“No one fully understands the Internet medium” – Webchutney Founder & CEO
In an interview given to exchange4media Webchutney Founder and CEO – Sidharth Rao ( Webchutney is known for making great virals ads! and has clients like makemytrip, microsoft etc) has said that No one (including themselves) in India fully understands the internet medium.
Here is an excerpt from the long interview:
| Q. |
But do you think there is lack of understanding among the traditional agencies about the online media space?
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| A. |
Most of the advertising agencies had tried to have an interactive agency in 1999-2000. but most of them floundered and shut down shop. Will that happen now? No, I don’t think so. We hope they will surely do a better job this time. Interactivity is not like where you can put a business head and 3-4 guys and have an interactive business. The Internet is far too vast to be considered that frivolous. Even we or any of the specialist players in the medium cannot say that we fully understand this medium. The Internet continuously keeps changing. It seems as if all the advertising agencies have a single-point agenda in their 2007 or 2008 plan – that they want to set up an interactive agency. But I don’t think that is the way to look at Internet. Do Indian (offline) agencies have the appetite to do something dramatically different? I don’t think so. If you ask me who are the biggest challengers to Webchutney today, they are all independent companies like us. If you put the independent agencies together against the interactive arms of the traditional agencies, then we will be three times the agencies pieces. Interestingly also, if you look at PR, direct marketing, outdoor and other alternate media pieces, generally agencies have trailed in these areas for a very long time before actually catching up. The top agencies in India in these domains mostly are independent ones. It is also true in the case of online interactive agencies. But also to say they will catch up finally. It is not rocket science at the end of the day. But they will take a fairly long period of time. But if your question is whether we are worried to fight against them, then at least not right now. |
Sidharth Rao also spoke about social media like blogs, discussion forums and how their influence is affecting brands and how Webchutney is looking to help its clients associate with bloggers (Point to note is Webchutney owns Alootechie a popular blog on the internet space)
| Q. |
But do you see interactive agencies tackling such social media challenges?
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| A. | We currently have a practice in Webchutney to monitor, analyse and influence some of the social media content. Does that mean a company can come to us and say that can you get consumers really, really interested in our product on the Internet, no, we can’t do that. But can we monitor what is being said about a particular brand or product, can we analyse it in such a way that there are actionable ideas around about what can be done, yes, we can. And can we try and influence the negative opinion, I think yes. Webchutney would be the only interactive agency which would know on its fingertips the top 100 people who blog in India, we would have had a relationship with them in some way or the other. I hope that they would be willing to engage in a dialogue with us. | |||||||
| Q. |
But don’t you thing the space is too vast to monitor and especially influence the bloggers, or whatever you call them? And then they are also very averse to the very idea of being influenced.
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| A. |
See, we don’t mean influencing the bloggers in the traditional way. Consumers become averse to a particular brand due to some bad experience or the other. Suppose our client, a bank, has screwed up somewhere in the handling of the customer, and every customer serving organisation has those challenges, the idea is to tell the client to resolve that problem, and once you have done that actually you end up projecting an impression of a company which has years to the ground and that delights the guy who was got completed agonised just a day before and that actually influences. Webchutney actually tries to resolve the issue, which could have otherwise gone unnoticed in the current scheme of things for a very long time He also spoke about viral ads and how they can go wrong and also how he started his company webchutney at the age of 19! Currently only 27 Sidharth feels that age is an important factor for an internet company as the employers are first users of the medium itself
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