Budding actors, directors and scriptwriters can now showcase their talent on Ibibo.com. The social networking site has launched a talent hunt for India’s first 24-episode online serial, which will be broadcast on its site.
Partnering with Maruti Suzuki, Ibibo will provide this opportunity to its more than eight million user base. The participants will be chosen in three categories of acting, directing and scriptwriting.
“Through this e-soap, called Maruti Suzuki Ibibo i-Serial Star, we plan to give our users a platform to create content and get social recognition. The serial will have eight actors, two directors and two scriptwriters who will work behind and in front of the camera,” says Ashish Kashyap, CEO, Ibibo web. “The hunt was launched almost a month ago and Ibibo plans to have the first set of episodes in the next 30 days. As of now, it has got more than 2,000 unique content creators,” he adds.
The format requires participants to create their profile on Ibibo.com and upload videos, scripts and get maximum votes. Contestants who want to audition for the acting category have to upload their video enacting a scene from any movie, create a profile and get the Ibibo community to vote for them.
For direction category, participants have to upload a short film or a serial directed by them and try to garner maximum votes. Those trying their luck at scriptwriting will have to upload an original script or dialogues up to a maximum of 500 words.
Vodafone is back, sans the Zoozoos. Following the FIFA campaign, which was also without the eggshell characters, comes a tactical commercial to popularise the brand’s Rs 4 bonus card offering for prepaid consumers. This time, the telecom major has made use of an animated parrot as its creative execution route. Animation is no new territory to Vodafone: back when the brand was Orange/Hutch, it had created two characters — H and I — as part of its advertising.
The commercial shows the owner of an Irani café — an animated talking parrot, the voiceover of which has been given by actor Boman Irani — cribbing about the fact that nothing can be purchased for a
paltry Rs 4 in today’s day and age. He draws various examples from real life to prove that even the silliest of things cost the high heavens; and absolutely refuses to believe that Vodafone’s bonus card delivers a slew of value-adds in just Rs 4. The MVO (Male Voice Over) and Vodafone’s standard tetris deliver the ‘Now, believe it’ kind of explanation about the myriad offerings of the low-cost bonus card.
The Zoozoos – which are used to communicate to audiences with high levels of literacy, who already understand the concept and are familiar with it – have been left out this time; as a different target group is being addressed here, for which the brand needed to be more loud than subtle.
According to Anuradha Aggarwal, vice-president, marketing communications and consumer insights, Vodafone, this is an attempt to democratise the brand’s bonus products. These “low and accessible tariffs” need to be communicated to the lower income groups/masses, preferably, existing prepaid customers of Vodafone. This would include the budget conscious SEC C and D, who don’t spend too much money on their service provider, and who stretch their money to the maximum limit – the kind of customers that live from recharge to recharge.
As per research by the brand, the first reaction anyone would have to such low-cost offerings would be disbelief. In the category of bonus products, generally, the fixed cost amounts to Rs 25-30.
“The prepaid customer has this sense of supreme confidence, an understanding, that a bonus card offering so much cannot possibly cost so low,” says Aggarwal. It is this disbelief that transformed into the insight for the ad as well.
The talking parrot is just a device for clutter-breaking execution, according to Vodafone’s agency, Ogilvy India. “We had to clearly be noisy; and a budget-conscious parrot, who is the stingy owner of an Irani café, was the route we thought would fit best,” says Rajiv Rao, national creative director, Ogilvy India.
The commercial also has two edited versions playing on-air. Apart from television, outdoor, print and radio (with Irani’s voiceover) would be used heavily.
The ad has been conceptualised by Rao, along with the creative team, which comprises Elizabeth Dias, Nishant Goyal, Akshat Trivedi and Saurabh Malhotra. The production house is Windmill, while Vaibhav Kumaresh has directed the ad.
Social networking site Facebook, started six years ago by a 20 year old student in his Harvard dorm, announced it now has 500 million users worldwide.
This number means that if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world.
“This is an important milestone for all of you who have helped spread Facebook around the world.
Now a lot more people have the opportunity to stay connected with the people they care about,” Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zukerberg said in a message on his site.
Facebook crossed the 500 million milestone yesterday.
It had over 400 million active users by February this year.
Zukerberg said in celebration of the milestone, Facebook has launched a new application called ‘Facebook Stories’.
“We have put together a collection of stories you’ve shared with us about the impact Facebook and your friends have had on your lives,” he said.
Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site, surpassing Twitter which has 105 million users and LinkedIn with 70 million users.
Zukerberg started Facebook in February 2004, when he was a student at Harvard.
“Our mission at Facebook is to help make the world more open and connected. I could have never imagined all of the ways people would use Facebook when we were getting started 6 years ago,” he said.
About 70 per cent of Facebook users are outside the United States. It has 12 million users in India.
An average Facebook user has 130 friends and people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the site.
There are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
Facebook content can be translated into more than 70 languages.
NEW DELHI: Country’s largest telecom service provider Bharti Airtel has revealed its plans to launch iPhone 4, the latest product from Apple Computers’s stable, by October.
“We are working with Apple. Hopefully, we will launch it in the September-October timeframe,” Bharti Airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor told reporters on the sidelines of a CII industry conference.
Earlier in June, Vodafone Essar had spoken of its plans to launch the iPhone 4 in India, without specifying a timeframe for the same. However, according to sources, the company is launching iPhone 4 in India in September.
Bharti Airtel already sells iPhone 3GS in India priced at Rs 35,500 for the 16GB model and Rs 41,500 for the 32GB model.
With the launch of third generation mobile services in the country by the end of this year, the sale of such high end devices are likely to get a boost.
US-based Apple Inc, the inventor of iPods, iPhones and iPads, had last month announced the launch of the iPhone 4 with a sharper screen and video-chat features in an attempt to ward-off competition from devices running Google’s Android software.
The iPhone has emerged as Apple’s top product, overtaking its Macintosh computer and iPod.
Budding actors, directors and scriptwriters can now showcase their talent on Ibibo.com. The social networking site has launched a talent hunt for India’s first 24-episode online serial, which will be broadcast on its site.
“Through this e-soap, called Maruti Suzuki Ibibo i-Serial Star, we plan to give our users a platform to create content and get social recognition. The serial will have eight actors, two directors and two scriptwriters who will work behind and in front of the camera,” says Ashish Kashyap, CEO, Ibibo web. “The hunt was launched almost a month ago and Ibibo plans to have the first set of episodes in the next 30 days. As of now, it has got more than 2,000 unique content creators,” he adds.
