I attempted a different format. Do check the slideshow below.
Interview: Eric Schmidt
The Line of Google's perception of privacy:
"People are ok with ads that are targeted on what they are doing, but not necessarily with who we think you are. We are very careful about that" - Eric Schmidt(CEO, Google)
There are many such interesting insights in this interview of Eric Schmidt by Ken Auletta.
(Link : Total length 56min)
Fiction mein Dum nahi hai
SET Max and Star Plus launched high profile quiz-game shows this summer, spending close to a crore on its hosts for each episode.Sadly for them, the two game shows on television aren't doing well at all. Dus Ka Dum hosted by Salman Khan on SET MAX delivered 2.5 TRP ratings on the day of its debut (June 6). Shah Rukh Khan's quiz show, Kya Aap Paanchvi Paas Se Tez hain, on Star Plus got a first rating of 4.61 on April 25, before it dropped to 1.97 on June 6. For comparison: the inaugural IPL match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Bangalore Royal Challengers had 7.2 TRP. [Source]
Definition of TRP (For those who aren't clear about it)
TRP is measured by TAM Media, a joint venture between AC Nielsen and IMRB. They monitor TV habits in Class I towns (population greater than 1 lakh). One TRP point indicates that 1% of the population was watching the show. When used for the broadcast of a program, usually the average rating across the duration of the show is given. [Sources 1,2,3]
I was amazed to note that the sample covers only approximately 7000 households (translating to 30,000 respondents) across India, represnting around 35 million television households. Whereas across India there are close to 100 million households with a television set! Anyway, I'll continue the article with the assumption that the data collected is representative of the whole population.
What went wrong ? Was the problem in the show promotions ? No. In fact, both channels made heavy investments for that too. Star Plus definitely did a better and more rounded campaign than SET Max:
- Lots of humourous TVCs about normal people claiming that they are better than 5th graders(like this)
- A song-and-dance featuring Sharukh and the kids featured on the show (here)
- game tie-ups with Indiagames [Source]
- some viral campaigns too [Source]
In comparison, DuskaDum's campaign had been lacklustre.
- There were a bunch of brief 10 seconds promos announcing the name of the show followed by a key sponsor. These were mainly airted during the IPL matches (Note to SET : the fact that L'Oreal or LG is the sponsor is not an incentive for me to watch the show!)
- In a few others, Salman Khan would swagger up to the screen and mumble something about Dum.
- A song-and-dance sequence featuring the host himself (here)
- And of course, they had to start a blog about the show by Salman. They didn't even give the poor thing its own domain, hosting it on Blogspot. It is regularly updated, boring and clearly fake.
When the magic doesn't seem to be happening, they try to tweak the format a bit: Like Sony attempting to change from a generic music reality show to K for Kishore to decide a KishoreK prodigy. The singers, saccharine praises and judge antics however remained the same.
Then they try to add more drama: Like the RocknRoll Family show on ZEE where the whole family jiggles on stage in moronic costumes, and Ajay Devgan& Kajol try to cook up praises while adjudging awards like 'Best Dada' and 'Best Dadi'
Then when all ideas dry up, they just up the prize money hoping that'll be the clincher (like DusKaDum).
Me-too ideas have bombed multiple times!Entertainment channels have a nice spectrum of shows spanning Fact and fiction. Fiction is when you know you are viewing imaginary characters, in an imaginary world - irrespective of the vivid depiction (like the K Serials). Fact is when can relate to the participants - you enjoy the rush of 'Had I been in his position' (like in Antakshari or KBC or Aaja NachLe). Reality shows forcibly plonked themselves somewhere in between, where we know the contestants are for real, but the scenarios are increasingly unreal.
Lets have a recap now!
Females with oodles of makeup giving each other the stink-eye in K serials: Fiction
Amitabh Bachchan doing an impression of Deewar on request from a KBC contestant - Fact with a sprinkling of fiction
Singing Contest Participant's candid outburst along with inputs from mummy, papa and the neighbours - Fact with dollops of fiction
In a recent promo for DusKaDum, the contestant (female of course) expressed her predilection for a song from 'Maine Pyaar Kiya'. Magically, they happen to procure the same song during the show. And then Salman and she danced while the audience cheered. Don't you think this time they went too far ?
In an attempt to the have the best of both, you are left with neither. When you try to entertain the audience, yet use 'one of them' in the nautanki, you have the risk of confusing them. When forced to innovate within the same format, the only immediate fix that occurs to the show developers is to dramatize things further.
Well, it doesn't work that way.
Related Readings:
Afaqs did a great analysis of a peculiar Indian phenomenon - of families still persisting on owning a single television set. They site some detailed and interesting reasons for it.
Motomusic in India
"Motorola is expanding its business in Asia. Recently, they launched another one of their Motomusic service in India. It is an added service provider for music or radio and net purposes of mobile phones. Bharti Airtel will be the first telecom to offer Motomusic." [Source]
Although the official website for Motorola isn't reflecting this change yet, I am hoping for an early rollout of this service. Given the proliferation of MP3 enabled mobile devices, a formal channel for music download is an imperative for the music business. I also happened to watch this video in the series Authors@Google with Don Tapscott. He is the author of the book Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything . He made a wonderful statment about the music industry.
"Music should become a service, not a good....Nobody will steal music. You will never want to take possession of a song, if for say $7 you can have access to any recorded music ever, and any kind of service around it - say Mike Jagger's favourite folk songs."
The first statement is quite astonishing. What it implies is that once re-engineered, the cost structure of music business will be completely different. we won't be paying for the storage, manufacturing or distribution costs for music. Since the medium will be MP3 (or evolved versions of that), those heads come down to almost zero. Instead the payment will be for useful information. The MP3 will just be a part of the service. All the tagging, ranking and 'iLike' activity on platforms such as Facebook will actually be little computational activities that help sort the music according to taste, popularity etc. As such music choices is heavily weighed down by a bandwagon effect (choosing what others seem to like). Hence I'd gladly pick and choose those titles that are popular or sorted well. Another interesting effect of this shift is called The Long Tail - which is a shift in revenue proportion from mass-market v.s niche titles.
I hope the Indian music industry will embrace this well :)
p.s - Seth Godin recently wrote a similar piece for the publishing industry, which itself is going through a major shift. Read it here.
What makes Chetan Bhagat a Success
What we'll attempt to do in this post is break down this success into parts, so that it makes sense.
The Book
Remember, this is the 3rd book by Chetan Bhagat (CB). So the story is spelt out quite differently for the launch. Expectations for the new book are defined by the previous experiences with the author, which have been quite encouraging for readers. There have been others who tried to emulate his success - like Joker in the Pack. These have not succeeded. In fact, it was a pain to unearth their book titles. They just didn't deliver.
Of course book number 3 can't purely ride on the success of the previous books or the hype associated with the launch. Yash Raj's movie Tashan provides an excellent analogy for "Overpromise and Underdeliver." The reviews for the movie (online and WOM) were so vile that it sank within 3 weeks. The hype won't ever be a substitute for the book.
The reviews for the book over the last 2 weeks have been satisfactory. Given the positive vibes for this release, sales should match or exceed that of the previous books.
CB will be conquering the 'Pop Curve' - which Seth Godin depicts in this graph above. The curve to the right caters to a bigger market - the people who don't want to try things too edgy or focussed - a wide set of customers who want to read books that are good (not necessarily great) and don't really want to get into make specific choices (jargon: dissonance reducing behaviour). John Grisham is another example of an author riding the right curve, while Jhumpa Lahiri would definitely be on the left.
(On a different note, I find the music business in India to be focusing solely on the right curve. There aren't any niche artists at all.)
The Author
Chetan Bhagat has a cheerful and chubby face. Seriously - you don't expect an IITian to look this smart. In fact, when I googled IITian, one of the first pictures turned out to be of another IIT-IIMA guy. This one is more stereotypical and realistic!
(I don't know who this guy is. Guy, if you are reading this, you're welcome :D )
Hmm....Like I was saying, apart from writing a good book, CB has made sure India discovers more about him as a person. A dozen references to his IIMA wife and twin kids on the media and soon he doesn't seem like a distant author at all - instead what is conceived is an image of an aspiring IITian who has found his calling for writing books relevant to Indians. So any Big Bazaar customer with an additional hundred in his pocket, a soft corner for CB and with even substandard reading habits will think "Why not! I'll try out his book now!!"
Though I admit that's not the only way. you can emulate Melvin Udall and be a prick, but CB's strategy is definitely better! Some of his quotes which support my argument.
“I started writing when I was in class 5, and in those days, seeing your name in print used to be a big thing. Since then, this desire to become an author was there inside me,”
"Hey, one more thing. I am Chetan Bhagat, and I just want to be known and remembered as that.”
"What I want to do is entertain people, and I want to do it by writing nothing serious or highbrow." [source]
Beyond the Book
There are two key elements in for the explosive sales for the new book.
- Pricing it at 95/-
- A tie-up with Big Bazaar for greater reach
The tie-up with Big Bazaar has turned out to be a symbiotic extravaganza. The book launches have been planned with sessions for Book Reading and Meet-the-Author. Shake hands, get a signed copy of the book - and turn into loud megaphones for the book. Its perfect. Of course, by the time the 5th author tries the same stunt....
CB also started blogging around 3 weeks prior to the launch. (This is much better than the Aamir, BigB, Salman crap). It talks about his reasons for writing the new book, his style of writing, the book launch schedule - same ingredients mentioned above: the book, the author and going beyond the book.
To sum it up,
1. Maintain a quality level to please your book reader (critics and literature knights can go to hell!)
2. Give them a reason / lower their hesitation for trying out the product (in this case the pricing of the book)
3. Look beyond being just an author - be a whole person to your reader - online and offline.
4. Be visible - people want to know more so that they can talk more about the same to their peers.
5. Hope for the best!
p.s: I know this should be followed by a normal review of the book (looking beyond Chetan Bhagat's face to judge it :D). I'll have that in the next post!
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