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ITIS HARD TO imagine a world today withoutcomputers. How did we ever get anything done wayback then - running multi-million dollar enter

prises, learning, creating graphics, producing movies... ?And already, it is becoming equally hard to imagine theworld without the Internet, without mobile phones. Howdid we ever survive back then?

Okay, now here is one for the marketing soothsayers:How long before we will be telling ourselves "It's hard toimagine marketing without inter activity How did we eversell anything with one-way conmmnication?" Not long, ifyou ask me (you could have, if you were reading thisonline).

In the near future, all marketing will be interactive. Itis inevitable; it is, after all, evolution.

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The thing is, marketers and brand managers havealways yearned for interactivity Take coupons in printmedia, or DMs with Business Reply Envelopes.Interactivity and measurability have been elusive, notunexplored. So, it is not as if interactivity is an addedfeature, a bonus, in a marketing activity It is a pre­requisite for effective marketing. It just wasn't availableso far.

The Internet has provided that missing direct connec­tion between the marketer and the customer. It is helpingmarketing become what it was always meant to be:• Personalised & Relevant

• Entertaining & Engaging• Interactive & Actionable

The Internet is marketing's vehicle for Nirvana!

JAN UARY 2007

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Mobile Phones: You arrive at London Heathrow airport.

As a Marriott Rewards member, you receive a messageinviting you to avail yourself of a special price on a room.

ever been to the London Marriott? Check out the video

tour of the room on your mobile. Ready to make a reser-vation? Send back a text message. "

SMS-based m0.bile marketing is only the first step.But, according t~ NRS 2006, 38 per cent of all mobileusers already access value-added services like

downloads, Ml\1S, etc., making a market of arou~ld 30mn"power users".

Community applications that enable peer-to-peerCOllll1lUnications over the mobile internet, such as mobile

blogging, and dating, are taking off. Entertainment

which tells you more about the deal. Happy? You make abooking or fill in a form asking a rep to get in touch withyou.

Back to where you left the program.IPTV and Interactive TV are not new concepts at all.

The earliest initiatives date back to the late 1970s when

cable TV operators in the US and UK experimented witha few models. However, it is only with the advent of triple­play models (Voice, TV,Data), based on Internet Protocol,that promising developments are taking place.

The State of Interactive TV 2005 report from KaganResearch reports that currently 34.1 million householdsin the USA subscribe to ITV service; the number of sub­

scribers is expected to reach 69 million by 2009. That ismore than half of U.S. TV households.

IPTV subscribers in the Asia-Pacific region (excludingJapan) are expected to grow to over 20 million by 2009.In India, Airtel is testing its IPTV services among a smallgroup of users. DTH, a potential alternate route forInteractive TV has ah'eady been launched in India.

Are we ready to take Sunil Babu interactive?

But you have heard this before. In fact, it probablyreminds you of the Dotcom hype. Isn't it this very hypeand over-promise of the Internet that led to its neardemise?

There's one fundamental difference, though. We areno longer under the illusion that all marketing money willmove to interactive media. It is interactivity which will

pervade all media, including "traditional" media. And allmedia - TV,Print, Outdoor, Mobile - will be interactive,

thanks to the Internet and other future networking tech­nologies. The web is only the first. It is the beginning ofthe age when, across media, advertisers will know who isseeing their ads, where, and how they are reacting tothem, in real-time, based on real people, and not basisunreliable meters or diaries.

According to the Internet and Mobile Association ofIndia (IAMAl) and IMRB International, as of September2006, India had 37mn Internet users, a figuTe that islikely to cross 40mn by March 2007. The J\TRS 2006

reports the reach of Print media at 222mn readers.Television is estimated to reach around 230mnindividuals.

Marketers have, so far, argued that at a paltry 1/6th ofthe reach of mass media, the Internet is perhaps just aniche alternative. The question is not how fast the PC­based internet users will gl'OW:The question is how soonwill the Internet and begin to power traditional media?

It's ah'eady begtll1!

It is the beginning of the age when,

across media, advertisers will know

who is seeing their ads, where, and

how they are reacting to them, in real­

time, based on real people, and notbasis unreliable meters or diaries.

Television: You're watching Discovery Travel &Living, which is broadcasting a feature on Turkey.Yesterday; you were searching Thomascook.com forholiday deals. A little scroller pops up to tell you that youcould fly to Turkey for as little as Rs2000 per month onyour card.

You press a button on your remote which pauses the

program and takes you to the advertiser's web-page,

JANUARY 2007 SP AGE

I11arketing

The global mobile population is

expected to reach around 1.78 billion,

of which Asia-Pacific will see the highest

growth rate contributing nearly 40 percent of total mobile revenues.

companies are beginning to create content for mobile.With or without 3G, mobile broadband is but a matter oftime. Already; in the UK, 900,000 have watched TV viatheir mobije phone (Continental Research, ConvergenceReport, May 2006).

One of the key characteristics of mobile medium thatstill remains unexploited is localization. Dnlike the PC orthe TV; the mobile phone travels with your customer,allowing the marketer to not only reach him anytime,anywhere, but also make your communication geograph­ically relevant.

According to The Yankee Group, the Global Mobilepopulation is expected to reach around 1.78 billion, ofwhich Asia-Pacific will see the highest growth rate con­tributing nearly 40 per cent of total mobile revenues.Agency BBDO and marketer Coca-Cola UK have eachmade claims that mobile will eventually replace TV asthe most important medium for advertisers.

Ignore this channel at your own peril.PS. Keep your ears to the ground for Bluetooth

marketing, Blackberry marketing and other colours ofmobile marketing. The best is yet to come.

Podcasting: Create your own radio station with yourfavourite programming. And change it all tomorrow.What the heck! Have one for each day of the week!

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Podcasting offers a new level of Content On Demand(COD), similar to the Video On Demand (VAD) modelsbeing offered through digital Tv.

By choosing content, the consumer has voiced his/herpreferences improving the marketer's ability to reachvery specific demographic targets, instead of makingbroad assumptions about what any demographicsegment is or is not interested in.

MarketingSherpa.com published an interesting casestudy about how BearingPoint used podcasts to success­fully.promote downloads of its whitepaper. The podcastsaw sign up rates of over 30 percent for the whitepaper, . ~

versus a traditional 10per ~..~~:--=::&c.~'L:~.- - Yp/ab~. ~-~Newspapers &Magazines: Thisis where it getsexciting. You pickup your morningnewspaper - no,not from your doorstep, butfrom next to your bed, where

perhaps, it was being recharged- ~@overnight. The paper instantly "comes nalive"with moving images and text giving the •news that you asked it to give you. Sports newsfirst? Don't need to skip to the last page. Need that up-to­the-minute update on stock prices? As long as you are ina WiMAX zone, why not? See a coupon on offer forgroceries? Just beam it to your cell phone for when youvisit the store.

At the Plastics Electronics Trade Fair in Frankfurt,October 2005, Siemens, the German electronics firm,exhibited extremely thin, miniature colour displays thatcan be printed onto paper or foil. The company says thatit has lowered production costs for paper-thin displayssufficiently to allow their use in newspapers andmagazines. Norbert Aschenbrenner of Siemens claimedthe new screens can do everything a regular TV screenor computer monitor can do, but at a fraction of the cost:

"The technology makes it possible to put movingimages directly onto paper ...at a cost that would make iteconomical to use on everything, from magazines tocigarette packets ...where the moving images would givemore detailed instructions than any photo could ever do,"he said.

JANUARY 2007

II arketing

When all these interactive media start

inte,grating seamlessly in a campaign,

the real power of both the marketer, as

well as the consumer will emerge.

Philips says it is producing prototypes of ultra-thin,large-area, rollable displays. A metro newspaper in theUSA uses approximately 200,000tons of newsprint eachyear. At current newsprint prices, a typical publisherspends about $150 per reader on the manufacture of adaily newspaper. Reduced distribution costs, localizedclassifieds and display ads, no space constraints, the e­paper is the publishers' delight too.

Marketers who have wet their feet in online adver­tising will understand this medium better.

Outdoor Media: Youare standing in a bus shelter whichcarries a digital billboard about the latest pair ofReeboks. You hold your cell phone up to the billboardwhich downloads a voucher on to your phone. The adver­tiser records the download and you walk into a store toclaim your new shoes.

UK-based Hypertag has developed a technology whichworks by allowing infra-red or Bluetooth mobile phonesand PDAs to interact with a small electronic tagembedded in the billboard. When the consumer holds

their mobile phone up to the Hypertag, they candownload assets related to the promotional opportunity,such as ring tones, audio and video clips, wallpapers,Java games, vouchers, tickets, instant win prizes, games,animations and ... the possibilities are endless.

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Two companies in the US - Adapt Media, and VertInc. - are working on Internet-supercharged taxi tops.As the cab goes about the city, an electronic taxi-topbillboard receives feeds via satellite and GPS to changeits message according to location and time of day Forinstance, while passing a college, an ad for a multiplexappears on top. While moving through the financialdistrict, Stock Exchange quotes are flashed.

ConclusionTl).e"MinorityReport" world is not far. And the "internet­isation" of traditional media is only the first step. It opensup the world of not just interactive advertising, but alsoexploiting possibilities presented by newer phenomenaof the networked world, like social networking, blogging,citizen journalism, and so on.

It is difficult to imagine what form and shape themedia of tomorrow will take, but somehow;some form ofadvertising will appear in or around each (unless allcontent ends up beingPay-Per-View!). But, unlike today'sadvertising, these will be interactive. And when all theseinteractive media start integrating seamlessly in acampaign, the real power of both the marketer, as well asthe consumer will emerge. For instance, the communica­tion may be beamed via one channel, say IPTv; but thereturn path may be via a MobilePhone, or an EPaper.

Another "BIGDEAL"thing about online advertising isthat it collapses the classical AIDA(awareness-interest­decision-action) cycle of consumer advertising.Traditional advertising doesn't allow you to buysomething the moment you see the ad for it. Youmight bein your living room couch or worse, reading thenewspaper in a private moment in the morning. But,online, you can probably go straight from awareness tointerest, more information, references, decision to buyand actually purchasing the product (assuming it's not ahouse or a car!) in 30 minutes.

And, finally, all marketing will be performance mea­surable. As the campaigns feedback consumer reactionsto the communication, marketers will adjust to maketheir communication more relevant, more personalized,more engaging. At the same time, withconsumers able to take immediate

actions with a click, the compensationsystem may well shift to pay for perfor­mance. lit'

VIKAS TAN DAN

The author is the founder-director of Indigo Consulting, a leadinginteractive technology services company.

JANUARY 2007