The Hindu Business Line : Where consumers seek out ads

Is it that one detests advertisements, or the intrusion they represent? And if you do want to recall something from an ad, such as product features or an e-mail ID, where do you look once it’s gone? If you’re a marketer, how do you get in formed customers to pay attention to your ad? As for Internet searches, isn’t searching for the precise information you want from 10 million results rather like searching for a needle in a haystack? These are the questions that Buzzar.TV tries to solve with its virtual exhibition space for brands.

The brainchild of the Chennai-based PixelKraft Media Solutions, Buzzar is an interactive and online solution to advertising that complements print, TV and radio-based advertising. It offers advertisers a ‘brandfront’, described as an interactive and comprehensive way of exhibiting a brand online. What it comprises is a video screen and dashboard that’s at the crux of the offer.

“Mass media is useful for familiarisation but not to drill the product into consumers’ minds,” says Siddharth S. Kumar, Founder-Director of PixelKraft. “And they’re constrained by time and geography. A presence on Buzzar helps marketers extend the consumer connect.” Siddharth explains that marketers can mention what he calls the exhibition ID (a brand’s location on Buzzar; for example, brand>buzzar.tv) in their mass media ads, just like the Web address and telephone numbers, so that consumers can visit the site to view the videos and glean more information. Buzzar is a way of getting the community to build the brand, says Siddharth. The people who come to Buzzar to see the ads are seeking products, and that’s what advertising is all about, he says. Not only can they tell other people about it or use the discussion forums, there’s a good chance they visit the other brands being exhibited on the site. “It’s the benefit of aggregation, and the cost of lead generation is marginal,” says Siddharth, adding that for virtually a fraction of the campaign’s cost, the marketer can get valuable interactivity.

Buzzar.TV, which is allowing brands to exhibit free in its first month of operations, plans to charge each brand Rs 50,000 a month for the standard features. The add-on features are ‘brandworlds’ (walkthroughs, 3D or 360-degree views of the product or retail outlet), chronological archives of all videos, shopping cart, an album to record all events and a digital catalogue.

With 1,000 brands in over 40 categories and more joining, Buzzar.TV has three slots for the video exhibition. It need not necessarily be a TV commercial, it could be a corporate film or other material related to the brand. Through the features on the dashboard, marketers can build an online community for the brand through the wiki pages, run opinion polls, enable downloads of posters, ringtones, music and other digital goodies and run promotional activities. However, how would people know Buzzar.TV even exists? Well, there’s an offline avatar, a tabloid called Buzzar, which is being circulated in 12 metros. This now reaches between 35,000 and 50,000 people, mostly in malls and other city centres. Right now it’s a monthly. And there’s a lot of “online word of mouth”, says Siddharth. The team also plans to advertise Buzzar on Ramandria.TV, another initiative of its and probably the country’s first online mini-sitcom (featuring a conservative Tamilian husband and his outspoken Mumbaiya wife).

The Buzzar team has had to evangelise quite a bit for marketers to adopt the Web platform. “Don’t look at the number of hits, look at how a marketer’s media assets are being leveraged,” says Siddharth. The extent of involvement and dialogue enablement are more accurate measures. Brands are urged to look at it as a promotional cost rather than as a return on investment.

Says Samuel Chandar, Vice-President (HR, Commercial, Supply Chain and Corporate Communications), Henkel India, one of the advertiser-exhibitors: “A modern and user-friendly Internet presentation is an essential base requirement. On the Internet our advertisements can be viewed any time of the day and consumers can revert to them as and when they want to which is not possible with any other medium.” In fact, PixelKraft has another Web platform called indibiz.tv, similar to Buzzar, but that’s work in progress and a B2B space, unlike Buzzar which is B2C.

Siddharth declines to reveal how much it cost PixelKraft to set up Buzzar.TV but says they will break even very soon. Gradually, the firm will look for venture funds. Future plans include taking Buzzar to other countries and to the mobile platform. Siddharth prides himself on Buzzar.TV being the only thing of its kind (well, most probably). “It’s nothing short of a revolution, at the very least a phenomenon,” he says, with a grin. Watch this space.

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