Pitch Smart.

Hello All,

Here's introducing Micro e-books. The shortest e-books, quick and useful

Pitch Smart is the first such creation. 

Agencies have such a tough time dealing with the corporates, true? First impressions are such a herculean task? Well, here's trying to make that process slightly easy. Talking from the other side of the fence (from a corporate's point of view), Pitch Smart tells you things that matter, acts that fetch brownie points and make your pitch perfect. 

Happy Reading!

Don't forget to drop in your feedback 

Chat with Alicia Souza - The Illustrator

Learnings from the Learned #1

This series is dedicated to all those amazing achievers who never seize to inspire us! Here's starting with the lovely Alicia Souza. Do i need to introduce her? I hear most of you shout NO. So, skip this part and jump straight to the interview you guys, because i will introduce her for the benefit of others who are still not in love with her awesome illustrations

Alicia Souza is a young illustrator based out of Bangalore. She started off working for Chumbak (a Bangalore based startup selling Indian souvenirs and knick knacks) and then went on to become a freelancer. She now also runs her own e-commerce store. TED Talks, Corporate Workshops and so much more. Alicia Souza is a bunch of joy who speaks through her drawings. Can you believe her Twitter profile says, "I draw"? Such infectious passion i tell you. 

1.  You draw & always draw! so much! Considering freelancing is so self-driven, how do you manage to stick to it and not get bored?

In the beginning it was hard and a lot of conscious effort was put into sitting at my desk, especially when I'm generally a very fidgety person. Over time, I learnt to mix in a schedule that suits me and my hyperness. I also tend to work in accordance with my moods. So if I don't feel like drawing, I just don't and when I do, I make up for the times that I don't!

2. How do you manage your social profile? I mean your strategy to manage your social channels is so amazing! Your responses are quick and your content is constantly flowing. How do you manage this despite your busy schedule?

 In the beginning it was, again, challenging to fit it in a schedule and to take time off to put up a drawing but now it's a habit. Like brushing my teeth. I don't think much about it and it's part of my day. Also it helps that everyone on my page is super lovely and supportive! Makes it less of a chore and more of a joy!

3. e-commerce is so challenging today and you are now a part of that world! What is your biggest learning as an e-entrepreneur?

 I feel like I'm still learning! Adapt! that's my biggest learning. Learning to be flexible when things don't go according to plan because goodness me, they don't! But it's also so much fun because of it. 

4. Do you have a cut off time in a day when you just stop working no matter what!? Does taking off time from work help spur your creativity?

 In the beginning I used to not take time off and then I started getting family and friend obligations. in the beginning it used to be off on Sundays and I used to keep thinking about how much I could've done but then I realised how much MORE I do when I get back. Weekends are like mini-vacations away from my desk. Also, yes, I have a cut off time of 'Charlie whining for playing company'. He's like an alarm clock. And yes, it also helps because you get content to feed your drawings.

5. Do you have any plans of using your skills to raise social awareness? 

Yes, I'm already working with a dog behaviourist and pet store to print these one-page-booklets on little pet information. All the proceeds from buying them go straight to an animal shelter. It's something I've always wanted to do, so I'm glad:)

6. How do you come up with such entertaining names for your dogs?

 Charles-Brown Whimperbug Souza: I always loved the name 'Charlie' and was reading Peanuts when I got him. He responded first to the name, so it stuck. And 'Whimperbug' because he was such a whimperer when he was a puppy. 

Lola-bear Schnitzel Souza: Well, I initially wanted to call her 'Polar Bear' because she looked like a little white bear cub when I got her, but got refusals from everyone about the name, so it turned to 'lola-Bear'. 'Schnitzel' was because my friend who picked her up at the time had just gone to Prague and was obsessed with them. 

They grew into their names. 

Thank you Alicia Souza for doing this :) 

Hope you all enjoyed reading this! You may now like, share, comment or just smile 

Have a great day!

P.S - All images belong to Alicia Souza, permissions taken!

Is your feedback system people-friendly?

The addiction for feedback has always existed among achievers or to-be-achievers (be it an individual or an organization) But, how many of us have taken the "Human Factor" into consideration for the same?

Let me elaborate. Most of our feedback is so skewed towards the extroverts. Would you agree? In Webinars, the person who clicks on the raise-hand button is prioritized over a person who has keyed in his/her question in the chat bar. The person who has commented on a post is taken more seriously than the one who has merely liked something. Did we miss pondering upon the fact that, there are so many silent listeners out there, some of them being our biggest customers? Why did we just assume being loud is a sign of importance?

Needless to say, today our content (be it at a personal level or at an organizational level) is exposed to a varied set of listeners out there - there are the extroverts who respond, debate, challenge and discuss, there are the ambiverts who may prefer to take the discussion offline or online and then we have the introverts, who prefer introspection over an open discussion. When you take feedback how receptive are we to all these people-types? It's not stereotyping i am talking about, it's the inclusiveness that's important. It will make you stand out as an organization.

Here's a practical example of how i used this thought to get feedback for my blog

For the enthusiastic extroverts who love an on the spot open discussions, I have the regular comments section.

For the lovely introverts, i have a silent response section, as i prefer to call it. I do not need you to talk or give me your details. Just tell me how you would categorize my post

For the introverts who do mind speaking up in person, or for the extroverts who do not have time for an open discussion, i have a section to take this off the blog - having them send me a feedback to my mail. A lot of people do respond here.

The bubbly ambiverts are the ones who vacillate on their mode of communication. So, they always have options to choose from. I let their mood do the choosing for them.

I can now firmly say, i have accommodated all kinds of people into my feedback system. Will they now communicate more? I can't tell, after all we are humans overpowered by so many external and internal factors. But, once they want to, have i facilitated them enough? Oh yes! Moreover, this may involve a little more time & effort, but hey! it's worth it. You never know which silent listener can actually change the way you do business and take it to a whole new level.

When organizations take this thought into consideration, i am sure it will act as a strong differentiator in their favor, not to mention how considerate and inclusive they prove to be

Do you think this thought makes sense? Please comment below to share your views on the same. You could also drop me a personal message if that works for you

Thank you for reading!

Marketing Tools for Young Marketeers & Startups (part 1)

Young marketeers and small businesses/startups will find these tools highly valuable if put to use! Penning down five interesting tools you can use for your marketing endeavors

1. Haiku Deck - Last minute presentations to be made? No worries. Stop hunting for relevant images. Haiku works great and you can try it for free (ah! the *smiles*) Choose a background, pick your images, put your text, jot down your notes and done. Wait! also export to pdf or share it online! All from one spot. Use this tool online or download it to your system! I swear it only spurs your creativity! Not boring!

2. MailChimp - I know most of you are familiar with this, however sharing my experience will make a point! It's a great tool to send out newsletters to your internal or external crowd. The best part being, you can track every click, the location of your viewers and so much more! You can start off using it for free and upgrade if need be. 

3. SurveyMonkey - While all the MBA grads are going "Oh we all know this" this is as i said for the younger/newer crowd. This is a great tool to conduct surveys or quizzes for that matter. Ask questions for free and track results efficiently. Use it once to only keep using it forever!

4. Tweetdeck - Marketing and no Social Media? Not possible right? Also, twitter works great especially for B2B companies. So, while you are gathering your relevant followers, pick this tool to schedule your tweets and track your activity. Very user friendly!

5. Megavenues - For a small Marketing team, events are not managed elsewhere. Also, finding the right venue is not very easy. This site lists out so many options for different kinds of occasions. Marketers will find it very handy

Will list some more in my upcoming posts. Please do add to the list if you may want to. 

Crowdsourcing Inspiration @ INK TALKS

• INK Talks is an excellent platform for budding entrepreneurs and achievers,brilliantly captured through the art of Story Telling 
• Started by Anu Sethuram & Lakshmi Pratury (a renowned TEDster who brough TED to India in 2009) 
• INK Talks draws its inspiration from TED India, with its theme of UNTOLD STORIES
• They have built a community of young unconventional achievers, who become the ambassadors of INK; they are called the INK Fellows
• Alicia Souza, one of my role models is an INK fellow too!
• My favorite INK talk is of Snigdha Manchandani - she loves studying TEA?! Hear that? Studying tea! 
• INK hosts its flagship annual event called the INK Conference each year! It's happening in the end of Oct this year! So many awesome speakers, but too expensive for me. May be you can attend and share the experience? 

So, INK Talks is the new TED in India!? why not?

P.S - No, INK never asked me to write for them. No i don't get paid for this! 

Apparel Shopping 3.0

I have noticed three major trends in Apparel shopping so far. One, being the rudimentary physical shopping, where we wade through stores finding our best fits. The second phase, Apparel Shopping 2.0 as i call it is the Virtual Shopping, browsing the Internet, visiting online stores and making an online purchase! This phase triggered the convenience stimulus in us.

Well, all this apart, now i see our Shopping experience being taken to a whole new level, the Apparel Shopping 3.0 Here's mentioning two wonderful concepts i have come across recently

1. Kiosked - I am sure all of us have had our "oh i like the blue shorts in that ad" or other similar moments. While dresses worn by our favorite actors & actresses from blockbuster movies are turned into special collections in stores, our tastes are not often restricted to those popular choices right? Let me help you picture a scenario here. You are browsing a news website and you suddenly like the tee shirt a sports person is wearing. What do you do? Well, nothing but try and find something similar and almost always find yourself unsuccessful. But Kiosked helps brands this way. If the sportsman was wearing a shirt of brand X and if the brand has partnered with Kiosked, then you can go ahead and buy it by directly clicking on the shirt by getting redirected to the site where you could buy it! So, Kiosked turns anything into a store! What else? Advertising is now a Service!

Kiosked lets you buy anything anywhere (only for brands that choose to advertise with them though) If only every brand partenerd with them, you can literally buy anything you like anywhere on the Internet! Can you believe that? How interesting right?

2. Fitle - No matter how much we talk about online shopping, not many of us are still very comfortable buying apparel online, owing to the hassles involved in finding the right size. Also, we are often skeptical about how a piece of clothing would look on us. Fitle (a mobile app) nails this one by letting us try out those dresses virtually, oh yeah on your 3D virtual avatar. All you need to do is register your height and provide them a couple of your pictures (in different angles) Their exclusive 3D technology creates an avatar of you and you are good to go ahead and try your favorite outfits (their technology claims to have a 99% accuracy on all your measurements) Here's the cherry on the cake. Fitle saves all your past purchases and creates a personal wardrobe for you. So, you can always pull out your previously purchased top and try out new pairs of jeans to see which one gels well with it!

Does this seem like next phase of apparel shopping to you? It sure does to me! Please share any other interesting examples you may have.

Note : All relevant images have been borrowed from the Internet, i do not own any of them

Irrelevance - a phenomenon going extinct?

No, i did not spell it wrong, Irrelevance is what i am talking about

Entrepreneurs, Companies, Organizations, Marketers and all those who identify themselves under the umbrella of business, have begun to swear by the importance of “relevance” lately! Buy a watch on Flipkart once and more and more watches are shown to you, calling it “Relevant” I read technology news for a day or two and all i will be updated about eventually is Technology. You look for a book online and you keep attracting similar books.

Even the Facebook feed for instance will only show me updates of profiles that I regularly click on. Well, that’s sad because the whole point of being updated on the people I have lost touch with (in the physical world) is dissolved in this process. So, how exactly is Facebook connecting the world again?

This in case of an offline setup may end up being quite different. Let’s assume I love science fiction as my favorite genre. If I end up buying that book online, the internet has the lovely habit of showing me books of the same genre over and over again! So, I might not even end up attempting to look for what’s new in other genres. The purchase happens and the story ends. But imagine I am in a book store (a physical one) despite the fact that my eyes may first look out for science fiction, I will not miss on the opportunity to eye other genres as well. You never know which book may just impress you and you buy it, read it and what next, it might just end up giving you the next big idea in life! Does this show irrelevance is important? Am I missing it online?

Steve Jobs as we all know is a great businessman, a charismatic leader and everything under the sun that we can take inspiration from. Think of him and Technology is what comes to your mind first. Well, he chose to learn Calligraphy back at college! How irrelevant right? But as we know this helped him design the world’s most awesome GUI feature, “The Fonts”. If only irrelevance was so irrelevant, how could Jobs connect those dots in his life? How could he end up being charismatic and legendary?

This is what uxmag.com talks about calling it Meaningful Serendipity, it's all about surprising customers/users with spontaneous results. This i assume will soon be a great part of our Digital World. Does it sound like dejavu? like good old times? Ofcourse yes! Well, I am not against the wonderful algorithms that tailor content to my taste, however what i am talking about is excessive personalization that's narrowing down my world, my knowledge in particular. Don't you think?