Cleanslate researched our competitors and offerings in the market and clearly defined the brand personality and positioning for Network Sunday. Cleanslate were fast, creative and professional and have without doubt contributed to our early successes.

Tim Bond
Managing Director, Network Sunday

We approached Cleanslate when we decided to revamp the current plain vanilla website to a professional website. We are highly impressed and happy with the end product and we are looking forward to a long term partnership with Cleanslate.

Laks Pendyala
Director – Technology, ThinkAhead Systems Inc.

We have been thrilled with Cleanslate’s redesign of our website. They pulled out all the stops and created a great looking, easy to navigate site that’s simple to update. We are delighted with the result and our partnership with Cleanslate. We highly recommend their work.

Tim Holder
UK Country Director, The Hunger Project

Cleanslate are a great company to work with. They have an excellent attitude towards customer service and they worked hard to make sure they delivered a web site we were happy with. They are a reliable and ethical business I really feel I can trust.

Paul Richards
Managing Director, Key20 Media

If Google is to be believed, maximum brand searches in India are on mobile phone companies and telecom operators. The findings are part of Google Zeitgeist 2010, which is based on the aggregation of search queries people typed into Google this year. As per the data, seven in ten most popular brands in India, five are mobile handset companies and two are operators. The most popular handset brand is Nokia, followed by Samsung, Micromax, Apple and Sony Ericsson, in that order. The most searched operators include Airtel and Vodafone.

This definitely says a lot about our mobile crazy country. No doubt we have 600 million plus mobile consumers!

Nokia had always been the most sought-after mobile phone brand in India as it caters to both high end and low end customer base. But 2008 saw the rise of Micromax, which started giving tough competition to Nokia with its range of low cost feature rich phones.

Micromax has also recently joined the Android bandwagon with the launch of its affordable Android-based smartphone called A60.

In order to stand firm in this highly competitive market, Nokia launched phones with dual-SIM facility, much later than Indian players, but failed to capture the segment. However, the Finland-based company is still growing strong with its loyal customers.

Samsung too has created a buzz in the mobile phone market with its attractive smartphones such as Star, Corby, Galaxy S, Galaxy 5 and now, a tablet – Galaxy Tab.

Apple, unlike its popularity in the West, failed to charm Indian customers. Due to the high price of its iPhones and the issue of unavailability without bundling, Apple could not make it so big here. At present, one can buy an iPhone in India only through Airtel or Vodafone stores.

Another interesting trend that we see in Google Zeitgeist 2010 is that among the top ten fastest rising brands on Google search in India two are handset players Micromax and Samsung Mobiles, and free SMS service Way2SMS.

Source: http://telecomyatra.afaqs.com/news/?sid=2589_Mobile+phone+companies+most+searched+online

When I first joined an online marketing agency, I was intrigued by the word Buzz Marketing.

I found the term interesting and an innovation without even knowing what it meant. And the funny thing is, when I was on the client side I had spent huge amounts on conventional advertising, events, PR without being able to have a track on the ROI or leads generated through which activity.

I was warmed upto the idea of buzz marketing and its advantages. Took me a while in my career but I did finally learn that buzz marketing is the practice of gathering volunteers to try products, then sending them out into the world to talk up their experiences with the people they meet in their daily lives. The idea is that the more people see a product being used in public, or the more they hear about it from people they know and trust, the more likely they will be to buy it for themselves. Of course, word-of-mouth has long been the way that many people find their favorite products, says marketing professor Jerry Wind. ”It has more credibility than traditional advertising.” But it’s a fairly recent development for companies to try to create a structure around the practice, to harness and direct the way that word-of-mouth spreads — and to attempt to measure its effect on sales once the ‘campaign’ is complete. “Buzzing isn’t really new. The hype about these different kinds of buzz agents is what’s new,” says Kahn.

Buzz marketing stands in direct contrast to traditional television or radio advertising — the classic ‘mass marketing’ approach that is based on the premise of broadcasting a message as widely as possible, assuming that this is the best way to reach the largest possible number of interested consumers. Buzzing, which might also be described as ‘micro-marketing,’ assumes that a person-to-person marketing message is much more powerful because it is so personal — and that it could potentially reach more people than a broadcast message, if only it is buzzed about in great quantity by people who have very long contact lists and no qualms about promoting products to anyone who will listen.

But does it work?
Buzz Marketing campaigns often depends on Word of mouth techniques. There was a time when the life of such campaigns was restricted just to mutual conversation but with internet invasion, the scene has changed much for the better. The buzz marketing campaigns are spread through internet and every buzz marketing ad which is mailed to your friend is stored in the database. Internet has propelled the intensity of the campaigns further than all the previously existing mediums.

As contrary to the myth that through internet one can create buzz only through emails, there are many other ways of creating buzz.

• SMS’s which can be sent to many people.
• Posting videos on internet which can be accessed by many people at the same time. These videos mostly aim at generating a brand image by relying on others.
• Photosharing many of the times internet surfers promote the photographic mails without actually realizing that they are actually promoting the products.
• Websites as a whole can play instrumental role in creating very instrumental buzz marketing mediums.
• Blogs are also promoted as campaign tools.

Buzz Marketing works best if you have an ability to exploit the viewer senses and convince them to believe in your brand and behave like endorsers.

For decades this central Indian city was vintage old India: crumbling Mughal-era ruins and ancient Buddhist caves surrounded by endless parched acres from which farmers coaxed cotton.

But this month Aurangabad became an emblem of an altogether different India: the booming, increasingly urbanized economic powerhouse filled with ambition and a new desire to flaunt its wealth.

A group of more than 150 local businessmen decided to buy, en masse, a Mercedes-Benz car each, spending nearly $15 million in a single day and putting this small but thriving city on the map. Frustrated that the usual Chamber of Commerce brochures were slow to attract new investment, the businessmen decided to buy the cars as a stunt intended to stimulate investment in Aurangabad, one of several largely unknown but thriving urban centers across India’s more prosperous states.

“In and around Aurangabad there are companies worth a thousand crores,” an amount of Indian rupees equivalent to about $225 million, said Sachin Nagouri, 40, a hyperkinetic local real estate mogul who came up with the idea. “But Aurangabad is not known even in this state. There is plenty of money here. We just need to show it.”

Economists and government officials have long acclaimed India’s so-called second-tier cities as new founts of prosperity and incubators of India’s growing middle class. Cities like Pune, a manufacturing and information technology hub a few hours outside of Mumbai, and Ahmadabad, the biggest city in India’s wealthiest state, Gujarat, have shown that smaller cities can attract big business.

But now even smaller cities in some of India’s most prosperous states are booming, too. Coimbatore, a city of about one million in Tamil Nadu near India’s southern tip, has expanded from textile manufacturing to software development and making auto parts.

Aurangabad, with 1.2 million people and a stable base of automotive assembly plants, factories and agribusiness, has long attracted the attention of companies selling small appliances, cellphones and economy cars. But as the city’s fortunes have grown, and cultural mores that once made ostentatious spending unseemly have shifted, companies selling luxury goods are also seeking out these newly flush consumers. A sprawling new mall just opened here, as well as new multiplex theaters and luxury hotels.

“The story of Aurangabad is the story of India,” said Debashish Mitra, head of sales and marketing for Mercedes-Benz in India. “There are many cities like Aurangabad, where Indians have money but were not indulging in luxury; they were always in a saving mode. But now that is changing. People want to spend, and feel they deserve luxury.”

That certainly describes Mr. Nagouri, Aurangabad’s answer to Donald Trump. He has made a fortune buying and developing land in highly leveraged deals. He lives in a sprawling modern house kitted out with Italian marble floors and designer sofas. Four cars sit in his driveway, including the latest, a gleaming white Mercedes sedan with buttery chocolate leather seats.

He was working out at the gym one day last spring with a friend, he said, when the idea for the group purchase of the luxury cars struck him. Perhaps, he wondered, if they could get enough people together they could generate publicity for the city. It started with a core group of 20 friends, but as word got out the number quickly grew. Eventually more than 150 businessmen signed up, most of them in their 30s and early 40s like Mr. Nagouri.

These men could not be more different from their cautious fathers, who stashed every penny as a hedge against an uncertain future in India’s economy, which until 1991 was heavily controlled by the government. In the land of Gandhi and the birthplace of Buddhism, grand displays of material wealth are still frowned upon.

Older men like Ashish Garde, who runs Nirlep, a company that has made nonstick pots and pans here since 1968, declined to join the group. Mr. Garde said the nearly $15 million spent on luxury cars would have been better spent on investments in industries that would create jobs or donations to charity. He declared himself satisfied with his economy car.

“Those of us who went through the hardships of the past know the value of money in a different way,” Mr. Garde said. “Those who get quick money, their relationship is different. After globalization things happen very easily. The element of struggle is gone.”

Mr. Nagouri’s family once had a small fortune in land holdings, but his father, a university lecturer, made a bad bet on a spring factory that went bankrupt.

“We had no money even to take a bus,” he said.

In the 1980s Mr. Nagouri got a job as a clerk in a construction company and spent six years studying how the business worked. He made a bit of money on the side selling sand and bricks. Eventually he struck out on his own, borrowing $2,000 from friends and relatives to build a small apartment building. He said he sold it almost immediately. “I understood the gimmick,” he said.

Not everyone is cheering Aurangabad’s new ostentatious wealth.

Sanjeev Unhale, a local antipoverty activist and journalist, said that the money spent for the luxury cars could have gone a long way to help those left behind by Aurangabad’s boom. The Marathwada region, of which Aurangabad is the capital, is cursed with perpetual droughts. Cotton farmers often assume huge debts to stay in business. Suicides by debt-ridden farmers are common, Mr. Unhale said. India’s economy may be nearing double-digit growth, but the wealth is not widely shared, and hundreds of millions live on $2 a day.

“Mercedes is for luxury,” he said. “It is not the manner in which we should show our mettle. We should show it in the genius and quality of what we produce.”

The desire to flaunt new wealth, however, is a natural part of India’s economic trajectory, said Ashutosh Varshney, a Brown University professor who has studied the social dimensions of India’s economic rise.

“It does show the burst of ambition in the small towns of booming states,” Mr. Varshney said. “It is, deep down, a drive for recognition, an impulse known to be sociologically and psychologically important when those lower down rise.”

Pramod Khairnar Patil, a local builder who bought a Mercedes, said entrepreneurs like him deserved to enjoy their wealth. Initially he had planned to buy the least expensive model, which sells for about $50,000, but his daughter persuaded him to upgrade, which nearly doubled the cost.

“It’s more expensive, but we should step ahead,” he said.

Mr. Patil has seen Aurangabad’s fortunes rise since he started out as a builder in 1990. Where he once built claustrophobic one-bedroom apartments for aspiring middle-class families, today he puts up airy townhouses and bungalows.

“People’s dreams are changing,” he said.

His own fortunes have grown, too. When his father built the modest house in which Mr. Patil lives, it did not occur to him that he needed more than one parking space. At that time owning even a single car was a distant dream. Now he has a problem deciding whether to park his sport utility vehicle or his shiny new Mercedes in the driveway.

“Times have changed,” he said. “The things that were luxury initially now are the need of the time.”

Read more at: http://profit.ndtv.com/news/show/indias-smaller-cities-show-off-growing-wealth-112722?cp

ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank has launched the Hindi version of its website, to offer convenience and a wider reach to its customers.

With the increase in internet connectivity, ICICI Bank aims to reach out to it’s wider customer base, who can now access the website to suit their banking requirements.

ICICIBank.com is amongst the top 10 most visited banking and financial websites in the world.

Ms. Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director & CEO, ICICI Bank Ltd. said, “Our Bank is synonymous with growth and innovation focused on customers requirements. We have launched the Hindi version of the personal banking pages on our website to offer our customers with the power to use technology for convenient banking”.

With the increase in broadband and internet connectivity, we believe this is just the beginning and more Indian companies will launch websites in Hindi and popular regional languages in the coming months.

Twitter users aren’t talking to you or about you. In fact, they barely know you exist. That’s one of the conclusions of a six-month analysis of the service’s ubiquitous 140-character messages conducted by digital agency 360i and released today.

Despite marketers’ embrace of the medium, brands are finding themselves on the outside of the conversation. Of the 90% of Twitter messages sent by real people — the other 10% come from businesses — only 12% ever mention a brand, and most of those mentions are of Twitter itself. Further, only 1% of consumer tweets that mention a brand are part of an active conversation with that brand, meaning marketers are, for the most part, conducting one-way conversations — the opposite of the way consumers often use Twitter.

The most mentioned brands on Twitter tend to be there because they are part of a constant daily conversation, not because of anything the brand is or isn’t doing on Twitter. The most mentioned brands on Twitter are, in descending order, Twitter, Apple, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Blackberry, Amazon, Facebook, Snuggie, eBay and Starbucks.

Embedded in the culture

Snuggie is the surprise brand on the list, but that appears to reflect the brand’s place in the culture, not its own Twitter activity. Official Snuggie profile @OriginalSnuggie has just 591 followers and @WeezerSnuggie, an account set up to promote the once-popular Weezer video, has just 693 followers and has been dormant since November.

After spending six months going over a statistically significant sample of 1,800 tweets, 360i Senior-VP Sarah Hofstetter was struck at just how mundane and personal they were. “They’re mostly doing what people mocked Twitter about in the first place, as in, what I had for lunch.”

The vast majority of real people’s tweets, 94%, are personal in nature. Most tweets, 85%, are original and not re-tweets of other messages. They’re also very often conversational: 43% of tweets begin with an “@” sign, meaning they’re directed at another user, not the sender’s followers at large.

While marketers such as Dell, Comcast, Ford and Starbucks have been, at times, clever participants on Twitter, the majority of marketers use it as a mini press-release service. Only 12% of messages from marketers are directed at individual Twitter users, meaning marketers still see it as a broadcast medium rather than a conversational one.

Showing up isn’t enough

“There is still a misperception that if brands show up, people will listen to them, kind of like Facebook a few years ago,” Ms. Hofstetter said. “Twitter can be used as a promotional RSS feed, but that’s not going to establish a relationship with anybody.”

The study was conducted before Twitter took any advertising, from October 2009 through March 2010. Twitter has since rolled out a series of ad units including promoted tweets and trends. Ms. Hofstetter said the ads are great to help boost things already popular on Twitter. “They are only going to work if they are relevant in the first place,” she said.

Twitter posts are intrinsically navel-gazing, conversational and personal, but they aren’t predominantly self-promotional. Depending on your circle of connections, it can certainly feel, as Wired’s Evan Ratliff noted, that “self-aggrandizement” is “standard fare” on Twitter. But the 360i study found only 2% of tweets were professional updates or career-related.

What do Twitter users talk about? Beyond the 43% of individuals’ tweets that are conversational, 24% are status updates, 12% are links to news or comment on current events, and 3% are seeking or giving advice.

The good news for brands is that when a consumer does mention them on Twitter, they’re usually not complaining about it. Only 7% of tweets mentioning brands indicated negative sentiment, 11% positive and an overwhelmingly 82% neutral.

Source: Ad Age.com

Visit http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=145107 for the complete article

Cleanslate assists small and medium companies (SMEs) to launch brands in India and more importantly successfully market these brands.

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