Savory -New York

August 22nd, 2006 • 2 comments Social Media

Some time back, I wrote about Turn Here – the travel website that features short videos of cities. If you loved that site and if you are in New York, most certainly check out Savory.  A super-easy wiki format and professionally shot local vidoes of new (and notable) restaurants in New York, Savory hits the nail. Each restaurant listed has a page to itself with links to reviwes in mags and papers, vital stats (cuisine, price, hours, mode of payment etc.) AND information on public transit and parking. Can’t beat that!

I like covering new business ideas and entrepreneurial ventuers on my blog. The stories are often simple, yet very interesting. Like in this case -McBride thought of this idea when he wasn’t able to find a good resource to find a good restaurant in San Diego. Co-founder and wife, Jennifer, a producer for VH-1, loved Chris’s idea of restaurant videos. They started working on the idea last year and went live this April. I played around the site and it is pretty exhaustive!

Savory has plans to launch a San Fransisco and Chicago version soon. I only have one beef with them : the big cities are overdone! Maybe concentrating on the little-er cities makes more sense. I could be wrong but my guess is- being in NY/SF/LA, you are constantly deluged with information, websites and travel guides. There are just too many options!! But in case of smaller cities like Philadelphia, a concept like this would really hit it off. (or maybe I’m just partial to Philly!)

Madonna + H&M ??

August 21st, 2006 • 5 comments Marketing/ Advertising

  Yesterday while browsing through Elle magazine at Barnes and Nobles, I was amused by this 4-pages advertisement in the issue for H&M. Madonna and her troupe wear H&M trackpants and such to pose for this campaign.

Honestly, I liked it better when H&M hired Karl Lagerfield to design an affordable collection. Not sure where they are doing with Madonna…. She maybe older than their target audience, but she definitely is an icon. Or not?

(Pics from Product Shop NYC)

Everything bag is good for you — Book recommendation

August 21st, 2006 • 2 comments To be filed

"This book is an old-fashioned work of presentation that ultimately aims to convince you of one thing: that popular culture  has, on average, grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past thirty years. Where most commentators assume a race to the bottom  and a dumbing down – "an increasingly infantilized society," in George Will’s words -I see a progressive story: mass culture growing more sophisticated, demanding more cognitive engagement with each passing year. hink of it as a kind of positive brainwashing : the popular media steadily, but almost imperceptibly, making our minds sharper, as we soak in entertainment usually dismissed as so much lowbrow stuff."

This is how Steven Johnson begins this (fourth?) book, Everything Bad is good for you. I’m in midst of finishing this book and if anything– it is certainly thought provoking. A different lens to look at the same old stuff. Oh and it comes with a Malcolm Gladwell seal of approval!

Burrp – new startup

August 21st, 2006 • 1 comment Social Media

Olfactory branding

August 14th, 2006 • 4 comments Marketing/ Advertising

Anyone afflicted with a bout of nostalgia will tell you how certain smells push them in the long forgotten worlds of past memories- some happy, some sad. Fresh rain on the asphalt reminds me of my adolescent monsoons in Bombay and a pomogrante scented candle from Henri Bendel reminds me of a particularly happy time in my life that is only a faint, hazy memory that I try recalling everytime I light that candle.

I read this fantastic article in BrandChannel today about brands learning to incorporate an olfactory element in their overall experience. Remember those Westin Hotel advertisements promoting their White Tea scent? Even Anthropologie stores have a french chatlet-like feel to it, complete with the music and the amalgamated scent of the soaps, candles and perfumes.

Another example are magazines — esp. fashion mags. I typically relate my copy of Vogue to rich, expensive perfume (even though the strips are only advertisements) I’ve already written about scented credit cards and scented cell-phones in the past, it will be interesting to see how brands, both physical and virtual experiment with this emerging technology.

This also reminds me of a lovely short story I read aeons ago. The story is set in a little town of Europe. Mr. Thimble owned a flailing hotel that losing all it’s customers to his competitor’s hotel that was right down the road. So in an effort to lure back his customers, Mr. Thimble hired the best chef in the country and decided to rename his restaurant to "The Seven Bells," But he asked the painter to draw only six silver bells below the name. When the hotel reopened the next day, people were puzzled about the new name and the bells. Invariably, some would walk inside the hotel to point out that there were only six bells painted and the seventh bell was missing. Once inside the hotel, the delicious smell  from the chef’s kitchen had them extend their stay to lunch or dinner and if they were tourists, they often ended up staying at the hotel. Slowly, the word spread about the food and Mr. Thimble’s six bells became the pride of the town!

You get the idea? (yea, he also went on to live a happy life )

but it can be made easier…

August 11th, 2006 • 3 comments To be filed

The future if left to me, will have 1) apartments that are already hooked up with internet and cable TV and phone lines (if I want one) they day I move in. 2) ability to do everything online, even deposit checks online. 3) a one-stop shop for all my banking, utiltiies and such. I can’t remember all my passwords (some banks/ credit cards requier various combinations for passwords) I just want one window to deal with everything.

Any takers?

Life doesn’t get any easier

August 11th, 2006 • 6 comments To be filed

I apologize for my errant behaviour on this website. I’ve been MIA for weeks and I have a good reason. I recently moved apartments (again) and transferred my life from one apartment to another. In this day and age, I would have imagined this process to be simple and doable at my fingertips and keypad. Unfortunately, not so. Changing addresses at the post office, changing addresses with banks and credit card companies, choosing internet service provider, choosing cable TV provider, dealing with their inconsistencies and the added stress of new furniture and dealing with little necessary items like garbage bags and cleaning supplies!

In midst of this, Commerce Bank decided to generously drop $1100 into my account. Perplexed, I called to find out when and what the money was for. I wondered if my father had made a wire transfer from India that he forgot to mention. So the customer service rep. tells me, the $1100 is a check for $500 and a money order for $600. I was stunned. I didn’t remember depositing a money order or a check in my account, so I asked him to read the names on the checks. KINAL SHAH- he spells them out for me. Realization and disbelief struck me at once.

Commerce had deposited my SISTER’s money in my account!! Granted, we have similar sounding names. Does that mean Mary Watkins of Brooklyn has to worry about having her money deposited into Mary Watkins of Manhattan’s account?!  And the funny thing is, my sister made these deposits at a teller! Unlike me, she actually goes to a bank, deals with teh teller, and writes a deposit ticket. She wrote her social security number and her bank account number on her deposit ticket and yet, her teller chose to put my sister’s money in my account.

My sister didn’t even know about this until I called her and asked her to stop payment on all her checks. Especially her rent check. While the matter was sorted out in the next few hours, I wonder what would’ve happened if neither of us had noticed it. Honestly, I have never heard a more bizarre story, leave alone, experience one.

So between making calls to Commerce to set my account straight and dealing with customer service for Verizon to just get me my internet, I’ve no motivation for anything else. I just want my life in order  and apparently, that’s too much to ask for!

Oh and I can’t change my address on Commerce Bank’s website. I have to call someone and verify it to have them change my address. Times like tehse, I think my other bank accounts and credit card companies for atleast making this process easier!

This morning, I’ve been on the phone with Verizon for 2 hours. And close to 6 hours if I take into account all the calls I’ve been making them in the last 2 weeks. I signed up for their dry loop internet service and recieved my modem and stuff last week. But had no internet. I called and called and they kept asking me to troubleshoot and then a supervisor told me something was blocking my connection so he would send someone to my apartment to fix it. Nothing happens, no one arrives and no one calls. I called again this morning, and literally begged the customer service rep. to allow me to speak to the same supervisor who I spoke with last night. Any longer, and I would have cried on the phone. I just wanted my internet to work!

You know, sometimes I wonder. My blog and the blogs I follow and the news I read and teh work I do is all about the fantastic future, the technology, the new trends and an easier, faster life. But I wonder if we will ever get to it. Not at this rate, not if we are bogged down with picking and waiting for cable and internet and not if banks keep requring me to call them so they can wax eloquent about their customer service.

Nope. Definitely not at this rate.

Philips Simplicity campaign

August 1st, 2006 • 4 comments Marketing/ Advertising

We live in interesting times. Phillips Electronics paid Hearst magazines $2 Million dollars to remove subscription cards from Hearst magazines 4 titles, Redbook, O at home, Weekend and House Beautiful. Instead a two-page ad will read, "Simplicity is not having subscription cards fall out of your magazine."

While I read none of these magazines, I am curious to witness the experience of reading a consumer magazine without any insert cards. Apparently, Phillips had also bought all available national time for one episode of 60 minutes last fall only to give back some of the time so the show had fewer ad breaks and longer segments. Again, to align with it’s simplicity campaign.

I like what Phillips is doing. And while I am no expert on products and speak strictly from experience: unless they revamp their product line and provide me with products that last longer, are designed better and have better quality, I could give a damn about Phillips’s efforts to simplify my life.

MTV’s version of popular culture

August 1st, 2006 • 3 comments To be filed

As a teenager, I felt a little left out and ‘out of it’ because my home cable wasn’t hooked up with MTV(India). I’d consistently fail to enter random conversation about music and only knew artists I heard on radio. (there was only one FM channel then and it had a propensity to play, It’s a groovy kinda love) When I finally caught on to the MTV-India mania, I realized just how far behind I was in terms with pop culture and just how close I was to social suicide. The MTV VJ’s seemed super cool and a part of me wanted to be just like them. Blonde highlights, hinglish slang and a fun, carefree disposition became my mantra for assessing cool. This craving for cool turned into a counter rebellion and everything Indian  MTV VJ’S did, wore and said began to look like a cheap imitation of MTV-America. The VJ’s seemed ‘wannabe westerns,’ and I joined the subgroup that thought it was cool to reject MTV. Phases. Phases.

In full disclosure, MTV’s The Hills and My Super Sweet Sixteen are on my flip-list. (shows I watch when I channel-surf because I can’t seem to remember the dates/times for these shows)

New York magazine does a fine job at outlining how MTV has altered popular culture in the last quarter century.