Category: Strategy

  • Change 2.0

    The world, or at least most of it, has been applauding the success of Obama’s social media strategy, stating it as one of the big pillars of his victory, and rightfully so. A look at his homepage would tell you that he is very well connected to the social media scene – ‘Obama Everywhere’. ‘Organise Locally’ (my.barackobama.com) and “Welcome Hillary supporters. Get involved” are two things that impressed me much, the signs of a man who knows wants to carry people along. StartUp Meme has a post on the Facebook stats of Obama’s activities. Obama has 4 times as many supporters as McCain on Facebook.

    Meanwhile, in the case of blogs, 500 million blog posts for Obama vs 150 million for McCain. The ratio is almost 4:1 again. On MySpace, 844,927  friends for Obama compared to McCain’s 219,404. On Twitter, Obama 118,107, John McCain’s Twitter followers amount to 4942.(all data courtesy RWW, and Trendrr) On an aside, Trendrr seems to be a neat service, will use it more, and post.

    And for those who thought that this brilliant use of social media was a campaign stunt (as many brands tend to), Obama has launched Change.gov. (via Mashable), where he is attempting to have conversations, right from asking people to share their election stories and their vision for America, to outlining his own agenda. The two properties of the social web I find most appealing – transparency, and the wisdom of crowds.

    But social media, after all is a tool. Yes, a tool which can take the brand to great heights, but only if it has a strong product/brand at its foundation. And there lies the brilliance of brand Obama. Adage has a great article by Al Ries on the attributes that made Obama’s campaign a colossal hit – Simplicity (of the keyword – change), Consistency (create and maintain the positioning of ‘change’ agent, so that the word is associated with him more than others), Relevance (forcing the competitors to fight on your comfort ground). I was also very impressed with this article on afaqs by Vijay Sankaran, which gave 10 lessons that marketers could learn from Obama. Excellent lessons all, i especially liked the one about relinquishing control.

    The brand was so strong that several of my friends became fans of Obama on Facebook. On election day, I saw a photo of college kids in bangalore wearing Obama tees, and carrying Obama placards.

    As a person in India, the real benefits that Obama can get me are not much, but in addition to becoming America’s messiah, he might have also become social media’s messiah, and virtually, nothing could make me happier than a web 2.0 champion who happens to be the President of America. Yes, Obama, we can!!!!

    until next time, i hope change is a constant

    PS. For those reading this, make a start, join ‘Connected Indians‘. Hopefully we can change India too.

  • Where’s the movie tonight?

    Google has been struggling to get some money out of You Tube for sometime now, and a few days back,  introduced ‘Paid Search’ in You Tube. They appear on the right hand of the page and one small image and Google Adwords style text ads, as ‘Promoted Videos’. These link to the advertiser’s channel on You Tube itself, and sometimes to their homepage. You Tube has anyway been a fertile ground for viral campaigns. This should well work for branding, leads remains to be seen, since (unlike Paid search) users are only looking to be entertained on You Tube. On an aside, they also have a deal with CBS now to play CBS programs on the site, and Google TV advertising.

    The latest monetising attempt from You Tube is click to buy. (via Marketing Pilgrim) If you happen to see a good music video on YouTube, and are wondering where you can buy the track, there are Amazon and iTunes links nearby to help you out. As of now, this works only in the US, but of course, this is only a start and Google will work on scaling this up for additional content and product partners, and international users. I wonder how this will affect the distribution model of sites that promote indie music? On another front, Facebook is plotting a move into the digital music business.

    Meanwhile, closer home, Medianama recently carried a story of Landmark making a foray into online music sales, with a ‘pay per song’ model. I agree with the article and wonder how this model can work with piracy that’s so rampant. I wonder if someone would try out the Popcuts model, about which i’d written about earlier. Otherwise, mobile seems to be the only way for digital music.

    While audio seems a tough place, there is definitey some action happening in the video space. Here’s a review of Moviemart, an online DVD rental company, and a report on the DVD rental market in India, on Trak.in. I also came across the news of Hulla’s release on BigFlix, simultaneously with its release in cinemas. I think Vivah was the pioneer in this.

    With DVD rental companies getting their distribution in place, online video sharing sites figuring out revenue models, and DTH, with its ‘movie halls’, increasing its penetration, I wonder if we’ll see the simultaneous release of mainstream Bollywood and regional movies on DVD, DTH & online (a pay per view model) and cinema screens. I’ll be particularly interested in the online piece – a social angle to it by tying Bigflix with Big Adda, and involving movie communities to do word of mouth publicity, ‘invites only’ premieres and so on? Perhaps a virtual multiplex screening on Second Life later? 🙂

    until next time, so many tubes..

  • Don’t shoot the messenger….yet

    A few weeks back, I’d written about Yahoo India’s TVC for Search. I was not impressed, because I felt that the ‘need for speed’ in search could easily be portrayed without making fun of a speech impediment. A few days back, I happened to see another TVC, this one for Yahoo Messenger.

    To its credit, it does manage to create some suspense with the one eyed character, and you wonder where all this is leading to, especially since there are things that suggest a certain line of thought. The ending, however falls flat when it turns out that there is nothing more than a  ‘It pays to know people better’ positioning communication. It plugs the revamped Messenger, with picture, music and video sharing, and friends’ activity updates.

    I also read a couple of days back that Yahoo profiles was being evolved into a social network. You can read about more of their plans here.  If Yahoo is serious about social networking, then I wonder if Yahoo will link some of its very popular properties, which together could create a formidable entity. A social network that utilises photo sharing flickr communities, the delicious link sharing communities, Messenger, Yahoo Launch for music sharing communities, and upcoming for geographical connect. The potential is enormous since all these are extremely popular in their own right, but yes, a star studded team need not be the best. What do you think?

    until next time, some greater than sum..

  • Everybody, Friendfeed, right now!!

    In a way, Friendfeed’s latest offering has revolutionised my usage of social media services. My experiments with FF had been limited since Twitter used to give me a fair amount of good conversations on various subjects of interest – from Bollywood to advertising campaigns to social media to social issues. I didn’t see any value that Friendfeed could’ve added, inspite of it being an aggregator of several services i use including blogs, Google Reader, delicious, Linked In, twitter, Google Talk status messages and recently last.fm among others.

    With every new service, I’ve needed a catalyst to use the service more. With delicious, it was the toolbar plugin, with Facebook, it was the critical mass of friends to get me in there, and then apps like Scrabulous. With Twitter, it was the browser plugin. I’ve been lax on most services which make me open a separate web page. And that was the case with Friendfeed, Kwippy and Social Median. These three, because they are excellent services which i should ideally have used more. A quick plug for the last two before we move on.

    Kwippy, a very neat Indian startup, about whom I’d written about a few months back, has moved on from a ‘twitter like service’ to a great place to have focused discussions. It has an awesome crowd too. But I do wish they’d work on a few things I had mentioned in the earlier post. Critical since information overload is bound to cause a consolidation soon. Social Median, with whom i was very impressed, and had written about sometime back, is a great filtering service that connects you to people and topics, by sharing links that interests you, and then have conversations around them. You can also create customised news networks on topics you’re interested in and then add sources. It is well connected with other networks and even has a toolbar plugin that allows easy sharing of links. In a sense, it works better than FF on many fronts.

    And so, back to the catalyst. Last week, FF added a new feature – real time updates. What it does is that it helps me get instant reactions to the things I have shared via various other services. It can be anything from a comment to a blog post to a photo to a tweet to a Google Reader shared item. One small snag i see in the real time interface is the lack of bundling that the standard view of FF provides. It could mean I miss out comments and end up replying to them much later. I also have issues with my Google Reader shared items since they aren’t reflecting on ‘real time’. And lastly, why can’t I include my Facebook statuses??!!

    A look at how all this affects my usage of other services. Twitter Search has real time updates for specific queries, and as Louis Gray points out about FF, “the team hasn’t yet connected its capability to search or keyword filtering, which, if ever delivered, could be a body blow to Twitter search.” (via The Inquisitr). Now,  when i see a friend’s tweet on FF and decide to comment on it on FF, i am given an option to also send an @reply to twitter. How about pulling all the @manuscrypts tweets live for me on FF and giving me the same option?

    My usage of Google Reader as a sharing device was limited. I have noticed that with real time FF, that has increased. I am sure that will also influence the posts I do here. Meanwhile, I can use FF to share links, with a comment. I can also choose the room I want to share it in. What does this mean to Delicious and Social Median, especially if FF can bring the easy search (and tags) features of delicious and the functionality and interface of rooms is jazzed up to the levels of Social Median?

    With conversations happening everywhere, the need for aggregators will only increase, and whatever be your take on noise (there’s a great note here) a service like Friendfeed can only help. It’d be interesting to see the other services’ reactions to real time.

    until next time, when there’s information overload, a friend in need…..

  • Social Branding (3 of 3)

    I’d mentioned in my last post on the subject, about a study which showed that 93% of online Americans wanted companies to have a social media presence, and believed these companies also should be interacting with consumers through social media, with one third of the younger set saying that companies should actively market to them on social media. 

    Of course, we have a different scene here in India, from what I read in WATBlog’s report on the IAMAI Digital Marketing summit, with marketers hesitating to go beyond the performance based model . I personally believe both the performance based model as well as a more ‘social’ model have their uses. To put it simply, the former is tactical, and the latter is strategic. But, I agree that it is difficult to sell the latter.

    Like I mentioned once, the measurability of the net as a medium is a double edged sword. I mean, which marketer can measure how many people saw a particular billboard, a particular ad (print or television) or heard a radio spot. The first is at best a judgment, and the rest, an approximation based on reach figures. There is zilch accountability in all cases, but the net has to be measured, even if the spend is 1% of the other media. Perhaps the fundamental love for quick, short term results that envelops the rest of marketing is prevalent here too. But yes, in the end, the intent/objective of the activity should decide the strategy in any medium.

    The best part about social media is that it allows the marketer the flexibility to do both kinds of activities. On one hand, you could be having twitter conversations, interacting on Facebook groups/profiles, and building communities ( a good how to note here)  keeping the brand strategy in view, and on the other hand, you could be running interesting promos on say, YouTube. Here is another study by iPerceptions that shows customer online ad preferences. (via Wild Blue Skies) There are independent tools being developed that measure the efficacy of  video campaigns – Visible Measures is an example, so its about time more companies got viral. I saw a few good digital promos that I’d like to share. (all US based)

    Chevrolet offered up to 10 free rides a day to college students on six campuses in a Chevy Aveo5 hatchback and filming the experience. They are then loaded on a special site, from where it can be shared on other platforms. Finalists are chosen from each college and then one grand winner will get a car. Read all about it here.  

    For their product ‘Dragon’, HP did a promo called 31 days of the Dragon. As part of this, they contacted 31influential tech bloggers to give away 31 laptops in 31 days. Each blogger ran a contest according to his rules, but also publicised others running the contest. With 3,80,000 links and 25000 entries, I would count it a success. (via Marketing Pilgrim)

    And these days the biggest marketer online is after all Obama. He’s got himself an iPhone app, which enables you to call your friends prioritized by their location in battleground states. That nothing works better than peer recommendation is a smart understanding. Read about it here.

    Nokia has a new and interesting promo running at somebody else’s phone. I wonder if its a new phone or something else altogether. The Facebook profiles of the characters don’t offer me any clue. Anyway, we’ll know in about 4 days.

    I read a post here, about an agency Modernista, that does not have a website. Big deal, you would say, most agencies here don’t have one, but the twist here is that its website is a ‘Wikipedia’ page that uses the resources of the web (Flickr, YouTube etc) to showcase its work. Its a great and radical thought, which definitely breaks the clutter.

    Lastly, take a look at this article, which talks about branded iGoogle themes. And here’s a superb compilation of companies that have used social media, but while in social media, beware of the cliches in digital marketing, especially social media. After all, Gartner has projected that over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. But, he added in an interview with CNET News, 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures. (via a must read article) A similar small but useful note on Twitter usage can be found here. 

    As Chris Brogan has rightly written, social media is like phones, its a new (possibly better) tool, but the most important part is how it is used to reach consumers in a better way.

    The sad part is that there is still a tendency to choose easier ways of getting this job done, than getting a clear understanding of the medium and using it to the brand’s advantage. Here’s an article that talks about ways of ‘handling’ online reputation. The CEO of one such company that does this job for brands talked about cribbing sites like Mouthshut!! I wonder when these ‘practitioners’ would understand a few things – one, usually customers write negative things because they feel strongly; two, you cannot control the conversations on the web; and lastly, if companies made good products and provided good service, the same customers would write good things!! 

    until next time, be the change you want to see?