Category: Strategy

  • A Dunbar’s number for brands?

    Seth Godin had a very good take on the Dunbar Number recently in the context of connections made on Twitter and Facebook. (Wikipedia: Dunbar’s Number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150) Godin was of the opinion that “You might be able to stretch to 200 or 400, but no, you can’t effectively engage at a tribal level with a thousand people.”

    A few months back, I’d written a post wondering whether smaller organisations were better placed to use social media effectively. This was based on a post by Chris Brogan. Smaller organisations with a flatter structure, and a culture more open to ideas. In that post, I’d questioned whether ideas becoming products/services and then further on brands, meant that the large audiences developed by brands would dictate the kind of communication used, and if mass media one way messaging became easier then. Also, I’d wondered whether larger organisations could handle the empowerment required to work in a social media environment.

    When I read the post by Godin, I wondered if there was a Dunbar number for brands, dictated by the number of people  the brand can connect with- internally as well as externally? There are two things I read recently which added to the thought. One was the idea of the Intention Economy (via Surekha) which “grows around buyers” and is “about markets, not marketing”, and which is builts beyond transactions alone – conversations, reputation, authority, respect all of which are earned by the sellers and buyers. This is a provisional idea, the other is a report from 360i (via Mashable) which states that “that a majority of social media search listings that appear for brand-related queries are created by individuals not affiliated with the brand”, an increasing trend.

    Meanwhile, another interesting thought occured to me when I read Jeremiah’s  post on #OperationBlueWater – where he proposes sharing one’s personal goal plan with online and offline social networks to help people achieve it. I wondered if organisations could ever approach this scenario- not so much as an objective, but the openness and the willingness to share and collaborate along the journey.

    With or without Dunbar’s number, brands would have to involve either consumers or employees (ideally both) to thrive in a ‘social’ world. If its employees, it means hiring people who are passionate about the stuff they’re working with. Yes, the communication has always been that way, maybe the virtual and social forces will make it happen in reality. As for consumers, in most mass advertising, we have been seeing for sometime now, what Godin describes as “politician’s glassy-eyed gaze or the celebrity’s empty stare”

    until next time, social goal setting 🙂

  • Twitter lists, Social Search and brand content distribution

    So its been quite a while since Twitter lists launched, and the ego seems to have stopped trending now. The open API means that we can hopefully see a some interesting apps/services (eg.directories like Listorious or alert systems like Listiti) soon. In fact, Twitter has already made an interesting widget, which you can see in action on the left side, at the bottom. Its a list of people who create/share content/have an interest in the Indian web space.

    Meanwhile, though Twitter lists will add a new dimension to search – people, content etc, like I mentioned in the last post, and create perceptions about people (basis lists they appear in), there are already directions which make me feel ambivalent (country lists, and I agree largely with this take). Even as they try to balance utility with threats like spam, I wonder what features Twitter will add to lists – feeds of lists, search (and advanced) within list tweets or add this option in existing search, one click DM to all members of a list (at least by the creator for starters),  or at least a way to send a tweet to only a list (so that I can be more pertinent to specific kinds of users – eg. there are those who hate my godawful puns, but like the links I share 😀 )

    (Let me know if these exist in some form – even on apps, and add on the features you can think of)

    Another line of thought occurred to me while on Twitter lists – brand communication. It started off by me wondering whether we’d now see brands occupying Twitter backgrounds of relevant lists (considering the web interface is still the most used source of tweeting) say, Star World on a a Heroes/Lost fans list, Kingfisher on a beer fans list. (all of you brands pay Twitter and the list creators, please) Taking that further, would we have brands create lists? Hopefully, not just something as vanilla as their fans, but say, a relevant common interest topic. 🙂

    This led to a larger picture of how brand communication’s distribution would evolve. This also fit into last week’s post – aggregation of content and serendipity. How would brand communication fit into the varied methods of content consumption, aggregation and discovery?

    Even as new distribution and consumption patterns develop rapidly, the identity of the traditional distribution means i.e. mass content creator-aggregators (newspapers, TV. and even web entities) as just a platform for vanilla advertising (and that includes ‘innovations’ like force-fitted editorial) has been changing for a while now. For example, Yahoo, even as it takes steps in creating and curating content, is also making deals “to help marketers creatively incorporate their brands into original online programming. The programs will appear exclusively throughout Yahoo!’s network of leading media properties including News, Sports, Finance and Entertainment.” ESPN Sports Center worked with Toshiba to create advertising that illustrates specifically how ESPN fans could use Toshiba TV sets and laptops. But all that’s still only creating more context. Seemingly seamless content and advertising, tricky territory, that.

    To compare it with say, Twitter lists, the latter already have the context and the audience in one place, and these are created by the audience themselves. Isn’t that at least a step ahead. Meanwhile, there’s another way of looking at it – the Google way, using Social Search, and that includes not just Google’s own services like Reader, Profiles (and that means all your other service details you shared there and your respective networks), Mail contacts, but also Twitter. That means, when a person is searching for information, Google can now give him socially layered real time results, quite a good start to a man+spider filtered way of search. I have to wonder (again) how long the SEO way of making sure the brand website appears on top will work.

    All of the above – traditional content platforms, social platforms, search are different kinds of people and content aggregators, and options for brands to create/share content (self created or UGC) in. While it might look challenging, it offers enormous possibilities of tailoring content according for the brand’s different audiences and their needs. They have varying sets of positives and negatives, several parameters will decide the medium, but as far as the message goes, interesting content is now, increasingly and thankfully mandatory. 🙂

    Brands have always been experiences. Brand communication has sought to build/reinforce/manage perceptions. In an unconnected world, the audience had to rely on the communication, and the small set of experiences that they knew of – their own, and those of their circle of friends, relatives etc. In a connected world, the audience will experience in many more ways, and the content they create will be shared and distributed in ways they deem fit, across a much larger audience. Perhaps, now, the experience is the message, and the audience is the medium.

    until next time, medium, message and mob mastery 🙂

  • Brand Chats – Google & Godin

    Last week, Seth Godin’s company Squidoo launched “Brands in Public” (BIP from now), a  service which creates pages -‘public-facing dashboards’ that aggregate conversations about brands on Twitter, YouTube and blogs, in addition to news, videos, images etc. BIP will create the pages anyway, but for a fee, brands can develop this page. Brands then get control of the left column on the page, and can respond to the content, highlight certain content, run contests etc. (example) In Seth Godin’s own words, brands “can respond, lead and organize.”As Godin himself states, there are many monitoring tools online (found an excellent wiki by Ken Burbary) which can be used to ‘listen’ to the conversation, but this service allows brands to respond publicly.

    I saw a couple of posts which asked an interesting question – whether by creating pages ‘anyway’, Godin was brandjacking. Godin had clarified that if a brand requested him to take a page off, he would do so. And in a later update (to clear the air) he took off the 200 sample pages that had been put up. Bravo! Not that there was anything technically wrong with it – after all, like one of the articles states, Google does something similar- sell ads next to contextually relevant others- generated content (search, ad sense on sites), but the non-paid for brand pages just didn’t sound right.

    But it made me wonder again about the location of brand-consumer conversations. Before we get to that, another interesting news item in context, albeit a bit tangentially. Last week, Google launched Sidewiki, “which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.” The entries which are shown, are selected not by recency, but an algorithm that has among other things – the contributor’s previous entries and the feedback on the entry. Moreover the entry will also be used on sites with the same content. Users will have to be logged into Google for leaving comments and rating.

    As Jason Falls notes in his post about Sidewiki, this adds another layer for brands to keep in touch with, because users may not even have to search for information about the website (or the product/service sold there). If they have the toolbar downloaded, they can see the information as they browse the site. He also rightly remarks (IMO) that we should expect ads (even that of competitors) in the wiki soon. Meanwhile, like any good social product, there is no control that a brand can exert on this content, as it exists on Google’s servers. Jeremiah Owyang  also has a post on the same subject, which offers several great insights and advice. Apparently, the comments a user leaves will also be displayed on his Google profile. The web as one giant social network, he’s right, that’s what Google’s after. There is also the option of sharing it on Facebook/Twitter. It’d be interesting to see a Facebook version of this whenever it happens – a play with Facebook Connect, the website, and perhaps, Facebook fan pages. The Facebook newsfeed means that it can bring the conversation back to Facebook. That’s something Google can’t do..yet.

    Now, back to the location. Attempts are being made to aggregate these conversations, and in BIP’s case make it a conversation involving the brand itself. My problem was not with brandjacking, the conversations are happening anyway, and brands are free to create their own ways of aggregation and response, I was more concerned with two other things. One, the creation of a destination point , a ‘middle man’ whose only context connecting its users was the brand itself. Like a subject popping up while chatting over coffee vs a focus group – they both have their uses, but for me, the former is more social media, simply because of the difference in intent. To be fair, I’ve always thought aggregation was inevitable, but Chris Brogan wrote recently about ‘Feeling the Community‘, where he talks about how “we don’t join communities because we  happen to like a product or service. We gather around people who feel what we feel, and we share passion for things that bring us some sense of pleasure or joy, or even healing.” I can completely relate to that, it is the reason I’m not a fan of many things on FB, and was/am not an active member of the groups I’d joined. Now, I talk about all these things (whose group/fan page I am part of) on Twitter. I follow blogs and use these as conversation points there, on Twitter and offline, whenever I feel there is a context, and whenever I can identify with what’s being said on the subject.  What I’m trying to say is that the objects (brands) or even the platforms are not the important context, the people are. Even though the brand has an identity and a personality, different people associate to the same brand differently, and my conversations happen with people who I feel can relate to what I’m saying. Also, the aggregation may not really show the context in which a comment was made. (esp. Twitter). For that, the brand has to be present on Twitter. I’m not sure whether an aggregation point would have the same effect. Woods, trees, and mistakes.

    The second issue I have is whether such destination points would tend to become band-aid fixes for a larger problem. Would brands approach the issues with a short term tactical mindset – highlight the issues that they’re able to solve, gloss over the ones they can’t? In essence, see this a point where they can control the conversations? Shouldn’t the greater priority for organisations be changing their internal processes and structures to adapt to social media, than having a dashboard responding to comments? I’m just not very sure it can work in parallel.

    So, conversations on the brand website, on its side, and on some other site..actually everywhere. At some point, all data would have to become portable, and depending on context (and perhaps other parameters) I would choose the platform/service/location for interaction. For now, world wild web indeed. 🙂

    until next time, a website with a sidekick 😉

  • Flipping news models

    Google’s Fast Flip has been receiving quite a lot of attention these days. Based on the Google News model of aggregation and categorisation, Google has partnered with quite  few sources including BBC, BusinessWeek, Washington Post, New York time, to name a few, which shows previews of their pages on Fast Flip, but looks exactly like they would on the source site, almost. We’ll come to that in a bit. The stories can be accessed basis sources, sections and the other parameters we are used to – recent, most viewed, recommended etc. Oh, yes, much of it is the user interface, that lets you ‘flip’ through the content, ‘like’ stories, and you can click through to the source site, if you want to read the full story. It has its rough edges, and is far from being any sort of killer to anyone, but its a damn good start, much better than any interface that any publication has brought out so far. On the revenue front, there are contextual ads on Fast Flip itself, and Google will be sharing revenue with newspapers. It is interesting to note that the previews of the source sites do not include ads. So if I am able to read a story completely in the preview, (which in many cases I am), I wouldn’t go to the source site, nor would I see/click the ads there. This is potentially an area of conflict, since the (shared) revenue from the one ad that’s displayed on Fast Flip cannot compare with the revenue from the source site. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to a time when perhaps, Google Reader will have a similar interface. 😉

    In the last few weeks, this is the second instance of Google engaging with publications and ‘helping’ them create a revenue stream. The first instance was Google sending a proposal for micropayments, in response to a request for paid content proposals from the Newspaper Association of America. As per an NYTimes blog, this would be an extension of Google Checkout. Google is only one of the companies that have sent a proposal, and the list includes Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. The system is of course in its early planning stages, and the business model has a 30-70 split (Google-publisher). Though Google still doesn’t believe that paying for content will be the remedy for newspapers’ woes, it  still has a vision of a premium content ecosystem, which includes five key features that combine the Google’s e-commerce, search, and advertising platforms.

    While Google is described by many as the single largest threat to newspapers, its definitely not the only one. From new hyperlocal community sites (eg. Patch) to remnants of old giants (AOL’s Digital City, Yahoo Local) and from new age media entities like Huffington Post to new and varied kinds of aggregators (Guzzle.it, OurSignal, MeeHive, Thoora) different services are catering to the different needs that newspapers used to satisfy. The important aspect is that the new entities are well versed in leveraging the latest tools and collaborating with those who can add to their utility value. A good example would be the tie up between Huffington Post and Facebook for HuffPost Social News. Social sharing, real time are changing the way news is being consumed. I recently read about The Twitter Times, which creates a customised ‘newspaper’ by checking the links from people you follow, and the popularity of those links. Even while massive changes are happening online, and affecting the lifestyle of individuals and society at large, newspapers are still grappling with how to evolve new business models. (a good, albeit dated read on battle plans)

    There was a short but interesting discussion on Twitter a few days back, where Surekha brought up the example of PressDisplay’s business model (aggregation of various newspapers and consumers pay for access) to ask whether a DTH kind of model would work for newspapers. I didn’t think it would. The only other distribution network for television content is the local cable guy (ignoring the web for now). But ‘news’ and even the ‘features’ content can find its way to the consumer through multiple sources and media – TV, web, mobile, and multiple sources within that.  The entry barriers have fallen drastically. Scarcity model vs Abundance model. Keeping in mind the cost that newspapers incur in creating the content and the incremental value that they give the consumer, how much would a consumer pay a newspaper aggregator, and how much would the newspapers get out of that. Yes, Press Display will make money, but ask newspapers to survive only on that revenue or even that plus web advertising, and it would be a tough task. This is why newspapers are finding it hard to negotiate this transition stage (discussed earlier) because its not one answer and its definitely not a common answer. Again, as I’ve discussed here earlier, there are inherent differences between news gathering processes in the print and online space – batch processing vs real time processing. It calls for a (albeit cliched) leaner meaner structure, not just for operations’ sake, but also perhaps from a profitability perspective.

    The more I think about it, the more I realise that its not just processes, there is a cultural angle to this. As Terry Heaton points out in “The Web’s widening stream“, the knack of creating and facing disruptive innovations. We’ve discussed David and Goliath before, David becomes version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 faster and faster, each version better than the other (because he fixes the bugs in 1.1, 2.5 etc) while Goliath reels because it can’t even figure out the answer to 1.0.  His strength has become his weakness – scale, and he doesn’t have a culture that encourages moving fast, learning from mistakes, being open to changes amongst other things. In fact, newspapers have been lazy and guilty of doing the exact thing that Seth Godin warns about in “Flipping abundance and scarcity” – putting free on top of a business model, and now rapidly trying to change it.

    I don’t think India is impervious to these changes, the time frame will vary because of several factors – technology adoption delays, vernacular content to name a couple, but as I keep repeating, its no time to be complacent. From Rediff and Instablogs which have evolved their own news collection systems to hyperlocal players of different kinds – governance based like Praja, Citizen Matters, local businesses review based like Burrp, and several other niches, the different domains of newspapers are being challenged. More importantly we’re increasingly getting used to ‘streams’ – FB, Twitter etc. The principal revenue model of newspapers has been advertising (as opposed to circulation), they have been the medium to reach audiences, with the most basic of audience filtering. The radical change (as Heaton points out) is that advertisers can be part of the stream themselves, with such filtration techniques that they can target an individual if necessary. So, for newspapers, if the advertiser won’t pay, the reader has to. The reader , meanwhile has figured out that on the web, he has an abundance of choices.

    until next time, stop press?

  • Social deluxe

    Sometime back, Mashable had an interesting post on luxury brands and social media. While a few points were raised on the challenges, the one that interested me most was how the facet of  ‘exclusivity’ could be balanced with the relatively open nature of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. The post also highlights a couple of examples – the aspiration based FB fanpage of Gucci and the invite-only closed social network of Mercedes Benz – GenerationBenz.com. The examples were interesting because they were two different approaches – of how luxury brands can use social media. On a related note, Jeremiah Owyang wrote a post a few days back – 5 ways luxury brands can overcome the conundrum of social marketing.

    Before we discuss the specific usage on social media, how exactly do brands become classified as luxury? According to the post above, “When linked to brands, it is characterized by a recognizable style, strong identity, high awareness, and enhanced emotional and symbolic associations. It evokes uniqueness and exclusivity, and is interpreted in products through high quality, controlled distribution and premium pricing”. I assume the above takes into the account the parameter of service – not just in the case of say, hospitality or other service luxury brands, but even regular luxury brands, since the overall experience (from the retail experience of shopping for the brand to post purchase service) is key to earning the tag of a luxury brand.

    With regards to social media, I’d say that social media has this way of stripping the veneer, of removing the fluff around entities so that its reputation is made/broken basis its performance on the core value it provides. In fact, sometimes even the cost of ‘production’ is not taken into account, the audience expects things for free and the crowd makes its own sense of value for the product. (yes, I am referring to the interesting free vs paid debate) Wired has an excellent article titled ‘The Good Enough Revolution‘, where it takes examples from various sectors to show how, with advancing technology, consumers’ expectations from their purchases are changing drastically – the rise of the ‘good enough’ tools. While it is essentially attributed to the busy lives we lead now, the fact that it is also ideal for recessionary times is highlighted. From the article,

    We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”

    Of course, there still is an audience that doesn’t live by these credos, but that’s perhaps not really a large number. One could argue that this was the only audience that mattered to luxury brands anyway, but If this trend catches on, then the entire premise of luxury branding becomes wobbly. PSFK has an interesting note on a Louis Vuitton Calabash – on mixing the notions of utility and luxury, and how the addition of a designer label on a commonplace item raises a question on the value of things. A lot of the luxury brand’s aura is through maintaining a perception among the audience, and keeping itself as an aspiration among potential consumers – couching utility in intangibles. This is not taking away anything from the quality of the product per se, but the entire concept of ‘brand’ is usually seen as a way to distinguish the product from similar products and take it to a level  above that of a commodity. A lot of communication these days is about the aura/show off value of the luxury brand than anything to do with the product superiority. In a way, its quite logical (and obvious) because if luxury brands focus on the utilitarian value of their product, they really wouldn’t get ahead. The counter point to this would be that the premium charged by the luxury brand is for the emotional high of using the brand, in addition to the (hopefully) superior quality that it provides. Does it mean that luxury brands would have to relook at the premiums they charge?

    But having said all that, there are quite a few things that seem to point towards potential synergy between luxury brands and social media. One of the points that Jeremiah mentioned in his post is the usage of celebrity associations. Celebrities are now running rampant on social networks, and luxury brands have a good means of weaving themselves into the conversation, and increasing their aspiration value. Usage by a celebrity also gives them a context to kickstart conversations. Also, social media is about emotional connect and sharing. If much of a luxury brand’s aura is built on the emotional appeal, then it can use social media very well to its advantage. After all, what other medium offers such easy methods to spread some ‘show off’ value? 🙂 I thought the Mercedes Benz idea of a closed network would be great if they allowed users at least partial portability of data to other networks. (to, rather than from) The ‘share’ aspect of social media will also help identify potential customers via existing ones. But most importantly, I feel the biggest use of social media (actually the web in general) for luxury brands is the audience data that is being generated on a regular basis, real time. It offers better segmenting and targeting opportunities, and while this is applicable to all brands, it is all the more important for luxury brands. This can be used for gaining more insights, encouraging sampling and so on.

    It is definitely an interesting conundrum, but the web, thankfully has space for all kinds, I think. Will appreciate your thoughts. 🙂

    until next time, the luxury of real time? 😉