Rajesh Khanna in Havells Fans Ad

Fans are Forever, a Havells Fans TVC, features yesteryear’s Bollywood superstar Rajesh Khanna. The TVC begins with Fans kya hote hain…mujhse poocho. From Shock Laga to Wires that don’t catch fire, Havells advts have become the talk of the town. Now with this advt, Rajesh Khanna is making a comeback appearence after a long break. The TVC ends with Mere fans mujhse koi nahi cheen sakta. This is also his first TVC. This is a great advt for fans & helps in establishing a good rapport with buyers. The element of nostalgia found in the advt helps users identify with the product. Brands are trying to differentiate & to beat the competition, advertisements are getting creative by the day.

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Go Further with Ford

Ford’s new spot in which no brand name appears has attracted top views on youtube. Only Go further & Ecoboost are flashed in the spot. For the first time, Ford has not shown the brand name in the ads. Ford has also setup a site gofurther.com which gives more info about the spot. The website has been neatly done with good visuals and information. Ford has been pioneer in automotive social media with new & innovative concepts. Digital marketing has become an important avenue for brands to engage with customers.

Microsoft launches so.cl

Microsoft has launched So.cl, a social network, which was tested by Univ students in 2011. At the time facebook is going public, so.cl has had a quite launch. Company’s FUSE Labs has developed the site. This helps combine search with social network for the purpose of learning. It uses facebook login or windows login & also takes the name & picture from facebook for so.cl’s profile. Also one can post on so.cl & it won’t be posted on facebook. Share to facebook feature can be used to post to fb. So.cl uses bing search results & also the results are displayed. Recently bing has incorporated new features to search results with social data in the search results. Google has its own social networking site Google+. Facebook is still the king of social networking with more than 900 million members.

Facebook App Center

Facebook’s app center will give its 900 million members a whole new way of experiencing social apps. It is accessible through web & also on iOs & andriod apps. Users can find great apps like Pinterest, Battle Pirates, Viddy & others. Apps will have an apps detail page which will help users to have more info about the apps. User ratings, engagement,app ratings metric will help rank the apps & also helps in its success. Mobile users can also browse the apps from their mobile devices & can install it depending on the mobile device. App developers need to go through the guidelines to get it listed & also if it doesn’t meet the guidelines it will be removed. Apple’s & Google Android app center have become the top app centers. The facebook app center will help facebook reach more users & also provide better engagement to the users. For marketers, it will provide an easier & better route to reach their members.

The New Bing

The new Bing has a three column design with Core Search, Snapshot & Sidebar panes. Core Search contains core web results which will help get results easier without cluttering it with social updates. Snapshot is the center column. It is between the web results on the left and the new sidebar on the right. Snapshot has info and services related to your search along with maps, reviews & others. This helps the users to take the intended actions. Sidebar is all about social information with info from friends, experts & others. Social results which were in core part have been completely moved to sidebar. You can even ask friends, experts and others from sites like Twitter, Foursquare, Quora & others to what they are saying about the search. This is a great search interface which will take search to the next level. With the rise of social media, social results appearing along with main search results has changed search results. More info can be had at Bing Community.

Pinterest

Pinterest is the latest socal media site which has made the marketers buzzing these days. Pinterest has become the talk of blogosphere & social networking. In Pinterest, members can pin images, videos & other objects to their pin board. A large percentage of the users on Pinterest are women. Brands can reach more customers, drive traffic, increase visibility & also sell products. It is already sending more referral traffic to many sites. Along with facebook, twitter, youtube, google+ it has become a major site for brands to reach customers. Many pinterest like clone sites have also been started. As women are majority decision makers, brands are finding it easier to reach them through this site.

2012 Webby Awards Winners

Webby Awards winners for 2012 have been announced & webby person of the year goes to Louis CK. Webby breakout of the year goes to Instagram which has become the talk of the blogosphere after facebook purchased it for $1 Billion. With over 70 categories, the list is a great mix of awards, nominees & others. Categories are spread over Websites, interactive advertising, online film & video, mobile apps. The winners represent best of the web. Webby awards will be held on May 21st & will be hosted by Patton Oswalt. More info about the winners is available at Webby Awards website.