Who is Preeti Technani on Orkut.com?

She is a technology consultant, a blogger and a freelance writer. She loves music and movies and receives a lot of friends and dating requests

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.