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The Interactive @dvertising

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

Alyque Padamsee, the doyen of

Indian advertising, recently, speaking on CNBC Channel, highlighted the power of Internet

as the emerging medium for advertising. He said that one should not fear that Internet,

the communication medium for the new millenium, would overshadow the TV and press media,

like TV did to the cinema advertising. Press/print advertising continued to thrive despite

TV which did give print an initial setback because of TV’s wider reach. Today, both

have become complementary. Likewise, Internet and TV will complement each other.

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alt="Interactive sites will be preferred as customers can get instantaneous reply to his/her query, enriching the experience."

align="right" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4 ">The

difference between a TV bulletin and an Internet web site is the delivery format and in

turn, the control. TV relies on brief narration–same for everybody to meet minimum

common needs in limited time. A web site, by virtue of hyperlinks and back up databases,

does not have such limits, with the control now in user’s hands. Each individual

surfer–an active news seeker–chooses what he wants, and in whatever detail. Live

"video streaming" is possible too.

The Internet has actually boosted

the market for the print media, as the Net, mostly, operates on scripted words–be it

e-mail or news sites–which are transmitted faster than pictures and sounds.

Newspapers–though late in realising the Web’s threat and potential–are now

making up for lost time by creating web sites of their own. For instance, classified

advertising, which is believed to account for more than 40 percent of ad revenue for many

papers, is believed to be doing even better on the Internet. However, it is not enough to

be on the Internet just from fear of being left behind. It is still the content which is

more important.

Internet: the Global Media face="Times New Roman" size="2">



Alyque said that Internet is expected to emerge as a cost-effective media not only for
global and mass marketing but also to reach niches. As global village materializes, the

customers will analyse much more microscopically, enabled by Internet. It may be

interesting to study how trend-setting channels like MTV, Cartoon TV, National Geographic,

Discovery, etc., are developing or changing young minds which can be used for say brand

building.

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Alyque also felt that Internet

will help even small brands survive and continue. Indian products like sandalwood paste

and hair oil will, thus, always have market, and globalization of Indian products/brands

like Paan Parag and Skikakai will take place. More so as an NRI population of 15-20

million can be accessed through Internet.

Web Sites: "Interactive" Is the Key face="Times New Roman" size="2">



Most sites look like the brochure of the company put up on the Net. The sites need to be
"interactive" so that the customer can get an instantaneous reply to his/her

query enriching the experience. World over, corporates are utilising the Internet to reach

out to their consumers and investors by being able to have a continuous interactive mode

of communication with them. If the experience is rich enough they will visit again and

again.

Web-based Yellowpages face="Times New Roman" size="2">



Web sites can be used like yellowpages. For instance, the Net helps car buyers to quickly
find the right price of a car and empowered with information drive hard bargains. Most car

dealers in the US now have web sites or are linked to some automotive web site. One such

on-line car-buying site www.Autobytel.com is believed to have a network of 2,700 dealers

on it, each paying a monthly fee to the site. Another US success

www.Autoweb.com–launched in 1994–which also puts dealers and customers together

and charges dealers $29 for each new lead. It claims to have generated $1 billion in

on-line car sales in December 1998 alone.

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The Marriott Experience face="Times New Roman" size="2">



Bill Gates in his latest book "Business @ The Speed Of Thought" cites the
Internet experience of Marriott –one of the world’s largest hospitality company

which put together its first on-line reservation system in 1996. Marriott says, "The

Internet is all about service–providing service to customers in a way that’s

faster, friendlier, and more personal than they or the company has ever experienced

before. And service is Marriott’s business. We don’t even own the bricks and

mortar in most of our properties."



Bill

Gates’ Recipe: How Good Is Your Web Site?
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Actually

it’s easy to judge the quality of your site: use it yourself. Is the experience easy?

Is the information well organized? Can you quickly get answers to questions? Is it easy to

gather goods into the electronic shopping cart—or is it hard to search for items, and

do you have to jump back and forth? Every company that touches a consumer electronically

has to build products that work intuitively. You need to be sure to rigorously test

anything you put up on the Web for customers. You get only one chance to make a good first

impression.

  • A successful web site requires the creation of a new

    customer experience that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the Internet.
  • Success on the Web requires high-level corporate

    understanding of the Internet’s capabilities and support of early test-and-invest

    projects.
  • The majority of your interactions with customers on the

    Internet will involve support rather than sales, and the word-of-mouth nature of the

    Internet means it’s very costly if customers have a poor experience on your site.
  • A good web site can help turn salespeople into consultants.

Source: "Business @ the Speed of

Thought" by Bill Gates

Marriott was one of the first

companies to build an interactive home page to enable user to find a Marriott hotel by any

combination of location, onsite facility, in-room amenity, and recreational offering.

Marriott’s site has links to more than 1,000 other web pages. Linked web pages

describe shops, restaurants, and other attractions close to a hotel. An integrated mapping

system gives you access to more than 16 million businesses and points of interest all over

the world.

The web site being

"interactive", Marriott is able to personalize it for each and every visitor.

The information, kept in a database, is presented to the site visitor according to the

visitor’s search criteria. The back-end software is dynamically adapting the site as

a session—depending on his or her interests—goes on, taking every visitor

through a different experience. It currently averages 15,000 hits a day. Marriott has

found that the more "interactive" a site is, the more business it gets from its

visitors. Marriott plans to enrich its web site and personalize it further by adding a

customer profiling feature. Ultimately it plans to use multimedia capabilities, enabling

the visual experience of a property.

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The HLL Strategy face="Times New Roman" size="2">



Hindustan Lever Ltd—the first Unilever arm to have a web site—has identified the
Internet as a key component of its strategy for facing upcoming challenges in the new

millennium. Its own site www.HLL.com is being revamped into an "interactive"

site and there would be one web site for each product.

HLL has many instances where the

Net helped in customer care. An IIM Calcutta student got his "hard" toothbrush

replaced by a "soft" one after a couple of e-mails. A housewife in IIT Delhi,

after getting spurious "surf", used e-mails to get raids carried out on the

dubious manufacturer. A consumer in California could get his favourite "Pears"

soap (manufactured only in India) using e-mail.

Earning Loyalty face="Times New Roman" size="2">



Today when the web sites are offering various incentives for surfers to log in,
"interactive" may be a far cheaper way to earn loyalty.

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