Celebrate the festival with love and care. Spread the light of happiness and
overcome the darkness of evil.

When a dream comes true

It didn't take more than 5 seconds for me to get glued to the screen. The year was 1993. The channel was known as Prime Sports at that time. All I could understand was that a yellow and green car, driven around a circuit with a tunnel and lots of boats around it and a driver whose name sounded like an asteroid that was about to smash in to Jupiter, was zipping down the narrow streets and no one could do anything about it.

Well not till lap 33 that is. The asteroid guy had to pull over because of some problem. But by then he had already secured a fan for life. 18 years later I am still a Michael Schumacher fan. His retirement in 2006 left me dismayed that I would not be able to see the greatest driver of my time and one of the all time greatest in person. His return and the inclusion on India in the F1 circus looks like a perfect gift to me today.

As a kid and a young blogger, I remember writing a post about him when he retired. A hero who has made me believe in my abilities more than anyone else. He has not only given me the courage to stand for what is right but also made me see what perfection can look like. Nobody is perfect. Neither is Michael. His imperfection of not being able to accept defeat combined with his determination to plan his victory and his ability to execute the plan with clockwork precision brought him that much closer to being perfect.

He has a dark side is what I am told. But from that darkness a beacon of success and glory radiates like none I have come across. He has single handedly made Formula One a household name in a country like India which finds nothing comparable to cricket. He made our God, Sachin Tendulkar, want to see him and get his car signed by him. He made Sundays so much cooler. Hell he even made German and Italian national anthem as familiar to me as the Indian national anthem.

Yes. Michael Schumacher had me hooked that Sunday afternoon in 1993. And I am hoping that in 2011, on a mild Delhi winter afternoon, he will fulfill one of my dreams. My dream of seeing my hero scorch the tarmac with some rubber. Ah what a good time that will be.

Image: LAT Archive

Tragedy of my city.

July 19, 2006. Yes that was the date when I wrote a blog about Mumbai Train Blasts that rocked the city eight days before.

5 years and a major terror attack in between, here I am, back to square one. Today, July 13, 2011 was yet another date with terror for Mumbai. And as I revisited my blog from five years ago, I was amazed to note that not much has changed since then.

We are still angry, irritated and maybe a little helpless too. Same old Mumbai Spirit, same old "The city will bounce back" on the news. What is new is locations where things have come to a grinding halt. Oh wait! Even that has a strange commonality for all these years gone by.

Some may say 5 years, or 9 years for that matter, is not a long time to change the system. I might disagree on that. We have changed our system in last 5 years. We have moved from being bad to becoming worse. It only remains to be seen, where we end up. How many more such incidents will it take for our thick skinned scumbags otherwise known as politicians to realize, there have a responsibility towards protecting us and not to protect their bank accounts alone.

What skills these men show in discussing one corruption case after the other, if only those skills could be used in solving the basics that are constantly questioned in our country. Or have they completely forgotten that while they take for granted the process of making money in office, they have to work for it as well?

What is more stunning is that we take this all with a sense of loss. Condolences are passed around, world leaders would condemn the incident and a relief fund will be allocated to the families affected. But what a lot many people fail to see is the lampoon the country faces from these very people. "Not smart enough to protect its own territory!" "No intelligence!" "Soft Target!" is what we are called.

For a minute we can understand these statements coming from foreign personnel, what is jaw dropping is the fact that our own members of parliament making remarks like, "first attack in 31 months, we have improved!" "Can't make a call on who has done it because we have no initial report!" and worse still top police officials making remarks such as "Don’t go out at 2 am in the night and then say Delhi is not safe!"

Of course, if our jails are brimming to capacity with politicians who have stolen public money thinking that it’s their right to do so, then all the goons are going to walk on the streets of our cities. Not much is going to change. We have a spirit to live up to. Wake up after one tragedy only to sleep in fear till next one knocks down our door.

Like I said, 5 years back also we were angry and irritated, today also, we are angry and irritated. Tragedy of my city is not that we are soft target for act of violence. The tragedy of my city is no one is there to listen to us.

5 Facebook Marketing Strategies

Not long ago, marketing managers were more than happy to launch a product with few ad campaigns, a gala launch event and a celebrity endorsement. But in today’s Facebook generation, brands are beginning to go where the masses are, instead of relying on the masses to come to them. With 600 million members, Facebook represents real-time access to the online mainstream.

Campaigns such as Nescafe Know Your Neighbour have shown that most of the big names are now ready to explore the alternate medium of communicating to the target audience. The Launch of Tata Aria led the automobile industry towards an unknown territory, of running a launch campaign via social media.

But there is still a lack of confidence amongst the brand managers to make Facebook Marketing a key strategy of the overall marketing plan. The brands prefer to join the Facebook network once they have already established themselves. Or, the social media campaign is looked upon as a support to the main campaign which runs on ATL medium.

However, there are instances where Social Media Campaigns have given much better results by themselves and in some cases outperformed the main marketing campaign by going as far as product launches via Facebook. Internationally brands have been using their Facebook Pages to connect with customers. Even application makers are building tools that small and big brands alike can use to sell their products and offer Facebook-tailored customer support.

Here is a look at 5 Marketing Strategies that your brand can adopt.

1. Facebook Launches

Product launches on Facebook is becoming a new trend. Big brand names including Ford and Nike are going so far as to release on Facebook first. In Nike’s case, the athletic wear company opted to debut its three-minute World Cup advertisement on their Facebook Page before they released it anywhere else. The ad then went on to break viral records.

Ford’s ambitious 2011 Ford Explorer Reveal campaign is an example of knowing how to break the trend. The car maker decided to forgo auto shows and reveal its new car on the web, with Facebook as the centerpiece of the company’s online reveal strategy.

The campaign proved to be more successful than anticipated. On reveal day, Ford produced the number one trending topic on Twitter in the U.S.; the Explorer was the number two most searched for term on Google; Ford’s YouTube reveal video garnered 11,000 views; more than 50,000 Ford Explorer Facebook “Likes” flooded in; and, perhaps best of all, 25,000 potential car buyers built and priced new Explorers on the company’s website.

Tata Motors tried a similar tactics with the launch of Aria. They created an application for Facebook users called "Build Your Dream Car," where the users were invited to assemble the mystery car. This built a lot of curiosity amongst the car enthusiasts with the car garnering a lot of media coverage.

2. Facebook Places Experimentation

The Facebook Places location is just a few weeks old, but because Facebook’s checkin features integrate so tightly with the entire Facebook experience, Facebook Places is a business opportunity in the making.

Westfield Valley Fair mall used the Facebook Places to offer a checkin special to its Facebook members who promote their shopping behaviours through Facebook Places. The special in question offers a coupon — powered by Fan Appz — for discounts in exchange for a checkin. The special may resemble the variety we’ve seen on Foursquare (Foursquare), but it’s still an ingenious effort to turn Facebook fans into offline buyers.

3. Facebook Business

Facebook’s brand-friendly Pages (pages) are proving to be more than just wall-centric places for fan and brand comments and photos. Businesses of all sizes are finding that they can make their page double as a store front, and in so doing sell their products and goods to window-wall-shopping Facebook users.

Huge corporate entities like Disney and Delta are in the business of selling on Facebook. Disney, for instance, built the Disney Tickets Together Facebook application so that fans could pre-order tickets to Toy Story 3 without leaving the social network.

The big guys aren’t the only businesses capitalizing on Facebook’s sales-friendly platform. Small businesses are enlisting the likes of Wildfire and Payvment to help them create and manage their own Facebook store fronts and deal centers.

4. Facebook Customer Support

Social media has long been touted as a vehicle for brands to provide better customer service. The challenge is that so many customers are social media savvy, which means complaints and requests can get lost in the fray.

In recent months, Get Satisfaction (Get Satisfaction) and Parature have stepped in to help businesses tackle this new challenge. Both companies are reporting rapid adoption for their inside-Facebook customer service platforms.

Get Satisfaction’s Social Engagement Hub, built by Involver, extends the functionality of its popular customer support service to Facebook and offers full-featured support that integrates with the client’s existing dashboard. Parature is a bit newer to the space, but the Parature for Facebook customer service application is already getting traction from brands hoping to channel Facebook for direct customer engagement.

5. Facebook CSR

CSR through Facebook is a rising trend. One of the biggest trends is for the corporate to solicit fan action on Facebook to ensure its charitable causes get greater exposure. The social good trend obviously extends beyond Facebook and to social media sites in general, but Facebook Pages and “Like” buttons are doing their part to inspire collective action.

Last year, Target launched the “Bullseye Games” Facebook application and let fans choose where the discount retailer should spend its weekly $3 million charitable contributions. More recently, Aviva life insurance launched a global charity campaign by asking people to donate their pic to be part of their "Bigger Picture" campign to donate money for various social services.

Such campaigns paved way for brands to think beyond ATL promotions. Today, it is more about getting the audience to act that to wait for them to act.

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