On why there would be a supari on me soon

Yesterday I was told by a friend after some friendly 'trying to sell him the moon' session that focussed on what we can do for him on the mobile space, that I should speak to someone who is writing an article on convergence of mobile and internet and 'are Indian businesses using these new media effectively?'. "wow" I thought and went straight for the kill. I have put on record (yes the conversation was recorded) that the digital space in India / Asia will change so much in the next six months that all those who are ignoring will have perished or will be struggling to adapt. My reasoning was simple - if you are a product or service and need interaction with your market, you have to be where he / she is - on their laptops and their cell phone, else you are wasting money. The editor asked me if anyone was responsible and I dug deeper and said yes the media buying agencies are pulling wool over the eyes of the clients. Its like this - some smart @#$$ brand manager somewhere decides that he wants his ad to be seen on TV and the buying agency gives the same solution to him which they sold an hour ago to the boot polish wallah and to the chai wallah. Media buying agencies have the same solution for all problems. half page ads, innovations that make no sense and endless TV spots for no one. ( I sometime wonder who watches the ads that run on Discovery Travel and Living at 10 30 pm in Mumbai). The underlying idea is have inventory paste it on some poor brand manager. After all for every 100 bucks that gets spend these poor sods make so little ( 5% if they are lucky) which always means that they have to get someone to spend more than what is required to justify their inflated perks and salaries.

My argument was that if brand are looking for some response then they have to be on the internet or on the mobile. And no not buying impressions but asking the agencies to deliver results. Tangible, quatifiable results. I an sure within six months people who behave like they are selling onions and wada pav will have to dance to a new tune. The tune of integration.

The moment I said that and realised it is on record I broke into a sweat - these guys are going to get me and my agency.

After all we completed our seventeenth campaign yesterday, we advertised (we bore the media costs, decided where to advertise and where not to - yes sometimes we make mistakes like having a link on Ryze which goes no where) and we delivered results. Client wanted customers, we got them customers, used the mobile phones to reach out, once they said they were interested, our call centres went into action. Our on ground persons gave demos and as a result we got a conversion rate of 25% on all leads.

And yes we made a pile.

Now we are going into stage two. All those who bought the service also need something else. There are some who could not buy due to constraints, we have got together with the client and packaged lite versions of the product available in smaller pack sizes. WONDERFUL NO?

Now imagine what would happen, you guys would read this and say hmm let me send him a message and so on some will even send me an email. or others will just say "Big Shit" and go silent. If what we have done spreads and some big spenders decide to pull out media budgets and decide to go with us, I am sure I am going to be run over by a truck :)

Anyways. Have fun.