About all things unimportant

Have been talking to a few folks who understand the media business and there are numerous problems in elevator advertising

Cost - What is the media that you use ( Poster/audio et al ) to reach out to the audience in an elevator and what is the cost of targetting the advertisements. With television, you are one of the thousands of advertisers but your work is limited to creating the creatives and handing over the transmitter and monitoring the impressions.

   If you had to replace advertisements in 1000 elevators in bangalore , what would the cost be .. Would use of audio advertising be too different from radio advertising .. There are several other such reasons which might In Elevator advertising not so cost effective. Also, how do you provde ROI to the prospective advertiser ? and how easy is to ascribe a particular action to an elevator advertisement as against advertisements in any other media ( Though this is slightly easier to achieve in local advertisments ).

Cost of placing advertisements could be the biggest reason why advertisements are not run actively in elevators.

Elevator advertising may not be so common in my building but looks like a lot of advertisers are using the same to some advantage.

Google Search - Elevator Advertising 

Yahoo Search - Elevator Advertising

Even though i agree that "Ideas come cheap and Execution is all that matters", ideation is a very important process in a potential entrepreneurs journey. Listed below are a few ideas that i have been getting of late ( all courtesy the number of hours i have to kill during train journeys ).

 i Intend to develop the discussion about these ideas. I may not have enough beef ( or patience ) to do a thorough evaluation of each idea in the subsequent posts but will try to keep readers engaged with some thing useful. In case you think certain ideas are too dumb or think that you want others to provide comments on few of the ideas mentioned here .. please spread the word .. would love to discuss the feasability of these ideas.

Idea 1 - "Movie magazine" -

The other day i spent close to 20 minutes just staring at the magazines that were available at that news stand ( a rather big one ) and was disappointed that not one magazine had focus on the technicalities of Movie making. I would love to read about how a director like Mani rathnam visualizes his screen play. I would love to see how editors go back and forth to unlock "entertainment value" from loads of reels.

     I would love to know the economics of a movie business. I would love to get amateur movie tips so that i can do a near professional job with my low end camera. Given the low costs of CD’s/DVD’s and copyright protection that exists for using a small piece of a work of art ( say a 5 minute clip ) , wouldnt it be facinating to get the thoughts of top directors and film buffs on why a scene was an awesome moment or a damp squibb.

    If you have read the trash that is dished out in in terms of film magazines .. you would know what i am looking for and the wide gap between what is there and what an avid film buff like me would be interested in.

    Assuming that in 2 years you can notch up a conservative circulation of 1,00,000 copies a month and make it a monthly and charge 80 bucks, you are talking about 80 lakhs per month in subscription money.  Lucrative .. not lucrative .. If you think that you would buy such a magazine .. drop me a line. 

Idea 2 - In elevator advertising

Disclaimer - I over heard the term "In elevator adverstising" in the elevator and didnt pay too much thought to it then. In the meantime i imagined situations in which "In elevator" advertising would be very effective and think that there are situations where it might be an amazing way of getting targetted ads.

Would it make sense to target audio ads ( something like radio broadcasts ) at people who use the elevator. Given below are some of the use cases of the possible impact of "In elevator advertising".

  a) You are leaving from work at 8:00 pm in the evening and you are taking the elevator down. You listed to an add that says - " Watch the investigation of Mumbai bomb blasts in Nat Geo Investigates" on National Geographic channel at 9:30 pm today. How likely are you to surf channels and settle down on National geographic chaneel at 9:25 pm.

  b) You and your team are taking the elevator down at about lunch time and the local restaurant plays a small audio clip about how they have launched this new executive lunch buffet at just 120/- ( sic .. just 120/- ) . How likely is this team of 4-5 likely to consider going there ?

  There are several other reasons as to why "In elevator advertising", either local or national advertisements might be a very effective way of reaching out to people. Think about it .. in case you come across reasons why this model fill fall flat on the face .. let me know .. we can initiate a discussion on this topic.
 

Idea 3 -  Ad supported movie shows -
 

 If you are like me, you would agree that Multiplex prices for tickets are very very stiff - Rs 160/- and going up to Rs 200/- on weekends. Assuming that it is possible to scroll ads at the bottom of the movie screen .. would you consider watching "Don" for the second time ( Why would anyone want to do this .. watch Don a second time .. yucks ) if you had to pay only 40 rupees and the Multiplex recovered the difference in prices by subjecting you to scroll ads or intermittent advertisements that show up every 30 minutes .

For advertisers , assuming that they can advertise in a way that does not damage their brand perception, would it make sense if they get access to 300 ( or whatever be the count of people who turned up to watch the movie ) and had to pay 30 rupees per person ( 30 * 300 = Rs 9000 ) for say ten impressions of their latest product. As long as advertisers can figure out a non obtrusive way of showing ads ( ala Google search ) , i dont see why users would mind watching a movie which also runs unobtrusive advertisements in the parallel. The advertisers are relatively better off since they have reached a target audience that is bound to be more attentive than normal television viewers and they have an exact count of number of people who have watched their advertisements. The caveat is that these adverisements have to be non-obtrusive.

once again .. your suggestions are welcome on whether this model would work or not.

In case you have more zany ideas, please jot them in the comments section. If we have lots of ideas (atleast one idea)  we could possibly start a collaborative blog just to throw around ideas and dissect them.

Cheers

Chandrashekhar V 

Came across this website - http://www.webyantra.net/ . It is a good website for tracking some of the Indian start up companies.

About 8 years go ( when in college ), i told myself that i wanted to retire at 35. I didnt think i would have the patience or motivation to work till i am 60. The plan was that i would work till 35 and then stash up enough money to allow me to experiment with my life.

At that age i wanted to do the following things

 1) Make movies

 2) Start a company of my own and provide direct employment to a few people

 3) Start a group of educational institutes

 4) Teach in colleges where you have very substandard teachers/professors

 5) Cycle around the country and just laze around

I sat recently and wanted to see if my opinions / intentions et al have changed recently

1) I have become more normal and have been partially consumed by wordly peer expectations of wanting to buy an apartment for investment , wanting to travel ( blame my Gult - Telugu origins ) and wanting to own the best automobiles and plasma televisions.

2) I still want to make movies and am actively searching for schools that teach the same in Bangalore.

3) I want to start spending weekends increasing my spirituality quotient.

4) I want to have some impact on this world .. unlike the hords of people ( including me ) who just exist from Saturday to Friday. I see truck loads of people during weekends in the Malls and ask myself .. what are these but insignificant creatures who are trying really hard to kill time ( Including me ). Just whiling away time so that they can last till the next weekend and the weekend after that and the weekend after that.

5) I want to paint one masterpiece.

6) I want to blog sensibly ( Its not as easy as you think )

7) I want to go back to ISB and never have to come out of the Campus again

8) I still want to build one world class company.

9) I still want to retire at 35  

What a cliched title, Y! was always hiring ( Interested ? - See this ). In fact every firm in Bangalore is hiring ( right from Indian research labs of companies like Microsoft to the neighbourhood retail chain. Coming to think of it .. i am not so sure the new generation ( people who have been employed in the last half a decade ) has seen any down turns. This is kind of dangerous .. because a downturn if and when it happens will hit people really really hard.

Everything is on an up - salaries, real estate prices, dining out costs .. and if we follow a simple rule that what has gone up .. must come down .. then in a few years ..when we dont continue growing at unbelievable rates of 8-9 % ..It is going to be hard. Till then .. party hard folks .. live like there is no tomorrow.

On the topic of salaries, have actually heard of a few programmers who have been made offers to the tune of US $ 65000 ( Mind you .. convert that compensation into rupees .. that is salary in India. Heck … whats happening .

I see everything changing … but not a single facebook or youtube was engineered in Bangalore or Hyderabad or .. any other "wannabe" Indian, Silicon Valley. Drats .. that brings me to the topic .. Is it possible to build a killer consumer website or tool or s/w product that would be engineered entirely in India. My opinion is that engineering is no longer a bottleneck. A youtube could have so easily been engineered in bangalore and launched from bangalore .. Probably the bottleneck is somewhere else.

I have been trying for some time now, but havent been able to kick a habbit. My family have collectively spent atleast 2 % of their life span in trying to convince me to avoid buying 3 newspapers for the same day. Sunday is one of those days when i pick as many papers as i can and yesterday picked up Times , Indian express and the Hindu. Was running through the news papers and came across this interesting restaurant model  - Seva Cafe. I still have my doubts about how such a service model can exist ( especially when the people behind the venture intend to give away any profits that they make to charity ). Given that its been operational in Ahmedabad for some time now .. i guess it should be sustainable. Would love to visit the place and get a crash course in the restaurant business. On the topic of restaurants , was reading an article in Outlook Business about the restaurant business and the economics of it. Made a good read. Would recommend Outlook Business as a good business weekly to read ( It is more marcoscopic in content and that works for me as compared to a detailed analysis of all the Mutual funds - This week’s business world india ).

As with regards to kicking the habit of buying multiple news papers to read the same piece of news, i can say that after having read so many comparative news stories, i can say that Times of India is probably the dumbest news paper in India. Hindu is great for sunday reads and has style and substance ( style for me does not imply garrulous colors and beautiful models - For which the times wins hands down ). Express is mid way with an egalitarian look and is kind of lost between being an popular news paper ( like Times ) and being a not so popular, but intelligent news paper ( like Hindu ). Have been dusting my business gyaan and see no clear positioning for Express. The business gyaan also lectures me that though Times of India is a dumb paper .. it is still the most widely read. Also there are a lot of times clones in South India ( most of this comparison holds for southern editions of these papers )  one example of a Times clone is Deccan chronicle.

Another of the feel good news stories that i read was the the one regarding Sanjha Chulha winning the Ashden award (  http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/nishant ). Good going .. considering that the inventor of the chulha created the stove to create demand for his bio fuel briquettes.

i seem to be living up to the theme of the blog .. about all things uinimportant ..  

I pick up strategy books with a lot of trepidation. All the strategy books that i have read ( i should confess that i havent read toooooo many of them ) tend to be descriptive and try to look at business history and look at patterns that have occured and then try to force fit a framework that explains these patterns.

As a result, you have fancy frameworks like BCG Matrix, GE-McKinsey ( Gem of an example of how highly paid consultants can monetize common sense ) and five forces. A big problem with all these strategy tools/frameworks has been that its difficult to take these top level frameworks and translate them into concrete ground level actions .. it is a bit like a  meteor shower entering the earth’s atmosphere, looks beautiful .. but you see lesser and lesser of it as it near’s you (thankfully, no pun intended ). 

In this light, had picked up Blue ocean strategy with some sarcasm. Had been telling myself that it probably wasnt worth buying .. but should say that it is by far the best strategy book that i have read ( its very lucid and short - only 240 pages  .. gosh .. and its a strategy book … ). If your employer has stocked up on this book or you are in a good mood and want to splurge about a 1000 + bucks, pick it up. Strategy might actually make sense. Net net , you might actually enjoy the writing style of the authors ( even if you are not a great strategy fan like me ). 

When ever i need to buy these books .. i start missing ISB big time. Those were the days when i could dig out any esoteric book ( Courtesy Google and Y! search ) and in almost all the cases .. this book would be there in the LRC. Damn .. why dosent Y! have an office in Hyderabad.

BTW, Y! has access to online editions of most books that i would need .. but then reading online isn’t as much fun as having a few papers within your hands