Category: Digital

  • 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? 😉

  • 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 🙂

  • The changing face of search

    The last week saw some frenetic activity in the online space – a few events that are not just going to cause a shift in the way we search and share online, but could possibly impact the direction in which the web develops henceforth. These are very very interesting developments, and not just from a technology standpoint. Apparently, if we go by this, our brain is hard-wiring us to  love Google, Twitter and texting. That will change the way we evolve as a species. But meanwhile…

    Facebook began the week by acquiring Friendfeed (FB, FF – BFF), something I’d hoped that Twitter would do. For those not familiar with the service, its a neat aggregator of most of your activities online (blogs, twitter, facebook, delicious, flickr, YouTube…) and allows others to comment, share, like, search. Yes, most of those features that Facebook has been adding have been lifted from Friendfeed. For several reasons, the service, though extremely useful, has remained geeky.

    The integration is bound to be tricky. While Friendfeed is used mostly as an aggregator (though some publish content exclusively there), Facebook thrives on ‘original’ content. Also, there are features on FF that don’t have a parallel on FB, and perhaps users too. I have different user names on both places, and there are very few who are friends of mine on both networks, and for a reason. I wouldn’t want to import my network on FF to FB. Also, I don’t import all of my content on FB. In many ways FF was my ‘private’ aggregator,  a place where I could aggregate without making it too public. Adapting that on FB would require a lot of settings work. FF’s stream and its approach to updates is also different from FB. So it is quite possible that integration will not happen. But the Friendfeed ‘brain bank’ – people who had earlier made GMail, co-founded Google Maps, is unquestionably an asset, and one part of me won’t mind the fact that the acquisition will perhaps ensure that the innovations will reach a wider audience, and perhaps speed up the learning curve of casual social media users. The other part hopes that they will leave this version of FF intact too, even if it is as FB Labs.

    Facebook’s ‘Lite’ also caused a stir, as several users saw an announcement that they were the chosen ones to test it out, though it turned out to be an accident, but that meant that all of us got to see a preview. It turns out to be a lighter, faster-loading version of Facebook, designed to give new users (especially from countries with lesser broadband access) a simple experience to begin with.

    Facebook also launched real time search around the same time, and the ability to search shared (friends and public shared) news feeds (of the past 30 days) – status updates, photos, links, updates, Fan pages, with the option of filters, is quite a huge step. In many ways, FB is ‘forcing’ people to be more public to derive the maximum advantage out of the service. As Steve Rubel correctly points out, it has major implications on our consumption of content, making us ‘source agnostic’, which we are already, to a certain extent. Also, as he mentions, the impact of Facebook Connect in this equation means that the net is cast wider. The important factor in this, and the reason why i feel Google needs to take a long hard look at this is because there is a people filter here, in addition to the algorithm – news feeds of friends, people who have chosen to share their FB content publicly, means that it works as a kind of endorsement, a personally tested good source. That might potentially be better than Google’s spiders. I am not even bringing Twitter Search into the equation because if FB uses FF correctly and gets a majority of Twitter users to get their tweets into FB (store all but dipslay selectively), then the uniqueness of Twitter Search is gone. Besides FB has a much larger user base anyway.

    Yes, Google is watching, flexing its muscles, and developing a few new ones too. On the day that Facebook dropped its big news, Google also unveiled the next generation of its own search – Caffeine. According to them, “It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.” More than an upgrade, it seems like completely new architecture, and will change the way Google indexes pages, and these changes also include real-time. Meanwhile, its also playing with new forms of product ads.

    Google is also getting a bot more serious about ‘social’, and that is perhaps the reason behind iGoogle getting a facelift with 18 new widgets on the homepage. I’m not too much of a user of this service, but according to RWW, Google is slowly unleashing the services built on OpenSocial, and trying to make iGoogle the hub of a user’s Google activities, and sigh, there’s quite a lot of them. There are Facebook like update feeds (of friends), a share-able To Do gadget, a Scrabble gadget (hmm, that’s appealing) among other things. But the integration is not complete as shown by the YouTube widget and the absence of a Reader widget. But as I always say, the potential, if they actually manage to integrate all of this, and then add Wave features on top of it, is scary. But perhaps (since the social graph – i.e. who sees your comments and shares, is different) iGoogle is not meant to be connected with others.

    The last announcement from Google was on the subject of Reader. In addition to the recent social developments, now reader items can be shared easily to other networks including Twitter, Facebook, Digg, MySpace, Blogger etc. Also, some tweaks in the ‘Mark all as read’ feature make it a lot more useful now. You can read the details here. But hey, Google, how about bringing Reader closer to real time?

    Meanwhile, in the midst of these killer shark wars, the ‘whale’ boys have their own bogeymen. In addition to the wave of DSoS attacks, and the fact that Facebook grew twice as fast in July, the Gartner Hype Cycle white paper for 2009, has stated that microblogging has tipped over the peak and are about to enter the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’. But I am not sure I agree with that. Microblogging, as Seth Godin once stated (about Twitter) is a protocol (nailed it brilliantly!!), what gets transmitted across it is a variable. Its news and links now, and who knows, a smart user/set of users might figure out something else tomorrow that would cause yet another disruption. Perhaps Gartner meant it only in the current context of usage. Twitter has just announced phase one of Project Retweet, which is aimed at changing the way the format of RT works and looks. While it does pose some inconvenience – we are used to the current RT @ format and will perhaps take some time to get used to seeing just the original tweet with a small ‘RT by’ (reminds me of Friendfeed’s ‘Like’), I am hoping that the open API means the developers will deliver to us some useful stuff (Retweets by/to me, of my tweets timelines, the lessening of clutter, as Mashable points out) But honestly, these seem to be small efforts when compared to those of Google and FB.

    Interesting indeed. Rather than conspicuous face offs, Facebook and Google are warily circling each other, and launching and tweaking services that  test out each others’ stranglehold on areas. An elaborate game of chess, that doesn’t look like it will end anytime soon. Stalemate? Though it could be argued that there is space for both, I am inclined to think that the margin of advantages between the leader and the second best will be very high. The battle is for understanding consumer intent and making a revenue stream out of it. Google did that without much competition with search, until specific competition (Bing), real time and social media made threatening noises. Facebook’s appeal was on both those fronts, and now Google is making advances there. But Google is rich and now even has a browser with which it can define the starting point and direction of a user’s web experience, while Facebook revenues are still iffy. Facebook users have shared so much of content inside the ‘walled garden’ that it’ll be difficult to get out even if they desire. Not that Google is an angel on that count.  (You must see this hilarious Onion video – Google’s opt out village) And now with Friendfeed, FB can lay its hands on Google content too – YouTube, Blogger etc can all be pulled into Facebook. But if they rub users the wrong way while trying to accelerate revenues, one can never say.

    What would I like to see? Microsoft buying out Facebook. Perhaps then, we’ll have a fight that’s really too difficult to call.

    until next time, which service is your BFF? 🙂

    Bonus Read: John Borthwick’s ‘The rise of social distribution networks‘.