Even in India
We had a big week here at Big, welcoming back our globe-trotting assistant project manager, Jessica, after nearly a month in India. As you might imagine, she returned with all kinds of amazing stories, plus a digital camera full of fantastic photos, some of which we hope to share with you in an upcoming post (once Jessica’s jetlag subsides sufficiently for her to do some uploading).
Before you ask—no, Jessica’s mission was not to set up Big’s first office in South Asia, nor was she looking to outsource our creative services. This was a trip for pleasure, not business, but you could perhaps consider it a Big fact-finding tour, since we learned a thing or two about the state of advertising in India.
For instance, half a world away is not far enough to escape the ubiquity of Twitter (a fact we just had to mention, given our post last week, as well as earlier posts here and here). Kingfisher Airlines, India’s only Five-Star airline, recently began tweeting, joining other India brands like Zapak.com, Naukri.com, Business Line, and The Times of India.
In terms of followers, we’re not talking Ashton-Kutcher type numbers, though. Of those brands mentioned above, only Business Line, the business daily newspaper from The Hindu, comes anywhere close to a thousand subscribers (remember, Mr. Kutcher made news recently by breaking the one-million mark). Overall, Twitter.com received only about 120,000 unique visitors in India per comScore data released in February 2009. (Thanks to afaqs.com, by the way, for all these numbers.)
But Twitter is still new in India, and though not many brands have made the jump yet, India can probably expect a lot more advertising tweets and followers in the future.
Is this a good or a bad thing? Depends, I suppose, on what you think about the effect of Twitter here in the US. But if you’re feeling like you’re late to the party, and don’t care to be Ashton-Kutcher follower number one-million-and-one, you could always subscribe to Kingfisher. At last count, they were only up to about 50.