Tag: HP

  • News out of the paper

    Its not exactly breaking news that newspapers are almost in desperation mode now (no, don’t throw ink at me, this is in the US market context) to make sense of the wild wild web, as the very public who used to pay for the print editions now want it on the web, and more importantly for free. An issue that newspapers are still grappling with. So, with fears of revenue models collapsing, RSS feeds, PDF editions, user generated content, podcasts etc are now being force fed into print journalism regular usage. (How American Newspapers Used the Internet in 2008).

    The point to note is that the internet with advertising as a revenue model is not going to be the salvation, web entities which rely on that are also going to be in trouble. There are some experiments happening in the news space online as well – News Mixer is a great example, it aggregates content and has integrated Facebook Connect for users to comment on stories. The integration eliminates anonymous handles and also means that it can highlight the views of your friends so that you can know what their take on a story is. (via RWW) A member of Yahoo’s BOSS team has found a great way to use Twitter’s search function and relevance (different tweets to the same story) for fresh news and come up Tweet News. Ice Rocket’s Big Buzz pulls different live sources (Twitter, Flickr, You Tube etc) on to a single page. (via Steve Rubel) In fact, I see the last one as a sort of threat for Google News – real time news, a scenario which can be extended into the larger context of Google Search soon, because I don’t think Google has cracked real time yet (from what I see around).

    Meanwhile, hyper local entities are being created to fill the gaps being created by local newspapers shutting down. But while the monopolistic doyens are struggling, there is a paradox happening, new media empires might be getting created as web entities are making forays into print- The Printed Blog, is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper in cities across the US aggregating localized blog posts. (via Wired)

    In fact, though the state of the Indian print media is not the same as in the US, the same phenomenon (web to print) is happening here too – Mutiny, which started in 2006, and wants to be India’s Huffington Post, launched its print edition a few months back. Burrp, which started with restaurant reviews, and later expanded into lifestyle events, and TV listings, apparently have a few print plans of their own.

    So there must be potential  in the 2 cents of journalism (Seth Godin’s excellent post on the death of newspapers) even as there is the danger of ‘right now’ news. Seth Godin rightly says that “The web has excelled at breaking the world into the tiniest independent parts.” The challenge for newspapers will be to find the 2 cents that they can provide and people will pay for.

    In India, low figures of net penetration mean that the US levels of ubiquitousness will take a while. But the mobile could be a bigger threat in the short and long term. Various players like SMSGupshup, MyToday, Mobme etc already offer subscription based services, though the source seems to be mainstream media sources. Newspapers have long relied on distribution might to thwart specific competition. But with a digital platform, that is nullified. From my consumption needs, the only thing I cant seem to find online are the hyperlocal news (that also includes local retail deals and discounts – eg. Springfield had a 60% off sale in bangalore last week, try searching for  it online). So far, in India, all the tiny independent parts that Godin has spoken of, haven’t been brought online. In that sense, the net’s utlity is incomplete in an Indian context. The real threat will start when that happens. With their huge network of reporters/other sources, is there a digital revenue model for newspapers in the real-time and/or hyperlocal news space?

    The double whammy for newspapers is brought out due to the fact that advertising is the major revenue source for most newspapers in India. Most of the brand ads that I see in English dailies is targeting the young urban dweller. This segment is becoming increasingly net savvy, and I feel that brands will figure this out in the short term.

    Vernacular dailies might be a better off in this regard, since even if net penetration in their major markets accelerates, (read about the government’s rural internet plans here – CSCs) vernacular content is not yet at challenging levels. (the IAMAI-IMRB report on rural and state of vernacular content in India). There is an opportunity for newspapers here, especially the vernacular ones and even those which can translate English content into vernacular.

    until next time, selling news on platforms

    PS. Toy for you -HP’s Tabbloid – start your own newspaper 😉

  • @ the friends within followers

    Sometime back, I’d written about micro ambassadors, where I’d also touched upon the long tail of twitter influence that is made up by individual users, and marketing opportunities therein. I read a few posts recently that made me think on the subject a bit more.

    Some of the posts referred to a research paper on Twitter, by HP, which reveals that

    the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.

    A few numbers on the respondents (from the study) – 309740 users (this sample is 6% of the twitter universe, info courtesy Jeremiah’s post, the comments on the post are also very interesting), who on an average posted 255 posts, had 85 followers, and followed 80 other users. Among the 309740 users, only 211024 posted at least twice. The average @ replies ( conversations between 2 or more users, specifically mentioned in the tweets) were 25.4% .

    A few findings I thought were interesting. The number of posts increases with the number of followers but saturates after a certain point. However, this saturation does not occur if we consider the number of ‘friends’ (followers with whom a user has had 2 or more @ conversations). The study also shows that on a number of ‘friends’ vs number of followers chart, the number of friends saturate after a certain number of followers is crossed. Understandable, since in a day, one can only have so many conversations with so many friends. My twitter statistics (though not the same as the average user in the study) corroborate these friends and usage findings more or less. It is thus debatable whether there’s any sense in just increasing the follower count. A certain Guy definitely wouldn’t agree, and it does finally depend on the intent. 🙂

    It also questions the follower-influence- WOM marketing model, and its scalability. I’m actually quite happy with this since I have never been comfortable with this line of marketing strategy on a trust based network. While its not scalable generally, there are exceptions – Guy’s Alltop is one easy example.  The relationship he has with his ‘followers’ obviously doesn’t fit into the followers-friends definition discussed earlier.

    The echoing powers of RT (re tweeting) is another thing to be kept in mind. If I follow someone, and i find some content interesting/informative, there is a good chance I’ll RT that, even if I do not have regular conversations with that person.

    Lastly, this equation might change if Twitter implements groups. Even though its limited to Japan now, there is a good chance that the rest of the world could get it soon. Meanwhile, you can always use Twittgroups. Groups would allow consolidation of crowds interested in certain things. Marketing would definitely be easier then.

    And finally, to wrap up, the favourite twitter pastime- revenue models. If such marketing is not a scalable option, and will not excite brands to use twitter a lot, what will? I read two very good posts on the subject of revenues. RWW has a post on the search of Twitter being used as a revenue tool, since it gives live results from all of Twitter, and doesn’t wait for any indexing like Google does. In fact, the idea of companies using Twitter as an early alarm signal is something I have come across before. Nick Bilton has an interesting idea on Twitter throwing up the kind of immediately relevant ads we would like to see with “some really intelligent data mining and cross pollination”. I quite like that idea too. 🙂

    until next time, tweet and ye shall find 🙂

  • 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?

  • Brand or Ambassador?

    India’s success story and the rapid rise of consumerism has resulted in a feast for anybody who comes close to being a popular person. No, I didn’t mean your favourite office peon, what i had in mind was actors, cricketers etc, and the has-beens in those categories too. I even saw Shatrughan Sinha endorsing some TV the other day. Complete with Khamosh and Big B baiting!! So what’s more important – brand or ambassador?

    I’ve always wondered about endorsements and the value they add to the brand. I think there are some categories where rival brands have been used as some sort of proxy battleground for rival stars. Look at the cola battles – SRK and the B family are in the Pepsi camp, while Coke has Hrithik and Aamir. Wonder where Ash is though. She’s been on both sides. There’s also car manufacturers – Aamir for Toyota, SRK for Santro, and the Big and small B for Maruti Versa. The other interesting arena is handset manufacturers. I don’t know if you’ve noticed,  but there’s a neat battle brewing there now that Aamir has been roped in by Samsung, because with SRK pitching for Nokia, and Hrithik dancing to Sony Ericsson tunes, we’re over company phase and into crowd phase.

    Like I said, I’ve always wondered about endorsements. I can understand the endorsements for sports brands by sports people and even John Abraham (reebok did a decent job in Goal too).  I can understand clothing brands and accessories being endorsed by filmstars. I can even understand the cola wars because everything is about an edge over competition. Besides its a commodity. Similar for Abhi B for Idea and SRK for Airtel. Hey, Hutch ne to kutte ko use kiya, phir bhi bik raha tha. What does that say about those two? 😀 I’m on the borderline for Dhoni and Saif for Kurkure and Lays respectively. I thought ‘Whats the prograaam’ did the trick for me and Juhi did a decent job with ‘Kya family hain’.

    But what i really can’t understand is how Hrithik, Saif or SRK can do the trick for Acer, Lenovo and HP respectively. Isn’t that a product which is bought after much research and analysis on features? Will it sell just because it features a movie star? Don’t logic and rationale play a lot of role in the purchase decision? Is that a quality that the filmstars are famous for? Most importantly, these are also increasingly customised purchases, would you really consider a laptop just because Saif features in it (maybe because it recognizes faces, yes, but that could’ve been anybody’s face in the ad).  And honestly, i dont believe in that ‘getting the attention of the consumer’ jazz. If the product is good, its reviews will say so, and will also say so if its not. Similarly for mobile handsets and even cars, though Toyota did a reasonably good job by matching Aamir’s traits with the car. Whatcha think?

    until next time, mera wala paint or saif’s wall color?

    Update: Todays’s (28/03) Times Business carries an article vindicating the post, at least more or less :)… the timing is not by design 😀