All posts by Awfis Editorial

Instagram Trends of 2019: stay ahead of the game

Business How To’s, ,

March 13th was a black day for many of us who spend nearly all our waking hours on Instagram and Facebook. A technical glitch created a major outage and a sort of existential crisis for millions (yes, you read that right) of users. Just how large a following Instagram has was amply evident during this digital apocalypse.

If your brand has still not tapped into the possibilities of Instagram, it’s not too late yet. Move over Facebook and other social media platforms; Instagram is well on its way to becoming the ultimate marketing tool for brands looking to build a strong digital presence. Month on month, this photo and video sharing platform is leapfrogging its way into boardrooms and marketing meetings.

And quite rightly so. It offers a slew of exceptional advantages that make all the difference between a brand being #1 or #2. Throughout last year, the app made upgrades and modifications to its interface, and completely spoiled us with all the fun stuff.

Wonder what everyone’s favourite app has in store this year. We did a little snooping and this is what we believe users and brands can look forward to.

Going further with Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is set to be one of the biggest Instagram trends of 2019. If you thought this is some futuristic stuff, you’d be surprised to know that you have already interacted with it through Instagram Stories. Those cute face filters, such as the puppy dog ears and nose? Those are actually AR filters. Who knew, right? Simply put, AR is superimposing virtual effects (computer generated images and videos) onto the real world through the camera.

There are over 400 million people using Instagram Stories daily! And that, dear brands, is a fantastic opportunity for you to jump on to the face filter bandwagon. Create your own custom AR filters for your customers to use using Facebook’s Spark AR Studio.

And how does this benefit you? In order for your customers to use the filters, they need to follow you on Instagram or at least visit your brand profile. Once they do that, it’s all up to you to keep them engaged. AR filters have all the makings of going viral. Question is how soon you are going to cash in.

Everybody likes a good story

Instagram might have started out as a place to post pretty pictures of food and cats, but it is a serious business tool today. With the numerous features it offers, it’s a space to engage with customers and to build a community of fans.

If you’ve been following Instagram’s progress, you’ll see how Stories has slowly and steadily grown in popularity over the last few years. Many users are now actively posting on Stories rather than their classic feed, which has become more secondary. To put it in digital parlance, the main feed is more like their home page – strategic, planned, etc. – where people can stop by to see what’s happening. However, Stories is more natural and shows their quirky, ‘human’ side.

Instagram’s been quick to catch up on this trend and most of its recent updates have been around Stories: polls, questions, emoji reactions, stickers, countdown, music, focus mode … the list goes on. This means brands will now find easier and better ways to communicate with their audience, taking customer engagement to a whole new level. You can use Story stickers to give some measure of involvement to customers during product decisions. Track their feedback, and tweak and change your offering until it satisfies the majority.

Shopping @Instagram

Today, nearly 62% of smartphone users are making purchases via their mobile devices on the go. If you are an ecommerce brand, Instagram is your gateway to more sales. With nifty features like shopping and product tagging, monetising your presence on Instagram has never been easier.

Whether it’s loyal followers who want to purchase your products or potential ones who discover you on Instagram, this platform is now a bona fide sales channel that you can no longer afford to ignore.

Its built-in shopping reminder – the tiny shopping bag icon that appears in the lower-left corner of your posts – is a quiet trigger of shopping opportunities.

Using Instagram product tagging allows you to capture more mobile users who are always on the go, and shopping while they do it. And as more customers realise just how easy and fun it is, the tribe of Instagram shoppers is only going to grow.

All that they need to do is click on your shoppable posts via the ‘Shop’ button that is conveniently located directly below your highlights/bio. Serious shoppers can browse through all your shoppable posts, making it really easy for you to appeal to their inner shopaholic.

Nearly 46% of people say they avoid purchasing from a brand if it means a disconnected mobile experience. Instagram product tagging takes care of that seamlessly. It sends your customers directly to your product pages – sitting snug within the Instagram app itself.

Get real with influencers

The influencer marketing industry is expected to touch $5-10 billion by 2020. And this has been largely due to Instagram. And even though most brands are gung-ho about influencer marketing, the regular folks are starting to see through the thin veneer of perfect Instagram posts, overly edited photographs and sponsored content.

Influencers are getting real now. They have come to realise that in order to retain their followers and also their brand deals, they will need to get more personal and authentic this year. You will see more influencers being open about their sponsored content, even explaining to their followers how much of their income comes from sponsored posts.

This will mean more genuine experiences for customers and far more deeper, meaningful and authentic relationships.

The trend sort of kicked off in 2018 itself, which saw the rise of a new kind of Instagram influencer focused on authenticity. The example of body positive Jenna Kutcher is perfect. She went from 166k to 700k+ followers in just a year, that too without paying for a single follower.

Watch out for IGTV

When IGTV was launched in June 2018, it was a bit of a damp squib. Which was quite surprising, as the vertical video format is easier to work with while creating content, and for users as well to watch on their phone. However, the good guys always win in the end. It was closer to the end of the year when some of the bigger brands and influencers started dabbling in IGTV. 2019, we believe, will see vertical video come into its own. More brands and public figures will publish long-form content and more users will start to check IGTV. Be ready for the shift, and start working on creating vertical videos soon.

Conclusion

Instagram has always been a visual medium. ‘Show, don’t tell’, has been the mantra all along. And now with its many new features and upgrades, Instagram will help you turn your feed into a fun and easy selling machine too.

Quantum computer

2019: will it be the year of the coolest tech?

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There is no doubt that tech is finding newer, better and more extraordinary ways for businesses to connect with the consumer. You can’t really say technology is evolving anymore as that would indicate it builds on existing tools; instead, technology today is disruptive. It challenges the status quo and comes up with answers to questions that haven’t even been asked yet.

When we scoured the internet for cool tech finds of 2019, we were truly taken aback by the sheer array of amazing ideas and innovations that are coming up. There are hundreds of super cool tech gadgets and gizmos that have made it into 2019, and our hearts. But in all the din that is the latest and the craziest, only these six have made it to our list of the coolest tech of 2019.

Family Hub Refrigerator

There was a time when the kitchen or the dining area would bring the whole family together. Today, if Samsung has its way, this role looks primed to be taken over by a single gadget in the kitchen – the Family Hub Refrigerator. The Samsung Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled family refrigerator comes with a 21” touchscreen and a Bixby voice control that takes food refrigeration to a whole new level. The Family Hub synchs up food storage, better connects the family and can also be networked with the Samsung SmartThings ecosystem allowing consumers to control their washing machine and smartphone from the refrigerator’s console.

You can digitally label foods with expiration dates, check the content of your fridge from the grocery store using your smartphone, and also leave a digital note for other family members on things to get done before you return. You can even synch up the screen to your Samsung television so you don’t miss the action while cooking.

A television that rolls away when not in use

If you are in the market looking for a new television that blends in with the décor of your home, how about looking for a television that can disappear?

LG’s OLED TV R is a television that simply rolls out of sight when you are done with it. The screen drops away slowly into its console with the push of a button to come out when you beckon it again. Besides this truly amazing feature (and we really can’t get over it), the rolling television has support for Alexa voice controls as well as the Google Assistant. Hold on, there is more. The television has also integrated Apple’s AirPlay2 for seamless media playback. And you can do all this when your television is rolled out of sight.

Foldable phone by Samsung

If you are still dazed by the rolling television, here’s something just as extraordinary, but for something that fits your pocket (but maybe not your wallet).

The Samsung Galaxy Fold (umm, a less obvious name would have been fun) can be literally folded to half its size depending on your need. There are two screens, a full one when the phone is open and a smaller one for when it is closed. The layout of the intuitive UI will immediately change depending on whether the phone is open or folded. You will also get app continuity. So, if you are using an app in the folded screen and you open the phone, the app will automatically continue there. The larger open screen will allow you to run three apps simultaneously on the display, taking multitasking to a new dimension altogether.

The phone has three rear cameras like the earlier Galaxy A7, but the ones on the foldable phone promise to be more powerful. Now it’s simply a question of waiting for the phone to come out so we can snap it up in a jiffy.

First ever Quantum computer

When it comes to computers, there’s a new kid on the block – quantum computers – and both IBM and Google are racing with each other to see who can build the nextgen supercomputers first.

Quantum computer

Without getting into the details of quantum mechanics, let’s just say that these computers deal with atoms and molecules. This will allow the machines to work with far greater precision than ever imagined on tasks like complex chemical processes which our current crop of machines can’t even wrap their heads around. It’s like comparing two digital cameras, identical in all respects except that one has more pixels than the other.

It can get tad technical, so if you want to read a bit more about quantum computing, this should help.

5G: the possibilities are just getting better

The next thing after 4G, fifth generation or 5G, is expected to be better and faster. Yes and yes, and so much more.

5th Generation

5G capabilities include higher data rate (cheers to that!), reduced latency, cost reduction, energy saving (cheers to these two!), higher system capacity and improved device connectivity. Basically all your cellular woes thrown out the window. The biggest draw of 5G is that it will be 100 times faster than the current cellular technology. While the first phase is expected to be completed by April this year, the technology will be available to all consumers by 2020. It seems a long way off, but it is definitely something worth waiting for.

Nreal Light Mixed Reality Glasses

It might seem cool to own funky digital glasses, but the sheer size and image quality of a lot of players left much to be desired.

So when a Chinese startup, Nreal, jumped into the market with something interesting, it was worth giving a second look. These are low-profile mixed reality glasses that look and feel just like ordinary sunglasses but let you do so much more.

These glasses project digital imagery on the real life scene unfolding in front of your eyes. So you get the best of both worlds. Lightweight, and with a host of features like dual microphones, brightness control switches on both arms, and even Bluetooth headphones if you wish, the possibilities with the glasses are mindboggling – video games, entertainment, telepresence calls and more. Have prescription lenses? No problem. The Nreal takes care of that so you don’t need to wonder what to do with your existing pair.

Conclusion

Six cool tech ideas that have got the whole world excited. We can’t wait to see some of them in person. While the costs for a few might be prohibitive for some of us, there’s no harm in checking them out when they hit the stores soon.

 

What’s been your favourite tech gadget till date? Also, let us know which of these excited you the most

 

Fyre Festival: How a marketing paradise turned out to be the world’s biggest festive disaster

Business How To’s

To give you a quick recap, the Fyre Festival is one of the biggest failed events the world has seen till date. Conceptualised and established by Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc. (and also of the infamous Magnises startup that gave millennials a chance to live beyond their means; why that seemed like such a great idea no one knows) and rapper Ja Rule.

The festival, scheduled for April 28-30, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma, promised a ‘transformative weekend’ and was promoted incessantly by influencers and socialites like Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski. Naturally, the promotion got the attention of countless customers who, in their FOMO-driven rush, went ahead and booked tickets that were cheapest at $500 and going up to $1500. VIP packages at $12000 were astonishingly selling like hot cakes too.

So what went wrong really?

In a word, everything.

Fyre Festival goers were expecting a mind-blowing experience when they packed their bags for the weekend to Great Exuma, Bahamas. However, the reality they got was completely different. And the issues started even before they’d left American soil.

Festival goers thought they were signing up for a customised, VIP-configured flight. Instead, they were met with a crowded airport and chaotic, delayed departures.

And the nightmare got worse (as if it could) once they reached the Bahamas.

The party-goers were looking forward to spending two days in luxurious villas and eco-friendly domes. Instead, they were greeted with half-built huts to sleep in.

They were eager to be wined and dined by world-famous gourmet chefs. Instead they had to subsist on cold cheese sandwiches and salads with no dressing, served in makeshift food tents.

The promised line-up never turned up with many artists having cancelled their gig long before the festival, but none of this was conveyed to the customers until they got to the venue.

The crowds were expecting to party with friends for two weekends on pristine white beaches. What they instead did was struggle to just get a flight back home, which ended up becoming another disaster. Guests were stranded at the airport with no food or water, purportedly locked in a room.

Not exactly what the weekend deal was all about, was it?

Why did the Fyre Festival fail?

For starters, the founders really had no experience in organising an event of the scale that they had promised. What made it worse was that they didn’t live up to their commitments long before the festival had even begun.

The event was to have been organized at Norman’s Cay, an island previously owned by Pablo Escobar, a kingpin of the Medellin Cartel, but on the condition of anonymity. This clause was violated in the launch promo itself and the owners pulled out of the agreement. While McFarland was scrambling for alternate locations, the promos continued to mislead fans into believing they were to spend a glorious weekend at this exotic location.

A $4 million loan meant to be utilized for the event was lavished on arranging luxurious offices in Manhattan. And when McFarland approached organisers to help him with an event he had no clue about, he was taken aback to realize how deep his pockets would have to be. The leave-no-survivors internet abounds with rumours that McFarland is said to have Googled ‘how to rent a stage’ when he got desperate.

Comcast Ventures had planned to invest $25 million into the festival, but backed out a few days before, leaving McFarland scrounging for temporary financing, which he needed to payback within 16 days. He managed that by asking customers to transfer funds towards a smartwatch like RFID-equipped digital Fyre Band that would give them unlimited access to the festival. Advisors to the festival warned against this, citing poor Wi-Fi connection at the site, but McFarland in his trademark overpromise-and-underdeliver went ahead with the plans.

The Fyre Festival continued to fail to deliver on every count. There were no medical facilities, accommodation was below par with soaked mattresses, unfinished tents, lack of running water and poor quality food, no cellphone or internet service, and heavy handed security.

Points to ponder

Does the colossal disaster that was the Fyre Festival have any lessons for the rest of the world?

The question that plagues many investors is how McFarland successfully raised millions to fund his program that had massive loopholes in its initial investment deck itself.

How did some of the smartest investors become victims of this fraud? Do influencers play such an influential role that they can sell even the most badly-planned ideas to serious angel investors? Is being part of the ‘next big thing’ so exciting that people don’t bother to run the numbers and refrain from due diligence? Could a massive ‘vision’ have been sold purely on models in bikinis, social media celebrities and beautiful Instagram photos alone?

In hindsight, yes, there were signs, but it was all a smoke-and-mirrors trick that helped McFarland build a massive pile of cash out of nothing. Today he faces 8 lawsuits, with one of them seeking damages of $100 million. Last October McFarland pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

And Ja Rule? He was quick to post on Twitter that “it was NOT A SCAM” and “this is NOT MY FAULT”.

While dissecting the fiasco, many news organisations have drawn parallels between the festival and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The Fyre Festival will be studied for years as an example of how not to invest in a deal with a beautiful yet superficial vision.

What makes an ‘entrepreneur’ an entrepreneur?

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Your neighbour’s kid, instead of taking on a 9-5 job, decides to open a restaurant. Would you say that is enterprising? Yes, it is. It takes courage to get off the expected, beaten path and do something different.

Does that make him an entrepreneur though? Umm, not so sure of that. There is a lot more that goes into making an entrepreneur an entrepreneur.

Is the idea or business likely to revolutionise the industry or marketplace? Your neighbour’s kid again, if the restaurant had a theme, like ‘cook with the chef’ or an idea that took it beyond food as we all know it, then perhaps he could qualify as an entrepreneur.

Yes, it can be confusing. Let’s understand this a bit more.

Meaning: what’s in a word?

The dictionary defines the word entrepreneur as ‘a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.’ So, shouldn’t that mean every businessperson is an entrepreneur, since all people start business to make profit, and they take on financial risks?

Apparently not.

An entrepreneur is often seen, and rightly so, as an innovator – one who comes up with new ideas and new business processes. A strong set of management skills and team building abilities are a must-have to become a successful entrepreneur.

As is with many things in the English language, turns out the word ‘Entrepreneur’ is also not an original. This has been borrowed from the 18th century French word ‘Entreprende’, which meant ‘to undertake’. An interesting twist to this is, the word was mainly used to describe a ‘manager or promoter of a theatrical production’. And that’s not too far from the performance of a successful entrepreneur, now, is it?

As the world, and its languages, evolved, so did the word. Through the years, the word ‘entrepreneur’ has seen plenty of changes in its meaning, particularly in relation to business and commerce.

History: how did the term originate?

Much credit goes to Richard Cantillon, an Irishman living in France, who first used the word ‘Entrepreneur’ in his book ‘Essai sur la Nature du Commerce au General (Essay on the Nature of Commerce)’, published in 1755. He uses the term ‘entrepreneur’ to describe anyone who bought or manufactured goods at a certain cost to sell them at an unknown price. It was Cantillon’s usage that established an entrepreneur as a ‘risk-taker’.

This was just the beginning. Soon after, Jean Baptiste Say, a French economist, described an ‘Entrepreneur’ as an ‘adventurer’ or ‘one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediary between capital and labour’. He even went on to define the entrepreneur as someone who ‘shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.’

It was in 1934 that Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian American political scientist and economist, gave us a more modern definition of an entrepreneur as ‘the person who destroys the existing economic order by introducing new products and services, by creating new forms of organization, or by exploiting new raw materials.’

And finally it took US business consultant, Peter Drucker, to espouse that an ‘entrepreneur’ should only be that person who creates something new, something different. According to him, an entrepreneur ‘always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity’.

There you have it, the modern day definition of what started as a manager of a theatrical production.

Rise of the Intrapreneur

Today the word ‘entrepreneur’ is no longer limited really. It is rapidly evolving and starting to mean so many different things for so many different people. In fact, entrepreneurship has gone on to include social entrepreneurship into its for-profit-only folds. Here, companies seek to fulfil social, environment and even humanitarian obligations alongside business goals.

Unlike what you might have been led to believe, entrepreneurship is not just the domain of start-ups. As a trait and a business model, it can be found within an existing firm or large organization as well. Intrapreneurship, as it is called, is when an organisation sets aside substantial funds and even has dedicated talent that focuses on special ideas or projects. These teams are instructed to treat the project like an entrepreneur would, and successful ideas are many times ‘spun-off’ as subsidiary organizations.

Intrapreneurs have all the resources and capital of the firm at their disposal and the environment to think like entrepreneurs, without the typical risks that come with the territory.

Conclusion

Do not confuse the term ‘entrepreneur’ with a ‘small business’ or even used it interchangeably. While it is a fact that most entrepreneurial ventures start out as small businesses, the converse is not strictly true – not all small businesses have an entrepreneurial streak. Many consist only of the owner, or a few employees at best, and most of them might offer an existing product or service. They do not aim at growth or are not looking to change the market.

Entrepreneurial ventures, on the other hand, offer an innovative product or service, and the entrepreneur has plans to scale up by adding employees, looking at international markets, etc. This is made possible through venture capital and angel investments. Successful entrepreneurs must have the ability to steer a business in the right direction through planning, by adapting to changing environments and by building on their own strengths and weakness.

Ever wondered what kind of a leader are you?

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Most of us have our favourite leaders, either direct managers or more famous people, who we admire and look up to. As is wont to happen, we instinctively pick up traits (hopefully, all positive) from each of the leaders that we come across, and that often defines what kind of managers we become.

If you thought that most leaders get lumped under two categories – good or bad, with an average thrown in – you’ll be surprised to know that you are mistaken.

Yes, leaders can be good or bad, and mediocre, but the type of leadership they display is often determined by the role they have to play, the people that they lead and the demands of the situation. Yes, leadership styles often change and the same person may be found donning more than one type of leadership hat.

The list is quite exhaustive, so let’s plunge into it right away, shall we?

#1 Democratic Leadership

Here the leader actively involves subordinates in the decision making process. Of course, the final responsibility lies with the leader, but there is greater delegation of authority and autonomy. The most interesting aspect of such a leadership style is that communication flows both ways. This is the ideal form of leadership and it is identified as fair, creative, courageous, intelligent, competent, and honest.

The only flipside to this type of leadership is that its processes are slower and it might not be the most effective in organisations where quick decisions are needed.

#2 Transformational Leadership

As the title suggests, this leadership style entails bringing about change – be it in the organization, teams, individuals, and in oneself as well. A transformational leader looks for ways to motivate others to exceed their expectations and their abilities too. They set more challenging goals and often even obtain greater performance by creating an environment that is intellectually stimulating. Since transformational leaders empower their followers, this type of leadership sees deep commitment and more satisfied employees.

#3 Transactional Leadership

In this form of leadership, roles and expectations are clearly defined. The leader outlines a process in which followers get immediate, tangible rewards for implementing the leader’s instructions. This type of leadership might sound rather rudimentary, or transactional, and in a manner of speaking it does have a clear chain of command. However, in any form of leadership it is important to state expectations clearly, give directions, share feedback and allocate rewards.

While many believe this to be an effective method to achieve targets and complete short-term goals, it often doesn’t allow employees to reach their full creative potential.

#4 Team Leadership

This leadership requires presenting a powerful image of the team’s future, what it will achieve and what it stands for. The idea is to inspire and impart a strong sense of purpose. Team leadership means working with the hearts and the minds of the team members. This is a slightly risky leadership and it may not always succeed as it mainly depends upon how effective the top leadership is.

#5 Coaching Leadership

Coaching leadership requires teaching and guiding followers. This type of leadership is useful in settings where there is a need for quick results or to see an improvement in performance. In this leadership style, followers are guided on improving their skills. Coaching leadership motivates its followers; it inspires and encourages them. To perform effectively, a coaching leadership requires continuous monitoring of group dynamics, offering process recommendations and bringing timely interventions to keep the group on track.

#6 Strategic Leadership Style

This style of leadership needs the input of a leader who is the head of the organization but isn’t limited to the top of the organization alone. It caters to a much larger audience, across all levels, who are aiming to create a high performance team or organization. The role of a strategic leader is to close the gap between new possibilities and practicality by coming up with a new set of ideas and habits.  If the organisation is to see a change, it requires strategic thinking through effective leadership.

#7 Laissez-faire Leadership

Here departments and employees are given the authority to work as they wish to, with minimal or zero interference. This leads to reduced accountability and has been shown to be the least satisfying and least effective management style of all.

#8 Cross-Cultural Leadership

This leadership is mostly found in organisations where the business works in a global market and has various cultures within its society. Such organisations are often international ones who require leaders with the skills to tweak their leadership approach to suit different cultures.

Conclusion

These are the many ways that an individual can lead an organization or a group of people. Not all the styles are perfect for all the situations mentioned. It is up to you, eventually, to see which one fits your personality, your organisation and mainly the situation that requires you to take up the leadership mantle in the first place.

 

Image Source: Google Image Search (lancersglobal)

What’s in a name? How did some of our favourite brands get their names?

Business Innovations,

Brands and brand names are deeply entrenched in our lives; almost staple, one could say. We all ‘Google’ information, Skype with friends, and love to treat ourselves to a Häagen-Dazs ice cream every now and then.

But did you ever stop to wonder where these brands got their names from? Surely someone or a group of people sat in a boardroom and came up with these names. But what do they actually mean? Let’s look at some of our favourite ones, shall we, in no particular order?

Google is a typo!

Google’s founder, Larry Page, was brainstorming with a bunch of graduate students at Stanford University to create a massive data-index website. Someone (no one is sure who) suggested ‘googolplex’, which means the largest describable number. A student misspelled the name and that’s how ‘Google’ came to be.

And you thought Adidas stands for ‘All Day I Dream About Soccer’?

Sorry folks, the Adidas name has nothing to do with athletic sports. Story goes, the founder of the brand, Adolf Dassler, started making shoes when he returned home after WWI. He needed to give a name to the brand, so he combined his nickname Adi, with the first three letters of his last name. As simple as that. Now use this knowledge to correct someone else’s misinformation.

Twitter means just what it stands for.

The podcasting company, Odeo, was brainstorming one day. Jack Dorsey, who was then an undergraduate student at NYU, came up with the idea of an individual using an SMS service to send messages to a small group. The original name given for this service was ‘twttr’, an idea inspired by Flickr as much as the five-character length of American SMS short codes. In fact, the service was launched as ‘twttr’ also because twitter.com was already taken. Six months later the domain was purchased and there’s been no looking back since. According to Dorsey, “…we came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds’. And that’s exactly what the product was.”

Did you also believe IKEA to be a Swedish word?

IKEA is a fine example of a make-believe word. And no, it has nothing to do with Sweden, not directly at least. Founder Ingvar Kamprad created the brand name by combining the initials of his name, IK and then adding on the first letters of the farm and village where he grew up in southern Sweden: Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd. We, for one, are glad that he went with the initials only. Can you imagine saying those names aloud!

Amazon is named after the world’s biggest river.

Amazon, launched in 1995 as a bookstore, was meant to be called Cadabra by its founder, Jeff Bezos. It seems, however, that the company’s first lawyer, Todd Tarbert, felt the name sounded too similar to ‘cadaver’. Bezos then chose Relentless (if you visit relentless.com you will get redirected to the Amazon website. Try it, we just did.), but he eventually decided on Amazon – the world’s largest river. In fact, the company’s first logo even had an image of the river.

Starbucks finds its origins in Moby-Dick.

Starbucks cofounder Gordon Bowker tells an interesting tale of the origin of the name. They definitely wanted something that began with ‘st’ because it sounded powerful. Somehow the conversation veered to the old mining map of the Cascades and Mount Rainier. The old mining town of Starbo caught their eye, and Gordon immediately thought of Melville’s first mate, Starbuck, from Moby-Dick.

Häagen-Dazs is real, but the name is all made up.

Reuben Mattus, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, wanted to pay tribute to Denmark (the only country that saved Jews during WWII) and decided to name his ice-cream company Häagen-Dazs. The name doesn’t mean anything, but the combination of letters, especially the umlaut, does the job splendidly.

Xerox isn’t random, unlike what you might have thought.

We’ve seen made-up names and names that used initials of the founders or those that got their inspiration from entirely unrelated subjects. Xerox isn’t one of those; it has a clear etymology. It comes from the word xerography, which is a technical term for the dry copying process used in photocopiers, which itself is derived from the Greek words xeros (dry) and graphos) writing. That ‘x’? It was added for some techy punch. So popular is the brand name that today Xerox has gone on to become the generic word for the act of photocopying.

Sony needed something simple in English.

Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (as Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering) made perfect sense in Japan, but wouldn’t have the same impact in the US. How did the company overcome the hurdle? By reinventing the brand as something short and simple. Sony seemed to be a good choice as it was easy to say, and additionally it also suggested ‘sonus’ which is Latin for sound. Moreover, it was similar to ‘sonny’ an American slang for a young lad. That made the name friendly and approachable.

Facebook or Facemesh?

When Mark Zuckerberg was studying at Harvard’s University, there used to be an online directory of all the students in the college called Face Book. The idea behind this was to familiarize all the students with each other. If you’ve seen The Social Network, you will be familiar with how Mark hacked the servers and created a competition of sorts to ask people to choose who looked better. He initially named it Facemesh. This later evolved into a networking site where people could communicate with each other and even put up their photographs, and he reverted to calling it Facebook.

Then there’s Pepsi, named after dyspepsia (meaning indigestion) because it was meant to aid digestion. McDonald’s is named after the two brothers Dick and Mac McDonald who ran a burger restaurant. Gap literally indicates the generation gap between adults and kids. Nike is the Greek goddess of victory (apt, isn’t it?). Skype is derived from ‘Sky peer-to-peer’, which was shortened to ‘Skyper’. However, the domain name was already taken, so the ‘r’ was dropped to make it Skype. Gatorade was launched as an energy drink for the Florida Gators.

Whew! The list of brand names and their origins is actually endless, but these are just some of the more popular ones that we encounter almost daily.

Conclusion

What does this list tell you? Original, unique and catchy names are very important to building great brands, as against descriptive or rational ones. Fun business names have more power and it is important to think out of the box when naming a brand.

Do you have any names that you think are quirky in their own right? Tell us in the comments below.

Do you know what your chatbots and customers are talking about?

Business Innovations, ,

Artificial Intelligence is here, and it is here to stay for good. As machine-learning technology advances, it is paving the way for better self-learning machines that are showing the promise of being able to do almost everything that we humans can.

The benefits are indeed countless and more businesses than ever are getting excited about taking AI from behind the scenes to a more customer-facing role. This could be as simple as offering customer support, to helping close sales or even creating content for a blog.

But as is the case with everything new and exciting, this is unchartered territory and it comes with its posse of risks. While it might not be as dangerous or life-threatening as The Terminator, it could still create mischief and hurt your business. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of having chatbots interact with your customers.

An employee that’s always working, but that means constant supervision

What makes machines better than humans is their indefatigable ability to work. Given a chance, with uninterrupted electricity, they could work all day long, all days of the year, year after year. No lunch break, no sick leave, no overtime, and no home to go to.

This is extremely beneficial when it comes to interacting with customers. An AI chatbot can take care of customer calls after hours or from anywhere across the globe. Or if all your customer representatives are busy (and haven’t we all been on the other side of the unending recording), a chatbot can step in and handle more routine calls or trivial cases.

However, AI cannot be 100% perfect all the time. You cannot afford to let your AI chatbot run free to handle the night shift all on its own. Perhaps your chatbot could face an unanticipated problem, or it could interact with a troll, or there could be a language issue. While this doesn’t mean someone needs to be managing it every moment, you do need to have in place a system that contacts specific employees when the AI is stumped. If you don’t maintain a supervisor in place, you could face unhappy customers or worse, loss of business.

AI finds the most efficient solution and repeats it perfectly, but it leaves no room for improvising

The beauty of AI is that it finds patterns; could be through trial and error, or through the analysis of large volumes of data. Once it finds the patterns, it knows how to replicate them perfectly, over and over again, without messing up ever. In customer service it could be about finding a solution to their problems; in sales it might mean convincing them to agree to a follow-up call or even buying a product.

However, AI will not be able to improvise, like a human can, and respond to that one situation that is outside of the established pattern. While a human will quickly improvise and come up with a response that deviates from the pre-written script, AI will struggle in this scenario.

Data collection happens easily, but it can make you a target for hackers

An AI chatbot is the prefect repository of information on a customer. As it talks to a customer, it collects and analyses data, and learns more about the individual and uses that information to improve the experience.

What is the kind of data that can be collected? It isn’t just restricted to likes and dislikes, or the types of offers a customer responds to. The data collected can include some valuable and personal information, such as addresses, bank details, payment information, full names, and other information that can be used for stealing an identity.

This makes the chatbot and your database a target for hackers. To counter that, a business needs to invest in high-level security which means virus protection, firewalls, long and complex passwords, and educating employees on security best practices.

AI can develop a personality through customer interactions, but that leaves you open for manipulation

Earlier AI chatbots were simply question-and-response systems that sounded robotic. But as technology improved, AI chatbots have only grown better. Today customers often don’t realise that they are talking to a chatbot. With the right interactions, it is quite possible to build a distinct personality that meets the needs of the brand better. This could mean including specific words, starting conversations in a distinct way, and even using memes and emojis.

The downside to this is that if people figure out, they are talking to an AI chatbot, they could try and manipulate it. We all know what happened to Microsoft’s AI chatbot Tay on twitter. In less than a day, trolls taught it to issue sexist, racist and Nazi propaganda tweets, while also insulting anyone that tried engaging with it.

In all likelihood, this will happen to your chatbot as well. To avoid this, you must have qualified people go through your AI’s behaviour meticulously to remove traces of any negative habits it might have picked up. You must also have specific blockers against learning negative habits, such as abusing, calling people bad names, inappropriate content, etc.

Conclusion

The possibilities with AI are only as limited as our imagination. Or that of the abilities of AI itself. This powerful technology, although a little creepy, can perform tasks in minutes that would take a human, weeks to complete. It can overcome prejudices and learn from its mistakes quickly. Is it any wonder that more businesses are jumping on to the AI bandwagon?

Amazing ways live video can give your business a boost

Business Innovations, ,

If content is king, then it would be safe to assume that video content is the emperor. It is one of the most effective content mediums in today’s digital market, and if a business wants to stay ahead of competitors, it needs to embrace video to gain a prominent spot in the consumers’ mind and life.

The country today is heading towards a video streaming market that is expected to touch $5 billion by 2023. This has been made possible by rising affluence, affordable digital devices, deeper data penetration in rural markets and even digital adoption by newer demographics.

With the increasing competition, it is also critical to reach the right customer, at the right time, with the right message. And live video streaming on social media networks like Facebook and Instagram is the fastest, cheapest and most effective way of doing so.

Here are 6 amazing opportunities for including live video in your content marketing plan.

#1 A Q&A session

Let’s start with a simple Q&A session. This is an effective way for you to strengthen your relationship with your customers, current as well as potential. You could answer questions on how to use the product, or give tips to improve user experience, and even deal with grievances.

The session needn’t be restricted to your product alone, you could even organise a Q&A session to answer doubts and queries related to the industry. For instance, a company in the business of manufacturing beauty products can conduct a live session on skin care. This creates stickiness and takes your product from a cold and lifeless entity to something warm and more approachable.

#2 Share live events

There was a time live events meant actual music concerts or fashion shows with a live, physically present, captive audience. That is still the case, no doubt. However, with the seamless integration of digital in our lives, today an event can be conducted in one location and streamed ‘live’ to captive online audiences across the world.

Instead of waiting for a telecast later, people can participate in the event as it is happening. And the participation isn’t passive. Broadcasting the event live on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter gives your customers, current and potential, a chance to interact, ask questions, and become part of the brand story.

This helps build trust, showcase what your brand stands for beyond the product or service, allows you to express opinions, and works towards creating a stronger, expert brand.

#3 Test or review your product live

Another tried and tested way to build trust among your community is by testing or reviewing your product online. Time it with the launch of your new product and you are guaranteed more eyeballs than you could have imagined with just a launch.

Land Rover adopted this brilliant strategy while launching its latest vehicle. For an entire month the car brand did a live test drive video on Facebook. The vehicle was driven over all kinds of terrain and customers as well as car aficionados were treated to the vehicle’s performance. Any surprises the video got 9.7K views, and was shared across the platform by customers?

#4 Broadcast the launch of a new product

Similar to the product demo or test, you can also launch your product online and broadcast the event live. This is turning out to be quite a popular way for brands to generate a buzz around their new product and of course, eventually lead to sales.

For example, Dell used Facebook Live to launch its first Inspiron gaming laptop in India. The live event reached out to more than 55k fans through the launch alone.

#5 Live testimonials

Testimonials are great to get your customers to talk about your products. Have you given any thought to live testimonials? A new take on traditional customer endorsement, live testimonials, if done right, can provide you great returns no matter what your industry.

Goes without saying that you should choose your most satisfied customers, and get them to speak from the heart while directing them gently. Keep the videos no more than 2-3 minutes; else your audience will drop off.

 #6 Invite influencers

Everyone is talking about influencers these days. Perhaps your business can benefit from the opinion of one. Invite an influencer from the same industry to give your audience a whole new take on the subject, making the session interesting for them. Additionally, your influencer will certainly invite his or her audience to participate, giving your product more mileage.

But how do you find an influencer? Rely on tools like Buzzstream or Grin to locate an expert who can help your business. If your influencer turns out to be in a different geography, you can use Instagram’s new feature – collab-live stream – to overcome that challenge.

Conclusion

Thanks to social media live video options you can connect with your audience at a deeper level and engage with them like never before, wherever they are, whenever you want.

Will ‘Brick-and-Mortar’ Survive Alongside Online?

Business Innovations, , ,

In this day and age of e-commerce and internet-only presence, a brick and mortar business evokes a sense of a time gone by, when running a business meant getting ready in the morning and going to a fixed location every day.

Times are very different today. E-commerce is the norm and many businesses and start-ups offer services and products via the digital medium alone. One instance is travel services. When all the research and even financial transactions can be done sitting at work or home, there is no longer a need to go somewhere and book a vacation. Or even retail therapy for that matter does not necessitate dressing up and stepping out. Or groceries. Everything comes home, without the customer required to go anywhere.

Is it then any wonder that brick and mortar offices are slowly becoming a thing of the past? But is that entirely true? Let’s delve a little deeper and find out more, shall we?

Meaning: what’s in a word?

‘Brick and mortar’ is defined as: existing as a physical building, especially a shop, rather than doing business only on the internet.

When compared to e-commerce businesses of this century, a brick and mortar business is a company that has a retail presence, e.g. a shop or a chain of shops, and offers face-to-face customer experiences. These shops have a physical presence that lets customers visit, talk to the staff, touch and handle products and buy in person.

And that is where the big difference lies. But before that, a small lesson in history.

How did the term originate?

The moniker ‘brick and mortar’ is a metonymy, a figure of speech that is derived from the very material that a physical structure is made of: bricks and mortar. The earliest references to it can be found in the 19th century when British novelist Charles Dickens used the phrase in his book ‘Little Dorrit’.

It is also one of the few words that is a retronym, which means it is used to describe shops that had a physical presence before the internet came into being. Interestingly, the term is also used to describe businesses from a pre-internet era, to distinguish those stores with a physical presence as against those that had an order-by-mail model.

A brief history of retail stores, and more

It’s really difficult to say when brick and mortar businesses actually came to be. Perhaps the earliest vendor stalls in the first few towns laid the foundation for permanent, fixed stores. This was when traders stopped moving from town to town and began selling farm produce, clay pots, handmade clothing, etc. in the village market. Since then brick and mortar shops have remained an integral and important part of shopping and customers.

All businesses of the 19th and early to mid-20th century started off as single brick and mortar establishments. And then they grew to become a chain of brick and mortar establishments. Case in point is McDonald’s, a company that started with a small restaurant and now is a massive global business with restaurants in over 100 countries. However, like many businesses of its times, it too has an online presence, and its business model works splendidly on both platforms.

Present day scenario: can online and brick-and-mortar co-exist?

Many smaller businesses, those that are still limited to a brick and mortar model, have realised the importance of being ‘online’. Some, like smaller restaurants or a dry cleaning service, now have apps and websites to reach customers or to improve their service.

But does it also work the other way? Do online businesses also feel the need for a brick and mortar presence? It seems they do. Several online businesses have non-public physical facilities from where they conduct their business. It could be a warehouse from where they store and distribute goods, a call centre to handle customer queries and grievances, and, of course, an office where the business owners and other staff members operate from. This could be a permanent physical space, or they could operate out of a co-working set-up.

Conclusion

Throughout history, this physical presence, a retail store where a customer can go and look for a product, or a place where they can service or repair their products, or have their grievances addressed, has played a crucial role in the customers’ shopping journey.

Many companies and business models today are a product of the digital world. And while they continue to operate in cyberspace, there is a distinct need for a physical presence where the people behind the business can come together, on occasion, if need be, for the efficient functioning of the business itself.

2018: The year that was, and what a year that was!

Inspiring Stories

We’re deep in the holiday season, with New Year celebrations in full swing. The mood is upbeat, work is a little relaxed and businesses are gearing up for the coming year.

As we approach the end of 2018, let’s stop and look back at all that we achieved.

It has been an incredible journey at Awfis. We set ourselves challenging goals and we are delighted to have achieved most and even surpassed a few of our expectations.

Last year saw us expand our services to 55 centers across 9 cities, with the latest addition being the Awfis center at Chandigarh.

Awfis Center At Chandigarh

Our Product innovations like National Pass & Virtual Office continued to resonate with our audience. The Rewards program with its many alliances allowed the community to enjoy perks and benefits through the year.

Operating in a niche, constantly evolving, and still relatively new sector requires us to reinvent ourselves all the time. This is amply illustrated through the many initiatives that we took and the several milestones we achieved.

 

The year started on a fit note. Under the aegis of Awfis Moments we organized a Fitness Edition in association with Fitternity across our centers. From a bike ride in Kolkata, to Tabata in Bangalore and Bolly-fitness in Delhi, it was an exhilarating experience. The culmination in the form of a Morning Fitness Party happened at Powai in Mumbai. From quick workout sessions of Yogalates, Zumba, and Bollywood dance to healthy munchies from Epigamia, Get Baked and Mo Super Foods; the party had it all.

A few months post fitness, we got the community grooving to the Bollywood Edition of Awfis Moments. This spectacular evening, with its pulsating music, people dressed for the theme, delicious food and a busy dance floor, was a blockbuster event, held simultaneously across cities.

 The fun didn’t end there, but continued through the year with all the festivals that followed. We organized Holi, Diwali and Christmas parties at all our centers pan-India. The themes were different for each, but the underlying idea was the same – to have a great time and to get the community to engage.

Besides festivals, the year was replete with joyous birthday celebrations, delicious food fests, Karaoke evenings and Awfis parties. The launch of #HumFitTohAwfisFit saw the community adopt a healthier lifestyle and garnered enthusiastic participation in Awfis Premier League, Awfis Run and trekking expeditions.

Goodbye 2018

The year-that-was was undoubtedly exceptional. However, there is still plenty to achieve and we see the coming year already lined up with several opportunities for success.

As 2018 comes to an end, it is time for us to thank all our partners, customers and team who have supported us and been part of this momentous journey.

From all of us at Awfis, best wishes for a fantastic new year.