India Election 2009 on the www
Inspired probably ,by the Obama’s presidential campaign on the net most of of the political parties have launched/relaunched their websites .
BJP with bjp.org and lkadvani.in ,both sites are based on open source Joomla and have the content reasonably well organised .L.K. Advani ,I belive is the new poster boy for Google as his campaign for PM ,are putting crores in the Google Adwords program and is hard miss on both Google SERPs and specially on the Google content network.
Congress with congress.org.in ,has its top three leaders on the home page ,the information is cluttered but still the navigation links guide to what one is looking for.
CPIM with cpim.org is probably the reflection of the times the party is in ,I could see Front Page tags on the page source ! ,there is lot of text and site is difficult to navigate.
Loksatta part has gone one step ahead and launched an Orku app . They have discussion board and gallery but curiously is filled with advertisement ,which makes you wonder on the objective of the app.
Its hard to tell wether the above would help the parties to to garner the votes but BJP ,I think has got it right as far the online campaign is concerned with their IT vision on the home page , Advani’s blog and as far as the media planning is concerned.
The Tata Nano Launch Online Campaign
It was very heartening to see online as an integral part of the the Tata Nano launch ,with their count to the launch ads running almost on all the major horizontals in India .Like this rollover on Yahoo :
Though I, thought the internet audience was not the right TA for the worlds lowest price car ,but got a interesting different view point from a planning guy on the Hyundai account ,that net as a medium was used to position it as a technically advance and a modern car .What say you ?
Their site ,follows the same approach that Nano does to keep it low cost as it is based on open source Joomla ,has link to the Tata Nano community on facebook ,orkut and just to round it up a Nano game on Zapak.
Airtel Gana Bolo Saif-Karina Synchronised Banners on MSN
Apple was probably the first to use the synchronised banners ,meaning interacting with banner causes a change in the other .Probably part of their sustenance campaign after the TV burst ,at fraction of the cost(of ATL) and I would argue does a better job of getting the user involved and communicating the message.
Some screen grabs (quality is not great ,but you’ll get the drift….).
Technotrail’s Twitter account
Recently set up the twitter account at http://twitter.com/technotrail .
Just did some tooling around and added plugin for synchronising word press with twitter.Tried out Gigaom’s solution first ,could not get it to work .Then used Alex King’s “Twitter Tools” ,worked like a charm ,the subsequent post says it all….
Twitter to Wordpress post
Twitter to Wordpress post
Download YouTube Video for a charge
Google is exploring various opportunities to monetise its properties ,like Orkut smart ads ,now for a charge ,one can download a youtube video and pay for it using Google Checkout.
Here are are the details.
After AdultDost.com ,Kaamsutra.info
I had written about AdultDost ,on similar lines we have Kaamsutra.info ,which promises to find the best position for you ! (safe to open in the office).
KhattiMeethi life by SimplyMarry
SimplyMarry has launched khattimeethi life viral ,based on the concept of how the life changes after marriage and SimplyMarry’s positioning of being an urban specialist.Mediocre at best :
Quantum of Shoelace by IDBI Fortis
IDBI Fortis has launched this new viral ,based on the recent Bond movie .Our Viral filmmakers are moving on from bollywood to hollywood now for inspiration .This is a nice one and the obvious play with the name Bond and IDBI Fortis product Bondsurance. This is the second one from Contest2Win ,after BosskaBoss.com which till date has received 2.25 lakh views.
Google taking advertisers for a ride with Search Partners in India
Advertising on Google search through the AdWords ,you can opt to be present on Google Search partners ,which till recently ,one did not know what was the distinct share of Google and their search partners .Now the summary report is available ,but not a detailed report through the report centre.
Even looking at these summary reports ,was a revelation as most of the of the traffic for some campaigns was from these search partners with the conversion rate being very low .The predicament is that there is no detailing of these search partners and a campaign with only search partners is not allowed ,to optimise it separately.
Hope Google is out with a solution for this soon as I recall they indent not to do any evil 
