Category: Digital

  • 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…..

  • Locally cold, globally cool

    Like I commented here,  my reaction to Coke’s latest TVC is one of its own iconic tag lines – Thanda Matlab Coca Cola. The ad, which tries to showcase that Coke, in the festive season of Diwali brings family, friends and even strangers together, left me absolutely cold. While the earlier Hrithik commercial was far from impressive, its tag line – Jashn Mana Le, I thought, would’ve been a great fit here, wonder why they didn’t continue the thought.

    Coke has, in the past, done some great contextual stuff. I recently came across an old ad of theirs that used the premise of Grand Theft Auto, and did a neat twist to the character, who does good deeds instead of bad ones, and says that ‘Give a little Love and it all comes back to you in the Coke side of life!’ That seemed to be taking forward the theme of an older ad – “What goes around comes around”. I wonder why the ‘Coke side of life’ has not been utilised here. Actually, even this old Xmas ad of theirs was well worth aping.

    Meanwhile, Coke’s on to a lot of good things otherwise. I recently read about its efforts to go green. This  TVC, which aims to spread awareness of the fact that Coke is made without any artificial flavours. is a part of this effort. They recently launched a range of sustainable tees, made from its recycled PET bottles, and in the recently concluded Olympics, distributed it to athletes. They also partnered with the Olympics organising committee to make sure that all PET plastic bottles collected from all official venues were fully recycled into valuable reuses. Read about more efforts here.

    Coke has also launched The Design Machine, which ensures that its image in markets, across all brands,  around the world reflects the core strategy as far as POS materials go, but allows enough flexibility for localisation. This should allow them to get the perfect mix of glocalisation. You can read the details here.

    And its not just the real world, but they seem to be doing some interesting stuff virtually too. Coketag is a widget that allows users to package and share links across the web. This can be a “blog, work, interests, team, band or whatever you like or care about”. Once the links are shared, you can also track its popularity. The widget can also be shared on Facebook. A good widget to facilitate connecting and sharing, another aspect of ‘the coke side of life’ (via Startup Meme)

    All the above activities are in line with Coke’s position as a market leader. With the advances Coke is making in glocalisation, we can hopefully see the good work happening in other markets being adapted contextually in India. Or we could make better ads here 😐

    until next time, the green side of life..

     

  • Creating Super Brands

    Found an excellent article shared via Reader (thanks to @vimoh) which sought to mash marketing, and more specifically, social media into the life of Superman. Through this example, and three different scenarios, it shows the typical position of an older brand, presented with new competitors and having to cope with a changing media landscape. The article itself is an absolute laugh riot and brings to light the various kinds of social media ‘experts’ operating today, with their own prescriptions for social media triumph. It ends with the simple but (what i consider) correct lesson of staying true to yourself, and doing the best possible you can.

    On a similar context, I found another article that talked about how

    “Soleil-Media Metrics analyst Laura Martin cut her rating on Google to “Hold” from “Buy” and slashed her price target to $350 from $580…saying the company’s practice of giving 10 percent of profits to charity and giving employees one day a week to work on pet projects should end amid the current economic climate………she highlighted another company practice she believes should end – “the confusing myriad of non-revenue producing Google-products in the marketplace.””

    The Google culture has had a tremendous influence on the awesome products that are must-have’s now. Would anyone with that understanding have made a statement like this? I shudder to think what this analyst would say about say, Twitter, if ever it got listed..hmmm

    While I’m definitely not against a revenue model for social media, or an ROI concept for the brands/organisations that involve themselves in social media, I am against the typical Wall Street business analyst’s parameters of returns. Mashable has a good post on figuring out the ROI models in social media. Here is another good post on selling the social media concept in your organisation.

    I absolutely subscribe to this line of thought (via Online Marketing Blog). Applying the regular ROI metrices to social media is going to take away from the essence of what social media is all about. What’s the next step – how do i monetise my relationship with my friend on Facebook?

    Meanwhile, this is a contrarian view on listening to customers, and this is a very interesting read on the busting of Web 2.0. Coming from someone who’s seen it all right from Dotcom Bust 1.0, i think it pays to at least listen.

    If the intent is wrong, social media cannot help. Social media can only help if you have a good product, willingness to involve the users, and accept their feedback to improve the product. If the idea is to simply use social media as just another platform to air commercials/messages, build in templates like ‘corporate blog’ and ‘user generated content’ and then apply typical ROI metrices to track and measure it, social media will disappoint, but a great intent and a great product will have the potential to create a super brand.

    until next time, its a brand new social world…

     

  • 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?

  • Really, Google?

    ….and while there have discussions and rants about the need for brands to start using digital media intelligently, the news is that the greatest internet brand of them all – Google, is all set to do some traditional advertising. Google, which had followed a policy of making good products and then letting WOM do its job, is now thinking of marketing as mere mortals see it. 🙂

    Last week, WSJ carried an article, (via Marketing Pilgrim) which stated that some of its “executives have been pushing for the company to overcome its aversion to paid advertising”. Though the founders don’t seem thrilled about the idea, “the search giant has recently held discussions with several Madison Avenue agencies”. The article also talks about Google having done a ‘100 things you can do with Google’ campaign in Japan, a market which has seen some resistance to the brand’s omnipotence. 

    Google’s annual offline spend has been consistent at about $20 million. But they have always been doing PR, even for the bordering-on-ridiculous GMail Goggles. The launch of the G1 phone, as well as the browser Chrome had a fair bit of PR running for it. Chrome even had a comic book released specifically for its launch. It is said that the brands that tell the best stories manage to gain the maximum mindshare of its audience. Wonder if there’s a correlation 😉

    I think there are a lot of layers to this. The general economy’s slowdown is bound to affect the internet space too, and perhaps the growth is going to plateau. In such a scenario, it is quite possible that Google sees traditional advertising a safe way to get some growth inorganically. After all, thats the way most brands operate. 

    Also, while Google is loved/hated and even seen in awe by netizens, sometimes very little of its aura gets translated into the real world. Perhaps with the real world slowing down, and traditional companies and brands getting hit with budget cuts, this is a good time for Google to take itself to the next level and be seen as a sort of super hero brand that can survive downturns. This is all the more important since rivals like Microsoft and Apple have never shied away from using traditional advertising. 

    Most importantly, and this is something I wish all major web based brands would do, Google, with traditional advertising, could create new audiences by showing them the sheer utility value that it provides. These could even be people who have never used the net before. That would be great news for anyone who wishes well for this medium.

    And therefore, I shall not chant ‘Google is evil’ this once, and cheerlead its foray into traditional advertising.

    until next time, I somehow don’t think Baba Ramdev is Google’s brand ambassador in India, despite this. (via Labnol)