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Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, September 11, 2008
Going
by her Orkut profile created two months ago, Preeti Technani is a self
proclaimed techie who works as a technology consultant in a
multinational company in Bengaluru. She loves music and movies, has a
lot of friends and receives many dating requests on her Orkut profile.
For
the last two years, Preeti has been writing career guidance columns in
the education supplement of The Times of India and in a magazine called
Career Success Review. She has also authored a career related booklet.
In July, she started blogging on PreetiTechnani.wordpress.com, where
she talks about topical issues related to information technology.
Every month, she receives and answers about 2000 career related queries on her e-mail id, ptechnani@gmail.com.
In
reality, Preeti Technani does not exist as a person – she is just a
virtual character whose print avatar was created in 2006 by NIIT, an IT
education company. The online presence was launched in July 2008 to
interact with its target audience represented by the youth.
Speaking
to afaqs!, Anuradha S. Boxwala, senior vice-president, sales and
marketing, NIIT, says, “The objective of creating Preeti Technani was
to create a persona who is knowledgeable, credible and accessible to
the youth.” NIIT plans to keep the persona of Preeti separate from the
company and position her as a mentor who can be reached through e-mail
and SMS. It tries to ensure that the advice offered by Preeti is
neutral and does not sound like a brand endorser of NIIT.
The
print presence of Preeti is managed by a team at NIIT and Contract
Advertising, Delhi, while the online presence is conceptualised and
looked after by a digital agency called Interactive Avenues.
The
online presence was created because NIIT's target audience is active in
the social networking space. An Orkut profile and a blog help NIIT to
converse with its target audience more often and easily.
Anjali
Hegde, vice-president, Interactive Avenues, says, “The target audience
of NIIT already knows about the institute. If we had opted for pure
lead or display advertising campaigns on any social networking site,
people would have rejected it. We are trying to converse with the
target audience in order to build the brand salience, which will lead
to a higher number of interactions with the institute and help convert
interactions into admissions.”
Interactive Avenues is using
search engine optimisation to promote the Preeti Technani blog and it
plans to create Preeti's profile in Facebook.com as well.
NIIT
usually carries out print advertising and releases Preeti Technani's
columns in newspapers during May to August every year. The company
claims that during such advertising bursts, the presence of Preeti
Technani columns helps it to receive 20 per cent extra traffic,
particularly consumer enquiries about the courses, every month.
© 2008 afaqs!
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