A creator may create an image but that single image can have multiple meanings for different individuals that may or may not go with what the creator was trying to convey. Such is the situation today where “visual” holds massive influence and power on the masses. The meaning of whatever we see around us is very subjective in nature, that is, it depends from person to person. And all the meanings that we derive from seeing something around us depends on our personal experiences and backgrounds we come from. The visuals can be decrypted by many according to their own thoughts.

In the above picture, the creator was trying to convey how over the time we have so much indulged ourselves in technology that we have forgot to give time to ourselves and stopped caring about our health. However different people may interpret the image in different ways using their own understandings and logics like some may think this image shows advancement of technology from heavy computers to light weight laptops, some may think this picture shows the same person who has grown old in these 30 years.

The visual has risen steadily in importance in our culture. The presence of visual images has progressed from the high art of painting through various media such as still photographs, play television, video games etc. The increasing availability of various technologies has led to a massive presence of visuals around us.

Reading an image is about interrogating and playing with the separate elements that compose it to provide some private meaning. If we consider an “image” to be a combination of characteristics, then each one of us reading an image would construct and combine those characteristics attached to it and analyse it in new and unique ways.

The act of reading an image produces myths. It assembles in our minds various characteristics of image, some of which may change on subsequent readings and some of which may be undesirable. When we try to study an image, the image is brought into the world of discourse and meanings are constructed from and through them. . Images can become valuable if they generate powerful connotative meanings or if they are manipulated easily. Images acting as signifiers can evoke different meanings and examination of these images introduce the discourse.

Another example could be:

JapaneseGP: electric mini bike race - YouTube

The above picture is from a mini bike race in Japan, in which the creator wanted to convey the “peculiarness” of the picture, that is, adults on mini bikes. Some may just focus on those mini bikes or some may just see it as a normal bike race or some may see how the one in the far right is going out of the lane or some may see all of the above mentioned and all of this depends upon the interests and thinking capacity of individuals.

Conclusion: Every picture says something and every picture is trying to convey us a message, even though a picture may not look thought provoking, it carries come thought or meaning in some or the other way. Several factors are involved in the evolution or what we can say is “contamination” or pollution of image or visuals. What a creator is trying to convey through a message can be completely different from how the viewer interprets and decrypts it. Every individual can have several different meanings about the same visual that can be positive, negative or both depending on his interests and background.

MULTIMIDEA IN MARKRETING

Services | Enforcer Web Solutions & Multimedia Marketing

Advertising has become very prevalent in our daily lives , so for a product to stand apart , it is very essential to present it in a dynamic , visually stimulating manner to grab the attention of consumers . The business world is slowly rejecting run of the mill tradition methods (such as placing ads in yellow pages , distributing pamphlets , etc.) and adopting solutions from the electronic era . Only companies with a nerve to radically change their marketing strategies for the new millennium will survive and be able to cater to ever- changing customer’s mindset . Applications of multimedia in the marketing field include the following :

Presentations for launching the products of a company . Reaching the target audience with necessary technical services or products requires clear communication stating the benefits and features , outlining its applications and any other product -related details , all presented in a well- designed and interactive manner so that the users can be familiarized faster . Multimedia presentations helps in motivating , informing and captivating audiences via PCs , laptops , plasma screens or kiosks delivered via CD-ROM or the Internet .
Multimedia is used to create interactive product catalogues , training tutorials , buyer guides and information directories with adequate search and navigation facilities to guide the user to easily trace the desired information . A buyer guide can list the nearly dealers , a comparison of the top brands , maps of the city and other helpful guest services .
E-mail advertising or placing banner ads on the internet is an extremely cost -effective method of launching a product , promoting an event or selling services . Effective use of multimedia in advertising can make potential clients sit up and make notice .
Multimedia applications help in building brand loyalty as well as improving sales .Brand loyalty will be improved as the users are provided a custom application which entertains ; informs or assists them .
Graphical elements , animations , as well as audio and video can be used to more effectively deliver sales instructional or marketing messages , thereby differentiating a firm from its competitors .

BYJU’S: India’s most valuable Unicorn.

What’s the business about?,

BYJU’s is an Indian multinational educational company which was founded in 2011 by BYJU Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath. Today, it’s the most valuable unicorn in India and world’s most valuable technological educational company.

History of BYJU’S

In 2011, Mr. Raveendran and Ms. Divya Gokulnath founded an educational company with the help of their students which provided online video based learning programmes for students of kindergarten to Grade 12th.

In 2015, with the help of Think and Learn Ltd., the business firm launched its first ever app named BYJU’s: The learning app. After that, in 2017, BYJU launched its second app for mathematics for kids and subsequently they also launched another app for parents to help them track their child’s learning course.

Rose to fame: BYJU’s

By 2018, BYJU’s had more than 15 million users and 9 hundred thousand paid users. In 2019, BYJU’s won sponsorship rights for Indian Cricket Team jersey. Popular Indian actors Mohanlal and Shah Rukh Khan are the brand ambassadors for Byju.

Major Services provided by BYJU.

Initially, educational content was only made for students from classes kindergarten to 12. But now BYJU also trains students for Indian competitive examinations like IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, UPSC and it also trains students for international exams like GMAT and GRE.

In 2019, the company announced that it would soon start providing classes to students in their respective regional languages in India. The same year it also announced the commencement of an international app for students living in countries outside of India.

Byju’s also launched its Future School which is a Kids Coding Platform where kids are taught to code online by experts.

The video tutorials in the app are about 12-20 minutes long and they’re digital animation videos for classes 4th to 12th and hence this makes it easy for students to grasp and learn.

Road to most valued start up!

BYJU’s has raised 350 million dollars from UBS, private equity Equity Giant Blackstone and also from Abu Dhabi state fund ADQ, Phoenix Rising and Zoom.

Byju’s has raised over 1.5 billion dollars in last eighteen months because of the increase in online learning and teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Byju’s has also acquired several other small business in the recent past like White Hat Jr, Scholr, Osmo and Toppr. In fact, it’s latest fundraising comes from popular educational chain, The Akash Educational Services, estimated at about 950 million dollars.

According to Mr. Raveendran, the 21st century illiterates are not those who can’t read and write, but those who can’t learn, unlearn and relearn.

The impact of Social Media Influencers on Promotion of a brand

Promotion of a brand involves informing, persuading and keeping the potential consumers for continued and long term engagements. Promotion can be done by informing the public about the features of the product or brand, persuading them to buy the product by telling its unique features and keeping in touch with the customers to convince them to further buy more products of the same brand by providing after-sales-services and by maintaining good producer-consumer relations.

It is also important to note that there is a difference between promoting a product and promoting a brand. Promoting a brand is broader in terms as it focuses on building and maintaining brand image and is related with the promotion of the entire business. Promotion of a product is narrower in terms as it just focuses on promoting a “particular product”. For example, when Loreal Paris uses the tagline “You’re worth it”, it not just promotes a particular product but the entire Loreal brand. However, when it uses “5 problems, 1 solution”, it promotes a particular product (i.e., Total Repair 5) by highlighting the importance of it.

Online Brand or Product Promotion is the method of promoting the brand or product on different social media and online platforms by using the internet to its full potential to reach a wide range of audience. For ages, brands and advertisers have influenced and shaped consumers’ attitudes and behaviours and sometimes we don’t even get to know about it.

There are several ways in which Social Media Influencers impact promotion of a brand or a product:

1) Influencing Purchase Decision of Consumers:

Consumers’ purchase intentions are frequently measured and used by marketing managers as an input for decisions for new and existing products. Social Media Influencers do not put up advertisements but just directly talk about the product or brand in details, how to use their, if they are value for money. So influencers cover the “Frequently Asked Questions” about a product.

2) Convincing customers to buy products:

After influencing the purchase decision of the customers, the main task of influencers is to make their followers buy the products. Actions involving social media influencers help more when there is best personalised advertisement done by the influencers.

3) Distribution of Samples:

This is one of the newest techniques through which social media influencers help business firms in their promotional activities. The influencers take free samples from the producers and further distribute them to their followers in terms of “online giveaways”. This technique of “Online Giveaway” becomes extremely beneficial for those firms which are new in the market. The social media influencers ask their followers to comment, like or share the posts of the business product/firm they’re associated and few lucky winners are the ones who get to take the products in these Online Giveaways. There’s also traditional form of distribution of samples where influencers distribute a business firm’s products which are generally smaller in quantity than the original products so that customers get a first hand experience of the products.

Clearly, social media influencers have had gained and influenced their followers a lot in recent years and especially during the pandemic. People rely on influencers more these days and influencers keep on creating more content for their followers.

Emerging Trends in Social Media

Over the past decade, social media has managed to secure a special position in our hearts.
Like every other evolutions in the world, the way we use social media platforms also evolves.
With the quick growth of social media, trends change every second day and thus brands and individuals are in a hurry to adopt them fast!

Major Trends…

1) Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual and auditory.

How it is used in different ways in social media?

Now, during the pandemic times, it wasn’t easy for people to go out for shopping and try out the things they wanted to purchase.
So Augmented Reality became an important feature in social media apps so that consumers can try out the business products from their respective homes.

Popular furniture company IKEA using AR.

MORE COMMON EXAMPLES OF AR IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, recently said Augmented Reality has slowly become the company’s “topmost priority” .
We have already witnessed how social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram have become more AR oriented– all the face filters that we use on such social media apps are nothing but small facets of Augmented Reality.

2)VIRTUAL REALITY

Virtual reality (VR) refers to a computer- generated simulation in which a person can interact within an artificial three-dimensional environment using electronic devices, such as special goggles with a screen or gloves fitted with sensors.
Users have a realistic feeling experience when it comes to Virtual Reality.

VIRTUAL REALITY IN SOCIAL MEDIA

A) VR CHAT
VRChat is a free-to- play massively multiplayer online virtual reality social media platform. It allows players to interact with others as 3D character models.
Users can interact via text chats and then play the games according to their needs.

B) FACEBBOOK SPACE
It allows an integration with Facebook, which makes it easy to invite our friends and acquaintances to the VR world.
Three people can actually interact using a VR device. This has however now been discontinued.

3)Shopping through Social Media

Many new brands and business firms deal with their consumers entirely though social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Both these social media platforms provide services like a complete e- commerce portal and also allows business firms to show their products on the platforms while attaching a link to the firm’s official website. Customers can view products, see prices and can directly order products from these social media platforms.

4) News Culture on Social Media

This is one of the most popular trends we tend to see these days on social media. People spent most of their times in social media and therefore many mainstream media channels maintain good interaction with their audiences on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter via video stories, pictorial presentations and like.

Many new media houses are completely based on social media. People mostly get to know about recent happenings through social media.
Twitter as compared to any other social media platform has distinctively been credited for instantaneous news.

5) Hash-tag Culture

This is another form of social media trend that can be seen these days where interested groups make a hash-tag phrase (for example: #xyz) regarding their concerned matters.
This has widely been witnessed on Twitter and Instagram where users make their interested topics “trendy” on social media. This is especially done on Twitter to bring anything to public notice.