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?

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!!!

My Son's Father : 5 Things I Re-Learnt From Neo

I was a bit apprehensive how my son, Neo would adjust to this city shift - Bombay to Delhi. He took less than 24 hours!! Children are that adaptive...I have tried to spend more time with him these last two months...It's amazing how you can learn/ unlearn/ re-learn tons of stuff from your kids. In their innocence and curiosity they often make profound comments and observations....Here's what I picked-up!

1. Look beneath/ look around. I remember it was one of the first few weeks in our Gurgaon house, he ran upto me to show something, Dragged me to the 'backyard' and asked me to look at 'the thing'. With my well trained planner eyes I kept searching for 'a thing' a 'big physical thing' while Neo wanted me to show how tall the grass had grown!!

He often stops me and shows me an unusual flower, the full moon, a bird on the wire, ants in the bathroom...

2. Play and learn. Like all kids, he has an insatiable appetite for play. Kids want to play in the morning, while eating, while studying, before going off to sleep...In play they learn. Playing UNO, snakes and ladder, cricket, ludo and Monopoly has made me wonder how we can inject more play at work. Increasingly a lot of work that we( at least I do) is conceptual and creative. Being too serious and working like a factory shift has diminishing returns beyond a point. It's the play value at work that adds that extra bit!

3.Do you know my friends?It's important for him that my wife and I remember all his friends names(often I fail miserably)- Bombay school friends, Bombay Ashiana building friends, Gurgaon school friends, the colony friends, the school bus friends...

What I feel is in all the lip service that a lot of marketing pays the DM mailer often reads - Dear loyal customer, the call centre guy often calls up from your mobile company to find if you are a post-paid or a pre-paid customer!!

If it's a relationship you care, remembering names is important. Period.

4. M and H.The other week-end I had taken Neo to the Qutab Minar(achcha tower hai he kept on saying), he suddenly points out to some similarity he found between the Hindi letter 'mm' and the English alphabet - 'H'. I wondered why this thought never came to me.

Is it because our analytical minds have been trained to spot the differences more than focus on similarities...Kids are good at recognising patterns. And it would help if we could learn to relax our grey cells and hunt for patterns in unlikely places.

5. Deliver-what-you-promise. It's very important for Neo that I walk the talk. If you have promised a bedtime-story, it must be told. Neo would wait upto an hour with sleep-filled eyes to hear a 'Ram-aur-Shyam' story from me.

Kids I have realised can teach us an awful lot...Next time before we brush them aside - Accha chup raho, abhi tum bache ho - maybe it would make more sense to lend them a ear!

P.S. The picture is that of a 'digital drawing' that he made on my laptop:-)