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Tag: Hareesh Tibrewala

  • The webinar was conducted as part of the 'World Goes Digital' series

    IAA hosts ‘World Goes Digital’ webinar with Sanjay Mehta & Hareesh Tibrewala

    By A Correspondent

     

    The International Advertising Association (IAA) India Chapter hosted Sanjay Mehta and Hareesh Tibrewala, veteran digital media specialist and Founders and Joint CEOs of Social Wavelength for its webinar conducted as part of the ‘World Goes Digital’ series.

     

    While evangelising the digital media, the duo spoke about the growing acceptance of the digital media by marketers and industry as a whole. “There has been a significant change over the years,” said Mehta. Added Tibrewala: “Digital Media should not be looked at by the ad spends, but also the way they can drive business activity.”

     

    Srinivasan K Swamy
    Abhishek Karnani

    “The industry – especially young professionals – gained much from the first-hand experiences that Sanjay Mehta and Hareesh Tibrewala shared at the IAA webinar,” said Srinivasan K Swamy, President IAA India Chapter & Vice President, Development Asia Pacific, IAA.

     

    “We are very thankful to Sanjay Mehta and Hareesh Tibrewala to have answered several queries and doubts that young marketers and advertising professionals have as they are embark on a digital foray,” said Abhishek Karnani, Director, Free Press Journal, who along with Manish Advani, Head – Marketing and Public Relations, Mahindra Special Services Group, is co-chair of the IAA Webinar series.

     

    The webinar that was viewed live by over 1250 students from different Management Colleges can now be viewed on the IAA YouTube channel –www.youtube.com /iaaindiachapter.

     

  • The Webinar will be aired live on the IAA YouTube channel – www.youtube.com/iaaindiachapter on February 12, 2015 from 3 to 4pm live

    IAA Webinar Series to discuss ‘World Goes Digital’

    By A Correspondent

     

    The International Advertising Association (IAA) India Chapter has invited Sanjay Mehta and Hareesh Tibrewala, veteran digital media specialists and Founders and Joint CEO of Social Wavelength for their next webinar that will be held on Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 3pm.

     

    Srinivasan K Swamy

    “Our objective at the IAA Webinar series is to provide an interface with leading digital media practitioners and we are delighted to have two leading entrepreneurs and pioneering digital professionals Sanjay Mehta and Hareesh Tibrewala to address the next IAA webinar. I am sure young professionals and others wanting to make a career in the social media or use it in their own companies would gain much from this interaction,” said Srinivasan K Swamy, President IAA India Chapter & Vice President, Development Asia Pacific, IAA.

     

    “We are very happy to have with us Sanjay Mehta and Hareesh Tibrewala, extremely successful digital marketers, who will enlighten us with the future of digital and help us embrace digital for taking our brands to the next level,” said Abhishek Karnani, Director, Free Press Journal, who along with Manish Advani, Head – Marketing and Public Relations, Mahindra Special Services Group, is co-chair of the IAA Webinar series.

     

    Abhishek Karnani

    The Webinar will be aired live on the IAA YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/iaaindiachapter on February 12, 2015 from 3 to 4pm live from the Google Hangout Room at the Google India office in Mumbai.

     

    As part of the Webinar series, the International Advertising Association (IAA) India Chapter has hosted speakers like Sanjeev Kapoor, CMO, Citi (India); Ashish Hemrajani, Founder and CEO, Bookmyshow.com; Rajan Anandan, MD, Google (India); Nishant Rao MD, Linkedin (India); Ajit Balakrishnan, Founder, Rediff.com; JulieRoehm, Chief Story Teller, SAP, Neeraj Roy, MD and CEO of Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, PaulBerney, Co-Founder & Managing Partner EMEA of mCordis and adfilm-maker Ram Subramanian. Recently Rajjat Barjatya and Tushar Vyas were guests on ‘World Goes Digital’ webinar series.

     

  • Lots and lots of social networking site logos and lots and lots of URLs. Does this really help?

    Follow us at F-T-Y-B: Hareesh Tibrewala

    By Hareesh Tibrewala

     

    While on a business trip to Delhi last week.  I happened to find myself in the midst of a traffic jam (so what’s new?) and while patiently waiting for the car to start crawling, my eyes fell on a large advertising hoarding. It was a well-designed hoarding for a luxury brand with some superlative creatives and the company web URL printed in the lower left hand corner. While everything on this 200 square meter hoarding looked perfect, what triggered my discomfort were four small colourful boxes in the bottom right corner, preceded by the words “Follow us on”.

     

    The colourful boxes were the single character brand logos for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Blogger, and quite obviously the brand manager was trying to invite the reader to engage with the brand on these social networks. What I saw on this billboard is a representation of what one sees in others forms of communication as well. Lots and lots of social networking site logos and lots and lots of URLs. Does this really help?

     

    Here are my thoughts

     

    • Simply putting colourful boxes with logos of social networking sites (without the full brand URL eg www.facebook.com/yourbrand) does not add any value to your communication. If at all, it only contributes to promoting the brand value of that social networking site.
    • Putting a half a dozen URLs in a communication serves no purpose either. No one has time to visit a single URL or click on a single link, leave alone click on half a dozen links. When I see a communication which has lots “Follow us on ..” links, frankly it is a bit intimidating
    • Just because you ask someone to “Follow” you is no reason to believe that that person is actually going to follow you.

     

    So what should be done ?

     

    • Sure, social networking sites are now the default place where consumers engage with brands. Also the days when consumer went to content are over. Now content has to reach the consumer. Thus continuing the engagement with the consumer, from your bill board onto a social networking site makes all the sense
    • If your brand is present on multiple social networks, choose one where you think you have the best chance of building a community or engaging with the consumer. Promote just this one link. When the consumer reaches this page, you can always provide links to your other social media presence.
    • Display the link in full (www.Youtube.com/yourbrandname). Chance of a brand recall is much higher compared to just saying : Find us on YouTube
    • Finally if you are putting out a link, see if you can build in a strong call to action. Try to answer the question, “why should the consumer follow my link”. And use that answer to trigger a strong call to action.

     

    Hareesh Tibrewala is Joint CEO, Social Wavelength. You can engage with him socially at linkedin.com/in/hareeshtibrewala

     

  • Far from being a casual youth-centric online hangout place, Facebook is increasingly becoming the focal point for all things digital, including businesses, writes Hareesh Tibrewala.

    Comment: Is Facebook the new centre of the digi universe?

    By Hareesh Tibrewala

     

    Legend has it that the digital universe, as we know of it today, evolved from ARPANeT. And a lot of websites, portals, directory sites and search engines lay claim to the ownership of this digital universe in its early days, until Google came along and put a method to the madness. It became the de-facto gate-keeper of this world. If Google did not know of you, for all practical purposes, you were just some digital litter in some corner of this universe!

     

    For the past few years, Facebook is challenging Google’s role as the gate-keeper of this universe. Already the total number of minutes spent on Facebook by netizens equals the number of minutes spent on Google. And Facebook’s understanding of relationships, and of likes and dislikes in the cyberworld is by far deeper than what Google can ever achieve.

     

    And now, with the launch of “Timeline” feature for brand pages, Facebook is signalling perhaps its strongest intent to move to the centre of this digital universe. Here are some interesting features that implementation of timeline gives to brands:

     

    Brand pages on Facebook are now no longer pages, they actually become a brand website anchored in Facebook.

     

    The new timeline feature gives huge real estate on the brand Facebook page, for a brand to communicate its message. Once upon the time, the only real estate that the brand had was a very small display picture (DP) and a small left hand aligned banner. Pretty much all Facebook pages looked the same!

     

    But now there is a complete masthead that stands out and fills almost 1/3rd of the screen, all of it screaming ‘brand’. We will see very creative uses of this real estate, in time to come, which will enable brands to communicate their differentiation to the audience.

     

    Brands can pin a story of their choice to the top of the fan page, thereby ensuring that page visitors definitely view that story. Again some more opportunity for brand communication Fans always had the facility to communicate with the brand using the wall. But this was a one-to-all kind of communication. Now a fan can send a message to the page and do a one-on-one communication, almost like a “contact us” kind of communication.

     

    With the entire tab navigation now moving prominently to the masthead, and with a compressed drop-down list, a brand can create a complete website with these tabs (with individual tabs for about us, products, services, testimonials etc).

     

    So now a brand can have its complete digital presence as well as its community… both at one place. And as more and more of us depend on ‘referral’ based inputs for our decision making process, rather than ‘information’ driven inputs (that Google offers), we might see both consumers and brands finding the Facebook eco-system more conducive than the current Google dominated ecosystem.

     

    So is www.mybusiness.com now passe and www.facebook.com/mybusiness the new norm? And is Facebook now going to be the new centre of the digital universe? What is your opinion?

     

    Hareesh Tibrewala is Joint CeO, Social Wavelength.

     

  • Mr. Sanjay Mehta and Mr Hareesh Tibrewala, co-founders of Social Wavelength, were awarded 'Social Media Entrepreneurs Of The Year 2012'

    Social Wavelength wins 2 Biggies at WAT Awards, 2012

    By A Correspondent

     

    SocialWavelength,India’s leading social media agency, has been awarded the ‘Social Media Agency of The Year 2012’ for the outstanding all-round work done in the Social Media space at the recently concluded WAT Awards 2012.

     

    To make the evening more special, Mr. Sanjay Mehta and Mr Hareesh Tibrewala, serial Internet entrepreneurs and co-founders of Social Wavelength, were also awarded ‘Social Media Entrepreneurs Of The Year 2012’.

     

    WAT Awards is an initiative of WAT Blog to recognize and felicitate agencies and professionals who have done ground breaking work in the Indian digital media space.

     

    “The ‘Social Media Entrepreneur Of The Year’ award is a recognition by our peers, for the passion and hard work we have put in to build the organization thus far. It also serves as an inspiration to scale greater heights”, said Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO, on receiving the ‘Social Media Entrepreneurs Of The Year’ award.

     

    “The double success of being ‘Social Media Agency Of The Year’ and also the ‘Social Media Entrepreneurs Of The Year’ makes for a fabulous start to 2012. Coming as it does after the Red Herring Asia 100 win, it puts us in the perfect mind frame and motivation to make 2012 a big year for us,” added Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO.

     

    Mihir Karkare, AVP, said: “Being recognized as the ‘Social Media Agency of the Year’ is a proud moment for our entire team. It makes all the sleepless nights and the hard deadlines worth their while.”

     

    Social Wavelength is a social media agency, headquartered at Mumbai. It’s suite of services include social media monitoring, online-reputation management, online PR, social media management and building online communities. Social Wavelength has a client portfolio of more than 50 Indian and international brands.