Blog by S.Swaminathan

NY Times has an article on whiting out of ads in the online world thro' a software called Adblock Plus, very much akin to TiVo in the offline world. Adblock is an open source software and has already over 2.5 million users!! Here's an example of how a whole business model of advertising will get hic...

There is an interesting survey which highlights the disconnect between agencies' thinking and marketers' decisions to handover their business to agency shops. Take a look:

• In general, clients don't feel that size matters, but agencies tend to believe it does.
• The majority of clients (83 percent) don'...

I have always believed bad customer experience with a company is primarily due to lack of alignment/ synergy with various departments involved in delivering value or service to the customer. When the departments' objectives are not aligned and if they don't work together closely, superior customer e...

Nokia has announced the launch of digital music service.

NY Times reports the Nokia Music Store, to open this year, will let users download songs from the Internet to their computers or directly to mobile phones over wireless networks, which Apple’s recently released iPhone cannot do.

Nokia said it w...

Nishad( a friend of mine) directed me to a thought-provoking article on branding by Russell Davis. There are some fundamental shifts happening out there. Marketeers and agency folks need to take cognizance of these changes and must get ready to reinvent themselves and change the way they approach an...

BusinessWeek has an interesting article on the challenges of finding the right CEOs for corporations. The article goes on to mention that it will soon be the age of specialist CEOs. Take a look:

James M. Citrin, corporate kingmaker, has long had a close-up view of the leadership demands of the world'...

Henry Blodget, a former Wall Street Internet analyst brings out a very telling analysis of where companies' marketing investments are shifting:

• US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies--Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), AOL (TWX), and MSN (MSFT)--grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%. 
• US ...

I read this interview of Ivy Ross, Chief Creative Officer of Disney Stores and was fascinated by some of the concepts she talks about. It has some great lessons for building organizations and developing ideas. Companies of the future need new structures and design thinking to create products and a c...

George F.Colony CEO, Forrester, has written a brilliant paper on how technology has broken down the barriers that existed between companies and customers. In an era where the 30-sec TV Spot and newspaper ads are dying, over the last couple of years, I too have come to firmly believe that marketing a...

Sometime early last week, I announced my decision to quit iContract, one of India's leading one-to-one agencies.

It was a job that I had really loved to do for the entire part of the last 14 years of my working life -  building and growing iContract. iContract is a one-to-one division of Contra...