Reported by Kapil Ohri @ AFAQs

Amul, which established its presence in Second Life in March by setting up its virtual parlour, is now working to expand its presence in the virtual world.
Trimensions, a Gurgaon based company, is helping Amul to develop its existence on Second Life. Rahul Dutta, chairman and managing director, Trimensions, says, “Amul is planning to buy eight-10 islands, equal to 160 acres of virtual land, in Second Life to set up a simulation of its production and distribution facility. The objective behind launching a virtual setup is to demonstrate its functioning to the consumers, and experiment with any change in the production or distribution system virtually before executing it in the real world.”

Screenshot of Amul Ice-cream parlour

Dutta adds, “Setting up ice cream parlours on Second Life was actually a pilot project. It will take around six months to launch the virtual Amul setup on Second Life.” The Amul ice cream parlours showcase topical ads of Amul starting from the late 1990s, Amul TV commercials and product displays.
Before Second Life, Amul’s presence in the online world was restricted to Amul.com (a corporate website), Amul.tv (showcasing short films and TVCs related to Amul) and AmulIcecream.in (to sell ice cream).
Second Life is an Internet enabled virtual world in which users can create their virtual identities. These identities can move around, interact and socialise with other users. Members of Second Life can participate in individual or group activities and create and trade items like virtual property and services with each other. A member has to pay for the space he purchases on Second Life. Second Life is developed by Linden Lab, a company based in the US.

Around 13 million users worldwide, including 50,000 Indians, are registered with Second Life.

© 2008 afaqs!

So I was going through Seth Godins’ blog (author of business books and a popular speaker.) and I came across this post (what do you know) of his where he writes about a bunch of things every good marketer should know. Thought it would be a good idea to share it on here.

1. Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
2. Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
3. Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
4. Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
5. Marketing begins before the product is created.
6. Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
7. Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
8. Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
9. Products that are remarkable get talked about.
10. Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
11. You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
12. If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
13. People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
14. You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
15. What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
16. Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
17. Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
18. People all over the world and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
19. Good marketers tell a story.
20. People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
21. Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
22. Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
23. Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
24. A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
25. Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
26. Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
27. Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
28. Good marketer’s measure.
29. Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
30. One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
31. In the Google world, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
32. Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
33. There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
34. Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
35. You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
36. You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
37. Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Having read all of this what struck me is that it’s all so simple! and yet alot of these facts get overlooked only too easily. There is always room to learn more and more each day, but learning matters only when you put what you have learned to use.This is but a chip of the iceberg, feel free to add on.

Problem one: There’s too much information is on the web..not really your storybook where you know the  quantum of content already.

Problem 2: Our brain processes visual information faster when viewing (what we mostly do on the web..esp with ads) as compared to reading.

This is where the challenge lies – creating impact as well as depth for this 5-seconds audience.. It automatically makes it more challenging to create a web advert as compared to a print or TV one.

Recent research conducted by the University of Vienna shows just how fast people process visual information.

Results:
Subjects could register content in less than 1/100th of a second.

Within 1/20th of a second subjects had already started to interpret style.

All this happening before recognition of the whole object.

Simply put, our art directors and web designers need to do some serious rethinking of their creative concepts and the media planner need to reconsider the time and placement of banner adverts and such else…lest we lose the fellow to a different ad!

Food for thought?