Category Archives: marketing

India: IPL, TV Industrial Complex and Social Media

That new technology, trends etc take their own sweet(not so) time to reach and permeate the Indian market is a well known and accepted fact, and Social Media is no different. While marketing and advertising companies/teams from other countries(especially from the west) might have already dipped deep in the Social Media waters, their counterparts in India are no where close.

When Pepsi ditched Superbowl and chose to spend their budget ($20 million) on a Social Media campaign there were celebrations amongst the Social Media folks world over and everyone(Including we in India) felt that Social Media has finally arrived and the game has changed from being Traditional Media centric to Social Media being equally if not more important. If you think that’s the same with India (transition from Tradition Media to Social  Media at a considerable level), think again.

In the course of last year or so I’ve met numerous Social Media enthusiasts/marketers/analysts and quite a few advertising/media agencies and some guys who are in-charge of marketing campaigns for the brands they represent. Little has changed since last year if we talk about how people who offer Social Media solutions feel and how those who should be using those Social Media solutions feel. Despite all the jazz around Social Media, in India particularly brands are spending a bare minimum percentage of their marketing/advertising budget on Social Media. Not just this, what’s particularly interesting is the fact that in India some brands have started spending more(and not less) on Traditional Media. If these figures are anything to go by

AD Rates for IPL3 and T20 World Cup 2010
you can get an idea of how things seem to be moving in the Indian market. We are increasingly spending more money on Traditional Media and it’s not just TV ads, the print media is also on a roll with Realtors and FMCG companies booking full page ads like anything.  It’s not just a co-incidence that there aren’t any remarkable Social Media campaigns around IPL despite all the hype and hoopla.

Keeping in mind all this and the response that these Traditional Media campaigns manage to get I would like to believe
that the days of TV-Industrial Complex are not yet over in India and it will be another few years before significant changes start to happen.

Apple and The Irony of Social Media

It’s a great co-incidence that this post comes right after my previous post with a similar title. As I write this post Steve Jobs is presenting Apple’s next innovation ‘iPad’ which represents a new category between the smart phones and netbooks. This launch would easily be one of the biggest Tech events in the History with millions of people glued on to various nooks and corners of the World Wide Web trying to get a glimpse of Apple’s latest offering. Twitter as predicted by some is almost down and so are many other platforms which were experiencing heavy traffic spikes due to the event.

This post is not about Apple’s iPad, it is however about the Irony that I see. In today’s day and age where every Social Media Enthusiast/Evangelist/Consultant/______ in every SEO/SEM/SMM____ company talks about being “Social”, “Listening to conversations and participating in them” and a lot more, here is Apple, a brand that has been in the market for a good amount of time and is conspicuous for not being “Social” as per the standards but it’s still being able to garner ultra hype about a product launch that is capable of bringing many a social networks down and get almost everyone on the ones up talking about it.

All by just making remarkable products that people are passionate about

PS: I can’t think of any Social Brand being a part of any event/campaign of a scale this big, can you?

It’s About Being Remarkable Stupid

I’ve been a great fan of Seth Godin ever since I read ‘The Purple Cow’ early last year. I really liked the book and am re-reading it again

 

purple_cow

The book talks about how a product/idea needs to be remarkable to able to spread like fire and succeed. The books lays emphasis on how marketing should be a part of product design and not just a follow up process after product development.

Call it a co-incidence that while facebooking I stumbled upon a link that led me to ‘Easy Tiger Corp’.

[Disclaimer: The content below might hurt your senses]

Easy Tiger Corp seems to have taken a leaf from Godin’s purple cow by offering something remarkable(weird?). Easy Tiger Corp (ETC) makes pre-stained clothing that free people from the embarrassment of having soiled clothing by selling clothes that come already soiled and thus making it a personal decision to wear soiled clothing and not a source of embarrassment.

Sounds weird? You are not alone in thinking that. But I wouldn’t get into how good/bad the idea is but I’d like to point out the fact that irrespective of how good/bad it is, it makes people talk.  The product by it’s sheer design has a lot of remark worthy points

1)  ‘Pre-stained’ clothing : When everyone is selling you detergents to remove stains, here come’s a product with in built stains. Readers from India might recall Surf Excel’s ad ‘Daag Acche Hain‘ (Stains are good) with completely opposite stand towards stains then what’s taken normally

2) Sense of Humour: With a product like this, you need a lot of confidence and sense of humour to do business and looks like the ETC folks have got it all. A quick look at the story of how the idea happened on their about us page and the on your face FAQ page confirms the same.

3) Hate all/Love some: Pre-stained clothing is clearly not a mass market product. In fact it’s quite the opposite it’s a product that most people will hate but a selected few will/might love. Then again the chances that those who like the idea or product will on average talk to more people about it.

To get more attention ETC has launched two contests since their inception in July 2009 namely the ETC YouTube Ad contest and the super remarkable ‘World’s Dirtiest Underwear Competition

ETC has been getting some coverage in the blogosphere and it remains to be seen if Philip the guy behind the company would be able to leave his day job and jump into ‘Pre-Stained’ clothing full time. But what ever the case be, the point of this post is to share an example of a remarkable idea and product and how easy it really becomes to market them. Also, keep in mind being remarkable is quite different from being ridiculous.

Is your product/idea remarkable?

Re-visiting Meow 104.8 FM

It’s been about a year and a half when I first wrote about Meow FM. For the uninitiated Meow 104.8 FM is an Indian talk based radio station that’s aired across Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkatta.

radiogaga

I’ve been thinking of reviewing Meow FM again to understand and share how it has evolved since then but it was only after one of the hosts at Meow emailed me to know “what I feel about the station” that I finally got down to write .

It took me about a week or so to listen to Meow at different hours to see what exactly they are upto and here are a few things I managed to gather.

1) The “A-Stars” Migration: Ever since last year there has been quite a few A-Stars that have left Meow FM for various reasons. Those who’ve left include Hosts Jaishree(last year?) and Rochie(July 9th) and COO(and host) Anil Srivatsava(June 2nd). The roots of migration of A-Stars in this fashion can mostly be traced down to the boardroom (bad policies or management, or both) and I assume that’s the case with Meow too.

Given the fact that the business Meow is in, the loyalties are almost equally(if not more) associated with the Hosts and the station, the station would have definitely felt the heat.

2) Talks are making way for Music: While during its initial days Meow was as much about conversations as one could be but I feel things are changing. Possible the Host exodus is the reason behind it. With just a few quality Hosts (Ginnie, Divya ,Manisha and Ved?) to handle about 14 hours of airtime(7 am – 9 pm), playing more music is inevitable. I remember listening to non-stop music for about an hour yesterday around 12-1 pm.
As it turns out Meow is mostly about music on weekends, which isn’t particularly good for people like me.

If in case this music fever spreads to weekdays, Meow will lose out on a good differentiator and even if Meow has to play more music they can try to make the whole process of the music selection a bit more interactive. A simple thing could be to ask listeners to SMS songs they’d like to listen(not sure if they do it already)

3) Diluted Positioning: While I don’t have any official word on this but off late I’ve started to feel that Meow is no longer aimed at just women. Be it the fact that they now have a male host for their 7 AM show or the fact the hosts no longer re-iterate Meow is India’s first ‘Just for women’ radio station. Also, unlike previously where male callers were allowed on just a couple of show(Tu-Tu Meow Meow & Top Cat) and on weekends(?) you can hear them on practically every show now.

If there has been a change in their target audience I am afraid Meow will find it increasingly more different to survive the competition and if there isn’t such a change they should try to leverage their positioning a lot more to do more tie-ups and eventually attract more women to them.

4) Focus on Quality: While other radio stations are still busy doing silly spoofs of Sholay’s Gabar or Sunny’s Papa ji dialogue, meow continues to add value by talking about meaningful things. Meow 104.8 FM offers by far the most intelligent conversations across the radio frequencies. Not sure if most RJ’s(from radio mirchi to fever) are stupid or they pretend so to sell to the masses but I am quite happy to note that Meow has a better lot of Hosts which continue to talk sensible stuff.

It’s not surprising that Meow has Dr Kiran Bedi as a co-host on one of their shows and they can also boast of having a great weekly book club.

5) Community: Meow’s ning community started by Anil reflects its listeners loyalty. With about 10,000 members @ ning they have a wonderful community of their customers available for free. This goes on to show that people love the station and want to stay connected.

merimeow

While I haven’t noticed extensive efforts aimed at making the most out of their community they can do a lot of things and make the most of it though I am not sure how it’ll work out with their ning community as it was created by Anil who is not associated with Meow anymore.

I’d like to conclude by saying that Meow has definitely not reached the place it should have given the strong grounds it started with and it’s a very crucial stage they are in and if they don’t do the right things game could swing either ways.

PS: Meow please get your site re-designed and if not at least update the content. It looks like the site hasn’t been touched for ages.

Update: This post is also available on radioandmusic.com (http://bit.ly/5eT7Z)

Samsung Jet Bloggers Meet

As mentioned before Brands in India have started to open direct communication channels with bloggers for sharing a sneak preview of their new products and getting some community insights among other things. Samsung  also took a formal plunge into direct conversations with bloggers in the form of ‘Samsung Jet Bloggers Meet’ (#sjbm). Samsung called upon select bloggers and mobile enthusiasts from the town to share more about their latest phone ‘Samsung Jet’. Jet is a smart and powerful phone with loads of interesting features. You can checkout their microsite for more details on the phone (and in case the site takes too much time to load, you can checkout the specs here.

After the introduction by a professional (and good looking 😉 ) emcee, Sarfaraz Borah, Product Manager, Samsung  kickstarted the session by showing a demo video for ‘Samsung Jet’ and then explaining its features in details while answering audience questions in between. While Sarfaraz was explaining the new model in all seriousness, a caricature artist (which was hired by organizers) was busy making interesting caricatures of the guests, btw here’s mine (How’s it ?)

caricature

The talk by Sarfaraz was followed by a quick summary of the whole thing by Ankur (Digital Marketing Manager – Samsung) and the summary was followed by a quick Tweet Q & A competition regarding the Jet presentation. @praval was the lucky winner and managed to closely beat @twilightfairy to get Jet as a prize. With another phone left to give away there was a lucky draw in which @twilightfairy, true to her name, pulled off a great trick and picked her self as the winner.

It was really nice meeting the blogger folks and friends over beer and snacks at the meet @ TGIF.  Thanks Samsung, Starcom and Blogworks for the nice event

PS: In case you missed the meet, I shall try to make pre-event posts for future events.

Social Media Case Study – Charity: Water

Charity: water is a charity started by Scott Harrison that provides clean water to save lives in poor countries. Charity: water has successfully raised $10 million (most of that last year alone) from 50,000 individual donors, thereby providing clean water to nearly one million people in Africa and Asia.

charitywater_1

Here’s how Charity: water is using Social Media to be more effective

  1. Creating Relationships: Charity: water (CW) is using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to connect with people who share the same concerns as them. CW also adds value by sharing relevant information and content with their friends/followers in these social platforms. Relationships are the key currency for nonprofits and social media is a great way to build and maintain good relationships.
  2. charitywater on facebook (Charity: water on Facebook)

    With social media it’s also relatively easy to ask people for small contributions or motivate them to volunteer for a task or just spread the word by say putting a badge on their blog.

    charitywater on twitter (Charity: water on Twitter)

    2.  Maintaining Transparency: For nonprofits to scale beyond a level, transparency is very important and to some extent the rate of their growth also depends on how transparent they are. In this sense too, social media and nonprofits are made for each other. Charity: water shows donors the specific impact of their  contributions. They post photos and G.P.S. coordinates so that donors can look up their (Charity: water grants naming rights to wells) wells on Google Earth. Come September and they will have a new web site that will match even the smallest donation to a particular project that can be tracked online.

    charitywater transparency
    3.  Experimenting with new things:

    During Twestival (meetup for twitter users in twitter lingo), charity: water raised $250,000 this spring.

    charitywater_6
    Viral video campaigns by charity: water are also a hit among its supporters and play a significant role in motivating people to contribute.

4. High Stakeholder Involvement:

    When was the last time you were asked to by a charity to engage in conversation?
    Hmm…Never?

    But that’s not the case with Charity: water, during Twestival CW invied donors to get involved by

  • Watching four daily short videos of the drilling as charity: water goes from village to village drilling wells.
  • Following the drilling updates via twitter.
  • Asking questions of the local drilling team via email or twitter. Also, The local charity: water drill team answers the top five questions on video

I’d like to end this case study by quoting  “communityorganizer20.com”

Charity: water is giving its donors exactly what they want: success stories, videos of the impact of donations, and  information about financial accountability.

If you know of something else  that Charity: water or some other nonprofit is doing to leverage social media, share with us

Dev D, Ghajini, The President is coming and Tata Nano marketing case study

It’s been quite some time since I wrote marketing case studies on

and it just occurred to me to make the pdfs of all these case studies available as a compressed version, hence this post

Click Here to download the rar file containing pdfs of all the four case studies.

Rickshaw Road Shows

Road shows are a common marketing activity in Delhi and rest of North India. It’s not uncommon to find big brands like Spencer’s, Horlicks, etc doing road shows to promote a new store or a new product. Road shows are also excessively used during political campaigns. A typical road show looks like this

Roadshow

While there’s nothing new about road shows, there’s a new(and low cost) variant of road shows that’s increasingly getting popular for doing promotions. Rickshaw Road Show or Cycle Rickshaw Road Show as it’s called consists of a branded cycle rickshaw(regular or a different small one custom built for such activities) with a rickshaw puller driving it within a given area for about 8 hours a day. Driving is the core activity with addons being parking for some time at certain key points like metro stations, bus stops and distributing leaflets/pamphlets .

djm_rickshaw

(Promotion for a Jewellery House)

xs_rickshaw ( Promotions for an automobile showroom and a satsang)

Ricksaw road shows are generally done at least for a month(2 days monthly off) and they cost anywhere between Rs 8,000 – Rs 12,000 per month ($170-$250). The costing includes rent for richshaw, branding and the fees for rickshaw puller. A rough break up for the total cost would be

Rickshaw Puller:  Rs 4,000 – Rs 5,500
Branding : Rs 800 – Rs 1,500

rest would be the rent of rickshaw and the owners profit.

It’s not just small coaching institutes or local businesses that do richshaw roadshows, they are also being used by brands like Fastrack that are also active on the web(Twitter, Facebook et all)

fastrack

So, what do you think about Rickshaw Road Shows ?

Chris Anderson’s New Book Free, Free for US only?

A couple of days back I got to know about a new book titled “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” by Wired Magazine editor and author of bestseller “Long Tail”  Chris Anderson. Next thing I got to know was true to it’s name “Free’s audio book is available for download for free“. While downloading the audio book I was wondering if the book is free just for audio format or will it’s e-book also be available for free ?

While browsing the web today I found out that Free’s e-book is also available for free. Excited, I clicked the URL to get my hands on the free e-book.

free_url

But to my unpleasant surprise, I ran into this

free_error

Frustrated by this(hypocrisy?) I searched around to realize that the not only is the e-book restricted to just US, it’s just free to read and not download. There you go again.

When I got to know about the free audio book I decided to buy a paperback copy for myself soon but given the weird policies regarding book’s availability in other formats I am not sure if I’ll be doing that anymore.

While Chris Anderson & Co figure out what’s the right way to market the book without screwing their economics you can either listen to it’s audiobook or read the book on Scribd(using a DNS proxy like hidemyass.com in case you aren’t in the US) or read it here.

Twitter Marketing, or Spamming ?

Twitter being spreading like wild fire is under a lot of experimentation for marketing and since there isn’t a way to advertise or sponsor stuff “Mentions in Tweets” is the way to get eyeballs along with “Treding Topics” and a few other things. Also, since the trending topics started appearing on every user’s home page, the desire to find a spot among top 10 has soared.

Want to get visibility on Twitter ? Get trending, and the way to be trending is by having enough mentions in tweets.

Add this desire to be mentioned in as many tweets(interesting or boring, happy or sad, sensible or nonsense, related /unrelated to the product or company) to the fact that most people will do just about anything to win something for free (especially if it doesn’t ask them to get up from their chairs) and you get a viral campaign like moonfruit‘s.

moonfruit_spam

Apparently there was a similar campaign by SquareSpace a month back but it failed to make it big because it wasn’t offering the phone but a $199 worth gift certificate but I am not complaining as atleast with SquareSpace’s campaign I got saved from the heavy spam attack that Moonfruit campaign led to.  For me the moonfruit campaign is no different from one of those spam attacks in which people randomly started adding some keyword in every tweet, which eventually led to those topics/keywords being in the trending list.

It’s not that I hate all twitter campaigns, for ex: I appreciate Tweetboard’s campaign, asking people to request for Alpha accounts for their service by tweeting(just once) in a given format instead of submiting their email id’s

TweetBoard

TweetBoard

Now that’s a creative and non spammy way to market using Twitter.

Getting back to #SquareSpace and #MoonFruit campaigns, I’d say this isn’t a particularly good way to market because

1) It’s spammy and so all over the place. More than liking I’d hate if everyone in my stream started putting a random keyword in their tweets. There chances of winning something are a lot less than chances of loosing a few followers/friends. I certainly wouldn’t appreciate my company name in tweets like this

moonfruit_sex

2) It’s not a scalable model:  While SqureSpace, MoonFruit and a few more might be able to get some eyeballs because of these campaigns I strongly believe this won’t be a scalable/easily followable model as if more companies start doing this then we’ll  have  a spoiled twittering experince and almost all the trending topics would be full of these promotional keywords which certainly won’t be liked by Twitter and it’s users and would invite some fixes to avoid such things, which’ll in effect led to a reduction in such campaigns.

3) I doubt if there’ll be significant value addition due to such campaigns: Though some of the statistics could look great after such a campaign I doubt if there’ll be a real value add for most companies that do such campaigns. For ex: I doubt if there’ll be a significant increase in moonfruit’s business or more people will start interacting with @moonfruit etc. Most probably the gift hungry crowd that gathered at their doorsteps  would move to a new free gift location in no time, shattering their false hopes.

That’s how I feel about various marketing campaigns on Twitter, what do you think about them ?