Category: Strategy

  • Big brands, small ideas

    I ended last week’s post with a note that social media services provide brands a way of having their lifestream online, and weaving themselves into the consumers’ context. Last week, I read an interesting article on Six Pixels of Separation titled “Your Company is a Media Company“. It talks about how the different social media tools allow companies to publish their own content without the aid of the earlier generation’s tools and processes – newspapers, PR companies etc, and how these companies are finding new ways to tell stories. It also discusses how consumers now expect companies to be connected, listening and reacting – in a human voice. I remember touching upon this subject in a few old posts of mine – “The new media owners“, and “The Evolution of Content Marketing” a few months back.

    One of the biggest gripes that come up when big brands arrive on social media services is how they use it as just another broadcast channel for their TVCs/microsite/contest etc without adding any value to the reader/consumer. I have seen many a brand on Twitter completely disappear when their promotion ends, perhaps it came up only because ‘Twitter account, Facebook page’ were the current flavours in the marketing communication checklist. These are obviously generalisations, and the three examples that I’d discussed in the last post are obvious exceptions.

    While wondering why it has to be this way, I remembered an old post of mine, which though discussed the future role of a brand manager, had started out on a different premise. It had been triggered by a superb post by Russell Davies titled “the tyranny of the big idea“, and a couple of wonderful notes at Misentropy, which took the idea further. (All the three posts I have linked to are 1-3 years old, and I still find them great reads. What I’m trying to say is that you MUST read them)

    In the last few days, I have seen a few posts that have explored this theme, from different perspectives. Six Pixels of Separation has a post that discusses how the combination of 3 factors – a conversation based social media, real time and fragmented media would mean that marketing strategy would have to move away from the big idea and be more involved with smaller ideas basis the type of people the brand talks to, the platform of discussion, and the context. Closer to home, I read a good post  on afaqs – a question posed – whether television is hogging the resources (financial and talent) because in India it is the most preferred medium (not basis revenue) for marketers as well as the advertising fraternity. L Bhat has a very pertinent post on regional branding, and how Indian brands approach it with a one-size-fits-all approach, relying on translations which don’t do justice to the original idea, or showing contexts which have no relevance to the local audience. He notes (illustrated with examples) that brands which have developed communication specifically for the region have touched a chord with the audience. Another indicator that media fragmentation is not just about the web, let alone social media.

    With the advent of the internet, and specially social media, brands have the opportunity now to use this means of distribution to explore the long tail of audiences and marketing communication. The economies that dictate the usage of television, print etc – in terms of both production and distribution, do not really apply on the web. The NYT has an article on the rise of sentiment analysis – the social web as a ‘canary in the coalmine’, as a way to identify opinion leaders, as a forecasting tool, and so on. Its still early days yet, and we will obviously see much improvement in the current systems. In BlogAdda’s interview with Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics evangelist, I had asked about the effect of the ’emotional responses’ in social media on the field of analytics. As he explains, there cannot be a single tool that can capture all data, and those who monitor this, will have to get used to the idea of multiplicity. From just deciding where communication will be distributed (and to a certain extent, consumed) to  having to track where conversations are happening in an ‘everything reviewed‘ (Transparency, Trendwatching’s September trend)  world, and then deciding the what-why – that is quite a drastic change. These are obviously not mutually exclusive, but it still is a challenge.

    The earlier models of communication (and even some elements of strategy) have perhaps been conceptualised and practised without factoring in instant two way communication, conversation among consumers, and multiple touch points. It was relatively easy for everyone concerned to have one big idea and push it into all the channels. That is perhaps what is happening as ‘social’ is seen as just another ‘media’, but it works differently. It involves a whole new set of rules, some yet to be even thought of. While there will be quite a few advantages, there will also be several challenges for the brand- to be different within the core brand idea, to add value to the different kinds of audiences in context, to decide levels of transparency and be comfortable with it, to be a ‘media company’, to be also comfortable with the rigours of listening and possibly having to react real time. There will be challenges for the brand manager, like I mentioned in the post earlier. There will be challenges for the creative agencies – when they develop ideas, they have to be medium and context specific, and also know how to respond in real time. They will also have to be churning out fresh ideas on a regular basis. There will be challenges for media agencies – to find out the maximum possible touch points relevant for the brand. And this is not just to do with the web and social media alone, but the better usage of other media too. Brands can actually be different things to different people, and be relevant. In short, a drastic overhaul of the system which currently operates, before they an get to being a media company. Being a ‘media company’ and ‘always on’ means that the ‘content’ cannot solely be made of big ideas. Possible, but impractical, I’d say, unless its an idea with several rendition and execution possibilities. From one big idea every quarter/year to a stream of small ideas. Not necessarily, perhaps, but probably so. I wonder, how many big brands and agencies will be game for playing with small ideas.. and failing sometimes?

    until next time, a tyrannosaurus hex 🙂

  • Bloody cool. They’ve earned it. Cheers.

    Ok, that was a fairly long and (to some of you) meaningless title, but that was the only way I could think of, to connect the three brands whose activities on Twitter make up this post. Since I rarely come across  praiseworthy efforts from Indian brands on Twitter, I thought it would be worthwhile to keep track of those who are making some decent attempts.

    We’ll start with Channel V, whose Rs. 5 crore makeover to a ‘Bloody Cool’ channel has been a talking point, thanks to a multimedia blitz including write ups in print, flash mobs and online activity, which could leave the viewer ‘exhausted’. I first came across them on Twitter when they RT ed a tweet of mine a couple of weeks back, and have since then seen several people on my list change their display pictures to the Channel V logo. There were two activities that they were doing on Twitter. One was basis the site ISawTheChange (loved Simpoo’s ‘Saw the chanze’ touch), where users were asked to spot the changes in an image on the site, and there were prizes to be won daily. Users had to respond on Twitter which meant that my stream also had people regularly tweeting ‘I saw the change at….’. This site also has a link to Channel V’s Facebook activities. They actually have more fans on FB!! The other activity was basis the OnYours site, and this was led to the sprouting of huge numbers of Channel V logos on my stream, as users changed their display pictures. The interesting part of this was that the user’s original display picture and the Channel V logo would be switched randomly during the period of the promotion (till Aug 22nd) Users also had the option to withdraw at any time. If they remained signed in for 5 days or more, they had a chance to win a tee. In addition to both these activities, on Aug 21st (the day before the change) Channel V also had a 12 hour (11 Pm onwards) – 48 question challenge and a chance to win more prizes. Judging by the timeline, there wasn’t a lack of participation.

    Of course, not everyone liked their in-your-face approach to ‘hijacking’ twitter (maybe a twibbon like approach would’ve been preferred), but the point was, the participation was crowd driven and if someone had to be blamed for the logo blitz, it could only be the people one followed. Channel V also used their stream to announce the details of their flash mobs and even answer the question ‘why a relaunch‘. Most importantly, they took everything in good humour, including my BC MC tweet. 🙂 They have built a fair amount of good equity on Twitter, it will be interesting to see how they take it forward. I was wondering if they’ll do a Twitter version of ‘Exhausted’, with tasks specifically created for the way Twitter operates (including pictures and videos using apps). Might be a good experiment. In fact, when i got the DM for the 12 hour quiz I mentioned earlier, I was wondering if it would be a promo for #exhausted. On the music side, they could latch on to several existing tags like #musicmonday, or even create their own #nowplaying. They could also use this to announce music launches and give video previews etc. With Twitter now getting serious about geolocation, there are bound to be some good apps coming along. They could use that to inform specific audiences about concerts/gigs happening in their city. There are, as always possibilities.

    Though I wasn’t a big fan of the initial promos on Twitter for its blog, the second brand that is doing some interesting activity now is the Cadbury Bournville brand with the #earnit tags. Interesting to note that there’s also a Bournville News operating from Birmingham, and that’s also about the Cadbury brand!! Meanwhile, our version of Bournville manages to insert the tag in context on a regular basis. From Vir Sanghvi’s articles to promising Pinstorm chocolates if they showed 5 reasons why they had #earned it, the brand manages to keep the conversation alive. What it should be perhaps working on is the integration that Channel V has been able to achieve – online as well as offline. For instance, though they do connect to Facebook, their ad on YouTube and even its spoof, I couldn’t find anything about their twitter activity on the website. And the connection to the the-dark-truth.com? In fact, with all the contests that V has been running, they could have easily tagged along and gifted some dark chocolate to the winners (at least where it is operationally feasible for Mumbai, like Mumbai?) Even though operations would be tough, it would be nice to see them running some Twitter contests (say, how have you #earnedit in 140 characters or a twitpic) and doing a gratification offline. I am sure they can at least tie up with a few retail chains to accept Bournville vouchers and give away chocolates. With people winning awards and contests on a regular basis, there is indeed potential for #earningit.

    The last interesting brand I’d like to mention is Kingfisher. Kingfisher came to my attention thanks to their timely and correct response to a user’s tweet. They managed to clarify an issue very well. Kingfisher also uses the stream to RT any mention of their brand by folks on Twitter (example) as well as give information about their events. Kingfisher does have a good opportunity to perhaps associate with tweetups in various cities by leveraging their association with F&B establishments. Again, given the amount of events that they partner, they could also further streamline their alerts using Twitter Local features later.

    In spite of the various challenges, Twitter does allow a unique way for brands to have their lifestream online. It enhances the story telling opportunities, and ways to weave themselves more into their consumers’ context. Such cases hopefully will encourage more brands to try out the service and take their brand beyond one way communication efforts.

    until next time, brandstreams and blue oceans

    Update: Just got to know that a fellow member of the Digital Marketing India group on LinkedIn – Sanjay Mehta, and his company, Social Wavelength (www.socialwavelength.com) are behind Channel V’s efforts described above. In my view, a splendid effort. 🙂

    No, there’s nothing to disclose 🙂

  • Paper Capers

    Almost 2 months since we last discussed newspapers, so I thought its a good time to update. Rumour is that Murdoch plans to sue Google and Yahoo over news services. Fact is that he’s going to charge for news, something he’s been doing for a while with WSJ, and the ‘experiment’ is going to start with The Sunday Times. Others are set to follow his example.  “Quality journalism is not cheap,” said Murdoch. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.“

    I, for one, am happy, because the keywords for me are ‘quality journalism’. Its perhaps a prelude to a shakedown, and the survival of only those who can adapt to a world with internet. With the width and depth of content available, the debate of ‘free vs paid’ has been going on for a while now. But perhaps the time has come to end it. Build the wall, and let’s see if people want to pay to enter. (that link is an excellent read, detailed and thought through, check it out) Opinions are bound to vary – and to be in extremes. Most people feel that it is flawed. Chris Anderson feels that at some point in the future, “maybe media will be a hobby rather than a job“,  Vivian Schiller, former senior vice president and general manager of the NYTimes.com, believes that “people will not in large numbers pay for news content online“, but there’s still space for an NYT to cut expenses and survive. Murdoch obviously believes he can get the audience to pay.

    Meanwhile, the Associated Press is planning to charge $2.50 per word if 5 words or more are quoted from its articles, with the help of a microformat. Not surprisingly, it has been widely criticised in several tones all over the web. Jeff Jarvis even has a post on ‘How (and why) to replace the AP‘, and illustrates the interesting concept of ‘reverse syndication’. Chris Ahearn, at Thomson Reuters, implores entities that are declaring war on the link economy to stop whining, and stands ready to help those who wish for an alternative to AP.

    Interestingly, Google had recently quadrupled its newspaper archives. (Locally, Dainik Jagran is now part of Google’s News Archive Partner Programme, and has a strategic deal with Google to help the group archive its bilingual daily, Inext) The average newspaper’s stance on Google is understandably ambivalent. On one hand, it is happy to get the traffic from Google, but its not happy that its only one among the websites shown, and the amount of content that Google shows. (that might prevent a reader from visiting the site) Sometime back, Google had posted its views and how, any publication can block search engines with a slight change in code.

    The reactions to this obvious ‘transition stage‘ for the newspaper industry has been taking many forms. Paywalls are boycotts are only one kind. Alternate methods of news collection like crowdsourcing+crowdfunding, public collaboration, (an interesting case, for more than this reason), nichepapers and ways in which journalists can use tools like Facebook and Twitter, are being discussed, as well as radical ideas like making the newspaper a gateway for particpative experiences, even as technological developments – touch screen ‘intelligent plastic’ roll up reader, and experiments from NYT (‘What we are reading‘) continue.

    While it would be easy to say that these are trends in the West, that are not very relevant to India at this stage, I’d still say that these are trends that media in India, especially newspapers, should be closely watching and learning from. A good read from Pradyuman Maheshwari at e4m on the same subject. While the Nielsen Online Global Survey on trust, value and engagement in advertising shows that newspapers are the most trusted form of paid advertising (in india), the TCS study on Indian urban school children show that they are extremely technology savvy and totally at ease with the web and social media.

    As stated in the TCS study “This societal trend has important implications for parents, educators, policy makers, as future employers as well as companies and brands that want to sell to tomorrow’s generation.” Some understand this, and have started experimenting with new forms of distribution. I just got  a mail asking me to check out Star Player!! The point is that one can never be sure whether the trends in the US will be replicated in India, though I’d say its more a ‘when’ question than an ‘if’, even though India’s version of the trends would be mutated, thanks to its own socio-cultural and economic pecularities. But it helps to be prepared. I read at Medianama, a few days back that the Hindu is taking Ergo, its 5 day a week publication aimed at young professionals in Chennai, online. Though the motive might have been cost saving, I’m sure it will be a great learning in understanding consumption patterns and figuring out revenue streams. I quite liked the site, powered by WordPress, with a very casual ‘About’ page, and covering some interesting stuff. It looks like an online news site, not the website of a newspaper.

    On hindsight, the collision was bound to happen. Newspapers, which subsidised news to the reading audience by making advertising pay for it. Google, which aggregated content, and served ads in context. They had to meet somewhere, and disagree on who makes how much. The concern areas for newspapers are manifold – news consumption has changed – quantitatively and qualitatively, modes of creation and distribution have changed, and Google has developed a much better advertising model. In essence, all entities in the publishing business have changed – producers, consumers, advertisers. Isn’t it inevitable that the publisher has to find a new business model? Newspapers in India still have some time on their hands, and some good tools too. With most publishing houses having multiple products that cater to specific audiences, they can actually experiment in different directions. It does cost money to create good content, the trick obviously is to figure out ways to minimise the cost and work out how much each stakeholder – reader and advertiser, is willing to pay for it. Now would definitely be a good time to start, unless you want to sound like the (as usual) hilarious Onion story – “Why did no one inform us of the imminent death of the American Newspaper industry” 🙂

    until next time, think about the link economy

  • Brands – Maturity, Transparency, Objectivity

    On the day that gay sex was made legal in India, I had wondered aloud on Twitter, whether condom brands like KS, Moods or even a deo brand like Axe – whose communication is all about attracting people (the female gender so far, since its a deo for men) – would use the occasion to provide a bit of a twist in their standard advertisements. As expected, none of them did. Which led me to wonder on the maturity of audiences and those of brands. (‘maturity’ for the lack of a better word, a more elaborate description follows)

    From an experience in an earlier place of work, when we had played on the visuals of Sai Baba and Jimi Hendrix and talked about music and religion, I have seen the fear that marketers have about how the consumer will react to a communication that could be taken as offbeat. In the case above, one could argue about hurting sentiments of followers (Sai Baba’s, according to the client, Hendrix’, worried the copywriter 😀 ), but there really wasn’t anything derogatory. Now that may be a subjective reaction, so let’s go back to the initial example. I’m reasonably sure that even if KS/Moods/Axe had thought of this, they might have decided not to pursue it.

    Is that because of a simple positioning mismatch that they perceive, or is it a fear to push the boundaries, of what they perceive as acceptable to their audience? Something that goes against the image they have created. But, as we keep discussing here, consumers are moving on. They talk to each other, and share their experiences about the brand, which may or may not work in advantage of the brand.

    Meanwhile, I recently read an article in the New York magazine, which got me thinking quite a bit on this subject. The article was titled ‘Say Everything‘, and talked about what the author perceived to be the largest generation gap since the hippie generation. While the extreme scenarios outlined in the article- of the kind of photos and complete transparency, of thinking of themselves as having an audience, of archiving their adolescence, of having a thicker skin than earlier generations- may not be what the average youth indulges in in his community, it does point to a generation which is growing increasingly uninhibited with sharing more and more of themselves with others on the net. The author points out that with surveillance cameras, transaction tracking etc becoming the norm, this complete transparency approach might be a saner route.

    In fact aren’t FB/Twitter status updates, and even online journals that many in my generation indulge in, also cases of living for an audience? The details of what they share might vary when compared to a younger user set, but this seems to be a trend that may not be scaled back, and in all possibilities, would increase. With the social tools that keep improving the ways to communicate, and share, can brands afford to cling to the kind of communication that they are used to delivering to the audience?

    In another article I read, YouTube blogger Kristina Horner, who was criticised for working with Ford Fiesta, makes a wonderfully simple, yet passionate argument that for “both bloggers and brands to be successful they need to accept that traditional advertising is not-effective (and even rejected) and that publishers like Kristina can find a win-win situation where a brand supports their work without compromise.”

    Would being completely transparent (yes, that is a bit of a redundancy, i guess) ensure that brands get a fair deal from the people they communicate to? Like I read in another context, would transparency fulfill the function that objectivity is supposed to?  But as always, transparency is not something that can operate only in communication, it moves to product, and many other functions within the organisation. So, as more and more consumers realise what Kristina has articulated so well, shouldn’t brands also take some initiative in changing themselves, and collaborating with their consumers?  That would take some maturity, i guess. 🙂

    until next time, audible audiences

    PS. For those missing the Tool Aid that is the blog’s staple diet, here are a few interesting reads

    The Sysomos in depth Twitter study that places India in the top 10 countries in which Twitter has been growing.

    The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing report.

    The Wetpaint/ Altimeter list of the world’s most engaging brands, and how there might be a link between engagement and financial performance

  • Its trending, trending..gone

    Much of last week’s discussions online revolved around some interesting news about, well, Twitter 🙂 . From the Twitpocaypse scare (“it will happen because the unique identifier –a signed integer, associated with each tweet will exceed 2,147,483,647 which is the limit of signed integers. At this point many of the third party clients for Twitter could either malfunction or crash if they are not coded to handle this problem”), which has been averted, to the Harvard study that brought out, among other things, the fact that 10% users contribute to 90% of tweets, Twitter, as is it is prone to these days, has been in the thick of the action. Facebook did have its own share of the spotlight thanks to the vanity url, but let’s save that discussion for another day. 🙂

    But among all this, the news that interested me was that Twitter’s rate of growth – that has been giving graph watchers neck cricks so far, thanks to stellar growth, seems to have flattened drastically at 1.47%, even as Facebook continues to grow at a healthy 8.54%. Though I did expect this to happen at some point, the timing was quite surprising, especially since Twitter has been getting a lot of mainstream attention these days, and even brands (most recently Pepsi) have been promoting it. I wonder if I could correlate this with the recent usage of Twitter (self fulfilling trends and ‘Spymaster’, for example) which has contributed to the reduction of my usage considerably. Back to that in a while.

    When i read that statistic, I couldn’t help but remember the article I had come across a few days back titled “Why Things become unpopular“. “According to the results, the quicker a cultural item rockets to popularity, the quicker it dies. This pattern occurs because people believe that items that are adopted quickly will become fads, leading them to avoid these items, thus causing these items to die out.”  I have to wonder if this applies to Twitter, Facebook and the other similar services. Now, for this result to not apply, there has to be obviously some utility that makes it go beyond a fad.

    Facebook seems to be in quite a good growth phase (even excluding the high growth coming from its international success). Does this have anything to do with the relative non-anonymity inherent in the service and the relatively limited number of uses that a majority of its users care to indulge in. In other words, is the Twitter user’s relative anonymity (which might be dealt with soon with Verified accounts) and lack of a specific purpose proving to be a disadvantage for the service? The trends, aimless banter could thus be a manifestation of the latter? Of course, all this would be irrelevant if this is just a minor glitch in its growth story. But meanwhile, if users were signing on, not finding the service to be of value, and then conveying this in discussions (WOM), wouldn’t it result in such dismal growth? Also remember that a recent study pegged the non returning users at some 60%. I, for one am still a Twitter user, but my ‘conversion’ rate is a dismal 1 in 10. And in the remaining 9, at least 6 are fairly active on FB. Ok, maybe its just me. 🙂

    Moving further, I also wonder about the impact of this finding on brands and their strategies. Is it fair to assume that, earlier, in a relatively less connected world,  trends and fads took more time to be formed, and therefore had lasting power. In today’s hyper connected world, a viral phenomenon reaches the peak of its popularity in no time. So what does this imply for brands, keeping in mind the perspective that Twitter, FB, You Tube etc are great platforms for virals. I would also like to question the ‘inherent value’ of a fad in earlier times, compared to now. Is it lesser? Say, a particular hairstyle vs a viral video on You Tube? Apples and pineapples, but still..? Meanwhile, assuming brands provide a great value proposition, do they make themselves hotbeds of trends, or do they look for longer lasting cycles? Is a balance possible? Given the frantic pace of technological advancement and its impact on lifestyles, would the audience really care about trends stretched over a long time, so is maximum reach in minimum time the way to go? From a business as well as brand objective point of view? Would that signal the end of organic communities? This decision could have implications on brands’ communication strategy, if not anything else.

    until next time, trend setter or follower?