Category: Digital

  • Brands – real and virtual frontiers

    A few months back, I had written about the Balkanisation of the internet, in which I had asked how a  brand could deal with the surge of not just new services, but new platforms too. A few days back, I thought of this from a (slightly oblique) user point of view and remembered incidents spread across years – a few years back, one morning, when I was thankful on seeing a CCD in Colva, Goa while I was hunting for breakfast options because I knew exactly what to expect in a CCD menu; last year, when I visited a mall in Cochin, and realised that I could more or less predict the brands that would be present there; on television, the increasing popularity of US TV shows and how channels seem to be working to sync a global audience in terms of seasons; (forget torrents for now) and how, a meme on Twitter or Facebook is many a time global in appeal and interesting apps on iPhone/Android platforms are discussion points across geographies and in general, an increasingly growing population is 'in touch' and having similar sensibilities.

    The themes here from the real world experiences to virtual ones are homogeneity, and of a user's preference (in many cases) for familiarity. Which makes me turn back the question on balkanisation

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    . Despite the balkanisation, do new platforms accelerate a homogeneity within a certain demographic?  The rate of upward mobility notwithstanding, do you think, at some point, popular culture and preferences will become homogenous globally? eg. say Angry Birds, Dexter, Bieber hatred…

    Meanwhile, since the time I switched to Android – a few months ago, I have noticed that services like Facebook, Twitter, 4sq and the Google range, are working hard to ensure that users can move seamlessly across different platforms – web, mobile web, apps, tablets. While that doesn't absolve the brands from having to understand the workings of different platforms, consumption patterns and how they could provide the user an interesting experience in these contexts, it does provide some relief.

    Few brands have been known to get regional nuances right in communication. Now, along with location and location based marketing becoming center-stage, there is an added challenge. Not only do they have to get the nuances right in their communication, but they also have to provide consistency in the value offering (not the same as being static) in experiences across platforms. That is a long stretch from blasting messages across traditional media platforms.

    until next time, brand-owned platforms?

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  • Social Shops

    One of the trends I think will catch on in the next few years is social commerce, despite the buzz. 🙂 Though word-of-mouth has always been around, newer technologies provide scope for newer manifestations. At this point, social commerce is seen as many things – from f-commerce to group buying/daily deals to virtual merchandise to social + affiliate marketing to social media reviews to shop-together applications, and so on. In essence, any usage of social platforms/applications/media for commerce, and  brands are using/creating these basis their objectives and understanding of the space.

    The buzz has been there for quite a while now. To take a few recent examples, JWT’s 100 things to watch in 2011 had at least a couple of obvious manifestations – F-commerce (35), Group Manipulated Pricing (4) and more in terms of enablers and related items. (come to that in a bit) Trendwatching’s May 2011 trend is The F-Factor – “that’s F for friends, fans, followers who influence consumers’ purchasing decisions in ever more sophisticated ways”, in which they classify this further into discovery, rating, feedback, together, and ‘me’, the last one about curation itself becoming a product/service.

    There are several technologies that will aid this trend in various capacities. Again, to refer to JWT’s deck everything from Automated Checkins (6) to Micro Businesses (51) NFC (56) to Personal Taste Graphs (67) to Tap To Pay (88) can play a direct or indirect part. Add to this increasing smartphone penetration and its impact on purchasing behaviour (check out a study by Google) and interesting services like Localmind, which uses 4sq check ins and location to help users engage in Q&A, or LocalResponse, that uses tweets and check-in data to create a marketing platform for brands to target consumers in real time. and this is sure to be an interesting space with plenty of $$ involved.

    That (obviously) explains why the usual suspects are making strides – Facebook with its check-in deals and Social deals and more importantly increasing the scope and penetration of Connect, Open Graph, Instant Personalisation (though), Google with its Latitude, Offers, expansion of Product Search to more countries (via) and even its fashion shop, Amazon with its new membership-only fashion sales site and so on.

    But more than these services, the applications that interest me are from the ‘real’ products that I come across. Levi’s remains one of my favourites. And the one that excited me much was Pepsi’s Social Vending Machine. It allows a user to buy a drink for your friend and add a personal video message while at it. After you provide the friend’s name and number, he receives a text message with a code which he can redeem at the nearest vending machine and watch that video you made. (via) Probably a gawky start, some would say, but think of the potential applications.

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

    It’s not that there won’t be challenges – privacy is the obvious one. Brands will also have to be careful about their natural tendency for broadcasting and aim to be relevant in time and other contexts. They will also have to integrate offline and online well. But despite these and more that might crop up, I think this will be fun with its synergy with Social CRM and its perspective on the answer to that omnipresent social media ROI question. 🙂

    Bonus read: Paul Adams on How your customers’ social circles influence what they buy, what they do and where they go

    until next time, social bill sharing? 😉

    PS: Interestingly, Coke had a friendship machine of its own too

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj3QLLTFDX8

  • Evolution of Enterprise 2.0

    In the last post  – on defining social collaboration – I had also applied it in the context of social business. It was a brief mention and I did describe it as a utopian thought at this stage. However it reminded me of a debate late last year on Social Business and Enterprise 2.0, because ‘collaborative tools’ found mention then. The reasons for the debate notwithstanding, it was still interesting.

    It began with a post from Andrew McAfee, written in favor of Enterprise 2.0 and in which he pretty much called ‘social business’ geriatric. 🙂 Stowe Boyd shot back with this post, giving his definition of social business and insisting that the nomenclature was important.In keeping with my generally agreeable nature, I subscribe to parts of both thoughts. Social business as an idea is indeed old, but its adoption has been patchy at best. The ‘social’ tools of this era can enable greater, better and more consistent adoption, as there is indeed much potential for synthesis when people, processes and technology meet. Because of this, the manifestation of ‘social business’ would be new.

    But in my mind, there is quite a dichotomy between Social Business and Enterprise 2.0 anyway, primarily because of intent, and therefore the way they’re pitched as ideas. To use them interchangeably would be doing injustice to both. Enterprise 2.0 focuses on using social technologies to address the objectives of the organisation. But Social Business has a larger role and (for the purpose of a direct comparison) would involve setting organisational objectives with a social-societal perspective and a purpose that people can identify with. In Hugh MacLeod’s words, “the need to belong  to something that matters”.

    Is one better than the other? I don’t think so and it is perhaps not an apt comparison. Enterprise 2.0 is perhaps a better fit (relatively) to the current organisational frameworks, while Social Business is much more radical. But it is quite possible that over a period of time, an organisation that adopts Enterprise 2.0 will transform into a Social Business. As for social collaboration, it is a process that can fit well into both.

    until next time, a social enterprise 🙂

  • Social Collaboration eg.

    My friend via Twitter, Prem, (twice over, because both his handles are friends :D) got me thinking on ‘Social Collaboration’ ever since he wrote this post, attempting to define the term as used by its vendors. Despite a good discussion in the comments, a definition proved elusive. Though I began to agree with Prem’s assessment that ‘social’ was redundant, Gautam’s post on it did offer an interesting line of thought –  that ‘social collaboration’ was emergent. He illustrates it with an example too. This was vaguely similar to one one of the ways in which I had tried to define the phrase, before I gave up. Here are the attempts.

    The first was by tying it to the idea of a ‘social business’ (not the wiki one, but the Dachis group version), where 2 or more businesses collaborate on an objective that may be larger/ unrelated to their individual objectives. Obviously, this is more utopian than any vendor’s idea, so I dropped it.

    Which led me to the second attempt, where I thought  the tools of the (enterprise) social web would enable social interaction in various contexts and collaboration would be one of the products. (Probably like what Krish Ashok is building at TCS?) This would be around the premise that Gautam presented – even identifying the need would be the result of the social interactions and collaboration would follow.

    While on this, I was reminded of Google Wave, where each participant could ‘drag’ people into a conversation. There were several instances when I, as an initiator of the conversation, did not have any control over the quantity or quality of the participants or even the morphing of the intent. I was also reminded of the last paragraph of this post I wrote in 2008, when Yammer came into the limelight – “..a bridge between Yammer and Twitter. One service that allows absolute transparent conversations within the organisations, and another that allows brands and organisations to be transparent with its end users.”A one way channel did open later. If any collaborator could ‘drag’ in another collaborator from a social web outside of the enterprise’ social web eg. a customer from Twitter, could that be social collaboration? On a related note, I also remember another post of mine when I came across Memolane and wrote about brand-streams connecting consumers and the enterprise. A couple of days back Memolane released an embeddable version which it hopes will be adopted by organisations.

    Alternately/further, could it be like what happened right now – where neither Prem nor Gautam invited me to collaborate, but I did nevertheless, inserting myself into it thanks to having access to their thoughts, having a take (hopefully) on a thought Prem started and being able to connect it back to them. (forget Twitter, their blogs will have trackbacks) Even if they do ignore me and refuse to collaborate, my take would still exist, available to all who might be interested? That’s probably not what the sellers intended of ‘social collaboration’, but could that be what it evolves into?

    I don’t know, and that’s why for now, I have parked this aside. 🙂

    until next time, continue collaborating..

    PS: Bonus Read – How Cisco integrates social media into the organisation

    PPS: Back in a fortnight 🙂

  • Lady Gaga, Identity and Flexible Persistence

    Though the Old Spice man campaign (earlier post) was famed for its creativity, the other important part about it was the near real-time operations involved. More recently, I read about Kraft’s plans to turn 5 chosen tweets into TV ads for its Macaroni & Cheese product. Even more interesting was Coke getting Maroon5 to compose a song in 24 hours, with “inspiration and collaboration from fans” on Twitter. They performed it on March 23rd and Coke released it for free on April 1st. On reaching 100000 downloads, they will also make a donation to an organisation working on providing clean water in Africa. (via, there is another example too, from the fashion industry)

    Real time can be cool, and then I read this article on ‘Accelerated Cool‘, an interesting take on how to keep up in a scenario where a trend is replaced almost as soon as you hear of it. Their answer – “be yourself”, because then “You are owning your identity and embracing the rawness of pure, unfiltered, self”.

    Is this an option for brands? An interesting perspective I thought of was a personal brand – no, not Bieber or Rebecca Black, thank you but (predictably) Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga, who wowed folks at Google and Twitter recently, interviewed by Ev and Marissa Mayer respectively, and answered a viewer question on “Stefani” (her real name) with “This is me. Gaga is just a nickname.” Her song “Born This Way”, viewed a record (until Black’s Friday happened) 24 million times on YouTube, is incidentally about identity. (via)

    But a Lady Gaga cannot scale beyond a person. So, with existing platforms in a constant state of flux, and new ones appearing with a unique set of rules regularly, the answer for a brand is not simple, especially when consumers have the tools to amplify the brand’s #win and #fail and the economics of attention do not usually allow second chances. There is always a choice – to take an example of logos, revert to the old logo like Gap, or stick to their guns, like Syfy. (via)

    I’d say that brands have to find their purpose, from it would evolve the identity, and its manifestation across contexts and platforms then needs to be planned, governed by what LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman would call ‘flexible persistence’. “The art is knowing when to be persistent and when to be flexible and how to blend them.” (via) The science would come from the tons of data – real time and otherwise (earlier post) that is being generated and will continue to grow in volume. The trick, as usual, is in balancing the identity and the context, and if that is done, the brand can play with real time as easily as Neo does with the Matrix. Damn, that example is a dozen years old!

    until next time, identity kits