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?

Walk the Talk with Salim Khan

Last Sunday after a long time was taking a morning walk on the Bandstand promenade. Halfway through the walk, my wife spotted the celebrity script-writer of yester years Salim Khan(Salman's father) walking towards us.

I gathered myself to speak to the legendary Salim Khan of the Salim-Javed fame. Over the next 10 odd minutes, I could mentally jot the following nuggets which am sure to weave someplace into my brands and Bollywood book.

1. He was particularly peeved at the media-grabbing attention seeking lifestyles of the newer writers and directors...Said he - "Ab Ashutosh ko hi le lijiye. Achchi film banayi, par aajkal jyada waqt ribbon kaatne mein ya TV pe discussion karne mein nikaal deta hai". "Main maanata hoon ki Art is nurtured in isolation and exhibited in public".

2. Salim saheb had watched Chandni Chowk to China the previous evening with his friends and was still reeling under it's effect:-) He blasted the writer..."Ab Bollywood story likhna koi atom bomb banane jaisa nahin hai, phir bhi aaj kal ke writer mein woh sensibility nahin hai aam zindagi ko capture karne ki".

3. Writer ko patience chahiye. Bolye kam, suniye jyada...

By this time we had walked off to one end of the premenade. He then started reminiscing about his younger days, his love for fast cars and a fast life. How Salman recently gifted him a Triumph 500. What made "mere pass ma hai" work the magic and get into popular culture.

He was sweet enough to give me his ghar ka number. So maybe a chai with Salim Khan may soon happen...As I pen this post, the vortex of a thought seizes me - "Maybe one should never meet the legends and the greats once they are past their prime. Because reality may end up diluting the myth in the mind!"

Schmidt Speak

On adage.com, browsed through Eric Schmidt's interview. It's always fascinating to tap into the mind of this internet era sage...Some nuggets from the article.

1. The internet is fast becoming a "cesspool" where false information thrives! Brands, therefore are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the internet cesspool.

2. Branding may be an essential element that helps people navigate the world. Brand affinity is clearly hard wired. It is so fundamental to human existence that it's not going away. It must have a genetic component.

Interesting stuff...Chewable!

Think Something New

Shoppers Stop has changed it's logo under a campaign called 'Start Something New'. It has a heard-it-somewhere-before ringtone. I think thoughts like - Start Something New work better in action than in image. So will reserve judgement till the next store visit.

I find the new Ray & Keshavan logo quite bland and sans character...In fact I like the older logo. Maybe they should have asked all their customers before changing the logo. And the gold/ platinum card customers could have had veto rights...LOL

You can read the story at afaqs here...

Sunday, Taglines and Virtual Worlds

Yet again I am in Delhi on a Sunday! Got an early morning client presentation tomorrow...Missed taking Neo to the Juhu beach and bandstand!! Waiting for breakfast...

A while back had written a post on the 'diminishing return on taglines'. I had largely meant those of the 'xyz de variety - hila de, pila de, ghumaa de!

Here's an article on adage.com in support of the enduring power of tag-lines. Have a read here...

A good article by Reuben Steiger of Second Life on 'Merging the Real and Virtual Worlds' again on adage.com here...

Reubens insights peppered with my own...

- Virtual worlds are a significant and fast growing market.
Okay in India, it might take a longer time because of bandwidth issues but we need to be mentally prepared for the virtual world to export our brand thinking when bandwidth sorts out...

- Virtual worlds are a subset of social media, which accounts for 30% of consumer internet activity in the US according to Comscore.
As I mentioned in my last post, in India the media participants are largely fence-sitters around social media. A layer of virtual world is perhaps too much change, too fast:-)

I think it's time to start a digital media adoption and first steps consultancy under Tribal...Must speak to my colleague Leroy on this!!

- Virtual worlds turn the web into a "place," allowing users to connect face-to-face in real time.

- Early data suggest that levels of brand engagement in virtual worlds are extremely high. Millions of Us has conducted some 60 engagements in virtual worlds for clients with engagement per user ranging from 2 to 24 hours.

- There are 550 million users of social networks and as users begin to put virtual "rooms" on their pages, the game will change significantly.
Agree, as I flipped through the A G Lafley and Ram Charan book, Game Changer on the flight to Dilli yesterday, was wondering on similar lines. Though, nobody has the idea of how exactly the real and virtual worlds will collide, mash up in the next 18-24 months, what is undeniably true is that the game will have further changed for brands, marketers, analog and digital agencies alike!!

Four toast, some tea and a badly made omelette has arrived:-)...Enjoy!

MySpace is Full. What About Yours?

So, finally MySpace sets up shop in India. Read the story at DNA here,!

Methinks, they are a bit too late. Orkut and Facebook have the first mover advantage. Mahesh of Pinstorm had this to say...

- MySpace in India has to establish itself in a territory where Orkut is the king with over 8 million users —that’s about one-third of all Indian youth online — a greater share than even Star Plus has of this demographic on TV.

- Too many of us are on too many networks — and it’s too much incremental trouble to get on to another network for very little incremental benefit.

Agree with you on that one Mahesh!

- No Indian social network has yet gained any significant advertiser confidence. Of the Rs 600 crore spent online in India last year that Pinstorm tracks, barely 1-2% went to social networks.

Well on this one, I feel Indian media mostly doesn't understand social networks.
To understand it, you got to do/be social not just understand/ know social and behave like big media/ big company!! We are still a heavily hierarchical company-media-network.

With my limited exposure, I find that media(print and magazine)in the West are trying hard to integrate the 2-way social aspect into their medium but in India it's largely lip-service or a blind eye.

Generally speaking, the Indian mediascape and clients are sitting at the periphery of social media, lusting at ways and means to monetise social media w/o realising what it is.

Thoughts like conversation, engagement, influence, participation fade in the back-drop of shouts of monetising the eyeballs, ROI and advertising potential and reach of the social media...

Coming back to MySpace - well myspace is full. Am happy with LinkedIn and Facebook!! But as a platform for musical bands, I think MySpace has a great positioning! One more grand threat to music companies!!

Great Indian Brand : Chandamama

Was returning from a client meet few days back when I noticed Chandamama on the pavement! Brought back childhood yaadein - Slouched on the bed and reading vikram aur betaal:-)

Picked it up for Neo. He was happy for precisely 5 seconds and then tossed it aside. Must read a story to him one of these days!!

Chandamama is turning 60 and digital. Check out this iconic Indian brand's web-site here...

You may wish to read a related story on HT here...

At retirement age, the once-fading title is poised to reinvent itself with an upgraded Web presence featuring interactive games and puzzles, downloadable wallpapers for cellphones and programmes on Worldspace radio!!

As a book, Chandamama has seen a revival too, going up to four lakh readers from 1.3 lakh in six months. To toast it, a 96-page comic book will hit the stands every four months from April 21.