The 2nd week of June, thus far, has been exciting.
First – I traveled to Kovalam from 7-9 June. Kovalam is a beach town by the Arabian Sea in Thiruvananthapuram city, Kerala, India, located around 16 km from the city center. Was a guest speaker at the first ever International Conference on Travel Technology (ICTT), India organized by the Association of Travel Trade Organizations, India (ATTOI) at The Leela, Kovalam with the support of Kerala’s Department of Tourism. ICTT was inaugurated by Oommen Chandy, Chief Minister of Kerala, and brought together subject experts from India and abroad, tour operators, hotels and resorts owners, tourism marketing professionals, academicians, researchers and think tanks to discuss evolving technologies and the opportunities they present for the tourism industry, a release stated.
Click here for Press Release, here for Sessions covered, here for Speakers for the event.
My presentation: Generating Leads and Conversion, Measurement and Marketing ROI
Summary: Are you a Business that is already Online? Or, looking to migrate a core part of your Business (say, Registrations application) Online? Or are you still an offline (or bricks-and-mortar) Business thinking of moving Online soon? Whatever be the case, your Business can only benefit from moving Online in terms of driving business growth, more international exposure and profitability. Understand the key points for being successful Online – what is Value? why Value is necessary for creating a Successful Business Online? What is Guy Kawasaki’s DICEE? Understanding the Lead Generation Funnel. What are KPIs driving your Business? How to Assess them? What to do to optimize the Conversions happening on your Business Website? More strategic insights into Key Levers for your Business. And finally, a practical way of Calculating your Business’ Marketing ROI.
Was an amazing experience – met some amazing people – learnt a lot of things – and yes, was absolutely fun living in The CLUB Arabian Sea facing suite of The Leela, Kovalam.
**Detailed blog post coming soon**
Once the event was over on 9th night, had to catch some sleep from 11pm to 3am; got up and then got ready; had to check out of The Leela by 4:30am; took the first flight at 6:05am and back to Bangalore. Once back, had to clear up all pending work for the past 3 days… And then eyes fell on the latest developments at the WWDC 2013.
I shall NOT speak of the major releases from WWDC 2013 in this blog post. You can read it all here (post from Mashable). Or, speak about the new Mac Pro which has the Internet going wild with reactions ranging from Darth Vader’s dustbin to amazing (Source: Mashable). That aside, the Pro will feature the Intel Xeon chip and will have a PCIe controller, with 1.25Gbps reads and 1Gbps writes. It will also have Thunderbolt 2, with 20GBps throughput and will support as many as three 4K displays. Apple has not yet said when it will release the new machine.
What I wished to speak about was the “Apple – Designed in California” ad campaign.
This is beautiful. First time I watched it – kinda watered my eyes. Each line echoed every word that Steve Jobs and his life’s work stood for. This clip separates “real Apple fans” from the “fake wannabe Apple fans”. The fake ones – not aware of all the major developments in the life of Steve Jobs will fail to understand the core meaning of this clip. To myself – this is a “masterpiece”. WHY?
- Black and white were the 2 favorite colors of Steve Jobs.
- Simplicity redefined in this ad.
- Focus. One of Steve’s favorite lines was – “Focus is Key”.
- There are a thousand no’s. “Say NO to a 1,000 things”, Steve often used to say.
Here’s the official version from source.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen this side of Apple — bold, brash, and unafraid. But at yesterday’s WWDC, when the company introduced a suite of new products, it also reasserted its brand values with this design-minded and quintessentially Apple film that played at the end of the event.
“Intention,” by TBWA/Media Arts Lab and animated out of Buck, is a sophisticated, but pointed jab at the company’s competitors, who are too busy “building everything” to ever really perfect one thing. A collection of dots and dashes make that point succintly, while poetic copy (“we start to confuse convenience with joy, abundance with choice”) accompanies lilting piano music.
And here’s the entire copy of the Apple Manifesto officially released by Apple for the TV Ad campaign.
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