem with this is that most of the time we ended up purchasing an entirely different brand! This is because I could not have returned home empty handed if my mom asked me to buy Surf and if it was not available.

Surf (a detergent brand of Hindustan Unilever) became synonymous to the word detergent in India (at-least) but it is highly probable that the store down the street would not have the particular brand in its inventory. So the seller would give you some other detergent telling "Yeh naya Surf aaya hai. Ise le jao" (Here is a new Surf. Take this).

Now brands which are basically an identity carry some value with it, which is reinforced by the quality of the product over time. Passing on products of other companies as a particular brand definitely cannot do justice to the brand. Imagine washing your clothes with a detergent that was not Surf and getting unsatisfactory results (results claimed by company in TV ad). Now what would a simple homemaker of a semi urban or a village say to others? "Yeh Surf se kapde saaf nai hote!" (This Surf is ineffective). Or perhaps when you get a smudged photocopy and you say that the Xerox is not clear.

A brand becomes so popular that it replaces the name of product and yet the brand somehow not living up to the expectations of consumer. This is quite a paradox. This might not be the scenario in cities where the customer is more aware. Nonetheless companies should not be less careful.

Coming to more recent times the problem has taken a new form. People make verbs out of brand names which are basically proper nouns. Examples ..Google it out, Facebook me. Although next time you sit down to "Google", before entering just check out your default search engine. It is possible that you are using Internet Explorer as your browser and the default search engine is Bing.

In strict marketing literature advertisement, promotion and publicity carry distinct meanings. Why not add one more jargon of consumer education? Or does marketing follow Caveat Emptor (Customer beware)?