Web 2.0 goes Desi!!!

Here I would put the list of some Indian sites which have joined the Web 2.0 bandwagon and are seemingly doing a fairly good job. Keep an eye on this space -

http://www.watblog.com/
http://youmint.com/ - Social NW with free SMS!!
http://funpiper.com/
http://www.watconsult.com/
http://www.watjob.com/
http://yaari.com/- Another Social NW with free SMS!!

Potter-onomics!!

It’s easy to disregard the old cliché that truth is stranger than fiction. But then consider Harry Potter. The story of how the franchise was built makes the schools of wizardry; epic battles and a menagerie of fantastic creatures seem commonplace by comparison.

The transformation of brand Harry Potter is rich in fairytale archetypes, a change that evokes The Ugly Duckling with a dash of Cinderella thrown in. There’s something genuinely magical about the way it’s morphed from an unknown solitary book a bare decade ago to an industry that is today estimated to be worth roughly $6 billion.

And in the tradition of the best fairy tales, almost no one saw the change coming. Marketing gurus, social scientists, bookstore owners, even the publishers, had little inkling of how successful Potter would be. Especially since it started unobtrusively enough, reading like Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers series with some magical elements grafted in.

Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer, JWT, and one of the world’s most clued-in trendspotters admits, “I did not expect Harry Potter to reinvent books — since books were supposedly off-trend when Potter was released. I feel Potter buzz is a decade-old but perhaps it’s more recent than that.” Pottermania took even globetrotting marketing guru and author Martin Lindstrom by surprise: “No one expected this. Several publishers turned Harry Potter down.

I heard about the potential success when the manuscript was at auction in New York. As the price climbed I realised this was about to be a great success... and it was.” One of India’s first champions of Potter, R Sriram, consultant and former CEO of Crossword, recalls having encountered Potter at a book fair in London.

Only the first two books were out at the time, and in spite of acknowledging Rowling as a very promising author, Bloomsbury was not going overboard with promotions.

Crossword ordered 250 copies of the first books, and according to Sriram, they weren’t particularly fast moving. Just a few years later, people would be queuing up as early as 5 am to pick the latest instalments. Sriram says, “Little did we know that Rowling would compete on an equal footing with Amitabh Bachchan or Shahrukh Khan.” Especially since Rowling did not fit the profile of an author likely to rake in billions. Salzman admits, “Rowling was also off-trend. She wasn’t Candace Bushnell spinning her sexcapes for singletons but rather an unknown who sprang from the anonymity of the talented and impoverished.” It wasn’t until the imminent release of Book Four that Pottermania got the world well and truly in its grip. It was bolstered by an all-too-rare announcement from the author that one of the characters in the book was going to be murdered. Ever since, each book has delivered an impressive bodycount, driven by Rowling’s Sibyl-like proclamations. The announcement that two of the central characters won’t live to see the end of Book Seven has set off a virtual parallel industry analysing previous books for clues to the latest. It’s likely the franchise will have ended with a bang, an initial opening that will be unprecedented in publishing history. Far from putting people off, the increasingly grim tenor is one of the main reasons for its growth. For instance, unlike most previous books targeted at children, Potter and his friends haven’t spent their entire lives stuck in a sanitised pre-pubescent limbo. Sriram says, “The publishers have managed to track the target audience. As they age and grow, the books have grown with them. It’s evolved just ahead of the market and effectively enlarged it with every passing year.” Lindstrom praises the flawless release strategy, likening it to the hype campaign surrounding iPhone. “It plays on magic. Harry Potter is released at a minute past midnight, not at 9:00am like everyone else.”

Potter is a favourite with parents for having dragged a generation obsessed with Playstations and violent TV shows back to reading. And while Sriram believes the so-called decline in reading was exaggerated, he admits Potter has brought a new generation of kids to book stores. An audience that bides their time between books, moving on to other fantasy writers like Philip Pullman, Eoin Colfer and Jonathan Stroud: “It’s obviously not just Bloomsbury but other publishers who’ve realised there was a phenomenon in the making. A rising tide lifts all ships.” Possibly the largest reason for Potter’s success, though, is its ability to draw in adults as well. The older target audience gets hooked, according to Lindstrom, since “Grownups are no longer all skilled readers. Many have become simple readers which is exactly why simple books hold appeal.” While kids pester parents to buy and then read the books, parents in turn have found them enjoyable enough to support the franchise. Salzman recalls there being no evidence of a generation gap by 2003 when it came to Harry Potter — it was either embraced or hated, but invariably inspired passion. It managed to move from being a niche franchise to a mass favourite: “Harry Potter is about and for everyone. The leap to mass is something that only masses can engineer. I see many comparisons between Harry Potter and everything else that has sprung from the cultural zeitgeist and stuck these last few years. In fashion, the comparison has to be H+M, chock full of accessibility and style.” John Gerzema, global chief strategy officer, Y&R does a quick analysis using the Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) study to find brands similar to Harry Potter: “iPod, iTunes, Mini Cooper, Pringles, Wii, Playstation, Sirius Satellite Radio and Universal Studios — innovative pioneers that are cool, trendy, intelligent, and fun as well.” Besides Potter’s good wholesome entertainment plank, at least a part of the target audience is rooting for Rowling. Though no longer the underdog of the publishing world, it’s felt the less obvious reasons for the franchise’s success have a lot to do with the author herself. Says Lindstrom, “Mystique surrounds her; a lady who rarely speaks with the press and prefers to conduct meetings with kids only. There’s the fact that she wrote the ending of the last book 12 years ago and locked it in a safe! The fact that people were trying to break into her house to secure a preview of the ending.

The fact that people are trying to ban her books as they are supposed to attract the devil!” In the initial days, Rowling was personally involved with branding. Sriram recalls the author sending Crossword a hand-written letter thanking everybody who celebrated Harry Potter’s birthday, one of the many promotional exercises that the store hosted. He says a tad ruefully, “Post that, it was impossible to get anything personalised from her.” But if there was any danger of the franchise falling off the map with Rowling withdrawing from the public eye, the films kicked in to keep even the older books alive. In fact, more than the popularity of Book Four, it was the film version of The Philosopher’s Stone that brought in many first-time readers. Says Sriram: “The combination of film and book has been killer. They feed into each other. It was a niche following before, the films made it broad based.” The movies may have lagged behind the plot, but have resulted in a huge push for the back catalogue. The books and films have taken centrestage “getting out of review pages and straight to page 1” says Sriram, resulting in huge free publicity. The rumours and revelations around each book have resulted in an almost incessant buzz on the internet. Lindstrom says, “Word of mouth has been Harry Potter’s main driver.” The jury is out on whether Potter can take other brands along for the ride, though. Rowling has been fiercely protective, actively avoiding a Star Wars-like situation where a much-beloved series was diluted by a spate of irrelevant tie-ins. The brand has primarily been experienced through books and the movie. Salzman says that apart from Time Warner, Potter is less of a brand showcase and more a brand in its own right.

Lindstrom is among those who think the brand has spread itself too thin: “It benefited LEGO, in the beginning and Time Warner over time. But no one over the entire period. The franchise was given to far too many and the price was far too high.” According to Gerzema, though, the brand shows signs of decline: “Harry is not for everyone, but is recognised as a mover/shaker.” An area of concern is that Knowledge (a parameter on BAV) is significantly higher than Esteem — indicating that people know more about the brand than they like it, a definite sign of a wear-out effect. Gerzema believes, “It could signal they are looking for other options for entertainment. Esteem has been growing slowly, so it’s not that Harry wore out his welcome, but to say he’s overexposed, is probably an understatement.” However, for Sanjay Luthra, managing director, Mattel Toys India, Potter still works his magic — to a far greater extent than other more well established franchises: “Harry Potter’s core target audience is kids between seven and 16 (seven to 12 for movies, and 10 to 16 for books). Unlike with Superman or Spiderman, where the TG is young children, Harry Potter isn’t a very big property. But as kids grow older, they grow out of Superman and Spiderman and start taking to Harry Potter.” Even the entertainment options are more in the area of card games like Harry Potter Uno, which cuts across older TGs. Launched in India on July 1, the response has been “phenomenal”, with a week 1 off-take of 42%, as opposed to the average of 25% that follows most new properties. While the average monthly off-take is 50%, Luthra adds that Mattel India expects Harry Potter Uno to have a figure close to 80%-85%: “Kids stay with Harry Potter much longer — for anywhere between eight to 10 years. They get into Potter through movies at the age of six or seven, and then graduate onto the books by the age of 10 or 12, and stay loyal fans till 15-16. A burst of activity around Superman will sustain interest for three to five months, but a Harry Potter activity lasts much longer.” To cap it all, there’s the all too finite lifespan of the franchise. Even casual fans are aware that Potter is going to have only seven books worth of adventures, crunching the commitment required from a reader. All the speculation, drama, suspense and intrigue are around a finite set of facts. Salzman says, “It is time for the run to end and seven years is a terrific tenure for a fad or for a trend at a stage where speed isn’t even fast enough. I think the brand will have a greater value if it’s not extended for now and if history and nostalgia drive its valuation in the next few years.”

Microsoft, Digg in advertising pact

Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday it reached an agreement to be the exclusive provider of display and contextual advertising on Digg.com, a popular Web site that lets readers recommend online articles to others.

The three-year agreement between Microsoft and Digg, which has more than 17 million visitors a month, provides a boost to the world's largest software maker's efforts to gain a foothold in the rapidly growing online advertising market.

The two companies said they would also work together on future technology and advertising initiatives.

Digg challenges the long-held journalistic assumption that editors know best what people want to read and allows readers to "digg," or vote for a story to push up its rankings.

Microsoft has a similar advertising agreement with another hot Web property, social-networking site Facebook.com.

Shares of Microsoft fell 14 cents to $30.66 (14.93 pounds) in afternoon Nasdaq trading.