Digital Ecosystem for your Brand? Now what's that!!!

Just came back from a 3 hour breakfast at Roots Cafe - great poha, chilla jasmine tea and early morning drizzle...And the sight of two cute kids wallowing in the small rain water puddle...Wish I was 4 again:-)

Penning down few thots in the head on digital eco-system...While consulting clients through my Social Media consultancy - Once Upon A Time, I very often try to explain the need for a digital/online/social media eco-system...

Of course they don't always understand the need for it, grown up as they are on a 'one-size-fits-all' mass media diet.

Here are few of the guidelines - some learnt by personal experience curating the content for Cinnamon Stays, my UnHotel brand and some from Guy Kawasaki's book Enchantment...

1. Is your brand/platform/POV worthy of an eco-system? Is your product, service, ideology boring/ bland - then try to fix it first!You cannot build an enduring community/ eco-system around stuff that people hardly care.

You can buy lots of online, SM ads and people may even like those so that you have a tidy fan base but that's all a mirage.

In the new world, spend the most time on having a worthy cause. Anna Hazare has one. He doesn't really need a SM plan, calendar!!

2. Create Meaning. Give consumers, readers something meaningful to do.

What does that mean - Take the very popular Vodafone ZooZoo campaign. Let's visit it's fb page. While they seem to have done a reasonably good job of a solid fan base and daily interactions! They have just about tapped the tip of the iceberg...

More can be done in terms of getting ideas from consumers who love zoozoos(crowd-sourcing). Ideas to improve customer service for eg.

We are heading towards Social media fatigue and the way to keep your fans and consumers engaged are not cute viral videos and contests only but a more meaningful exchange on a daily basis.

3. Welcome criticism. This one makes most clients go paranoid. How can we allow negative comments? Lets delete the dissatisfied consumers rant. Lets ignore him(he is anyways a statistical rounding off error!!) Or even lets punish him for publicly criticizing my brand!

Recently I spent close to 20 days getting a complaint resolved by a major telecom brand. I used SM to first complain and rant and later protest and berate the brand. Yet the over-all response from the brand was hopelessly unwelcoming!!!

I guess my lifetime worth for that brand is very high. No amount of mass media 'song-and-dance' interruptions will now ever change my stance. They just blew a big chance to engage and enchant a vocal consumer...The life-time damage of an ignored customer is very high in the new connected world.

So while many brands are very busy measuring the total count of positive and negative feedback on online platforms, they mustn't just be complacent by knowing the statistic on a nice power-point slide.

The strategy to deal with online criticism should be exactly the opposite.

Lets engage the dissatisfied lot(of course we can't do much about the non-genuine ones). Let's figure out smart ways to 'welcome criticism'. This requires a culture change at the company, not just sophisticated measurement tools!! That's what brand management 2.0 will largely be about - a culture of welcoming criticism(via Guy Kawasaki). What are you doing about it?

Jugaad Studio - the culture, craft and creativity mash-up!

This project has been very close to my heart for more than 2 years now...After being in 'skunkworks' for a long time, Jugaad Studio - an ideas, design and merchandising company begins life on facebook TODAY 6:00pm.

Jugaad Studio is an ideas, design and merchandising start-up! There are two of us to begin with. My friend Yogi - the artist and designer and myself - the conceptor and curator of ideas - some cute, some quaint, some crazy!

There are so many good design studios around us. We will try to focus on the popular culture space - Bollywood, cricket, music, etc. And serve up delicious dollops of mashed up concepts - on tees, as posters, on mugs and the moon:-)

We will share & sell our ideas and finished products on the fb link above. Stay tuned!

I Want One Million Fans. I Want Them Now!

If you are in new media/digital media/ social media, one of the briefs which you may get from some clients is - I want 1 mn fans! Having a large fan following in itself is not a crime:-) But few crucial questions that tend to be blatantly ignored are...

1. To Follow What. The bigger question to answer before the 1 million number is 'what cause to follow'? Is the product or the over-abused passion points - cricket, Bollywood, music worth following especially on say the facebook page of the brand.

You can use media monies to buy fans. But they won't be worth much if you haven't answered the central question of 'to follow what?' And this requires a deep think and strategic alignment with your long term marketing plans. Else it's a tactical gimmick.

Gloat over the short term gain. But that's where the game will end.

2. A Facebook Fan is Not Really A Fan:-) Facebook is a funny country. It works on lazy likeonomics. To unlike is too much of work. To be a fan is effortless. So fans accumulated like a bargain hunt don't really count for much if they are not truly engaged. It's obvious but often over-looked - when nurturing your fan base, go for quality and not quantity alone!

3. The New Definition of ROI. Just because Social Media has the word 'media' built into it doesn't make it akin to a mass media platform. It's fundamentally different. Because it's 2-way, people-to-people interaction and has a complex web like multi-way talk & feedback system unlike the fixed channels of mass media! The 'investment' must be in 'interactions'. A fundamental difference from our mass media upbringing.

What we should really be obsessed with is the 'level-of-interaction'. Once we have got our brand in the middle of the most interactive conversations, then an ROI on the efforts makes sense. But before that all talk of ROI is a lot less meaningful...

As businessmen, entrepreneurs and brand owners, let's obsess about making our brands social and not just do social.

For questions, queries, business please connect with me on mannsinha@gmail.com
I run a brand 2.0 consultancy called Once Upon A Time and use social media to promote my hospitality brand -Cinnamon Stays with small success! The lessons learnt are personal and over the last 5 years!!

Social Media is a lot like farming. It requires time, patience, perspective, nurturing and passion! The cold hunting instincts are less effective here:-)

PS. The picture above is that of the San Francisco Scooter Girls - a girl riding community. It was founded on the belief that women have their own place in riding culture that's very different from the traditional biker scene.

The SF Scooter Girls website features photos of each member showing off her highly personalized ride. Disco bikes. Flower-covered bikes.

And although these women can choose to ride any manufacturer's scooter, their passion for Vespa, even though they have no affiliation with the company, creates a strong brand statement on its own. Scooty - few learnings from here?!

Join In the Biggest Social Campaign of Our Time!

Some facebook updates from friends, few tweets and I am getting absorbed into what could potentially be the biggest social campaigns of our time!

This isn't a social (media) based campaign but facebook, twitter, youtube are for sure putting this anti-corruption campaign on steroids. This is also a taste of the shape of disruptive change to come - a converging of social media, mass media(parts of it) and grassroots movement - the likes of which we witnessed recently from Egypt to Libya!

And why brands can rarely hope to achieve this kind of response is that it's really difficult to have a real, convincing unadulterated cause at the centre of a brand campaign - one that resonates. That people strongly feel about. That people can empathise with. Not the year end 'care for blind people', 'save the tiger' scam ads!

Hope many more marketing guys realise that social media works more for 'social reasons' and not solely as the media platform that they would like it to work as!

I also hope some of the biggest creative names in the country would lend their talent and support to this 'social campaign' and join in! It would be a pity if they waste all their immense talent on brrr, the beach in Goa and beer:-)

The Art of the Start

That's the name of the Guy Kawasaki Book. Love the name - Art of the Start. Wish I would have thought of it first:-)

Anyways, what I want to share today are some simple lessons that I learnt running my(our - with my wife) start-up - Cinnamon Stays! Originally written as an fb comment almost a year back.

So here are some tips that you may find useful....

5+1 lessons that I would like to share (commonsense in hind-sight)

1. There is no right time to start a business. One can never be too early. In my case it wasn't too late either. The important thing is to take the plunge...That's half the work done.(Honestly)

2. Our degrees and fancy designations and the corporate egos we accumulate over the years are the biggest deterrents.

Think like the neighbourhood grocery store guy. Do not analyse too much! You can't get all the answers by analysis alone....

3. The brand can wait. It's maybe strange coming from someone having spent 15 years in agencies, around brands. What I re-learnt in past 4 months...
The brand is the clean loo...
The brand is the on-time pick-up...
The brand is the putting a 80 kilo 'barf ki silli' in the tank to jugaad fix the boiling hot water tank:-)
The brand is conversing with the guests and lending them the book you just finished reading. Your brand actually is quite different from what you read in a book...

The logo and the stationery can wait....

4. Belief is important. Belief that you will succeed no matter what - even when friends snigger behind your back, when family questions your intelligence, when you are down on the last reserves of some hard earned money

5. Ask for help. For contacts. For leads . For networking. There are cynics out there and then there are successful people who want you to succeed.

5+1. Social Media is not a fad. It works! It has worked for me!! We have spent negligible money on mass media(didn't have much anyways:-) But managing social media is an art more than science especially for start-ups. You can only learn by taking the plunge in SM....

Facebook, twitter, stumbleupon, LinkedIn, flickr, Trip Advisor have all contributed to building Cinnamon as a fledgling hospitality brand.

Today Cinnamon is rated No. 1 on Trip Advisor. We get business through Facebook, twitter and Trip Advisor...Did I have all the answers for Social Media marketing when I started? Certainly not! But I have learnt vital lessons along the way!

So for any entrepreneur, wanna-be-entrepreneur, individual, small brand owner I offer the Cinnamon lounge as a meeting place...930 to 530 weekdays and extended hours weekends:-)Happy to help with my SM expertise!

I can help jump-start your social media strategy through my second start-up - Once Upon a Time - a story telling and brand 2.0 consultancy. Happy to share - the art of the start!

Welcome Oberoi Gurgaon!

Was chatting with my friend Girish from Webitude. The Oberoi Gurgaon fb page came up in the chat for some reason which I forget. Triggered off some thoughts...

While the Oberoi page is far better than many branded fb pages, 5 suggestions which I feel can make their fb storyline better.

1. There is little 'Oberoi' story on the page. Facebook is most effective when the conversation thread is like an episodic, gradually unfolding brand story. The page currently has a stream of PR statements:-)

2. I find the grandeur and warmth of the 'Oberoi' brand missing! Period.
Part design of the page, part the selection of the picture/(s). Would the brand have been this callous if they were designing an expensive brochure which few read these days!

3. Related point, I find no 'Oberoi' personality on the fb page. It's important for any brand. Critical if you happen to be a hospitality brand.

4. You now have a participative community not an audience. Treat them with respect. And that means making an effort to answer each and every query like a friend. Fans on fb are not mere numbers to be hoarded in your bank account:-)

5. Go local. Where's Gurgaon on your page? The best social media engagements are those that are personal, micro, local. It's simple but a point that many brands miss...

Nevertheless, am a great fan of the 'Oberoi' brand. Welcome to Gurgaon and I plan to visit threesixtyone - your all day restaurant!!!

Nestea - Embed some 'social' into this campaign!

Like the new Nestea TVC... first squirrels(kitkat), and now Kangaroos(nestea)...what cutesy animal for Maggi now:-)

I guess the missing(till now) link here is the 'conversation between generations' that the campaign can evoke using digital media. With my limited knowledge about the brand, I still feel that real long-term success for Nestea will demand a behaviour change from consumers that mass media(read TV) alone can't deliver...

For the marketing team the key question will be - Think how you can embed 'social' into the heart of your new campaign....That will lead to an engaging, episodic storyline for the brand!