Last week, I was holidaying in my home place – Mumbai and we went out shopping for my marriage which is due on 23rd November, 2009. We were shopping at Bandra which is considered as a very posh place & there we can across a small chat [???] outlet. With the scare of swine flu, customers normally avoid from going to such places and this is where it becomes important for the shop owners to win back the customers confidence.

But what if, we use a household name to brand our small product. This is what MIGHT make the customer to purchase & use the product. And the chat outlet did exactly the same. The brand which was used was none other than Google and the product – Gola [????] was named Gogola, some interesting pictures below:

Considering that Internet explorer is the most widely used browser in India, using it effectively would be considered as “Another feather in their cap”. Just like the glass, the menu card was also shown in a very geeky manner in an IE window [picture below]:

I had a chat with the shop owner and he told that “They came out with this strategy mainly to get customer’s confidence” and as Google & Microsoft are household names[no matter you use them or not, but you definitely know them] using them ignites a spark in the customer’s mind. This trust indirectly builds the Gogola brand.

This is a lesson from a small time shop owner on “How a product can become a brand, sometimes by smartly re-modeling an existing brand“.

Few days back, when I was writing my previous article , I clicked the “Publish” Button instead of “Save As Draft” and guess what, the article was not even half written. The fun started when I thought how embarrassing [as well as unprofessional] it would have been, if a reader or subscriber notices the error Well, the mistake might have proved costly, with the blog’s image getting spoilt for the regular visitors and new visitors getting a first hand BAD IMPRESSION.

In my case, I was able to rectify the mistake by immediately deleting the article and than republishing it with the updated content but many mistakes are not so easy to correct. Yesterday, I received an email from Guruji about their new Music Search service. The service is quite good and have used it before , but the email had some serious problem[Image below].

Can we see an Indian child in this picture? IMHO, it looks somewhat disconnected, name is Guruji; which means mainly targeted to the Indian audience and we find ONLY foreign kids in the image

Advertisements are a major source of revenue for all the websites.But displaying advertisements at irrelevant places might be hazardous for the website.Shown below is an image from a local social networking website SirfDosti , and I could find an Ad on my name This may help them generate revenue but may result in a total turn-off for the visitors to the website.

Punctuation & Grammatical errors are quite common and one such mistake was found on Ibibo

By no means , there could be any software without bugs or any service with zero problems but the crux is to minimize those so called “Visible Mistakes”, which might create a bad brand name[not in terms of service] in the minds of the consumer.You can find some interesting articles on some common mistakes here, here and here

In today’s age, consumers are very quick in pointing out mistakes and as Seth Godin says: “There are way too many choices[for consumers] and way less time“. So before your consumers run to their next possible choice, just make them addicted to your service and keep in mind “To err is human and to err again is stupid”

Image Courtesy:
Fortune Watch

There has been a million times that I have mentioned Guy Kawasaki(the great guru) in my blog.So by this time,you might be knowing what is the title of his blog – How to change the world

Apparently, when I purchased April,2007 issue of Business Gyan , I was shocked to see that the book has been released in India.Since,it is Guy’s book,I had to buy the book but was surprised see Guy’s name not being mentioned in the book review.Finally,I came to know that the book has been written by David Bornstein and not Guy Kawasaki.Check out the image which is taken from Business Gyan,April 2007 issue.

Now I wonder who would change the world-would it be Guy Kawasaki or David Bornstein .Also,now the suspense remains about Guy’s next book (obviously, it won’t be titled “How to change the world”) since, David has already made an attempt to change the world