Shortcuts to Sales

There are quite a few shortcuts to get sales, volumes, numbers. Discounts, promotions come to mind. Advertising is one.

Design isn't. Design is the long-route to get your brand, your product, your organisation where you want it to be.

Please provide a what???

A Calcuttan missing his hometown opens up the website belonging to the most read newspaper in that town. Pleased with what he saw, he clicked on one of the sections of the e-paper. The site tells him that he needs to be registered in order to go deeper into the contents. No problem. He is ready to register. So he clicks on register and fills up a form. Presses Submit. And see what he gets:



Email ID? The form does not mention email ID anywhere, let alone ask for it. Oh, the error page tells him that the "Username" field should have been populated with his email ID.

Who would have thought? :)

If you were that person, would you fill up that form again and continue to use the website? I didn't. Who knows what other 'mistake' I would be chided for next? Is the phone number field actually supposed to contain my height?

Is it so difficult for web designers and companies that hire them to make websites that are free of inconsistencies and are helpful instead of carrying the old '80-90s attitude of "I made this thing and it works at my end. You need to learn how to make it work for you if you want to use it."?

It is all adding up to the user experience and thus the brand in the end.

Simple kit lens macrography (without reversal)

Did you like shooting macros with your kit lens reversed? I’m sure you did.

But there are some shortcomings with that particular method of shooting macros. Number one is that you cannot use filters while shooting that way. And if you are fortunate enough to possess a ring-flash, using that with that setup is pretty much ruled out as well. Add to that the fact that you have the lens mounted on the focussing barrel and not the lens body, which is in some cases not advisable. So how do you shoot macros without reversing the lens (or shelling out money on a macro lens either)?

Don’t worry I’m back :)

Remember I had shown you an extension tube the last time around? The tube at one end of which functions lied your reversal ring? So if you had bought an extension tube instead of just a reversal ring, you’re in luck this time. If you had not, then go out an buy an extension tube for your camera mount. It comes in 5 pieces, one each for the male and female mount, and three rings of different sizes to give you the freedom to vary the size of your tube.

Mount the lens on one end of the tube and mount the whole setup on the body. But wait... isn’t the picture through the viewfinder dark like night? Don’t worry. Just follow the instructions...

Get a tube of superglue and a short stick-like metallic object - I used a simple paper pin. Now unscrew just the female mount from the tube (it is the mount resembling the one on your body, on which the lens would mount), and mount one of your lenses on it. Now when you see the open (mounted) end of the lens and the mount-ring, you’ll see a lever (see diagram) protruding from the lens’s base - this is the same lever that adjusts your aperture as mentioned in the previous tutorial. Use a permanent marker or a chalk to mark the position of this lever on the ring when this lever is fully depressed, i.e. the aperture is wide-open.

Now measure that pin I asked you to get so that the distance you measure is shorter than the distance between the lens’s inner bevel and the mount’s screw threads, but slightly longer than the distance between the screw threads and the lever. Bend off the remaining part, so that the pin is now in L-shape, with one of the ends being the length that I just told you about.

Unmount the lens, squeeze out some superglue on the base thread of the mount just around the mark you made and place this pin, so that the prescribed length sticks out perpendicular from the circumference of the threads. The idea is that when this dries out and is fixed, when you mount the lens on this ring, this pin would move the lever to the position that the aperture is fully open.

When dried, the ring would look like the picture shown here.

Now mount the lens on this ring and make sure the lever moves back as intended (refer to the first picture). Adjust the lens to 50mm focal length, screw the wider ring on this mount and screw the male mount on that ring, so that you’re left with a tube that is around half the size of the ring you bought :)

Mount this setup on your body, set the focus mode to manual, set the camera mode to manual (M), and start shooting as you did while following the last tutorial.

You can now use filters and a ring flash if you have one.

Happy clicking!

Here’s a shot that I clicked using this setup. And don’t forget to drop in URLs to the photographs you’ve clicked this way.

Enjoy!

I’m Not Hired From Campus Here

While on my journey to Pune this Monday I was browsing through Seth Godin’s book Small is the New Big and came across this riff which was called Safe is Risky in the book.

It was almost poetic coming across that riff while I was making this journey. To update you all with the goings-on in my life, I have joined one of those companies that “don’t interview on campus” - not atleast on campuses like mine. They hire from NID, from other design schools, and have recently gone to MICA, but hiring an IIM grad? Even they had not thought of it seriously before I contacted them. But here I am, sitting in my cabin at Elephant Strategy + Design, Pune.

As Seth says, it is a small company, I will be working closely with the directors here, and will be handling responsibility which, in terms of impact on the overall organisation, will be tremendous. This as opposed to the typical jobs I have done, and my ilk generally do, in superlarge organisations, sometimes conglomerates, which have spent either over a hundred years in existence, or are employing thousands across the world, or both, where our work though large in ‘monetary terms’ is not more than a drop for the size of the organisation.

And to think of it that I had taken this decision long before I had even bought this book or had started reading Seth’s blog. Felt really nice to know that he agrees to my version of ‘building my career my way’.

Choice = Togetherness?

Tata Sky after its 1500 pricing advertisement has come up with a bubbly upbeat spot comparing two families. One stays together, does everything together and is very happy, while the other is not happy and not together. The head of the latter family peeps through a keyhole presumably on the door of the former, and finds the secret to their togetherness - Tata Sky. We are then treated to a series of shots showing the benefits of Tata Sky and that these benefits would keep our family together.

But wait a second... the features all point to one thing - the choice and variety Tata Sky offers - the games, the "mandir darshans", the special sportscasts. Off the top of my head, if my TV offers all these, and members of my family have interest in these things, would they sit together to watch TV? Does the TV show each of these items to its respective fans+recipients? Or do we have to flip channels to switch to either of the content streams? The latter is no doubt the case, and in that case, I don't think you'll get a family which would sit together to watch TV, not atleast because of the variety that's on tap.

Case in point - did families watch TV together when there was more variety on television or when there was less? Did different members of the family start getting different TV sets for their bedrooms when there were more channels or when there were fewer?

Does the Tata Sky ad then seem to hint at the right "benefit" arising from its variety?

Proud & Cute: Airtel on television this season

When you run out of ideas to get across your message, fall back on the most common tactic - use mushy emotions.

Two approaches to mushy emotions top the list - cuteness/relationships/family and pride/patriotism/togetherness.

Airtel has recently released two spots banking on these two.

The cute spot is very sweet. The kid is looking like an angel and you feel for her when she wants to "do drawing" with her father but her father initially expresses inability to do it. It drives the one position that almost all telecom players in India are trying very hard to own - best network. But as all mobile telephony users in the country know, none of them are in a position to honestly make that claim, and until any of them really delivers what they keep promising, these advertisements are not going to help their perceptions.

The pride spot has a message - that a Nokia phone is being bundled with an Airtel connection. But what has pride got to do with it? Why did they waste such a long ad with an expensive celebrity expressing feelings of pride and togetherness for a bundling message? Can anyone help me out on this one?

So what is Airtel's agency actually adding to the advertisements, apart from execution? Apart from the breaking barriers kids playing football spot from a few months back, Airtel's campaigns recently have been short of ideas. And even the breaking barriers idea was lifted from a New Zealand telecom company's ad.

Idea has launched the recent guide at Taj Mahal advertisement, strengthening the "Idea" positioning it has (is it a real position in the market by the way?). Vodafone's regular value-added-services and 'magic box' bundled phone ads keep hitting us regularly. Reliance Mobile is also consistently hitting us with its old but fresh and cinematically brilliant "total network" ads (though as I already mentioned, it is tough to justify claiming that position for anyone). Tata Teleservices' new avatar Virgin is also starting up with its ATL efforts.

In this scenario, is Airtel not being complacent with its marketing above the line? What do you think?

BPO Apartheid

In a move that seems ill-timed given Raj Thakre's Neo-Nazi-esque actions in Maharashtra, Netambit in Noida invited applications for positions in its BPO business, but candidates belonging to UP, Bihar and Islamic backgrounds need not apply. The reason cited for this is diction and other language problems candidates with these backgrounds generally have.

Why don't you take a look at the email that sparked this controversy over 'language'?


The picture is taken on a low-end phonecam. The highlighted line reads: "Those candidate belong to Bihar & U.P. & Muslim are not eligible. Required English/Hindi/Punjabi profiles." The words within the quotes are verbatim as they appear in the email / the news item.

(The main story and photograph courtesy evening Delhi paper MetroNow 4th March edition.)

lllisteennocteiyuhmpgoleeahuknsltri Anyone?

After more than two years of making the legendary word-of-mouth monster we adoringly call klueLESS, I still find that someone searched for "lllisteennocteiyuhmpgoleeahuknsltri" on the 28th of Feb 2008, and landed up on my older blog. :)

The legend lives on.

The Tata Sky at 1500 Melodrama

Two friends chatting in a party, and their wives just disappear one by one. Sounds like a scene from a suspense thriller, right? Well, this story has got suspense, drama, humour and a very clear message for all of us. Surely it’s a superhit movie!

That’s how the new Tata Sky advertisement goes. While Dish TV is still using a celebrity to sell category benefits, Tata Sky has moved on to assuming that it is a well-known brand in an on-the-way-to-be-established category (correct on both counts), and instead focused on that P (out of the traditional four we know) which is probably the only reason the category isn’t taking off like it should, given the benefits it is providing - price.

More of a tactic than a strategy surely. Instead of bundling a six-month maxi-subscription in an installation package which costs around three to four thousand rupees, Tata Sky has stripped down its offering to offer just the installation at an attractive price of Rs. 1499, plus whatever. Key point is, the advert attracts you quite well.

So what works?

• Humour - the plight of the two husbands whose wives (and their respective Geeta Bhabhi and Seeta Bhabhi) have just vanished into thin air is hilarious.
• Surprise
• Let’s face it. Who would ever have dreamt that the oft-repeated filmy line of “tumhari kasamm” would indeed end up in its implied consequence, even in make belief?
• “What? It’s not 1500? So why is the company placing this ad on air?”
• Direct communication - to the point. The advert aims at making the audience aware that Tata Sky is now offering its base system at Rs. 1499 only, and it does just that - with aplomb.
• The brand somewhere comes out to be painfully honest in here: “So what if the difference is just 1 rupee? It’s a lie alright.”

What might not work?

• Price wars. Have never been good. We have no evidence they will be good in the future.
• 1499 is the price of only the hardware. Software costs an extra 1000 rupees. And monthly charges are not included in this pricing. Consumers would not actually take nicely to this point. The lowered “entry barrier” might not really translate well into sales if we see that once the customer reaches the point of purchase, she feels cheated that a package of 2499+monthly charges has been sold to her as 1499 only.

What do you think?