Author: manu prasad

  • Brands & Associations..

    When we met sometime back, Nikhil asked whether I’d noticed the smudging of the Coke logo in a scene from Slumdog Millionaire. I hadn’t, and we weren’t sure if there was something to it. A few days back, I saw this article in Campaign India, which spoke about Mercedes and Coke rejecting an association with the movie, and demanding that their ‘association’ with the movie be smudged/deleted – Mercedes, because a gangster is driving it (passenger – Mahesh Manjrekar, during the cricket game-police chase scene) and Coke, because it is offered in the slum (as a ‘carrot’, before they are taken to the beggar camp). The article ends with

    While the average brand manager would have been delighted with the seeming ‘free’ publicity, executives at both Benz and Coke took a deep breath to consider the dangers to the brands. There would certainly have been some short-term gain, but was that gain worth it in the context of possible long-term damage?

    Possible long term damage?! I wonder if Mercedes-Benz has this set of parameters, which a potential customer has to fit, before he is given the keys. Maybe they do, I haven’t tried buying it, but then what about resale? What about proxy owners? On to Coke, do they restrict their distribution channel to areas which their specific target audience resides in? Does a pet bottle self destruct when it recognises economic/living conditions that it would not fit in? Does Coke actually mean that when i am thirsty, I’d not have a Coke because Jamal, a slumdog, had it in a movie??!! So, what exactly are we trying here? I am going to focus on Coke, because with their price tag, Mercedes-Benz can afford to be elitist, but Coke??!! Besides, at #22 in the Virtue’s most social brands of 2008, this is hardly the kind of mindset I’d expect from Coke.

    I understand that a brand has a certain target audience (in terms of demographics-SEC) it keeps in mind while designing communication. Good, it gives focus. But aren’t we going a bit ahead of ourselves when we think that consumers really have the time to check out all possible associations of the brand, especially these one off occurrences? (unlike say, the Indica – taxi phenomenon)

    At a time, when people can shoot what they want and load it on YouTube/Flickr and get a few thousand hits before the brand manager can say ‘Cut’, what sense does such policing make? Really, how much can you control where your brand is seen and what is being done with it? (Remember Diet Coke + Mentos)

    Almost 20 lakh views. That’s viral. Smudge that!!

    IMHO, this is exactly the kind of restrictive thinking that brands cannot afford in such times. Coke could’ve easily converted this into a ‘From Slumdog to Millionaire – Coke (Always/The Coke side of life/Open happiness)’ stance. But what do I know, I’m just a normal consumer 😐

    This very interesting adliterate article talks about empathy, and how brands try to understand consumers but never try to see the world through their eyes. By starting out with this perspective,

    We would then perhaps have a collection of real and individual stories about people who are from the group we are seeking to influence. These would be real accounts of real people’s lives.And to get those stories we would need a new approach to engaging with people directly and without fear.

    Instead, as he correctly states, we try to lump our audience into easily manageable categories, so that communication then becomes automatically an easier job. The old media scenario and the systems of distribution therein, had a way of making this perhaps the only way. But with the proliferation of niche TV channels, the web and social media, brands can now break the big lump into almost individual pieces which gives each potential consumer a unique relationship with the brand.

    Based on their context, a single brand means different things to different people, and fit into their lives differently. The sooner brands recognise this, the more meaningful their communication can become, to the consumer.

    until next time, open up 🙂

  • Heal the world.. in 140 characters

    This week, Twitter has a rendezvous with reality. While examples of Twitter based real aid abound – Twitter has helped build a well, provided help to an abused woman and her child,  there’s a cool Social Action and TwitterFeed mashup, this is the first (that i have come across) organised global attempt to use the Twitter network to make a tangible difference. Twestival, if you haven’t heard already. February 12th 2009, in your city. Well, at least one near you.

    On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.

    You can take part by attending the twestival, uploading or buying music at twestival.fm, taking part in the tee design competition or donating. The Twestival site gives you all the details, including the person in your city organising it. Here’s Bangalore, for example. Mashable has a good post on the New York version. Twestival is gathering steam as you read – LiveEarth is now the global broadcast and video partner.

    While this is a great attempt to make a tangible difference at a local level, I’m sure that with entities like Twitpay and TipJoy, we’ll find ways to overcome geographical constraints and connect our social currency with real currency. Meanwhile, on a tangential note, there’s something I came across on Twitter – twipple (i heard that naughty thought :p ) (the plan of action via adrants)

    a microblogging cross between Simon Says and Pay it Forward. Once a critical mass starts following @twipple, the latter will deploy “short, fun, positive tweet instructions to do something kind in public,” like smile at a stranger, give money to a street musician, or whistle your favourite tune.

    While I do write about brands and the business conundrums of social media, I firmly believe that the true power of this phenomenon is in the human network we are creating. People, who I trust will not just use the medium for self serving purposes, but also to leave our world a better place.

    until next time, 140 characters can make a difference

  • Bollywood.. a jungle out there..

    The best line on Chandni Chowk to China would have to be this one on Twitter by Ramesh Srivats.  It said, “I think Warner Brothers should change their name. They never warned us about CC2C”

    That, and the launch of two (more) Bollywood centric websites – CineCurry, by Percept, and Big Oye, by well, BIG, and two posts which talked about the usage of the web for marketing a couple of  ‘Coming soon’ Bolly films – Delhi 6 ( by Karthik, who also uses this to give a few good thoughts on how to use social media to promote film music), and Dev D (by Mayank, who talks about all the ways in which the movie has been marketed), and a conversation I had recently, set me thinking. Not on the marketing of movies on the web or social media, because there are quite a few tools out there, all/some of which can be used in tandem depending on the content and intended audience (Dev D’s work is a great example, replace it with Devdas, and you’ll see how it won’t work), but more on what I call the ‘stage of conversation’.

    The analogy that got used in the conversation was quite simple – long before the Foodworld/Spencer/Spar/Star etc genre of retail came into existence, there were the local kirana stores. They were functionally quite fine, and also had the extra perk of a personal touch. I am not sure how they have fared post the arrival of the big brands, but from a subjective experience, I prefer the big branded outlets these days. There’s some convenience factor that plays a role in this choice, as well as the experience itself. Now it could be said that the choice depends on a lot of other things – geography, for example.

    But what was the analogy for? Bollywood content websites. Along with the names I mentioned earlier, there also exist portals, like Bollywood Hungama, Glamsham etc, community driven ventures like PFC and individual blogs like Blogical Conclusion and WOGMA (which have their die hard followers. eg. er, me ) There is a plethora of content, good or bad is a subjective thing. You’d see everything from the kirana store to the branded store there.

    Now, the net equalises a lot of things, like the geography, but in terms of content, it is not an equaliser, since the big guys can bring in resources there that a smaller entity will find difficult to scale up to. There is also a level of synergy  that the larger entities can achieve (more easily) with others in the value chain, ( eg. Big Oye has rentals taking you to Big Flix, and a ticket booking tab) and in essence, make it a sort of one stop shop.

    So, with most films having a site, and the virtual Bollywood malls, and the groups on social networks, and the microblogging on Twitter, and the smaller specialist sites, is there a long enough tail (and time) that will allow all of these to co exist? If there is, what will comprise the large head? Is there any other news vertical you can think of, where such a scenario exists?

    until next time, content might be king, but…

  • LinkedIn…a bit more

    A few weeks back, RWW had an interesting piece on why LinkedIn shouldn’t have Facebook envy, and should not attempt to make itself a destination site like the social networking service.

    We thought the Valley intelligentsia long ago proclaimed the end of destination sites. The desire to “get people to spend more time on LinkedIn” is linked to a failed business model around advertising.

    I agree that just because people spend time at a site doesnt necessarily mean that advertising makes a great business model there. In the early days of Facebook, apps like Scrabulous made me spend a lot of time there. I’ve noticed that (at least among my friends) the usage of apps has lessened, and there’s much more sharing – notes, photos, comments on status messages etc. If advertising is the revenue model, brands and FB would have to do a lot more than just contextual banner advertising.

    I’m not quite sure whether the same would apply for LinkedIn. Not in terms of the advertising bit, but in terms of the time spent. Again, while I agree with RWW on the accessibility via API tools, I’m a bit ambivalent on the need for spending time on the site first. Perhaps it might make sense to offer services that are first utilised on the site, and then made convenient. Once the users are more familiar with the tools and services, they’d be more comfortable with connecting to it via mail or say, a browser plugin etc. Ambivalent, because my usage of Twitter via twitterfox screams an opposing view (but not every service is as simple as Twitter)

    While I use at least one LinkedIn app, and utilise the status message quite frequently, I believe that a lot more can be done with the ‘News’ and ‘Groups’. Yes, it does have features like ‘share articles’, ‘start discussion’ etc, but I think there’s definitely more potential. The best reference I could find is Social Median (recently acquired by Xing). Now, I admit that my usage of that site was pretty limited, but I still think it was only a matter of time before i utilised it much more. Somehow it appealed more than say a Friendfeed room.

    I also think that the limited usage was because I was connected with a similar set of people on twitter who used to share links on the topics I was interested in. This, and the paucity of time, made a visit to Social Median a postponed task. Now considering that LinkedIn is best placed to offer tangible benefits (business networking, as opposed to social networking), what if the Social Median kind of tools (like the browser add on to share sites) and services (like adding feeds to groups) were introduced on LinkedIn.

    Now, you might say that we do roughly the same on say, Friendfeed. The difference is that in the case of LinkedIn, the adoption would be much more, because professionals interested in say, Social Media would find it easier to join a group, and have discussions on LinkedIn than joining a relatively geekier service like Friendfeed. Also, the different kind of groups that could happen on LinkedIn is much more since it already has professionals from a variety of streams, and each of them could create their own networks. The tangible gains from such a network even in daily office work is easy to imagine. This would also be immensely useful for those who’d like to gather information about career streams different from their own. In fact, this wonderful post also shows how brands can utilise content aggregation to their benefit. The thing to note here is that LinkedIn would need to provide enough tools so that the groups don’t become stagnant like that on Facebook. But I’m guessing it won’t, since most people would like to offer insightful comments, and share the best links, because its a business network, one that’d help their careers.

    until next time, a link book 🙂

  • Crowd Control by the crowd

    Its rightly said that however thinly you slice the bread, there will always be two sides. Sometimes the very features that makes me love the social web – sharing and transparency, are not treated with the respect they deserve. Or, to be more specific, the crowd is not able to react maturely when someone is being transparent, or sharing something innocuous, or just doing his job. I remembering touching upon mob justice in the case of the Hasbro vs Scrabulous issue too.

    Since then there have been several instances of what Jason Calacanis might describe as the ‘madness of the mobs‘. From Hotmail users fighting against the new design, virtual protests and self immolations on Second Life against a steep purchase and maintenance fee increase, to relatively harmless breast beating on Twitter and Facebook, there has been a lot of action happening all around.

    A few recent incidents have made me look at the otherwise wonderful features of the social web in a negative light again. Rex Hammock recently wrote about a Dilbert strip in which its creator Scott Adams did a bit of ‘in house’ product placing – for DilbertFiles.com, an online sharing and file storage service that was the result of a deal between Adams and Sendyourfiles.com, which Adams had explained on his blog. In fact he also points out that

    As the number of traditional newspapers continues to shrink, this is the sort of thing that will help keep Dilbert free online.

    But several readers took exception calling it a ‘shameless plug’ and ‘unethical’. Thankfully there were many in the crowd who were objective enough to see it as ‘lame but not ethical’, and several others who found it interesting, and a great way of promoting the service. I, for one, thought it was some neat ‘brand integration’. The debate is now over, i guess, and Scott Adams made some candid, cool closing remarks on the issue. You can read them here.

    The other incident that caught my attention was the case of James Andrews (@keyinfluencer on Twitter). Here are the details. In short, this is what happened. James Andrews, from a company called Ketchum, in Atlanta flew to Memphis to visit FedEx, one of his agency’s biggest clients, to talk to their corporate communication team about social media. Being a regular Twitter user, he tweeted on landing

    “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.’”

    Instead of the lil argument that would’ve happened on Twitter over this, it became a classic ‘tempest in a tea cup’, when a person from the Fedex Corporate Communication Group took this up and sent a mail to Andrews. And thus it became a story of the agency guy (Andrews) talking ill of his client’s city. (the entire mail can be read in the link I shared earlier) All the poor man did was give a personal opinion about the place he landed in. That is a crime in social media, according to a few social media storm troopers. Suddenly, there are statements to be made, the agency has to apologise on behalf of Andrews. I say, FedEx, thats #FAIL. Kudos to Funkidivagirl for defending her husband so eloquently, and putting things in perspective.

    Both the situations made me think of expectations. Scott Adams is perhaps thinking of greater good (keeping the online strip free) when he makes a deal like this. He even explains the reasons on his blog. He doesn’t have to. And the crowd, or at least a part of it, loses it. James Andrews tweets personal views about a nameless place  (Fed Ex’ reaction ensures everyone knows about Memphis now) and his agency and work are judged based on that!! We’re supposed to be careful of what we tweet.

    The last and most recent incident is the worst, because unlike the other two, this one’s effect was real and physical!! And at the receiving end was none other than Tech Crunch’s Michael Arrington. As he was leaving a conference, someone walked up to him and spat on his face. The pain in his words are unmistakable as he relates the incident. It doesn’t matter whether you agree, disagree, love or despise TechCrunch or Arrington, but their contribution to the web and startups transcends that, and cannot be denied. If this has to do with what he writes about as part of his job, this is a despicable reaction. I, for one, would really want to know what provoked such an act.

    We expect transparency, honesty and sharing in the social web.  But are we always ready to handle it maturely when its given to us? Yes, brands and people have a responsibility towards us, but shouldn’t that be reciprocated by us too? By having unreasonable expectations from brands and people, especially in a scenario where the rules of engagement are only beginning to be formed, are we forcing these entities to stop sharing and stop being transparent? As RWW correctly notes,

    Whether you believe in monitoring yourself online or not, don’t forget the point of the social Web: to get to know other like minded people, share resources, have fun, and leave the place a little nicer than you found it.

    Let’s have some of this spirit back, and show some maturity not only when we share or tweet or try to engage an audience as a brand/PR person, but also as a reader, when we consume this content. After all we are human, and I like to think that with web 2.0, we’re on our way to making this cold machine driven entity called internet , human. Lets not make the reverse happen.

    until next time, you have the right to remain silent, sometimes the duty too..

    PS. but you should comment 😉