Archive for December, 2011

Through the Looking Glass

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

This article of ours was first published in Business Today”s 20th Anniversary edition

It was only in 2008 when social media took its fledgling steps in India. 2011 was the year social media got truly established with Indian corporates as 20 million Indians went social! In 2015, we foresee, an exponential growth and significant innovations as 500 million Indians log on given the high mobile penetration and $35 tablets!

With so much happening, social media promises to be like the plot of a Bollywood blockbuster in the coming years – full of drama, triumphs and twists. Let’s take a quick peek into some of the future trends.

  • Emergence of Rural Social Media:

Airtel believes that 700 mn rural Indian Internet users exist that remain untapped. Given that, Indian businesses will have to think rural in all aspects – social communication strategies, customized content as media consumption will be drastically different from urban centers, and rural workforce. Companies will have to divert advertising resources into creating content that is both captivating, relevant and ultimately building brand affinity with the users – be it in the form of videos, applications or plain text.  Also companies will need to educate and nurture rural workforce. After all a 24-year old executive in Gurgaon will not be able to write content for a farmer in Warangal!

  • Community Development:

There already is a shift in advertising spends as more monies are being diverted to BTL activities. This trend will see as significant boost as going forward companies will have to start investing in creating and maintaining social ecosystems for their brand. Ecosystems would involve building community of individuals who will spend their time and effort by being not just customers for the brand but also product innovators and ideators! Brands especially those operating in passion-led sectors like photography, bikes, etc will need to identify these individuals and panelize them to seek their ideas from product development stage to marketing and distributing it!

Few brands in India that have taken first steps in this direction are Royal Enfield and Canon. Both companies have built a social ecosystem that helps them leverage it not just for sales but also engage in a more profitable and wholesome manner! By doing that, they are betting that the collective social presence of this group will endorse and influence a much wider and larger audience towards their products as close to 40 million Indians today base their purchase decision based on online reviews.

  • Profiles of brand managers:

The biggest change that we anticipate will be a change in the profile of the brand manager. Today, several corporates have global brand teams that manage the larger nuances of brand building and the local teams are involved with execution and activation work around the brand. The profile of the local brand activation team will undergo a drastic shift as social media gains significance. In order to operate successful online communities as mentioned in the previous point, corporates will seek out individuals who exhibit and follow their hobbies & interests that are in sync with their business. A clear case in point is Red Bull that has individuals on board with specific skill sets and inherent passion who lead their various sports & cultural initiatives! Hence an employee list that boasts of former cricketers and sports journalists!

  • Social Media for Senior Leadership:

As Indian companies go global, it will be imperative for the senior leadership to build their presence in the social space. Global media would want to know more about the company and its team and would look at social media presence for the same. It is not uncommon today to read CEO tweets as newspaper headlines.

Also senior leadership will have to address other stakeholders – employees, customers and shareholders to help build connect with the company, receive direct feedback on their brands and assure safety on the monies invested respectively. Few good examples of this that come to mind are Mr. Anand Mahindra’s Twitter presence, HCL’s Mr Vineet  Nayyar’s blog and GE India’s CEO Mr. John Flannery’s internal blog meant for employees.

  • Individual Celebrities:

Brand endorsers will change completely. Gone will the days where the Bollywood and Sports brigade lapped up everything! Brands will sign up more real life individuals to bring in relevance and connect with their customers. These real life celebrities will be specialists in their own field and hence influencers on social media platforms. Offlate, various writers such as Chetan Bhagat (Revolution 20-20), Ashwin Sanghi (Chanakya Chants) and Sidin Vadukut (Dork & God Save the Dork) have successfully leveraged social media to gain celebrity status! Given that, Huawei India signed Chetan Bhagat so that they could connect with his fan base for their mobile and tablet offerings.

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Posted in Corporate Communications, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Windchimes Comm | No Comments »

Twitter takes a tweak

Monday, December 19th, 2011

twitter tweaks2011 has been a remarkable year for many startups and stalwarts in the arena of Social Media. For most part, the socially active would remember this year as the year of major changes being rolled out by most social networking sites.

Even the most popular micro blogging site, Twitter, underwent a major UI changes. The ‘New Twitter’ was launched amidst much talked about anticipations and apprehensions. Here is a look at how the tweaks make Twitter grow.

Navigation Keys

At the top panel of the newly refurbished Twitter, users have 4 easy to navigate keys which are essentially the Home, Connect, Discover and Me keys. Besides, there is also a Tweet icon that is omnipresent so that one can tweet no matter where they are on the page.

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Home

This is essentially where one views tweets from the people they are essentially following including their retweets. With the new twitter, photos, videos and conversations are embedded directly in tweets so that one can see the whole story at a glance.

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Image courtesy: www.fly.twitter.com

Connect

An easy conversation ready reckoner where one can initiate or continue conversations, see their RT’s, favourites, followers(these 3 clubbed under Interactions) and mentions.

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Image courtesy: www.fly.twitter.com

Discover

By far the most significant and distinct feature highlighted in the new twitter, discover aims to stream customized content and in most cases they are different for each user (Stories). Along with this, it has integrated the last rolled out Activity tab where one can keep a track on their followers, find friends from various mail portals, browse categories(according to the interest areas).

The Stories are visually presented with much revelry, aesthetically speaking. They highlight the name of the topic on the masthead where tweets regarding them can be viewed by a single click and are supplemented with a recent article on the same beneath.

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All about Me

The last of the tabs is a personal dashboard to the lists one has subscribed to/is a member of and an all new window to the Direct Messages which now appears in a separate window. The layout of the DM window is a lot more user friendly and packed. Clicking upon each interaction opens up a chat like window within the existing window with the latest messages exchanged appearing last.

The most prominent feature in the Me being the display and layout of the page that offers one to showcase to the world their identity. With an enlarged masthead where the profile picture is big enough to create a statement with enough space to key in an individual’s story. Not to leave out space to provide a link to one’s website.

This however, is one of the key benefits that Twitter Brand Pages would have in customizing there page layout.

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Image courtesy: www.fly.twitter.com

Also, when one gets’ to Browse categories, this is where the major development comes into foray. This is where most Brands would be interested and looking forward to. This is one stop shop for any brand or person with a public profile that are clubbed together in broad categories in order of their relevance. For e.g.: Sports, Music, Technology, Books, television etc.

Branded Tweets

Interface facelift and the potent mobile platform

Now that twitter has revamped its web interface with additional features, brands and users can exploit it like never before. Earlier high-powered twitter users made use of 3rd party tools like hootsuite, TweetDeck etc. which enabled them to manage their twitter presence because of elaborate and feature enriched interfaces. With the advent of the new twitter this trend is likely to get more users get hooked on to the web interface. The simultaneous launch of mobile apps also shows that Twitter is gearing up for the future.

Preemptive content curating

For brands, to build engagement it’s essential that they do a preemptive study on the nature of their followers. By knowing how their followers function could really work wonders. This way, the brands can think ahead of their followers and develop content that would have definitive response to.

The Activity tab has the Discover element under it. This lets the users and brand pages find out relevant content material that is in sync with their followers interests. This can subsequently be incorporated in their further dissemination of information/tweets.

The Brand Pages & Advertising

Twitter’s brand pages that were much anticipated has come with power packed features and is definitely a boost in the arm to woo major brands into the twitter ecosystem especially by integrating richer content and using paid advertising through its in-house developed advertising tool.

Last but not the least, as previously mentioned, brands could now use the page layout in doling out information about them in a much enhanced fashion. For e.g.: The mast head on top of the brand page has a huge space for bio and relevant/connected websites and makes for a promising stand out statement.

Also, the backgrounds could include more elements from the brand portfolio that defines it’s core fabric.

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The final tweet

Although it is still dicey as to how twitter would go about this, the content diggers on twitter will definitely discover twitter as a great reserve. As time rolls by and the brand pages gain prominence in the brandscape, the new twitter will definitely prove its mettle as far as effectively reaching out to consumers is concerned.

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Posted in Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Bloggerati of the Fortnight: Rati Tehri Singh

Monday, December 19th, 2011

RatiOur blogger of the fortnight, Rati Tehri Singh, dons many hats as a modern professional. She is currently engaged as the Director with an MBA preparation website where she works full time and administers blogs and websites that dole out study materials. Amidst all this, she also runs a highly acclaimed blog that caters to her hobby (makeup and cosmetics) via her blog ‘Indian makeup and beauty blog’. And she excels in that as well!

In her own words, Rati’s journey into the glitzy world of cosmetics began right after her marriage when she discovered that there is very little available on the blogosphere that exclusively addresses the Indian makeup scenario. Seeing it as an untapped opportunity to provide a comprehensive insight into Indian makeup for most women, Rati, took up the initiative to share her understanding of the market place.

Most of the posts on the blog are attributed to her personal experiences with a particular brand. A plethora of make-up products ranging from eye-liners, mascaras, foundations to lip-gloss, face masques, bronzers, nail polish etc. are reviewed. This provides a detailed insight for a first time usage to recommendations according to skin tone and other prerequisites to arrive at a purchase decision.

Another interesting aspect of her blogs is that wherever possible, she has given the pros and cons of the product. This gives a very brilliant and true review of each product. Also, it gives the pricing of most of the products there by letting the reader evaluate the product more personally. We also love her rating scheme which is a excellent summary of the entire review.

Rati has also used her blog to educate people on how to achieve a particular look through make up. Along with few other writers, a dedicated section on tutorials about perfect skin tone, festival looks and star looks is maintained.

All the entries are ideally supplemented with pictures of products, their packaging and a personal take by Rati herself. Written in a crisp and an easy to read manner, it gives out most relevant information in an organized format making it a very convenient read for the surfer. All this entitles Rati to be our Bloggerati of the Fortnight.

Read more from our Blogger of the Fortnight gallery.

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Catching the viral fever

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Viral-VideoYou would have had to be living in a different country to have missed the Kolaveri Di rage. Over the last couple of weeks, everything and anything seems to have led to this one piece of music video. From brand ads to political uproar and even a famous singer’s son making his version of the same, Kolaveri Di has had the spotlight firmly fixed on it. So what are viral videos? What purpose do they cater to? Here is an insight in to those videos that make the world catch a fever!

 

Prescription for a viral video

Viral videos are user generated content events, acts or largely ideas, made using a mobile device or any other video camera for simple consumption. The idea is to share the work on the web but the outcome is a huge buzz. This generally happens via multiple shares across various social networking platforms like the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. thereby giving the content a cult status.

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Click on the image to see the video

For most part, these are videos that are made without any direct intention of promotion. Many viral videos are simple homemade videos with animals, kids or even text and graphics. The insanely famous video ‘charlie bit my finger’ and the sequel, ‘charlie bit my finger – again’ that spawned off based on the popularity of the original one that was released on May 22, 2007 rose to the charts with an astonishing number of views (389 million as of November 2011) and people are still viewing that.

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Click on the image to see the video

But a lot of these videos are brand backed. Although, while launching the video, the brand is generally underplayed. It is only when the buzz builds up and has caught enough eyeballs that the brands start claiming their success.

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Click on the image to see the video

What’s making the temperature rise?

For any 21st century marketer, it becomes crucial to tap onto any medium that assures the brand presence is reverberated across various target groups. An increased visibility or mind-space is the first step towards selling any product/service today. With an increasing number of people who are getting added to the digital world each passing minute, the database of prospective buyers are on a parallel rise.

Traditional mediums like TV and radio are not just making a cut primarily because a major chunk of those who used to spend time on these mediums have migrated to the virtual world. The average time an urban dweller (not only restricted to metros) spends on internet today is much higher than what he spends in front of a TV or while listening to the radio. Also the cost of making such videos would be a fraction of what an ATL campaign would cost.

An incredibly successful viral video campaign is that of ‘The old spice man (Perez Hilton)’. The video has the main character talking to women about, ‘the man their man could smell like’. Within no time it started going viral and it reached to such heights that the same concept was carried forward as commercials.

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Click on the image to see the video

Season for viral

In most cases there is no definite time when a video should be uploaded. The thing about a video going viral is that if it’s properly edited with enough good content to keep eyes glued to it, chances are that it will in due course gather decent views. Of course there are few videos which are event and time specific that are released to maximize the benefit of prevailing crowd sentiment.

A clear example of the same was the video leaks of the chammak challo song from the film RA.One. People were already waiting to see how international superstar Akon would sound singing a Bollywood song when the video hit the social media platforms. And within hours, the video had garnered thousands of views. The fact of the matter is that although there is no foolproof time that can assure a video going viral, carefully releasing one in tandem with a stirring event can spell wonder for brands.

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Click on the image to see the video

It’s getting hotter

Although there is no hard and fast way to determine what will become viral, a simple idea that lets the viewer have an insight to some really interesting, entertaining or unseen footage will make the cut. There is no upper limit to the viewership that a viral video can achieve as compared to the ad spends that a brand is restricted to.

Combine this with the number of people who are getting on to these platforms and the further rise in users through mobile phones presents an incredible scope for brands to invest in viral videos. They not only come across as spontaneous but also are far more entertaining than a typical tvc.

While the fact remains that not everyone who uses internet would have plausibly view it, chances are that they would’ve heard a mention or two. That’s what internet does right? Spreads information like a wildfire.

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Posted in Brand Promotion, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Target Audience | 2 Comments »

Bloggerati of the Fortnight: K. Satyanarayan

Monday, December 5th, 2011

K.Satyanarayan_PrayatnaA prominent name in Media and Publishing industry, Mr. K. Satyanarayan is deeply involved in the field of education and entrepreneurship. Mr. Satyanarayan was instrumental in setting up Cricinfo India before it merged with Wisden in 2003.

His blogs, Education in India, offers a distinct platform for academicians and others alike who seek information about the latest happenings in the education industry. From posts on grass root level primary education issues and scopes to changing scenarios in education across states to technology and seminars held at national levels, his blogs cover the spectrum of education like no other.

Most of the posts are direct insights and information that are made available in the simplest of manner. With a no frill and simple outlook, the blog provides information on issues such as admission into institutions, schools, submission procedure, constitutional amendments in the field of education etc.

His blog is also a great place to come across various articles on education from across the web. In fact, so detailed is his research that he has even gone to the extent of providing the information on education as debated in the parliament.

In his other blog he talks about his current industry, Media and Publishing, wherein the sustainability and growth prospects of various Indian languages are addressed. The prolific growth of Indian writers of books in English language vis-à-vis the dwindling number of writers who write in vernaculars is just one of the areas where he shares his views on.

Mr. Satyanarayan charts out the growth of education in India for the future generations through his simple writing style which is a mix of first person narrative and a third person account of happenings in and around the industry. Working tirelessly with complete dedication towards such a noble cause surely entitles Mr. K. Satyanarayan to be our Bloggerati of the Fortnight.

Read more from our Blogger of the Fortnight gallery.

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