Author: manu prasad

  • Year trumpet

    Last year, almost to the day, I became a social professional – not just in terms of going back to work at an office after a year and a half of being home-based, but also in terms of my domain of specialisation. I wrote then that I chose to go with this opportunity because it gave me the maximum scope to implement the concepts I frequently write about on the blog. A year later, I can happily say that not only have we evolved a blueprint for Myntra on ‘social’, but have successfully begun implementing too.

    The last update from me was when we shipped the fashion blog. It isn’t as though nothing has happened since then, in fact, the reverse would be a better reason. So much has happened that I haven’t really found the time to document it here. Brand building on social networks, setting up and monitoring customer connect on platforms, product level integration – we’ve had fun. In fact, many of the things I spoke of during the India Social conference were based on experiences at Myntra.

    Last week, when I wrote that “Every day is a new and exciting adventure” in the ‘About‘ page at the brand new Myntra corporate blog, I meant it. The nature of social is changing everyday, new challenges arise, but more importantly, so do new opportunities. Ecommerce is probably THE red hot vertical in India right now, the organisation itself is well placed among competition and growing at a blazing speed, and I’ve been able to do meaningful work in a function I’m deeply interested in. Along the way, I’ve met some amazing people who have helped me learn. Touchwood.

    until next time, until next year 🙂

  • Differentiate or die?

    I’m close to finishing “A Clash of Kings” – Book 2 of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Pages 879-913 has lists of houses and characters. The lists will continue to expand in the next book, I’m reasonably sure, and I will probably have to spend Rs.200+ and buy this app. Many fantasy superstars have existed before GoT – Potter, LOTR, but this is the first time I have been immersed in one. Generally speaking, works of fiction are unique, and yet, such is the abundance and the related scarcity of time that there are choices to be made. So why GoT? Mostly courtesy the huge buzz the TV series generated on my various timelines. Let me now shift the story to brands, where abundance and time scarcity takes an even worse toll.

    The title of this post comes from an article in FT. Without getting into the author’s bias/(vested) interest, I think he has a point when he says that the increasing focus on efficiency is stifling innovation and on the other side making consumers ‘number and dumber’.  On the business side, why bother with niche audiences when access to large sets of consumers through databases and mass media (now social media too) is much easier. On the consumer side, larger tribes are easier to find in the search for belonging. Of course these are generalisations, and I’ll be the first to admit that there are exceptions.

    In the case of mass brands solving mass needs/wants, functional benefits are increasingly becoming a commodity. In an earlier age of information scarcity and relatively unfragmented media, differentiation could be as simple as just being visible. The story is different now, though the recent turn of social towards media would indicate that only the channels have changed. But IMO, there is a high chance that this trend will prove to be shorter than the reign of mass media, and true differentiation will evolve from a user perspective after everything from product to design to communication to experience has become a commodity. Arguable. 🙂

    Increasingly, brands are using social media to target better, and that’s how platforms are selling their users too. I wonder if/how many brands at this stage are attempting to make their stories personal to the user. Different social platforms offer different contexts – in the way they are designed, in how users consume them, in terms of the need they satisfy, in terms of devices they are best suited for etc. Think of how Facebook, LinkedIn, 4sq, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Path and the other services you use fit into your lives. Yet how many brands are trying to fit themselves into these contexts? Yes, we’re still in the early days of Big Data, but how much of investments are brands making in this as opposed to say, better FB targeting? What do you think – is it a scalable form of differentiation? Is it because of the pull towards familiar forms and templates of communication (read targeted mass advertising) that brands are loathe to walk this long path?

    until next time, differentiation by integration?

    Bonus Read: The Future of Storytelling

  • Micrograam

    Micrograam is a technology-enabled peer-to-peer lending platform to meet finance needs of underprivileged people in rural India, by connecting them to urban lenders. In conversation with founder and CEO Dr Rangan Varadan

    [scribd id=105223717 key=key-1ekabz5gl34nk8el6dn9 mode=scroll]

  • Pennyful

    Pennyful bestows users with cashback and savings on their online and offline shopping expenditure. In conversation with founder Ravitej Yadalam

    [scribd id=105089187 key=key-29yd7djnjynw2aeem18 mode=scroll]

  • Social grows up to be media

    On the first page of BG Verghese’ “First Draft”, he talks of The Times front page on the day he was born -21 June 1927. The paper was priced at one anna and “only carried advertisements on its cover page as was the general practice.” This was how traditional media companies had always worked. They had probably begun as journals, and later had sponsored information. (ads) In an era of information scarcity, this was probably required and appreciated. Even if they were not, the complaints would spread only as WOM. More importantly, while they took money from readers, their real survival (generalising) depended on advertisers. In the case of radio and television, it is even more evident. Then came the internet, and a story that has oft been repeated. We’re not going there.

    Though from email to BBS to Geocities to Friendster and beyond, everything can be considered social media, it began for me in the form of blogs (in 2003) became social networking via Orkut and really took flight with Twitter (May) and Facebook (July) in 2007. By this time, ads had begun to be ‘noise’ as media platforms proliferated. Twitter as well as FB served different purposes. As the cliche goes, “On Facebook, you connected with people you went to school with, and on Twitter, with people who you wished you went to school with.” In fact, such was my affection for Twitter that I even walked the talk. 🙂

    Why this long winded narration now? Because what I’d considered social is now very clearly becoming media that happens to have a social past. Facebook’s Promoted Posts will now reach people who have not Liked the brands as well, and it is working on measurement systems that resemble GRPs. From its options – a real time cloud API company and a media company, Twitter has clearly chosen. It has now started throttling the third party apps that made it the rockstar it now is. In their chosen line, this is an inevitable step to protect the ‘value’ it sells. Promoted tweets can now be targeted on the basis of interest.

    The disappointment, even if I reconcile myself to the fact that social is media, is the extent of evolution, or rather, the lack of it. Of the two, I have better hopes for Facebook now. Mark Zuck, despite the IPO, still controls it and from whatever he has spoken thus far, it seems this is not just a business for him, and though the ‘Promoted’ stuff on Facebook has now taken centre stage, the potential of the Open Graph remains and if it does evolve (as mentioned in an earlier post – last paragraph) it will continue to be interesting. Twitter? Oh well, Google’s AdWords is a megabucks one-trick, and it has Android. In the Google-like path it has chosen for itself, I can only hope that Twitter has a vision beyond being “sponsored”. If there is anything that media history has taught us, it is that irrelevance is just one service away.

    until next time, growing pains