At a recent meeting where the think tank team of a large organization were talking about branding, I got to attend an extremely riveting talk by an ex-Ogilvy guy on his thoughts on branding.

The organization was thinking about how to go about building a sharper identity and brand. Instead of talking about the multitude of issues that were unearthed and what transpired out of those discussions, I’d like to talk about one of my key takeaways. Building a brand that supports a larger cause …

#LikeAGirl Campaign

Before I go on, here’s a kickass Ad Campaign

This video was created by P&G Always, go ahead read through their Epic Battle. Here’s a gist of their larger cause –

72% of girls DO feel society limits them — especially during puberty — a time when their confidence totally plummets. Always is on an epic battle to keep confidence high during puberty & beyond.

The way the Always brand has looked beyond itself and targeted a larger cause is to be respected. I am pretty late in seeing this ad, but it does one think.

Brilliant Idea, Flawless Execution

What has me raving more than 9 months after the ad was aired for the first time, is the way in which this video was shot. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Lauren Greenfield (Queen of Versailles), the shoot features a fair amount of celebrities as well as children of different ages.

The ad was aired for the first time during the Superbowl, which would make one think twice about the bold decision to talk about a feminine product. Though this was perfectly tackled by cutting to screen Sport Illustrated’s swimsuit model Erin Heatherton in the first scene.

Erin is also a Victoria’s Secret model angel, thus making her the right choice for the first scene in this ad. I like to think that the casting did that much thinking through (SI would have a primarily male audience, VS would be female audience).

The video first starts with Erin, but then you have other people being interviewed and smartly questioned by Lauren about what does it mean to do things ‘Like A Girl’.

The realization hits you when the boy kinda figures it out on screen that he has been insulting all girls (including his sister). The campaign also goes on to tell you on how we can change our perception of this term … they nailed it #LikeAGirl.

History is written by the winners. It’s quite possible that the then documented history is through the eyes of the winning side.

Reading Mahabharata, one would naturally assume that Duryodhana was an evil prince who oppressed his subjects and was extremely conniving in nature.

Ajaya challenges this world view and paints a more neutral picture of the villain. Suyodhana (that was his given name) is shown to be an extremely rational and compassionate human being. That he did not choose to follow the laws of the land (dharma) is what caused his downfall.

Mahabharata Retold

Everyone knows that the Bhagvad Geeta is part of this great epic. However, what is so epic about this epic, is that both the sides of the battle are equally right and equally wrong.

If scriptures and the rules of religion (dharma) are to be followed, then perhaps the Pandavas were correct. However, if you look past those rules (the same rules which were broken and abused by both the armies in the great war that followed), then you will not see good and bad, you will see both sides as being good and both as being evil.

Keep in mind that this is one of the largest works in the Indian mythology with artifacts of this story all over the country. Right from the North to the very South do we see different aspects of the epic.

The new perspective puts a lot of things which were taken for granted as the divine workings of god into the realm of scientific rationale. For example, the astras that Arjuna and Karna use in the war have been nicely explained.

Good guys might finish last

The story is re-told from an unbiased view and your heart does go out to Suyodhana, who happened to be in the wrong company at the right times.

My interest in Historical titles was piqued by books such as Alexander, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Camelot. However, when I saw Constantinopolis by James D. Shipman, I knew I had to read through this book.

Settled between Europe and Turkey, Istanbul (the erstwhile Constantinople) is right between the crusaders of Europe and the Ottoman army. The tale of Constantinople and its eventual fall at the hands of the Ottoman empire makes for an interesting story.

The Prelude to Constantinopolis

The author does a good job of explaining the history behind the fall of Constantinople. The reason behind Mehmet’s (the then Ottoman emperor) hunger for taking on Constantinople. The reason behind why the Vatican sent such a meagre force to help out the besieged city. The explanation of King Constantinople and the daily frustrations he faced in holding the Ottoman empire at bay.

The Siege

People know of the Trojan War because of the horse, the malware and the movie. However, this tale bellies the same upheavals (if not more), the entire siege had both the sides teetering on the brink of destruction and coming back up to save the day to fight again.king

Sieges take time and well defended cities take months to fall. Likewise even this city which had some of the most formidable defenses took 6 months to finally fall in the hands of the Ottoman Turks. It’s not as if the Ottoman war machine was running in perfect synchronization.

They had their own set of problems, and the politicking within the large empire was subtle and this victory ensured that Mehmet become the all powerful emperor that he was destined to be, surpassing the feats of his father who was loved (and feared) by all his people.

Not just a Story, but History

All in all, the book is not just a tale, but also tells us the truth behind the events that led to the great city’s fall, and the subsequent rise in the Ottoman empire’s impact on Eurasian trade. If you love historical tales, do not forget to pick up this book!

Last month, I read 6 books – thanks to the Kindle Unlimited library I had subscribed to. Ample food for thought for some book reviews. I would have loved to go through some classic sci-fi books, however, I chanced upon some historical and mythology books, one of them being The Mahabharata Quest.

Since I had already read through a series of books on Alexander, and was thoroughly piqued to see how Mahabharata is related to Alexander.

Turns out, it wasn’t! Read on to know more :)

The Mahabharata Quest

The Mahabharata Quest is a previous hit book by the same author, and it involves the same characters in another sequel.

The great thing about this book is how the author has interwoven the past and the present into one coherent novel. The book is about Alexander’s declaration of being a god (son of Zeus-AmmonRa), and how his prowess in battle could be attributed by scientific reasons.

I will not divulge into much details here, suffice to say that I started reading this book to see how Alexander is related to Mahabharata. Turns out the plot characters were connecting the two books. The good part about the book is that the author has done an excellent job of keeping a fast narrative and has the readers interested through the book till the end.

Yes, there are parts where the scenes seem to Bollywood like, but that’s entertainment for you. No, I am not a grammar nazi and I won’t complain about the bad English. If I can read C’Bag, then I might as well pay homage to the rest of the Indian authors.

Give this book a read, you might just enjoy it! Please keep in mind to not nitpick about mythology and history being intermingled like this, the narrative style is fast and something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Google Analytics does tracking by using the urchin tracking cookies. In case if you do not know what are HTTP Cookies, then you need to start reading some of these articles that I am linking to!! They can give the crunch to your digital marketing initiatives.

Do bear with me through this post, I will get a bit technical. In case if you do understand a bit of PHP, you will enjoy this post. For now, just keep this information with you, it will come to your aid sometime later when you would be talking to your developers!

Some Cookie Basics first

So if you have any kind of server side script running on your server, then you can create your own cookies! You should know that on a PHP server environment, the entire set of cookies is available in the $_COOKIE reserved variable.

Isn’t this awesome? What this means is that with one line of PHP code, you can refer to all the cookies which are now on your site for each of your visitors.

If you take look under the hood, then you will see that there are many cookies used by Google Analytics.

Each of these cookies have a certain purpose.

So why the __utmz Cookie?

The __utmz cookie contains the traffic source information in Urchin tracker format. It contains information about how and when an individual visitor hits your site for the FIRST time. That means whenever the visitor comes back to your site, this value remains unchanged.

Imagine a scenario wherein a visitor first sees a post of yours on Facebook, or on Google … or other traffic sources. The visitor comes to the site, checks out a few pages and goes away (… such a shame!!). After a few days, the same visitor comes back to the site via an ad. This time the visitor leaves his information on one of your contact forms (I do hope you are using these!).

How would you know that the user is a repeat visitor? The form will only contain data which is about the visitor’s current visit.

So, whom would you attribute this event to? Your advertisement (the later) or your social media sharing (the former)? Do you believe in first impressions or do you believe in the recency effect?

Without having information about the user’s previous visit to your site, you will always choose the later. Thus misattributing your visitor acquisition to the wrong medium! And that’s why the __utmz cookie is so important! In effect it represents a unique visitor for your website.

I treat the __utmz cookie as equal to a real person!!

Associated with it is a story, this story which rolls out in a set of visits. Google Analytics can tell you if you are willing to sift through the data that is available to you.

What can we do with this Cookie?

How do we bite into this Cookie? Well, there are more than one method of cutting this cookie!!

• If you have conversions on your site (Downloads, Sales, Contact Forms, etc), then you can always use the value in this cookie to track the origin of the visitor. This will give you a definite number on which traffic source (and which marketing campaign) is more effective for you when it comes down to conversions.
• Each __utmz has a unique value set, this unique value can be converted into a Custom Variable and you can then track a unique visitor across your site using this Custom Variable (the free version of Google Analytics allows 5 Custom Variables, so use them sparingly).
• For the more technically sound platforms, you can use this and the other GA cookies to track the visitor ACROSS multiple visits. However, there are other tools which are far more easier to setup to do this viz., Mixpanel.
• If you are betting a lot on acquisition of traffic via Search engines, then the __utmz cookie can be mined for keyword data … yes, the data which people are searching for and are coming to your site. However, as of 2013, GA only provides the keyword data of users who have not signed in into their Google Accounts (around 30% of the data is not available).

Hmmm … crunchy delight!! And nutritious as well!!

I would love to hear from you how else can we use this and the other Cookies. In the meantime, do start integrating your Cookies with your CRM for more visitor intelligence!