What’s so new about it I ask? Is the term ‘Digital Marketing’ being used because of the trigger provided by ‘Social Media’? Why, the internet has been around for what seems like forever now. Isn’t that digital? Weren’t companies marketing on the internet? Was that not digital marketing? What is so different now?

Maybe Social Media is what is different… Maybe it’s about mobile marketing. Well, what maybe! I think that’s what IT IS. Analyst after analyst is talking about this huge opportunity. In the B2C (no surprises here) and in the B2B space (whoa!). Sure why not. After all it’s all about user generated content. Your users are your customers. And they are building content now. And they are listening to their fellow customers and not You or the Press necessarily. So you go where your customers are. Because customer is king.

So fundamentally the marketer is doing what she ought to do. Good for them (marketer). Good for us (consumer). Just that the marketer is closer to the customer now. Not a bad thing for sure! And that I guess is the buzz about digital marketing…

But what’s so fundamentally different about Digital Marketing I ask. Nothing really. Just that the technology is different. Or is there anything more? Has the ‘different’ technology impacted the behavior, or sensitivities of the customer?

Well I think it has. The customer today is much more informed and empowered than ever. To my mind, marketers have but no choice to be completely naked before their customer today. No more fancy designer clothes to enhance your endowments…! (pun certainly intended). You are what you are – and there’s no escaping it – just do your best job to be seen everywhere. That’s quite an irony though! By that logic a “less endowed but easily available” ‘thing’ will attract more customers!

Some things never change I guess….Digital Marketing being no exception.

Check out Jatin’s company blog at http://twentyonwards.blogs.com/.

As some of my friends have been reminding me, it’s been long since I’ve written here. Several reasons – some are valid and some are not. But if I’ve to blame for the sake of it, then it’s Bangalore. Yep, I got ‘Bangalored’ with Sakshi in the last week of May 2007.

The first thing that struck us when we took a cab from the Bangalore airport to our guesthouse was the reckless driving here. Not that Delhi is a city of great disciplinarians, but trust me it’s a lot better out there. There is absolutely no road sense in Bangalore. People love going round in circles for the sake of shortcuts not realizing how they are screwing the traffic and eventually getting late anyway! Auto-rickshaws still run on diesel, so it is as polluted here as Delhi was in 1997-98. Wonder when Bangalore will take a cue from Delhi and enforce CNG.

Almost immediately after we checked in began our long home-hunt. Following were some of the parameters:

• Should be in an up-market area
• Must have marble/granite flooring. Any traces of mosaic will instantly disqualify the place
• Should be close from both my offices (I work out of 2 offices)
• The landlord must be willing to enter a company lease arrangement
• Preferably a 3BHK apartment
• The apartment complex should preferably have all modern amenities like swimming pool, gymnasium etc
• Budget ceiling: 20k/mo
• And the funniest: Must have provision for window ACs. Now this is funny. Most Bangalore apartments, or may I say windows, are not suitable for window ACs. We have 3 of those that we moved from Gurgaon, and even though we may never use them, we wanted a place where we could at least fit them!

With such a huge checklist it was of course difficult to find our ideal match. We had sold our car in Delhi, so cabs were driving us crazy – wallet wise at least (we blew close to 10k on cabs in <45 days)!

Since luck favors the brave we were lucky to find our ‘ideal match’ within a week of our search! We also bought a car soon after and were able to arrange the house. All in 15 days flat, a tall achievement considering that we saw close to 30+ apartments and had an 8 wheeler of stuff to arrange!

So far so good! Almost a month after we moved, my mother and in-laws came to visit us (yeah all three of them together!). My father-in-law helped immensely with setting some of the pain-areas – plumbing and electrical issues – right for us. We went to Mysore and Srirangapatnam (pictures in next post) and had a gala time.

Sakshi also found a job very quickly. Traveling will remain a logistics nightmare till such time we buy our second car. I spend ~3hrs (starting today) on the road everyday and that’s not funny at all. Thank God we invested in a really good music system for the car!!

Well that’s that for now. I hope the flow continues and I keep blogging despite getting Bangalored!