Food for thought
Has the time for sellsumers come? http://tinyurl.com/yuxys9
In spite of the danger of sounding cliched, Social networking and blogging have crossed their inflection points and are now adopted by all and sundry, specifically individuals and small businesses. The growth is being fueled by both non-US users and the stampede of people between the ages of 25-55 who are jumping into the mix in huge and fast growing numbers – from the Fed to the NASA to Barack Obama and the uniqutously laughable ‘Iron Man’ of India. Having a Facebook or Twitter account is a ‘must-have’ for those of us toiling in the media and marketing business.
There’s a glut of companies now rushing to clients wanting to handle Online Reputation Management, Social Media Optimization, etc. There has even been a plethora of blog posts on how SMO is the next big thing in outsourcing. To a certain degree, I think its justified. Facebook and Twitter lets you have a one-to-one conversation with your reader. You can exchange ideas, get feedback and create a community of followers….in other words, Facebook and Twitter let you have follow distributed co-creation. The community becomes your sales force!
Interesting thoughts, but whats the reality? And is the above backed by enough reason?
comScore recently did a worldwide study and I completely agree with the findings:
This just goes to show either of 2 things – either companies still have not learnt how to effectively use Twitter or Facebook to engage audiences, or they still don’t think that they can target their right TG and these promotions do not give them the bang for the buck. For a credit card company, the COCA (Cost of Customer Acquisition) and COLA (Cost of Lead cquisition) through online marketing initiatives in India is still far higher than offline methods. The cost differential diminishes only over a period of time, once the advertiser learns what works for him, and what doesn’t.
Hence, while a rock band can create waves through Twitter, it is difficult to see in the near future how big companies can get mileage out of this. I think the trend is pretty evident: unlike individuals, corporations are often hesitant to embrace the newest tools (no matter how much buzz they generate in the blogosphere).
Which reincorces the case for Web 2.0. Harnessing it for for shouting out loud about products you love, telling people what experiences you had with that laptop, or even creating your own sales force in the community.
Gone are the days when a product does a brand make. After all the proliferations, me-toos, and the slew of deliberations on Positioning and Differentiation and Placement, the product asired to become a service. And the rest followed suit. Back to status quo! They said, the customer is the king. However, there’s a catch. Sitting in their air-conditioning offices, and commissioning research, the self-proclaimed brand owners thought they understood the pulse of the consumer. And they tried to better customer experience thru differentiation, again. This time, the epithet used was different – personalization. To a great extent, it worked. In India, largely, it still does. But one bad experience with a customer service professional, one malignant post on a user group online, and the brand takes that much more pain to dust itself and get back on track.
Welcome to a world, where brand becomes the organization itself. Or viceversa. Full circle.
Some guy in the US was having a lot of difficulty in connecting to the internet from his home. Say the service provider is AOL. He called up customer service, they dutifully sent a rep. This rep came home and tried getting the system to work, but there was a problem at the server end, so he called up the base and waited on the line for the problem to get resolved. And waited. And waited. And felt asleep on the couch. Not amused, our man picks up his phone and shoots a video of the snoring AOL rep on his favorite couch. Over the next few days, a few million people viewed the video on Youtube.
They say that AOL is still hurting from that.
There are probably hundreds of similar examples, but it just goes to show that there has been a tectonic shift in power from the company to the end user. His source of guidance, inspiration, gyan and comfort is not media, but the man on the street. Any man, whoever is willing to listen to him. And he is not alone. There are legions of such tribes out there. Fiercely independent, has the potential to be fiercely loyal.
Are we listening?
Remember Jerry McGuire? “I will not rest until I have you holding a Coke, wearing your own shoe, playing a Sega game *featuring you*, while singing your own song in a new commercial, *starring you*, broadcast during the Superbowl, in a game that you are winning, and I will not *sleep* until that happens……….”
Sports management in India is a highly-fragmented, under-exploited area with various players trying to bite more than they can chew in one mouthful. Not that they ain’t making money, but the approach of the Globosports and IMGs and Showdiffs of the world surely are questionable. Lot of people believe that its a vicious cycle – barring cricket, sports in general do not have the required infrastructure; they fail to ignite the passions of the billions; India is not a sports marketing market in the purist sense as compared to say the US; we are 20 years behind in training and facilities…. the list is endless! Most companies which started out as sports management entities have ventured into celebrity management from Bollywood, event management and other ways of providing entertainment mostly in corporate parties.
A close look at the way this industry operates shows that you can make more money by marketing sports rather than implementing it. But that’s not the full story – So how can a pure-bred sports agency develop in India? In principle, it shouldn’t be too different from a brand agency – helping sports nurture and grow relevant brands, grow the sports themselves and helping the brand sportsmen grow.
Total Sports Asian kicked off this “para” foorball contest in Bengal, sold the idea to Tara Bangla and Ten Sports, where football is played in a smaller ground or yard in fast and pacy manner, and the top teams can rub their shoulder with big teams like East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. Football is very popular in at least 3 states – West Bengal, Kerala and Goa : this kind of an idea has the potential to bring in big brands too. Sell this idea to different brands including sports attires, shoes, health drinks and you have a marketplace right from test marketing to consumer insight generation to product launch. The same idea can be extended to other localised sports initiatives like children’s marathons, badminton etc.
These can be televised by a host of regional TV channels and even children’s and youth channels. Besides viewership and ensuing ad revenues, not only do such initiatives raise awareness of the masses, but also instils enthusiasm and sense of bonding. Today, alas, it only happens in IPL!!!
The other upcoming area is adventure sports. Today whoever owns a raft in Rishikesh makes some money and the industry has close to 1000 unorganized players in North India alone, if not more. Some companies like iDiscoveri or Exper are utilising this platform as an experiential educational and mentoring programme for children and corporates. These can all be packaged properly and marketed to brands for good sponsorship options.
Sponsors need a space which they can own. If you can justify space in kabbadi or squash then they will invest in it. They key is to build up the sport. The key, as often stated vaguely, is finding and justifying the value in such partnerships. For instance, getting a tech service provider to develop and market a permission-based voice messaging system to increase ticket sales to a Ranji game.
The other area is integration of media like computers, mobiles, Dish TV’s and Internet. Hence sources of revenues for a sports marketing agency would involve, apart from representing the Yuvraj’s and Bhaichung Bhutia’s, rights to TV programming, working as a brand agency catering to developing products or services through sports, sponsorships, sports consulting, sports auctions and also sports research. Sports Research can vary from sponsorship evaluations, rights value valuations, product testing, economic impact studies, retail and consumer behaviour and attitude surveys, market industry reports, return on investment modelling and much more.
In the US, sports marketing is a $250bn industry. In India, if we leave out Sachin, Dhoni and Sania Mirza, its an abysmal figure. And it requires a collective action. And an ambitious Jerry McGuire to start the revolution. Then, only then, the medals tally at the Olympics can show 30 instead of 3.
For quite some time, I used to believe that viral ain’t a strategy. Even now, a product placement or a new ad campaign can hardly be strategized the viral route simply because the strategists (read brand managers) are too engrossed in the product/service and benefits thereof that they tend to forget that a viral idea, by definition is some random work which a few people like and that gets pollinated across networks and spreads.
Also, people tend to confuse viral marketing with social marketing thru networks, such as MySpace, Facebook, Second Life and blogs. Probably the best viral idea till date is Hotmail – which found its own users and replicated itself in almost every machine with an internet connection in no time by sheer WOM. Wikipedia defines Viral Marketing as “marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.” From the purview of this definition, marketers have indeed come up with a few delightful concepts, which, though short-lived, have been able to create major traction and WOM publicity.
My top 5 takes on such campaigns are as follows…
1. Why So Serious
Elaborate, interactive marketing campaigns were launched in the months leading up to the release of “The Dark Knight”. One of these was an event at the 2007 San Diego Comic-con called “Why So Serious”, which involved fans following clues hidden around the city. The legions of Joker-painted fans ended up congregating in the street across from the convention center, where one of their numbers was welcomed into a black Escalade (with Gotham license plates) that had just pulled up. After a moment the fan started screaming and the SUV sped away. Later that day, a “Gotham City newspaper” was circulated reporting that a man believed to be the Joker was found beaten to death. Included were “crime scene photos” of the fan who had gotten into the Escalade, and a mention that he was found with a playing card in his hand, on which was scribbled “See you in December.” The alternative reality game whysoserious was also launched, creating mass participation.
2. Nike
This clip is one of the all time greatest virals ever, with more than 50 million views globally. Featuring world famous soccer star Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar no less than four times, without the ball touching the floor. The creative material is from Framfab, in Denmark. The product on display is the Nike R10 football boot. A massive discussion on whether the clip was actually real or computer edited drove millions of interested viewers to the campaign.
Framfab won two Gold Lions on the Cannes Lions Festival for the campaign. The other winning clip was The Chain, a user generated initiative, consisting of more than 500 user uploaded soccer sequences edited together as one long clip of soccer celebration.
To watch the ads click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsO6D1rwrKc
Matt and his friend were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said “Hey, why don’t you stand over there and do that dance. I’ll record it.” He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It’s actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly.
Eventually Matt and his girlfriend take a break, visit 42 countries, do the same dance with just about anybody, from basements to “war-free zones”, make a video out of it, and someone posts it onto the internet. A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as “That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I’ll send you the link. It’s funny.” Today, Matt is a million-dollar brand ambassador for Stride Gum.
4. Diet Coke and Mentos Eruption
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmkxfEjPmtk
This campaign was never planned, neither by The Coca Cola Company nor Mentos. It started out as an experiment by Eepybird with a video showing two men adding Mentos tablets to a Diet coke. Watch to see the results. Several videos resulted, which makes it difficult to estimate exactly how many views the campaign has generated so far. But a qualified guess would be more than 50 million in total, including both the original and all the user generated videos.
This very unofficial campaign has generated loads of PR and causing thousands of consumers to contribute with their own eruption videos. Much of the hype around it was caused by statements whether or not it would be dangerous, or even lethal, to actually drink a Diet Coke and eat Mentos at the same time.
5. DOVE Evolution
Already a classic, even though it is one of the newest campaigns in this selection. Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, used time-lapse photography to show the transformation of an normal woman into a glamorous billboard model using beauty stylists and Photoshop enhancements. The clip was released under the slogan “No wonder our perception of real beauty is distorted”.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U
Dove Evolution took top honours in both the Cyber and Film categories on the 2006 Cannes Lions pointing to the colliding worlds of consumer-powered digital distribution and brand building. It’s the first time in the festival’s history that the same execution won in both categories, an even more impressive achievement if you consider that this huge success was almost single-handedly was achieved using online seeding. Only very few times has the commercial been aired on television.
This is the quintessential Great Indian Dream – have fun growing up, get overeducated in lots of crap, get a job from bschool that pays you a lot, sell your soul to your employer for a few years and then retire to do what you want to do. However, not many can do it. Blame it on the inflation, the spending and saving patterns, the demands of “responsibility towards your family” or plain inertia. Fed up with your day job, you just swim around in the flotsam and jetsam of mediocrity and blame it on the circumstances.
But there is hope. You don’t have to wait to turn 60, you don’t have to be rich, in fact, you can actually decide to retire as early as day after tomorrow. Here’s how.
1. To retire, there’s no need to quit: Just draw up a not-to-do list and stop doing them. Bargain hard, show the finger and focus on what you want to do. Realise that your day job is about 40% of your life – that 40% should not take control over the balance 60% of your life. Write your own job description. Be careful to marry it with the organization objectives and then have fun executing them. This is called partial retirement.
2. Deal with the conflict once and for all: Given a chance, what would you have done? And I’m not talking in air about setting up a multi-million dollar business, you need to ask, what makes me happy consistently for a long period of time? Teaching? Gardening? Pottery? Writing? Photography? Traveling? What’s stopping you to devote 15% of your time in such pursuits? Identify the obstacles.
3. Take breaks: Devote some time (ideally twice a year) to do something meaningful – travel, work with an NGO. Associate with a cause – even if it means joining a movement to protect Swedish Bikini models.
4. Set small goals: How much money do you need by 30? By 40? What will you do after that, with that money? Then plan each day to reach that goal. And enjoy small pleasures everyday – walking in the rain, clocking a mile under 25 seconds, learn a new recipe for cooking, plan how to get that cute office colleague out for a date.
Inertia is omniscient at times, and if you decide to do nothing, you’ll probably keep doing the same work you’re unhappy with.
(the above post is the culmination of a distracted mind during a 2.5-hr meeting session on achieving satisfaction the corporate way. I’m now convinced that no matter what, no meetings can go on more than 1 hour, on the dot.)
Last night Kuhu and me discovered a brand new signboard hidden amidst the chaos of the Delhi metro construction in Gurgaon Mehrauli road – a quaint announcement of a place having the most authentic sushi. Just about a week old and set in the usual red ambience with japanese art, Sushiya claims to be the first independent restaurant and home delivery service for true blue Japanese cuisine. Serving a host of sushi rools, bright Norwegian salmon, rosy Trivandrum tuna, tender asparagus spears, and creamy avocado, Sushiya is a delightful experience.
The founder and CEO, Varun Maudgil, can easily be mistaken for a weed-smoking chilled out 24-yr old bschooler. Having spent his childhood in Japan, where his family sells spicy indian “chicken tikka masala” and “butter naan” for a living, Varun wanted to do the opposite. So he tied up with a Japanese friend, learnt the art of making sushi, came to india, got a few hiccups thanks to the vicissitudes of our political system and when he got the funding right, he was all set to delight us with authentic japanese cuisine. What’s his business model? He sources most of his ingredients from Japan, some from India, has a team of chefs who he has trained in the art of sushi making and he earns his monies from delivery, sole distributors of teriyaki and the like for units like Suhar’n'Spice, and now a standalone resto. Definitely worth checking out.
While I was in Bombay, I used to frequent this place called Mae B, a small place resembling a shack with about 10 tables, amidst the bustle of Carter Road in Bandra, serving cool Continental and Italian faire. There also, the owner was an Oxford educated youngster, who fell in love with the food in England and decided to start off on his own in Mumbai when our very own Mughlai food was becoming the national dish of Britain.
These are not stray incidents. Now we’ve heard of reverse colonization, but today’s uber-premium constantly traveling Indian has taken a liking to world cuisine in a much bigger way, and it is not restricted to a particular set of customers anymore. This is probably a case of reverse reverse colonization! With our changing palette, we are willing to try out different things and food, now, is not only the best and easiest way to experience a new culture, it is now more of a routine. Food is no more an essential consumption item, it has become discretionary spending for today’s youth. And it takes up a major share of wallet. With access to boutique cafes and restaurants increasing, India is now poised to see a huge upswing in discretionary spending when it comes to “checking out” different cuisines.
McKinsey predicts that though overall share of wallet in food and beverage will come down, the industry will double itself in the next 8 years. And that, is a big claim.
So how will the food retailing landscape change? With the novelty of world cuisine and ways to serve it in innovative ways to willing consumers, what new formats will emerge? We have already had the hugely successful Mumbai dabbawalas, we’ve had food courts, we’ve had the boutique restaurant and we’ve had everything from dhabas to hotels to mobile units selling everything from burgers to momos. There has also been the successful model of tieing up with different restaurants in the city, taking online orders and delivering them to the customer at no extra cost, while taking a cut from the restaurant itself. What next? How can the experience become even more delightful?
Sharpen those chopsticks. Set out the wasabi. Smile.
