Blog by S.Swaminathan

Via NY Times

New York times has a nice article on how members in reward programs are giving away millions of points as donations for Katrina relief. This is an often overlooked aspect of many of the programs run by the airlines and credit card companies that allows participants to turn in miles to be...

Via Adage

Adage reports that the threat to consumers skipping ads is overblown as Tivo sales have started to slow down.  Customers in the US singing-up for TiVo this quarter was down to 965,000 as against 1.15 million last quarter. The article goes on to say that TiVo may be losing  mass-ma...

Martina writes:

Camera phones are taking mobile marketing a step ahead. Text & win will soon become history now that competition can be run inviting people to scan a barcode with their camera phone and send it as MMS to a special number.

In the UK, The Times is currently running such an initiativ...

Should brands and marketers get ready for a new world order - " Mass Intimacy" ?

I strongly feel so. Let me tell you why.

First the terminology by itself is an irony of sorts, for traditional marketers, I feel.  Intimacy is always associated with one-on-one, closely-knit small group, a...

Via warc

Google is offering a comprehensive package which includes print advertising. They are buying-up print space and offering it at lower than rack rates that print media normally offers it to advertisers. Of course, they must be bundling it with their ad sense model, I guess.

Google believes tha...

Kathy Sierra & team write

If you want your brain to stay sharp, you have to work it. "I write complex code every day of the week. That's all the brain exercise I need." you say. But you're wrong. If you want to keep your brain alive, you have to do things your brain doesn't expect. The ...

Just tried using  R-Connect( a wireless internet card that can be plugged into a laptop and can be used in over 115 towns in India ) from Reliance Mobile, a leading mobilephone services company in India.

The packaging was brilliant. Lovely images of a man sitting and surfing the net on the beac...

Seth Godin writes

Marketing projects are almost always vague.
They almost always involve people who aren't your direct reports.
And they almost always use people who have other stuff on their plate.

(this, btw, is very different than running a factory, where all three things above are never true).

So, he...

Derek Sivers writes there is no need to be protective of ideas because they are worth its money(in millions) only when executed well.

He gives a simple formula too!

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- ...

It's a known fact that print medium is getting squeezed (for their share of advertising budgets) between the power of the emerging new digital media that promises interactivity and TV that provides entertainment. Magazines have to get innovative and adapt to this new reality.

Magazines have a huge o...