Saturday, 30th May, NetworkPlay’s Delhi team brought the house down in total.

Viren had organised for a get together at his house and the whole Delhi team was there and man it was fun.

From 2:30 in the afternoon till 9:30 in the night, it was complete mayhem, thanks Viren for organising this get together, I am sure its a good thing to do once in a while.

The only sad part was when I was getting back home, I knocked the car right next to Viren’s home, thanks to an email from one of our partners, I was on the BB for a second and bang went the car into the wall, small dent on my massive safari, but nevertheless the dent

Over all it was wonderful a time, rocking Team NP Delhi

From my first blog to the first few meetings, it has been an interesting expedition of learning & understanding the Business Dynamics. I want to thank my colleagues for allowing me to accompany them for these meetings. This exercise surely helped me gain confidence. And I hope I am all set to kill on my own now.

What I saw & learned in these few initial meetings was not any different from what I have been practicing for last eight years as far as the basics are concerned. What I liked the most was the passion with which I saw my colleagues talk about our offerings. This passion was brilliantly accompanied with complete product knowledge & the belief that our solutions have to deliver.

So, we have a power product & we have team which believes in the product so let’s Rock n Roll.

A power ratio is a method used by media companies to measure revenue performance compared to the audience share it controls. In order to use the power ratio, a company must know three numbers: the total market revenue, the company’s revenue, and the audience share. The goal for media companies is to receive a high score in this ratio.

A power ratio often is used to compare the performance of different media forms against similar competitors. A high power ratio means that more revenue is received per thousand visitors or participants within a given medium. Power ratios are used both by media firms to evaluate performance and occasionally by large media corporations who seek to buy out smaller media outlets.

In one of the presentations that I attended, there was an example of horses using blinkers during races. It helps them focus. So if blinkers are not put, they’d go insane seeing other horses run with them. But the blinkers also need to be placed in such a fashion that they have adequate vision. So that they don’t run into the other horses running the race.

That is balance. Balance, therefore, is achieved when one is at the centre or near-centre of two extremes.
Balance of CONTROL is achieved by using a leash on a dog. Not by letting it run free on the one hand, nor by putting a bird in a cage on the other.

Balance in TEAM MANAGEMENT is achieved by offering an adequate chance to a person to perform. Not by indiscriminately firing people (like Anil Kapoor in Nayak) on the one hand, nor by suffering deadwood on the other. If adequate opportunity is offered and performance is still inadequate, it is better to let such a person go.

Balance in ACTION is achieved by thinking things through and acting upon them in time. Not by rash actions on the one hand, nor by procrastination and needless delays on the other.

Balance in SELLING is achieved by offering the correct pricing for the value offered. Seth Godin beautifully differentiates between Premium Goods and Luxury Goods. Premium Goods are high priced for the value they offer. Luxury Goods are high priced without any bearing on value. Balance is achieved by offering premium products at the right price. Not by underpricing them on the one hand, nor by converting them to luxuries by overpricing them on the other.

Balance in TEAM MANAGEMENT is also achieved by offering optimum space to the team. Not by being a slave driver on the one hand, nor a pushover on the other.

Balance in a SALES PITCH is achieved by both listening and speaking. Not just by listening and not having the intelligence or knowledge to add to the conversation on the one hand, nor by talking incessantly and irritating the customer on the other.

Life is a bicycle, as Rajesh Nair said. To ride it well, balance is important.

A strategy is not worth a pinch of salt if an organisation is not capable of executing the same. And execution is not a normal phenomenon in most organisation, it requires a diligent leader who is capable of ensuring that it is executed to the tee and to that effect the leader has to have a clear understanding of the market, its people and an environment both internal and external. And therefore its critical to understand the importance of a leader whose involvement in the details of execution is to the max, leaders are some say “born” but I think there is a natural leader in every human being and those qualities show up when put in extreme situations and Iam sure you all will agree with me that in an organisation where teams are close knit and full of self belief everyone is a leader, it could be leading an organisation or leading teams or even responsible for an area of operation if it is front line sales because they man territory, accounts agencies etc which are in their control and these are the people who lead the efforts on monetization, which automatically to my mind are leaders because they are responsible for the throughput of an organisations.

Therefore from early 2000 we have seen organisations go the bonus route in CTC pretty heavily because organisations, which have rewards attached as bonuses focusses on execution, though this might sound a very HR related theory, its actually an aspect of business where HR is closely involved with but with no leaders or sense of belonging to an organisation that creates leaders in individuals it is immaterial because if the organisation’s core DNA is not about execution then every strategy is just a piece of paper.

Leaders have to live their business. In companies that don’t execute, the leaders are usually out of touch with the day-to-day realities.

Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality. Start by being realistic yourself. Then make sure realism is the goal of all dialogues in the organization.

Leaders who execute focus on a very few clear priorities that everyone can grasp. Focusing on three of four priorities will produce the best results for the resources at hand.

Clear, simple goals don’t mean much if nobody takes them seriously. The failure to follow through is widespread in business, and a major cause of poor execution.

If you want people to produce specific results, you reward them accordingly. This fact seem so obvious, yet many companies do such a poor job of linking rewards to performance that there’s little correlation at all, infact at NetworkPlay, we have launched some innovative reward system that not only talks of the bigger picture, goals there of but even deal wise we will payout spontaneous commissions if there has been an innovative way to approaching a specific client business problem that has been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

As a leader, one would have acquired a lot of knowledge and experience, wisdom along the way. Its important to pass it on the next generation of leaders that you are building in your organisation. This is how you expand the capabilities of everyone else in your organization, collectively and individually. Purely an open door environment!!!!

Its very important to have an emotional quotient to be honest with yourself because only then will you be able to deal with honesty not only with yourself but also with your peers and the organisation you are attached with and if you are developing leaders within your organisation an open door environment not only enables people to think equal but also sets in clear position of strength when in discussions and debates, it allows people to be forthright in what you want to communicate on assessments etc.

At NetworkPlay we believe in these principals and try and follow them diligently, I keep telling my leaders that it is critical to be able to articulate thoughts because one is then pretty clear on communicating what is expected out of that person and then discuss the same as coach to ensure that there is clear visibility on what you want to achieve on the big picture and ensure they see the light at the end of the tunnel together because its the leader who guides the organisation towards the path of victory.

Else for all you know that the light at the end of the tunnel is actually an incoming train.

Reward people with recognition, its critical to communicate how much they have enabled in growing your throughput because Strategy Process defines where a business wants to go, People Process defines who’s going to get it there and Operation Process provides the path for those people and when you get these practices in place then you are assured of creating an ambience of getting things done and thats the key.

Like I began this post saying, A Strategy is not worth a pinch of salt if you dont have the right people at the right places in your organisation to execute the same.

At NetworkPlay, we are a team, which only believes in execution and that has been the key to our success!!!!

Conventional wisdom has it that an increase in internet usage has cannibalized TV viewership. Yet data shows that users spend as much time on TV as they do on the web, according to the TV/Internet Convergence Panel by Nielsen. Globally, TV viewership exceeds both internet and mobile usage, Nielsen found. We don’t need statistics to know that TV remains a popular mass medium, even with those amongst us who are heavy users of the web. All we have to do is look at our own television viewing habits: nowadays, they frequently involve simultaneously watching TV and browsing the web on our laptops.

While the internet has not cannibalized TV to the degree people assume, the web has certainly influenced TV, and in the future we should expect these two powerful mediums to engage in a symbiotic courtship. Users, advertisers and publishers stand to benefit from this exciting prospect.

On the web, search and online advertising technologies help to solve the challenges of content discovery and audience fragmentation. Search allows users to quickly find relevant information, while advertising platforms enable advertisers to quickly narrow down their target markets from millions of potential sites. Keywords and contextual-matching technology allow advertisers to find audiences on websites related to topics described by those keywords. Additionally, this technology provides timely and accurate feedback to advertisers on clicks, impressions and costs of their campaigns, thus enabling rapid fine-tuning to achieve their intended return on investment.

As television becomes more like the web and faces similar issues of content and audience fragmentation, the question turns to how can we address these challenges? Apply our long-tail learnings of the internet to television; make the medium more relevant, measurable, and accountable. Similar to keyword-based contextual and placement-targeted advertising on the web, television programs can become content that advertisers can target in a scalable and efficient manner. You should be able, for instance, to advertise your new brand of eco-friendly diapers on shows not only about parenting, but also about the environment, and you should be able to find those relevant programs — maybe ones you didn’t originally think of — just like you do when you type a phrase into your search engine and receive relevant results.

Similarly, as an advertiser, you should be able to more effectively measure your audience’s engagement with your television ads. Just as companies can see how their online campaigns are performing — what keywords are working best for them in attracting customers; what percentage of people are clicking on their ads — they should also be able to also do this for television. For example, within 24 hours of their campaign’s running, advertisers using Google TV Ads are able to log into the system and find valuable information about where and when their ad ran, how many impressions were delivered to their ad, the percentage of people who watched their ad all the way to the end and the average viewing time of their campaign.

Bridging the offline-online divide
Advertisers often place commercials into two categories: brand or direct response. But in the long run — and this is something that can be explained using TV as an example — every brand campaign is a direct response campaign, only with a longer lag. For example, when a car company executes a brand campaign to create a retention-and-recall effect, it is also hoping that 10 years from now, someone who has grown up watching the campaign on television will buy that car. Thus the real difference between brand and direct response advertising is the longer lead time in measuring return on investment.

Why does this matter? Because it means that eventually even brand advertisers will want to measure ROI on their advertising spend and will care about metrics just as much as direct response advertisers currently do. The only question is: how to provide interim metrics until that eventual sale is completed? How do we correlate what an advertiser’s target audience is seeing offline with what they are doing online? This is where measurement technology comes again into play.

Brand advertisers need to recognize the importance of traditional media and the internet’s symbiosis. They should extract data on how the two media can not only interact with each other, but also how they can build off of each other in the long run. In a study, those exposed to an advertiser’s campaign on TV and online in the same time period were 63 percent more likely to remember that brand. When people see an ad about a diamond company on television, that diamond company should then be able to cross reference online search data during that campaign’s run to gauge and adjust its message.

We are still learning from the web’s success, but we are making strides not only in taking the benefits of the online world and extending them to the television medium, but also in bridging the divide between the two media. In the end, delivering relevant ads to users, better measurability for advertisers, and revenue-generating opportunities for content creators will result in a win-win-win scenario every time.

It’s wonderful to see that small things & a simple thought process can make a whole lot of difference in life. This is exactly what Vodafone has done & shown us.

A simple story of a boy & his best friend ‘a dog’, where the various adventures of the little boy gets unfolded. The story resembles the story of almost 99% of us & that’s where we all could relate us. We all could relive our childhood or at least relate some of it. The ad campaign immediately became a hallmark & quite adequately achieved its objective. Although more than the little boy, the dog charmed everyone & became a star over night to the extent that its price shot up in the canine market.

Then came the ‘Egg’ alias ZooZoo - again a tale of simplicity & wonderful thought process & a pinch of humour. ZooZoo’s are the new eye-catching and very funny looking creatures in the new Vodafone ads that are mostly screened during the current IPL matches. But little did anyone (that surely includes me) know that they were real human’s that were acting the show and not some animated character’s as most of us had previously thought off. The sets have been constructed by shadows created by spray painting. ZooZoo have now become the new icon for Vodafone. Fresh from the Vodafone’s Ad inventory, these cute looking characters promote most of Vodafone’s services in a precise manner yet very funny and laughable way.

It does not always take great things to be big & famous…..small things can also do big things. Only it needs things to be simple, less complex, innocent & straight from the heart.

Slow down , recession ,lay offs , cut in media spends , companies shutting shops , re structuring etc they all sound familiar and each one of us are some how or the other, some were or the other has encountered it . By and large effected by it . No one I know, who’s not faced the heat of the current market scenario. But what do we do?

Wait and watch for things to improve ? which may take days, months, years or be proactive and encounter it ?

Its easy said than doing but you are left with no choice but to hit back and hit back hard…

How do we do this ?

First and fore most Stop Blaming the economy … we all know its slow down and all are effected but also understand the fact that companies are existing and have to sell goods and services to survive no matter what the economy is doing. Like wise media would be bought to promote the same, may be less ,but still they have to buy. Another familiar sentence we hear is “we don’t have budgets “ How is that possible? If your customer has no money then they’re out of business.

I have put together 3 simple thoughts . Try and follow these and trust me will help you sell well even in the worst of economic slow down

Re-think

• Work on your funnel and Re-qualifying every prospect.
• Focus and put your energies on your best selling opportunities
• Invest into 10 solid opportunities than chasing 25.

Re-phrase

• Use “Them” and not “You”.
• Talk about your customer, there product/service, share ideas for them.
• Avoid just talking about your company, your products, your service.

Re -work
• Knowledge is a key ingredient to sales success.
• Ask Questions to clients
• Questions that get customers to stop and think.
• Ask questions they haven’t been asked before.
• Ask questions that get the customer to pause and say, “That’s a really good question.”

Start investing 60% of your time doing research, 40% of your time making calls.

It’s been a few days that I have been in the system. I am trying to learn the more about the medium & strengths that it has. For one thing is sure that Internet as a medium has tremendous potential, which is why we all are here. But to all those people who have been in this space for long, I have one question. Have we sold it right?

I have not intended to offend anybody by asking this question. I am asking this question because I am confused. Confused for why this strong Medium that we represent “Internet” is favored more in the performance space. I have been of the belief that we establish our product & services to our customers. Here we establishing the Medium to the prospective Advertiser, suggesting the value that we bring on table. So why did we at the first place sold it assuring instant deliverables (Clicks, leads etc.). Internet qualifies to be the only medium which is Transparent & Offers extensive measurability. Would it be right to say that the strengths the Medium has have been positioned in a manner that they have become our weaknesses.

I don’t think it’s still too late for some corrective actions. The kind of reach that the medium can extend combined with some brilliant concepts & execution plan; I see no reason for which an Advertiser should discount it. Read somewhere: How many advertisers keep a check on what numbers have they sold right after a Commercial is aired on Television. But when it comes to Internet, everybody wants to talk about leads, conversions, etc.

For what I have understood about our Business Model at NetworkPlay, we are trying to make corrections here. Using Internet as a medium & creating Brands. Our effort is to create a right communication for an Advertiser & take it to the relevant Audiences. And I believe a relevant viewer might not give me a click, but has the potential to be the buyer some day.

So I conclude…………….

Been astonishing the way Apple as a company has managed to create its space through breathrough products, disruptive marketing and belief of Xerago.

To me they did what they did simply because as an organisation they supported their people on creativity and innovations.

If you notice typically they created an environment to thrive and I guess the following points enabled them to do so:

1) Risk taking is acceptable to management
2) Employees have access to knowledge sources
3) Innovators are rewarded
4) New ideas and new ways of doing things are welcomed
5) Information is free flowing
6) Good ideas are supported by executive mgmt teams
7) They create a climate thats motivational which supports fun and is challenging
8)Empowerment is high when it comes to freedom, time and support
9) Dyniamism is in their core DNA, which helps in getting teams into high enrgy levels where debate and dialogue are part of team work
10) Mgmt is open to listening to people where an environment of trust, experimentation and risk taking is encouraged

To me only other organisation that has managed to do these things is Google and we though small as an organisation are thriving for nobel equivalent in the space we are in and our pursuit will never end since everyday is a new learning.

I am loving it, never been so much of adrenalin in my life, everything is life or death and touch and go, super!!!!