Who hogged the bigger limelight – Facebook IPO or the IPL controversies?

On a day when all the Indian general news channels unanimously chose to discuss and debate during their primetime on the Indian Premier League controversies that happened over the last one week there was one another topic which was also closely watched and covered by the business media around the world including Indian business news channels… yeah, it was the much awaited facebook’s IPO on NASDAQ stock exchange. From what was touted to be the biggest IPO ever to the most controversial cricketing entertainment both made my greycells to tick. Sat down for an hour to make a comparison on the two most watched events of the day. And here are my views on these two Big brands and their stand as on today !

Disclaimer: I am neither a serious facebooker nor a serious IPL fan, neither I hold business/financial interests in either of these brands. But I admire/use/watch/follow both these brands just like any other person. These are just my personal views as I see it from their early days till today.

facebook	Indian Premier League (IPL)
The motive for starting facebook was just to connect people with each other and there was no business intention behind this idea until a few years back and it was started by few tech geeks .	Realising the business potential of the game of cricket had in a cricket mad nation like India, the idea of IPL was formulated to the ‘T’ behind the well guarded boardrooms by people who wanted to monetise the madness and make quick money
In a span of 7-8 years, went on to make history for the sheer number of users who cut across boundaries, language, culture etc. A classic example of living to the goal set forth..connecting people.	Made the common cricket fan who all the while support ‘Team India’ to support his home franchise. I learnt India is a classic example for Unity in Diversity in my school history classes that reflected when we supported Team India but what IPL has done to/taught/is teaching Indians?
Known in the public during its early years for the infamous CEO and his lack of business & PR skills, but in the last couple of years known for the metamorphed CEO who had lead from front the biggest media exercise – marching to IPO .	From the formation known for the glitterati, rave parties, cheergirls, bollywood and list is endless. All of this was epitomised with the exit of the founder commissioner. Last couple of years without the founder, known for  mismanagement, open spats between franchises, controversies etc.
The founder and idea owner still holds the mantle here and he has a the final word in all the major decisions. Also he leads from the front even after the negative publicity because of the movie based on fb.	The founder and idea owner lives in exile for fear of security and arrest in his home country. He was not able to sustain his position after he had conflicts with the powerful group inside the organisation he conceived and was part of.

 

But one common denominator for both brands is the big ‘A’ word… Advertising. Both platforms are used for advertising and that is the major source of revenue for both the brands.

What’s in a blog name ?

Hi fellas,

If there is one day which puts all the business professionals on tenterhook, it should be the financial year closure day, for most of the Indian organisations its March 31^st. I just survived one more March 31^st unscathed in my day job. If there is one word that can describe the month of March 2012, I would term it as terrifying .  Every day of this month throwed us new surprise which was never even thought of in my wildest of dreams. But at the end like our tamil movies it was “All is well”. I am happy to have gone through the experience… it made me tougher and made me ready to take on new challenges.

Since I was virtually on my toes throughout last month, the creative part of my brain went to hibernating mode. Come April, I rebooted my creative part and its active now. The result of that rebooting is this blogpost.

Is there a way to connect the popular south American dance form –  Tango with the macho bull – Harley Davidson  and the fruit that comes from tropical India & which has a huge following across the world – Mango ? This blog post illustrates how a guy found an uncanny way to connect the above unrelated things from his perspective. Most of you after reading this post might also accept and realise the connect, which till now is not in the horizon.

That was a peak summer season in 2010 in Chennai, and our guy (let’s call him as KK) who was working as a sales professional took a break during his lunchtime to have a glance at the newspaper. As he went thru’ the newspaper in his abode, there was this small news article in page 7 that caught his attention, it was an announcement for call of entries for a blog on the relationship between two nations that are increasingly becoming significant to each other, to other nations and to the world at large. The announcement was made by US consulate in Chennai and it was open to any one aged more than 18 years and who are living in the 4 southern states & 1 Union territory – Tamilnadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Pondicherry. The topic was, “US – India relationship : How it matters”. And there was a timeline given to submit the blog post.

As the organisers wanted the blog to be an innovative and creative one, and the topic was also an extensive one, it was a challenging task to KK.  He thought of having one more person to contribute on building this blog, so that it reduces some burden on him. He asked for his friend’s support in this venture – let’s call him R here. As always, our KK thinks more on the very minute details as he also happens to be a quizzer, a serious hobby which he pursues – it brought in him the inquisitive thinking capability. So once the deal was done with R, the clock started ticking.

KK’s first thought process was to fix a name for this blog so that it could be registered quickly. As the thinking process started, he went thru’ different sources to coin an appropriate blog name. He just din’t think that it was just a name for a blog, he wanted the blog name to convey the meaning of the topic and wanted the blog name to be a brand name as well, all his business management thoughts were put to test.

As KK refreshed his memory on current affairs it came to his mind that, the year 2010 was an year of fruition of the barter, where one nation’s cult brand was bartered for another nation’s pulpy and juicy fruit. Yeah, the year 2010 brought Harley Davidson to India while Mango was exported to America. While these were two distinct, unrelated words… KK thought of uniting it for his blog name. While the words Harley and Mango were chosen for the name, it struck on KK that there was something missing in the whole name. So he wanted to add one more word to make it more rhyming and complete!

As the search was on for a rhyming name to be combined with mango, this dance form – Tango which happens to be a fusion of various dance forms and which has its genesis from European & African cultures, which was further adapted and shaped by the former slaves of south American nations sounded perfect to become a blog name. And thus came the name:

HARLEYMANGOTANGO

As KK shared this name with R, he was also impressed and immediately a domain in wordpress blog was created which went like this:

http://harleymangotango.wordpress.com

As we come to the end of this blogpost, KK wishes to share with you all that this blog won the second prize at the US Consulate Chennai sponsored blog contest on US-India relationship. KK, is a firm believer in the adage, the sum is more than the whole of its parts.

 India and US are two big nations with wonderful people on either side, they have the potential to make the world a better place to live in, if all their thoughts and actions are channelized in a positive manner.

Do share your comments and feedbacks here… I can hear from my regular blog readers on what’s the update on Succession planning …. The updates are coming soon!

STAR VIJAY’s DIWALI BLITZKREIG

This entry may be a delayed one but its meaningful even if its hitting the creation of Tim Berners Lee late.The week of diwali ( the festival of lights celebrated in India) will be remembered by me for various good reasons.

I was fascinated by the way Star Vijay satellite channel rewriting the concept of festival programs. The tradition had been having special programs lined up on the day of festival with business organisations being the title sponsors of those programs. But the drawback in this model had been the effective audience will be spread across different channels and hence there is not much value addition the reason being only a certain fraction of viewers watching the program at any given point of time. As different people have different taste and given the choice of choosing the channel and program they want to watch they would easily migrate to other channels and hence at the end of the day only a fraction of viewers watch any program. But this year Vijay tv came up with a host of programs lined up for the entire week of diwali thus capturing the plum of viewers attention during the prime time. What they did?

They had done good homework long time back and it was evident in the line up of programs and the timing of those programs. Their promotion strategy for their programs was thru’ two mediums mainly. Through their own channel and thru’ posters (which is unconventional wherein one media is publicising its programs throu’ other media (thats the world of Out Of Home )) in the city of chennai.

The program Kamal @ 50 was running for more than a month and the final climax took place on 28th of September. But Star Vijay screened this program on the week of diwali. Thus opening the week of diwali with huge blockbuster.They had promoted the program heavily and this was evident when the rival Sun TV network doing a last move to dampen it by advancing its daily primetime movie in K Tv from 8 p.m to 7 p.m with a super star movie. This move might not have yieded much gain as Super Star Rajinikanth himself was present in the program Kamal @ 50 and he was the center of attraction. With two giants in the Tamil filmdom rubbing shoulders in the dais its a rare opprotunity to miss.

The title sponsor for this event happening to be HUL’s Rin detergent. HUL suffering from poor sales and having increased its advertising spend had chosen a good program to associate with. Star Vijay telecasted this program for more than 8 hrs on Oct 12th and 13th. Thus this program would have tilted the audience attention in favor of Star Vijay. The other programs on the week of diwali also were special like Super singer contestants and judges coming with their families and on 15th it was the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire in Tamil would have made the viewers keep coming again and again.

It was a clean sweep by Star Vijay and no other channel would have been prepared to face this blitzkrieg…..

Star vijay is emerging to be a contender in the fort of Sun Network. With innovative program content, Good thought out strategy, programs to woo different audiences, understanding the viewer’s pulse and appropriate timeslots for the programs its going to be Star Vijay atleast as of now till the competition wakes up. At the end of it its going to be a treat for Viewers and advertisers….