Category: Advertising

  • “What will you do when the money goes?”

    Even as stories abound about a Google acquisition of Twitter, Adage had a story on how Google is already making money out of tweets. According to the article, Google is offering ad units that display the client’s five most recent tweets across the AdSense network. The link leads straight to the client’s twitter account, and the campaign is measurable by the increase in follower count. One could say that Twitter gets some publicity out of this, but its obviously not getting any money.

    The ad network Federated Media recently launched ExecTweets, a site that aggregates tweets from business executives. The site is sponsored by Microsoft. With a twitter account, you can join the conversation, receive tweets from the community and vote for tweets and execs. At least on this one, Twitter will make some money.

    Since we have mentioned two biggies, might as well mention the third too, though what they’re doing is different from the above. Sideline is the desktop app from Yahoo, that runs via the AdobeAIR platform. It can do custom search groups, advanced queries and auto refreshes by pulling in data from tweets. There are other services that offer similar features, but maybe there’s more coming. And it does promise 20% more awesomeness. 🙂 On a tangent, a service called Say Tweet, which I have used in my personal blog to display my Twitter status, does give a sense of what Yahoo could do with Flickr and Twitter.

    In addition to the biggies above who’re using Twitter, there are numerous applications and services being built based on Twitter, and several others inspired by Twitter. A few examples. Tinker, from advertising and publishing network Glam Media, allows users to track real time conversations (from facebook and Twitter) happening around TV shows, entertainment events, conferences, and so on. It gives information on events by showing most followed and most discussed streams, popular events, and on trends with charts and historical data.  It also has embeddable widgets, which can be used to view a feed as well as update. They already have advertising and featured events and have further monetisation plans. iList Micro, from the iList service that alllows you to broadcast your listing to friends across networks, is the Twitter version and uses the hashtags #ihave and #iwant to create a simple process of classifieds. I have already mentoned Yammer (which now offers integration with Twitter), and Blellow in earlier posts, which are renditions of Twitter for more niche/enterprise uses, there’s also status.net arriving in a couple of months time.

    In spite of the several ways in which business are using Twitter, and the potential, I actually get worried when such services pop up on a regular basis, because I fear that when each service figures out a revenue model, one door could possibly be closing for Twitter itself. For instance, recently Jeremiah Owyang had a good post on social CRM being the future of Twitter, and within a few days, I read about Salesforce adding Twitter analytics to its CRM offering, and about CoTweet, a part marketing-part CRM tool.

    Twitter hasn’t been idle. From experimenting with advertising on profile pages (for third party and own apps, free for now) to tweaking title tags for better Google results, to hiring a concierge for celebrities (yes, really!) a lot is being done. And there’s also a new homepage design (limited roll out) which gives more prominence for the search function and increases homepage stickiness. It will also display popular trending topics (like in the current search homepage). (Hmm, perhaps one ad every 5 items, I wouldn’t mind that when i search)

    With the new funding, perhaps they have enough money in the bank to wait, watch new services, and incorporate the popular ones into their own functionality, in order to provide a diverse and robust service to all kinds of users.  Twitter is so open ended that it is different things to different people, but I wonder if identifying a few areas that they’d want to develop for revenues is of prime importance now. What I’m worried about is other services staking out potential revenue models, and whether addition of features towards no particular intent might result in everyone else but them making money out of these very features. But hey, maybe they have a plan. 🙂

    until next time, tweet dreams

    PS. the lyrics of the song mentioned in the title 🙂

  • The heat is on…

    You know its summer when you see the various soft drinks launching their ‘season collection’. Coke, Pepsi, Thums Up, Mirinda and Sprite have all started bombarding the channels with their respective ads. Meanwhile, I was really surprised to know that Sprite is now the #2 soft drink brand in the country after Thums Up, the brand refused to die. This happened in October 2008, and since then Sprite has not only cemented its position (at 15.6%) ahead of pepsi (at 13%), but is also closing in on Thums Up (16.16%) (via Economic Times)

    So, let’s begin with Coke’s TVC. Coke has brought the ‘Open Happiness’ theme (which i’d written about earlier) to India, and has started the campaign with an ad featuring Gautam Gambhir. (because he’s an opener? ok sorry) The ad shows how the game of cricket (with Coke) adds fun and refreshment in our lives and builds community  by sharing our moments of happiness together – in this case, a cricket match. Gautham Gambhir brings to life a regular hangout joint by offering ‘ a dost free with every Coke’. The wife uncharitably commented that a free dosa might get more response!!

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S59gN7bl6As

    I honestly wasn’t impressed with the ‘Open Happiness’ theme anyway- Coke has done much better campaigns before, and this has cemented that opinion. Unless the remaining ads do wonders, I doubt if that opinion will change.  In fact I got thinking about Coke’s Slumdog association, rather dissociation, which i wrote about earlier. If they had allowed that association, the Oscar win would have gone wonderfully with the theme, and the Oscar is a global thing. They could’ve even done a cheering ad at the bottom of the screen whenever SDM got an award. (at least in the repeat telecast). Oh well, why cry over spilt cola.

    On to Pepsi’s latest TVC. With the cricket team in action, and IPL coming up, it looks like Pepsi has (thankfully) decided to shelf R.Kap and D.Pad for a while, and move on to Dhoni and Co. This is continuing the path of “echoing youth sentiment” – the last ad talked about how padhai wasn’t the only way to success, and this one talks of how people use their connections (jaanta hain mera baap kaun hai?) to get ahead in life. The concept, though a bit jaded, might actually work because of the execution (Sehwag’s wig’s contribution must be noted)

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2xS3P_Ejjg

    And now Sprite. I had written sometime back about how Sprite is going about things in a very methodical manner. In plain words, I think they have a strategy, and from the numbers it seems to be working. Clear Hai !! They’ve added the  no nonsense approach to their product benefit of slaking thirst and the renditions have been great so far. As a massive Fido Dido fan (7 up) I can only grudgingly admire. Brilliant. They have released two ads recently, but they really don’t measure up to the earlier work.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQr9gwb_-I

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-vVSEDOWmA

    The positioning has gotten a bit diluted, I felt, maybe the later ads will be better. Lets hope someone gives them something to spoof on. And meanwhile, the big news is that King Khan, after Pepsi’s non renewal of his contract, will now say ‘Baki Sab Bakwas’. Yes, he is Sprite’s new brand ambassador!! Coke has the most awesome Bollywood portfolio now – Aamir for Coke, SRK for Sprite, and Akshay for Thums Up.

    Speaking of which, Thums Up has also released its TVC, which features Akshay in a double role.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVQUcO4GMus

    The typical Akshay-Thums Up ad, all slick action and stunts, centred around “will do anything for a Thums Up”. Wonder if Pepsi will spoof like last time.

    I also saw a couple of Mirinda ads, featuring Asin, very entertaining ones, but with a distinct south Indian flavour, which, am not sure will work across India (especially the market ones, which relies on wordplay a lot)

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65DbA-baZYA

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esp026fOXlE&NR=1

    The smaller 15 second ones which would work for a national audience don’t reach the same level as the ones above.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCiZ6ZCiDQ8

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em8_fbMGRKI

    7 Up has been silent so far. I hope they do something good with Fido Dido, which is a lot to ask for, considering the work so far. I couldn’t help but wonder the good use that Fido could’ve been put to in social media. This is the only brand which is instinctively identified with a character, and in a medium in which people like to talk to people and not brands, Fido could’ve served as a wonderful front end for the brand. His coolness wowed one generation, if someone thinks hard enough, he could easily wow many more too. Will he make a comeback with the new Pepsi lemon drink – Nimbooz? I, for one, hope he does.

    With the uninspiring 7Up and even Mirinda, Pepsi really has no flanking products. Coke, on the other hand, has two of its brands at the top. Pepsi needs a miracle now, to claw back. I have a feeling that Sprite is getting ready for the war for the top spot, and Pepsi played into their hands by releasing SRK. Thums Up, with Akshay at #1, and within touching distance Sprite at #2, with Shah Rukh. With these two sharing icy cold vibes these days in real life over the Bollywood #1 position, I think, we have a thriller on our hands.

    until next time, cold war!!

    PS. Interesting tactic by Coke – Don’t Dew it, a 24-ounce Vault (Coke) free with any purchase of a 20 ounce Mountain Dew (Pespsi)

  • More than fizz and froth

    While the recession hits the economies worldwide, the cola giants have been trying their bubbly best to get the fizz back into the lives of their target audience, through hope and optimism campaigns.

    Pepsi began proceedings with its new logo, accompanied by a tagline “Every generation refreshes the world”. You can catch an entire set of creatives in this New Year video. On an aside, the (yet to be proved conclusively) brief for this campaign has caused much amusement. You really have to take a look – it is bizarre and includes everything from gravitational pull and thr relativity of space-time to Mona Lisa and the Bible!! (via psfk) Meanwhile, Coke rolled out its ‘Open Happiness’ campaign a few weeks later, complete with a massive campaign and 2 new Super Bowl spots, prompting the question “Who smiled first“. The answer turned out to be Obama, but Pepsi claimed that finally Coke was following them. Coke pointed out that it had started using smiley logos six months back.

    Critics have been skeptical about Coke moving away from the ‘Coke side of life’. Pepsi, they say, having always been a youthful brand has been able to bring out a more buoyant and less laboured campaign. In India, they’ve decided to be totally Youngistan, with SRK no longer a brand ambassador, leaving us stuck with Ranbir Kapoor’s adventures. Some respite recently from Dhoni and gang, with the baap connection.

    Meanwhile, these campaigns also made me wonder whether typical mass media communication and feel good campaigns are indeed the way to connect during such troubled times,  more so when I read this article by Tom Martin in AdAge. It talks about “the simple human need to connect to others.”

    And that brings me to a brilliant campaign I’ve seen (virtually) – froth brand this time, instead of fizz- Starbucks’ “I’m In” campaign, (in association with ‘Hands On Network’) “ an initiative to make it easy to participate in the President-elect’s call for national service.” The campaign allows a person to pledge five hours or more of community service toward a local volunteer opportunity of choice. It rewards the person with a free coffee. The goal is to raise pledges in excess of one million hours of service from all over the country. You can catch the results here. This is what is correctly described as ‘marketing with meaning‘ – which includes several facets – social, personal, storytelling, disruptive, responsible, each of which gives individuals different sets of incentives to be part of the campaign. Starbucks timed the campaign brilliantly – Obama’s inauguration week, and got itself an Oprah Effect. It has all the ingredients required to make a consumer want to be associated with the campaign, and has used the social web very well.

    Now I’m not sure of Coke/Pepsi in the US have tangible renditions of the happiness theme on ground, but I know several campaigns in India which have paid lip service to excellent themes/ideas and have ended up looking superficial. In the times and circumstances we live in, there are excellent opportunities for brands to genuinely do good to society within the sphere of their category, and thereby increase their equity in the consumer’s mind.  (Jaago re is a great example) I wonder how many brands will see this.

    until next time, a lot can happen over coffee 🙂

    PS. While on fizzy stuff, did you hear about the RSS launching cow’s urine as a soft drink? Called gau-jal, its undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”. Sumant suggests Mo (rarji) Desai in low riding jeans, basketball jersey and bling, as brand ambassador, and I suggested the tagline Pee yo! Wonder if Coke and Pepsi are pissed 😉

  • For a few dollars more…

    This won’t be the first time I’ve written about Twitter’s revenue model, and I suspect it won’t be the last. In fact, the last time I wrote about it, it was in the context of the deal that almost happened between Facebook and Twitter. Its been a couple of months, so I thought its a good time to check what both have been upto on the subject of revenues.

    There was a scare recently on how Facebook is going to make money by selling users’ data, but that turned out just to be misinterpreted statements, based on a demo that they did at Davos to show real time crowd insights, and had nothing to do with the Engagement Advertising model. Facebook has been growing very fast, (stats) and though this is claimed to be a demo, real time insights (permission based) from the exact target audience could indeed add a lot of value to brands, and any other entity that could be interested in data. Market research firms should actually be working with Facebook and starting to develop pools specific to their client’s audiences. With Facebook implementing the Friendfeed style ‘Like’ feature, the tools are becoming as simple as possible.

    Meanwhile, I also wonder about the data that could come from the sites that have been tied through Facebook Connect, especially since there are some big names in their respective fields. This could reveal a lot more about the individual’s interests – basis his interaction with the other sites, and that data would be easier to handle since in many cases the site’s content would dictate the context, unlike the generic data that could be picked up on Facebook itself. This would be an interesting space to watch, and that’s an understatement.

    A simple yet possibly history making story of how Twitter was made. And in another simple yet profound statement, Seth Godin described it as a protocol. And yet another good one which describes it as a social experiment. Which then raises the question of how a revenue model can be made for this protocol or experiment. As someone once said, “Twitter is what you make it to be”. There are pains too. Twitter’s humble origins and the scale envisioned may not have made a vision mandatory then, and there is also talk that Twitter could ‘go for years’ without earning, but to survive in the long term, Twitter does need a vision, one that’d then give some direction for its revenue model.

    There have been many entities trying to use the stream for transmitting ads, adCause and TwitterHawk, being the latest, but honestly, it does seem like a force fit. But I’ll admit that the location+context based approach of TwitterHawk does seem very interesting. In fact, there have been many apps built around Twitter, some of which require the user to give the Twitter password to use the service, and there have been security problems thanks to that too. Hopefully that’ll get sorted out once OAuth is implemented, perhaps we’ll see a new generation of mashups too, leading Twitter towards a revenue model. Here are some very interesting thoughts on Twitter, including searching conversations based on category, and a marketplace around conversations and real products. Its interesting to note that brands have already begun experimenting with Twitter, and with tangible expectations, as the recent Dell promo of exclusive deals shows.  More likely to follow that model with the launch of TwtQpon. In this context, check out CheapTweet too. Meanwhile, here’s a good set of thoughts for Twitter revenue.

    Twitter Contest-Denuology Entry94 Update

     

    With enterprise versions (Yammer)and even college versions (Wiggio), Twitter needs to hurry, if it does not want to lose out segments altogether. This story about Twitter thinking about charging brands is turning out to be true. I can imagine those social media evangelists within organisations groaning already!! But all the best, and we await the Business Product Manager. 🙂

    While Twitter scores on the real time aspect (my opinion since I use both) Facebook offers a lot more easily available data on an individual’s demographics, interests etc. The other parameter is that while Facebook is being adopted by the masses easily, Twitter does require a bit of getting used to. Facebook might have to sweat a bit to crack real time, and Twitter would have to do many things – consider scaling up groups to other regions, have better ways of segregating conversations and data mining.  But in the end, it all does seem to boil down to using real time information of potential/existing consumers, with precise demographics and interests based targeting.

    We keep saying that social media and its tools are all about the human touch, and the personalisation. And brands utilising these platforms should understand that. I wonder if the same applies to revenue models too, and whether this extreme customisation will mean that both these networks will find it difficult to conceptualise and then implement, revenue templates, that will fit all.

    until next time, money makes the social world go around 😐

  • 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 🙂