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?

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:-)

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!!!

What's Ching's Secret?

There was an ET article on brands doing well in social media. True to mass media understanding of social media, it was a bit sketchy, a bit rudderless & reflected the general lack of understanding of the social landscape.

My friend & fellow digital road warrior - Shubho has done some analysis on his blog here...That in turn inspired me to have a dekko at Ching's Secret, Barista Lavazza and Just Dial Facebook pages...

Here's my analysis and ranking of these 3 brands on a 5 point scale where 5 - excellent and 1 - very poor.

1. Intent
Ching's Secret - The top management buys into social media. Lives and breathes it. The only brand to talk about the ET article on its fb page the same day!!
Rating - 5

Barista Lavazza - Looks like the social strategy is still at the marketing department level. Top management says - Lets see what happens, then we will scale up guys!
Rating - 3

Just Dial Social media for these guys is just another mass media channel. Judging by the quality of the strategy, it's still quite low on intent.High usage of the medium, low social intent of the brand.
Rating - 1

2. Content
Ching's Secret- Recipes is a great long running idea. Cooking is a bestseller conversation topic, immenselty shareable. Doesn't really matter if the recipes appear cut-n-paste. Content repurposing is part of the social media strategy.
Rating - 5

Barista Lavazza- The content is still small print ads dressed up insufficiently as conversation!
Rating - 3

Just Dial- Very boring and repetitive, It's a shame because with a product as engaging and diverse as Just Dial they could have really capitalised on content. Bollywood and sports however keep the people involved on the page...
Rating - 3

3. Engagement & CQ(Conversation Quotient)
Ching's Secret - Pretty high engagement and CQ. Is genuinenly a social brand and not a pretender. Not trying hard at all. The frequency of content upload matches the social vibrancy of both the brand & fb!
Rating - 5

Barista Lavazza - Quite average. Again promos pretending to be brand conversations & driving social currency.
Rating - 2

Just Dial- Below par. The comments by 'fans' are solely for/ because of Bollywood. Zero engagement with the brand Just Dial.
Rating - 1

4. Community
Ching's Secret - Lots of traction and not merely transactional.
Rating - 4

Barista Lavazza - Casual connect.
Rating - 3

Just Dial - Akin to people at a railway platform. High traffic. zero connect.
Rating - 1

5. Voice & Personality
Ching's Secret- Has a unique voice , has a sense of humour. Very human , very Ching , very consistent!
Rating - 5

Barista Lavazza- Quite artificial, very mass media tonality. Quite 1 way...
Rating - 3

Just Dial - The voice & personality of a bulletin board with pictures:-)
Rating - 1

While putting this post up, I commented on the Ching's Secret fb page a little before mid-night and pat came their reply...That's some impressive commitment to social media and consumers as people. These guys truly walk the talk!

Cheers and Happy Diwali

From Social Media to Social Conciousness

It's a nice long weekend and Neo and I are at Cinnamon. Him drawing on some clay pots! And me trying to unwind and forage for ideas and inspiration.

One of the things that has niggled my mind for some time is how to better use social media for social causes, community service, bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots, create a better work environment, create more meaningful work for everyone, make more meaningful connections and not just the quantity of connections...

So, in the morniing when I stumbled upon this profound and brilliant article by Umair Haque on the HBR site, thought of sharing it...

He talks about the "message" of the Internet's social revolution as being more meaningful work, economics, politics, society, and organization. Social media promises radically more meaning: to make stuff matter, once again, in human terms, not just financial ones.

Yet, Haque points out most "social media" strategies have one or more of three goals: to "push product," "build buzz," or "engage consumers." None of these lives up to the Internet's promise of meaning.

They're just slightly cleverer ways to sell more of the same old junk. But the great challenge of the 21st century is making stuff radically better in the first place — stuff that creates what he calls thicker value.

Umair talks about the 7 social strategies that are turning yesterday's zombieconomy upside down - Character, Creativity, Control, Culture, Clarity, Cohesion, Choreography - They're what he looks for when evaluating investments, innovations, and ideas across the social mediascape.

A must read, immerse and act!

Kreatve Inside

At my company, am a part of a 'creative committee'...Currently, we are doing an all office audit of what are some of the creative stuff we have done in the recent past... Since the entire exercise was about being and acting creative...tried making a video out of it. It hasn't come out that well though. Limitations of the video making site!

But found playing with video and images liberating. Thanks animoto.com! It also helps sell the ideas better. Planning to tool around a bit this month. Maybe start with a video for Neo's birthday, a short film(maybe) on a story I wrote a couple of years back, a creds for the Millennials study that I am working on and also some new business video conversation-starters... But first maybe a video post on 'social media fatigue':-)

Conversations with Consumers

Working around shifting is a moving goal post! As soon as one completes one area, a totally new one stares in your face and quietly takes the weekend away.

Last week, I attended many FGDs for a client project. While I am not an ardent admirer of this research tool, a lot of our insights are mined this way. Was giving some tips to my junior. Sharing the same...They are not in any particular order/ emphasis.

1. Capture more verbatims(as many as possible) - the actual consumer quotes. There are two purposes it serves.
(a) it's more evocative /rich/ has a nuance which may have been overlooked earlier
(b)it helps you later to weave a better narrative...

(Remember the first notes are like an FIR. Just write all the stuff, don't analyse at this stage or try to give structure to the discussion/ thoughts.)

2. Even before one enters into a GD as observer/ moderator, it's important to have a POV. Don't be rigid on your point of view(POV) but ask questions to vet it/ or drop it.

3. Compare stuff - with what you know before the FGD and what gets said during the FGD. I believe research is a dynamic, on-going conversation which we must have with consumers/ people. Also they are just 6-8 normal people in the room. You don't have to treat their word as gospel. They are capable of lying, speaking rubbish, rant because they are bored...Over time, one learns to separate the wheat from the chaff!!

4. The Importance of the Deviant/ Stray Comment
- Never underestimate the importance of the small comments, stray comments. They can lead you to places your original discussion guide couldn't have/ never intended!

5. Stories
Capture real life stories as vividly as possible. They are rare. They are true. They often are stranger than fiction...They give you a glimpse into the shifts and the drifts as nothing else can.

Then later during the analysis phase try to find out what - the motivations were
- Why they recounted those stories.
- Any hidden/ deeper meaning.
- What could a brand/ your brand learn from that story.

Good researchers and planners are story collectors and raconteurs!!
Keep mulling over the thoughts. Reflection when the FGD is done is very important. Research(any research) is not a power-point to be made, presented and archived...It's an on-going conversation with the consumer and with oneself!!

Mere Pass ZooZoo hai!!

Amidst all the IPL hoopla, the new series of Vodafone ZooZoo ads stand out. You can read the entire story of the making, the production, the props and people involved in the campaign here at afaqs... Ads on youtube here.

Was speaking to my friend Kumar @ Ogilvy after browsing through the zoozoo fan club on facebook(it's got > 26K fans!!) a while back and then generally thought about the zoozoos...

1. Talk Value. It's a great example of awesome creatives generating a natural buzz for the brand in internet time. With the top end of the audience now digitally immersed, they are commenting on, participating in the zoozoo conversation.

Also the brand is giving back enough stuff - wallpapers, screensavers, ringtones, IPL related offers, special tag-me images, Zoozoo sounds(Zoozoo laughter and music tracks, ad previews, Twitter updates etc.

2. Stories. But is that enough? Perhaps not. Maybe there is space for an entire zoozoo world with zoozoobeings with their zoozoo antics! In a digital world, the digital creative has an infinite life and therefore if you have great creative content like the 'zoozoos' one could look at creating more stories for niche consumption and popular culture seeding. Of course vodafone has done good stuff through the zoozoo quizzes and contests!! But there is scope for much more.

3. Conversation Creative.Zoozoos are a great example of a new creative style - the conversation creative where the TV creative generates great and ongoing conversations in the digital world(and of course the offline world as well). The 26K+ fans on facebook, the 84 comments on the afaqs article, the twitter fan following are all adding on to the conversation.

While I quickly scanned through the comments on afaqs, stumbled upon some zoozooisms- "Mummy mujhe zoozoo lagi hai", zoomply great, keep zoo zooing, zoo che!!!

This is a new strain of co-created conversation creative that is being created in real time and the agency and brand team can brainstorm how best to make use of it...

It is interesting content which can either die a natural death or put to better use!
Also, is the brand bold enough to open up the Zoozoo creative for the consumers to play! A campaign that can create 26K fans in a short time has great UGC potential.

4. Amplification. The other area where brands need to put more focus is amplification of the 'core idea'. A great and viral-ble idea like the zoozoos should now be amplified and seeded into popular culture. Of course the facebook, twitter stuff is good but perhaps it needs to be amplified through the mobile phone to really blow up the idea in a big way!!

5. Surprise is the new consistency. In the consumers-are-bored-and-networked era, brands must learn to surprise their followers rather than needlessly bother about consistency. Zoozoos have nothing in common with the pug(apart from the simplicity and cuteness quotient) or the Vodafone boy-n-girl, yet they make for arresting memorable stories. The consumer mind has evolved to a stage where he/ she can store these multiple stories and enjoy them and connect them back to Vodafone.

We shouldn't worry too much if the Zoozoos get more Talk Value in the short term than Vodafone itself! Zoozoos, the pug are cute characters , obviously they will get talked about more than the brand name...

Once again, some inspiring stuff from Ogilvy and very digital-media-friendly creatives...

Fake IPL Player, Real Conversations

Spent the last 30 minutes browsing through the Fake IPL Player's blog. It's incriminating, it's salacious, it's bawdy gossip at it's best/ worst!

Now whether it's a (a)real fake guy, or (b)a marketing ploy(I hope) or (c)an actual player blogger(rarefied chance), this guy/team knows how to create smutty buzz and generate conversation! Aren't you amazed at his site traffic and the thousands of comments from visitors and followers!

For quite some time, I have been arguing the case for conversation as brand content. But it mostly goes over the head of body-copy-only guys. Well the fake IPL player comes to my rescue.

Here are a few random thoughts which are floating in my little sleepy mind post lunch...

1. Context is Everything. The fake IPL player's blog gives a lot of inspiration to creating engaging alternatives to vapid 'Hilaa Denge', 'Dhikha Denge', 'Bataa Denge' ads on TV. He/she shows how gossip, locker room talk, the management vs. the player jibes can be engaging content as well. Maybe brands like Sprite, Levis, Axe can do more niche social media stuff which can draw lessons from this guy!

2. Don't Control the Conversation.Most Indian brands try to control/ avoid the conversation in the blogosphere/ social media and read too much into the controlled conversation(read FGD). This guy's posts have a thousand plus comments!! Comments by readers, visitors are part of the conversation. They add flavour/ spice to the conversation(even though here it degenerates into uncontrolled bitching:-)

Maybe brands like Mentos, Sprite(again), some of the bike brands(Pulsar for instance) could encourage a more intimate conversation with their niche audiences instead of merely pummeling the great looking, expensive ads. (Okay, I love the Tarsem(?) made Pulsar ad, but after the 13th viewing I now reach out for the remote/ or better still close my eyes. Instead guide me to the making of the ad web-site or the making of the bike(to the more engineering inclined DTSi variety)

3. Celebrity is One Of usWe knew(for some time now)that celebrities are not always on a pedestal. They lost some of their halo when they signed their 10th brand contract:-) But didn't know really that he/she is merely one of us.

The celeb can be reviled(SRK is called Badshah Dildo on this guy's blog- now how worse can it get from here). In contrast,the big brands largely treat celebs in an anachronistically sugar-coated way replete with a fake smile, fake swagger and fake talk!!

And the funny thing I feel is that all this bad talk and gossip from blogs like these won't really harm the celebs. But they will just make the Dish TV, Hyundai and sundry other badly made fake-talk-fake-smile ads even more boring for some of us!!

Celeb bashing might be more interesting than celeb grovelling!!

Well hats off to the fake IPL player and his blog!. You are giving us all real-time lessons in generating conversation(even though it's smutty). We need more brave brands and a mutant strain of journo-copy-writer-gossip-columnist to perfect this art for Indian brands.

Recession Hit Logos

Fresh from my morning e-mail oven:-)

Aamir - the blogger Khan

There is a sliver of a chance that I may get to meet Aamir(Khan) for my book. One of my close friends has promised. Maybe post the release of Ghajini...

So, while I keep my fingers crossed, I also decided to google all his interviews and other facts and trivia. He is a meticulous man I gather and I better be prepared.

And so I spent about an hour on his blog yesterday. I had stayed away from these celeb blogs earlier because in my own mind I just couldn't reconcile the Bollywood stars(so used to fame and manipulating mass media) with the simple, democratic and conversational act of blogging.

But alas I was wrong as far as Aamir's blog is concerned. This khan gets it. I mean he really gets blogging!! While many of my clients and few of my digital savvy colleagues(from past and present)still don't get it:-)

1. The posts are written exactly in the manner one would imagine Aamir to talk in say an interview.

2. The posts sound real. He talks about his anger and helplessness at the Mumbai blasts. How he felt screening TZP in Seattle for the IDA (International Dyslexia Association). Even the fact that he couldn't sleep one night because of ants in his bed:-)

Now this isn't rocket science. The being real part. But brands and brand managers seldom get it right.

3. It's okay to make mistakes.Blog posts are never meant to be perfectly crafted messages. Often they are random thoughts. They are the first opinions. They are amateurish. They might reveal mistakes and flaws. They can have spelling errors. Aamir's posts have spellos. He even spells the movie Memento as Momento and later acknowledges the error:-) Brands too must learn and adopt this degree of humanness when they want to converse through the medium of social media. It is more important to be human and share honest feelings than to be correct and share dessicated facts...

4. Inviting feedback. Bollywood stars or any stars for that matter have largely communicated from a pedestal. That's part of their mystique. Yet when one blogs one has to be receptive to feedback. From the commoner. The audience of One. Aamir does. Even the micro-feedback of giving indents in his paragraphs for better readability:-)

5. Contextual. Again brands arrogantly assume their primacy all the time. That they are the centre of the universe/ conversation. Whereas when you blog(the general sort of blog), context is everything. The content is a variegated play of life, your work, the important and the trivial thoughts...Again, I have found it difficult for clients and their brands to appreciate the context when it comes to any form of social media.

So, if nothing else, star bloggers like Aamir can teach marketers how to converse with their audience. One on one...

However, on the content front, I was largely disappointed. I don't think he has articulated his thoughts as well as he acts in his movies:-)( on the basis of the 4-5 posts that I read randomly...)

You may want to read a few of his posts - 'Sleepless in Seattle', 'It's a bird, it's a plane' - by Abbas Tyrewala, 'Ghajini'...Ah, you will will have to register and then log on...a bit annoying!

Reach Out and Other Stray Thots

Day before, I got a mail from a planner in Delhi. Nothing unusual about that. Except that I didn't know that planner and it was a 'reach out' e-mail. The e-mail wasn't for a job or a LinkedIn introduction or plain networking...It was just one planner reaching out to another - across cities, across agency networks...A simple, honest reach-out!!

The planner just wanted to talk to me...It felt good. Today we had a longish chat on the phone. Smuggled some time from the 'effie case preparations' that's keeping me and sonal bogged down!! One stray thot led to another...

1. It's so easy to reach out today. Through social media and a connected world. And yet in our small Indian ad world, we don't do that enough. We had a small planning collective - ThotBlurb - but unfortunately it died out after a few months...

2. There are few regular planner meets or ad forums.(Or maybe I am clueless about them or too old and therefore denied entry)

3. Is there something wrong with the Indian ad fraternity. While trying to get people to interview for my book, I have found it easier to reach Alex Bogusky(haven't made this up) than an Indian CEO(ex-boss, 4 mails, zero replies:-)
Why are we(ok, so many of us) so stuck up? So, hierarchical and designation-obsessed in our dealings and so incapable of reaching out...

4. On the positive side, today is the best time for communication people. It's so easy to stay in Mumbai and think with Boston...There is no lag time in global idea downloads. It's all there to be scrutinised, made sense of, to be re-purposed.

5. But I guess Internet and social media still hasn't really penetrated our bottled up mindsets, our un-sharing nature, our silo-workings...

6. Or maybe some of us are waiting for 'pehle aap'!!

Resolution - (a)To increase LinkedIn connections to 500 in the next 12 months!!, (b) To revive SchoolOfDavid(okay SchoolOfMudra:-), (c) Revive ThotBlurb, (d) Be more regular with the LikeMind Mumbai meets...and (e) Find time to do all of the above...LOLAnd this is the old file photo of a SchoolOfDavid:-) Miss you guys...

Tribal Goes Social

Tribal DDB London got into social marketing mode last week. It launched Radar DDB for social media. You can read the write-up here...

Till now, such services/ this space has been a place for smaller, independent agencies. Now Tribal DDB, one of the big three agency networks alongside WPP and IPG, is creating its own social media division to add to its UK roster…

Radar DDB, which already operates in Canada, is pegging January 1, 2009, as a start date. Radar DDB will focus on building brand strategy, social media monitoring and conversational branded content for Tribal clients, which include VW and Philips.

We have been working to create our own social media division for some time now in India. Time to get in touch with the London office for some tips and inspiration...

What's your Digital Quotient(DQ)?

Finally, we have our internal planner group-id/water cooler up and running! Last Thursday, I had asked to compile a list of Questions to check the DQ(digital quotient) of the planner group/ the agency executive...

Here's the compiled version...

1. Have you ever led an alternate digital life, such as Second Life? And for the moment ignore the duration of time spent!

2. Have you ever gamed online?

3. Have you ever used, supported or developed any alternate digital community space (such as Cydia/ Installer/ Applications on the iphone)?

4. When was the last time you actually experienced a completely new technological platform?

5. Do you actively seed/ leech from torrent sites? If so what do you seek?

6. Have you ever used your 'digital' world to guide you when you travelled abroad (locations, language translations, eateries, etc)?

7. To what extent have you shifted your bill payments/ ticketing/ movie bookings, etc online?

8. Has the digital world enabled you to work for profit with people whom you've only ever interacted with online?

9. Have you shifted a large part of your high-value purchases online?

10. Have you actively explored the various internet browsers on offer? If so, do you have a personal opinion on the same?

11. Do you read blogs? Which ones?

12. Do you have a personal blog? What's it about?

13. Do you participate in at least one social network? Which one?

14. Have you ever uploaded a video online? What did you use to do it?

15. What's your favorite search engine. Why?

16. Have you ever used an online classified service like craigslist?

17. Besides making phone calls—how else do you use your mobile phone?

18. Have you ever registered a domain name?

19. Do you use social bookmarks or tagging?

20. Do you use a feed reader of some sort? Which one? Why?

And once again these Qs make me realise am still a struggling Digital Immigrant:-)
( And I feel we missed some Qs for the mobile). We need to make a mind-shift from the PC to the mobile real soon...

P.S. DQ image source - derryquay.com

My2centsonsocialmedia

It's been a gap of two weeks from the blog...The longest in quite some time...Work, a few articles and general lethargy. No sublime or sacred reason to be away for this long. But actually the resolution not to blog from home might just be the reason:-)

Last Friday at our Media division's weekly meet, did a small talk on social media...These are the points I touched under the label - 10 Points to Mull About Social Media(For elevator pitches to clients, bosses and generally to impress other people:-)

1. It’s a Kick-Ass Learning Tool. Of course the price one pays is attention deficit...But if you can ride over it, you come up wiser! Am still struggling!!

2.Keeps you plugged in...I recently wrote an article on twitter and was rudely reminded by social media of the inaccuracy of some of the facts! Puts you on your toes all the time. One of the better researches I did for Nokia was using a college kid and her facebook account some months back!

3. Gives you a flavour of the new creative eco-system. More about that here...

4. Open Global Lab For Thinking. Don't exactly know how it's helping brands, but at the individual level all of us are growing because of the new connections we make every day!

5. Trend spotting. Often with a planning department of one social media and the web are the best trend spotting tools available...

6. Related to pt. 4 above, social media is a Gr8 Collaboration Tool

7. And of course a good( and equally bad) PR tool available to the individual, the brand and the company.

8. I have also found it very useful to Seed Strategic & Creative Content within the Agency and among Clients

9. It's a Fun Place to Be.

10. And my media team wud agree, it always displays - Signs of the changing/(ed) Media Landscape...

Maybe will try to thread them together into a more cogent piece later...

In case you want the presentation mail me at mannsinha@gmail.com

Ferment, Huddle and BarNone

When I took up my current job some two month back, one of the stuff that really excited me was the potential to integrate the 5 odd SBUs - in digital, OOH, data driven marketing, health & lifestyle and events & promotions...

The task needless to say is tough as hell but that's also the exciting part.

One of the things that I have been trying to do with the help of colleagues is to start conversation hubs within the SBUs.

The first modest gathering of three was BarNone - the mid-to-senior team conversations(actually to be honest still tweaking with the brand name). BarNone was held at Red Box in Bandra with Andee and Leroy as founder members:-) Happened in 3rd wk of Apr.

The next was for the young blood in the system. Planners and trainees and passionate crowd sourced talent. The first Huddle happened last Sunday - May 18th at Carter Road CCD.

In the words of my planner Sonal - "In between sipping scary looking blue slushes, some really cool initiatives were discussed. With conversations about music, virals, movies… and an impromptu performance by a guitarist member of The Huddle, the first meet was just like huddles should be – inspiring and fun."

And the last one - Ferment is going to happen with the SBU heads in June...

Our TQ(twtr quotient)/ conversation quotient is getting higher every month:-)

Blabnote : The World's 1st Vocal Social Network

Conversations, social media, ferments within my company and social experiments have taken/ are taking quite a lot of my time. But am enjoying this social school.

Pawar - the Mican trainee who is doing a project on digital media sent a link for blab-note - the voice-only social network a while back! Check it out here...

Blabnote, a British start up that is currently in private beta, has created what may be the world’s first “vocal social network.”

The product is far from perfect but it's the first step towards a voice-enabled-interaction future...The keyboard must now have a clear expiry date:-)

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!!

No Entry To Brands

I hate the term social media. I feel it lowers the value of both 'media' and the concept of being social. The term is just a convenient envelope to help brands/ commercial media trespass into the private space of people more indiscreetly than ever before!!

Some time back had stumbled upon this post by Richard Huntington which splendidly captures my sentiment. Do read the post.

By trespassing on spheres of conversations between real people, brands reveal their fake selves even more quickly than before.

Social media must not end up being a 'Selling Ground' for brands...The sooner marketers realise this, the better. Because the people out here are smarter, with more IQ, more EQ, more creativity, more environmental sensitiveness than what mass market brands would have ever come across!!

The cost of a backlash to an intrusive brand sales pitch could be quite high in the long term!!

Facebook : Counterpoint

My online friend Satish at Naked NY commented on the Facebook Indigestion post...Said that my Facebook experience could be at dramatic variance with the teen sentiment/ relationship with Facebook!

So, I asked a young friend of mine to put her thoughts around the subject...Here's her take...

My virtual umbilical cord (and no, this is not about the progress in medical technology!)
"The age of the global citizen...half my childhood buddies are all over the world...i know at least one person in every continent(maybe even Antarctica..i wudn't be surprised) friendships made for life...with only a geographical barrier...bridged by something as technological as the internet."

"Technology and relationships don't mix, like cold steel and heartfelt warmth maybe? Well, I'd beg to differ."

"School friends, college friends, colleagues, friends' friends, a lot of alliances you would best forget but there are just as many that matter so much."

"My best friend in 6th grade who left for boarding school in Shimla. Or another bestie who moved home to Japan when i was 14. My first crush who has lived in Colombo since we were 12, but i got in touch with again 7 years later...all thanks to Facebook."

"With such fast paced lives and with everyone in a different part of the world it's difficult to catch up for even a cursory drink, making the Boozemail application one of the largest used on Facebook."

With newsfeeds giving you a play by play update on your friend's lives(which you can update the settings of to ignore lesser acquaintances, and bring your inner circle into the limelight) to building an entirely virtual social life for the simple reason that, having a real one that functions the same way, is plain impossible.

"Facebook is what binds me to my old friends and actually helps me get closer to people I never got a chance to bond with earlier. You may realise that you and a casual friend may have similar interests from the groups you join, the applications you prefer, and a million other things considering Facebook is so customised you can read a person's personality just by visiting their profile page. for eg. Leena and I studied in the same class for 6 years in school, casual friends, but she only realised i was a fellow fan of The Doors when she read my status message. It simply said, 'Bhavna is: stoned immaculate'"

"Friendships are born out of sticky situations, escapades, lurid stories brimful of laughter and tears. Getting caught for bunking maths class and playing basketball instead or talking about your dreams and your passion over a cup of coffee while watching a beautiful sunset cannot be recreated even with the best graphics."

"We bond through sharing good times and the not-so-good (rather horrible, horrendous and torturous) ones and this is not an emotion that transmits through an LCD screen. So when you think about it, Facebook is nothing close to the real thing, but it's one hell of a replacement when the real world is out of reach."

Thanks B for sharing your thoughts...