Gul Panag official twitter face of WLIFW: Celebrities tweeting for brands

I had earlier written my thoughts on bollywood celebrities on twitter at pluggdin wherein one of my observations was:

“Considering the influence which celebrities have on Indian consumers and twitter becoming twilmy I’m wondering if the next trend will be celebrities endorsing brands on twitter or promoting services amongst their followers”

So it comes as no surprise to me when I read the news of Gul Panag being the ‘Twitter Face’ of the forthcoming Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. Wills Lifestyle has initiated this association to explore the platform of new age media and to engage with the patrons of WLIFW in an interesting fashion. For the very first time in the world, a celebrity will tweet directly from the event venue on the on-goings of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. Recognizing the growing popularity of Twitter in India and especially of Gul Panag on this platform, Wills Lifestyle decided to take on board Gul Panag as the ‘Twitter Face’ to cover the event for this medium. You can read more details of the story here.

Indeed a smart way of interacting with fans and viewers. And smarter is the choice of celebrity as Gul definitely knows the art of customer engagement and involvement in this space. With her loyal fan following and twee-peal (twitter-appeal), I’m sure Gul will manage to create enough word of mouth and viral effect for WLIFW this year. She has already started creating the excitement with special contests for tweeple where winners are going to get free passes for the event. With more and more Indian brands jumping on to the twitter bandwagon over last couple of months, I think it would be fair to say that twitter is one of the fastest adapted new age media by Indian marketers; it has proved to be a great communication medium, in fact in digital media right now it is definitely “THE” marketing medium so to say.

Image Source: GroveMarketingBlog

Presence on social media has become a hygiene factor for most of the brands and many Indian brands / events / services are using different social media platforms for different purposes. Some of them have been successful whereas some are still trying to figure out the use beyond posting links of advertising campaigns or PR coverages. But despite this mix, noteworthy thing is the innovative ideas which Indian marketers are coming out with for new age mediums like twitter. I personally loved this idea of a tech-savvy bollywood personality being “twitter face” of WLIFW and I think it’s one of its kinds in Indian market currently. Now let’s wait and watch which other brands follow the suit. Though a word of caution here for marketers would be to think carefully before deciding on this “me too” strategy as not all celebs can actually create the same aura in this medium and also not every product / service needs to be promoted through this platform.

Dettol goes SEM way!

Have been caught up in other things to update this blog, though have got many insights to share but due to paucity of time, I’ll stick to a short one; will be back with another post soon

First a small update: Few days back, one of my article came on pluggdin, check out: Twitter getting Twilmy: An opportunity for brands? @ http://www.pluggd.in/bollywood-celebrities-on-twitter-what-indian-brands-can-learn-from-twilmy-tweets-297/

Now coming down to this post, 2-3 days back while surfing for some content related to swine in Google, I glanced upon this:

This sponsored ad of Dettol was definitely not there two days back. Surprising to see Dettol using a digital route & that too by banking on swine flu!

Another case of Chance Pe Dance marketing but nevertheless a good initiative! Not only Dettol, there were few others also in the same search screen who were utilizing this buzz word for promotions, like alibaba or ebay doing SEM for swine flu prevention kits. Before this I had not observed Dettol going SEM way in India. The ad title read H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) & baseline read “Dettol kills 99.9% bacteria & Flu Viruses. Learn more now!” The ad led to Dettol website where there was a section on H1N1 virus & germ protection. Considering the rise in search for swine flu related key words this was definitely an interesting strategy to grab some eyeballs and promote products indirectly. Main route was educative one but the very facts that one need to wash hands frequently or sanitize his environment with a good disinfectant establishes a strong connect with the product proposition and leads to promotion in an implicit way. A smart campaign by Dettol in the right way at the right time and through the right medium, Swine Flu and related keywords are definitely the hot search words these days. Would be interesting to see any coverage for the aftereffect of this campaign both in terms of website hits or actual sales.

Kingfisher Communication

I’m sure like me all of you would also have got your inboxes flooded with new year wishes. More than personal messages, it’s in fact all sorts of marketing campaigns from different services wishing new year and announcing some or other new year offer. Ah speak of that over-abuse of email marketing channel in India!!! Well, most of promotional emails went into my trash folder without even opening it…but here comes one email on my gmail id which I couldn’t help myself from opening it immediately despite knowing it very well that this one also is some marketing mailer. Reason? Well, the sender of the email is Dr. Vijay Mallya J. Now am I not supposed to click it at least once to see wht Mr. Mallya has to communicate to me? This was also just another mailer but see a small customization in terms of sender’s name did make a difference to me as a consumer. And not only me, I’m sure most of the consumers would like to click it at least once to read Mr. Mallya’s message and therefore just a bit of personalization would have led to a higher CTR than normal King club mailers. After all the sender’s name reads Dr. Vijay Mallya and from the look of it, it didn’t seem to be a virus mail. Kingfisher is really the king of communication and yea they always set some benchmark of service and communication. Check it out:

 

Well, this is my last post for 2008… So, shall I also say in Mallya eshtylee – I want to personally thank all of you for your continued patronage, for reading my blog and sharing your opinions…ha ha ha, I know I know it’s getting too much, so better leave this style to Mr. Mallya. From my side, just a simple wish  - Wish all my readers and blogger friends a very happy and prosperous new year!

 

IDEA – for the people, by the people!

Logged in to Yahoo India today and got to see this splash banner of Idea.

 

Well, personally I have always liked the advertisements of idea esp. the television commercials. Though the ideas shown in the commercials are not always practical or implementable one but then too those commercials leave a sweet smile on your face with a thought, “oh how wonderful it would have been if this idea was implementable”. For e.g., that school kids of village learning through phone or the village kid giving the road direction to a gentleman in a very fluent English. Yes, some of the commercials show those ideas which if possible to implement could have really changed lives. So, considering my liking for Idea ads, it was quite natural for me to click this very prominent online Idea ad and to my pleasant surprise it took me to a site http://www.bythepeople.in .

 

The first look gave an impression of it being a web extension of their recent television campaign wherein politician seeks opinion of the people on some important projects through phone. And yeah I was right, it’s actually a site by Idea wherein people can submit their opinions on any public issue. The site emphasizes on public opinions and importance of participative decisions. As of now it’s just having one page which asks to vote in favor or against of participative decision and a text box asking to submit topic on which one would like to have opinion and on submitting your vote, it shows the result statistics. Well, personally speaking I liked the concept of this website. Though it’s not something absolutely new as there are some other Indian portals as well which are revolving around some or other important social awareness campaign but still the whole idea of raising public opinion on important topics through online voting system seems to be a good idea and if used properly it can be mutually beneficial for the brand hosting it as well as for general public. The portal is quite new as of now, maybe they have plans to introduce some more stuffs in future but I do think that this website is lacking certain critical info currently, for e.g., what will happen once I submit my vote on any important topic? What is Idea going to do with those public opinions? Are they going to submit it to concerned authorities or are they going to take some initiatives based on those opinions? I’m not sure if taking certain initiatives will fall under their responsibility limits but they should at least tell people why and what of this portal and the overall basis of initiating this opinion portal. If they do so, it will surely help them in differentiating from any current existing poll properties like TOI poll etc, polls like TOI merely act as indicator of certain statistics like X % said yes and Y % said no. The title of the page reads – “for the people, by the people”, I wish it really turns out to be so

SMS Marketing or Bombarding?

Yesterday I attended a session on “Mobile Marketing and its immense concealed potential in India”. While I agree to some of the points and as a marketer I am absolutely aware of the potential and different channels of mobile marketing in India but when it comes to execution I can’t help myself from heaving a frustrated sigh on this term known as “Mobile Marketing”. I will not go into deeper details of why and what, I will just cite few examples of my recent experiences with one of the most basic tools of Mobile Marketing which is SMS based promotions:

• Date: 23^rd Nov’08. Sender: Orange Holidays. Text of the SMS:
  • FREE LCD on booking today to Bangkok / S’Pore / Malaysia / Dubai @ 2500 including Airfare, Stay, B’fst, S’seeing. Taxes Extra. FREQUENCY of this SMS: Got the same message 4 times in 45 minutes! Well, it’s from Orange and it had to be this loud I guess.

 

• Date: 24^th Nov’08. Sender: 12900. Text of the SMS:
  • Searching for a Friend?? Call 12900 & say MUJHSE DOSTI KAROGE to make New Friends. FREQUENCY of this SMS: 2 every day for almost 1 week now! Wish there could have been a short code to reply and I would have replied: NO NO NO! Mujhe kisi se dosti nahi karna hai!!! Huh, what a wrong targeting, age as well as profile wise!

 

• Date: 24^th Nov’08. Sender: Some unknown number. Text of the SMS:
  • Kerala Holiday packages, House Boats, Tree House, MUNNAR, Backwater / Beach resorts/ Taxis.CNT-elaecoland.com. FREQUENCY of this SMS: 7, yes 7 in 1.5 hours!!!

 

• Date: X, Y, Z…1,2,3 (list is so huge that I’ve lost the count). Sender: Airtel. Text of the SMS:
  • Are you aware of your Mobile rates on Roaming? On your rateplan, roaming & local calls cost the same! Receive / make calls while roaming across India at Re 1/min. FREQUENCY of the SMS: Phew!!! Infinite I guess… including 2 reaching me at 2 and 2:30 am in the morning! Now how am I supposed to react??? I just wanna tell Airtel guys that not only I am aware rather by now I have remembered this SMS by heart, thanks to the non-stop bombardment from your side!

 

• Date: 24^th Nov’08. Sender: WIN. Text of the SMS:
  • WIN WIN WIN! Answer this simple question & take home 1 kg of gold and a brand new FORD IKON car! SMS A or B to this blah blah blah number. FREQUENCY of this SMS: Infinite, trust me infinite times on my Tata Indicom number. Oh, how I wish winning 1 kg of gold would have been so simple as these crap SMSes show. Gawdddd I see a WIN as first word and immediately press DELETE! I DO NOT want to get the same moron question everyday and neither I wanna win a ford ikon or 1 kg of gold at all!!!

Well, these are just few of the SMSes which I received in last two days, not to mention that while I was attending this session on mobile marketing, I received not 1 or 2 rather 11 promo SMSes. I as a customer am so distressed with such SMS barrage that most of the time my only reflex reaction with these SMSes is DELETE! I had earlier also written about Fate of SMS Marketing and with increasing instances of such forced SMS nuisances I can’t stop myself from expressing my distress yet again. I really doubt on the so called potential of this mobile marketing in India. Isn’t this marketing channel getting over-abused the same way as email marketing in India?  Don’t you think that not only content of such promotion lacks innovation but execution needs some serious attention as well? We are anyways listed as one of the top email spammers in the world, I’m wondering when we are going to top the list of SMS spams as well!

 

http://helpbihar.in: Interesting Example of Viral Marketing

One of my friends forwarded me the link http://helpbihar.in which is a campaign for helping Bihar Flood Victims. Its an initiative started by www.planindia.org and the conceptualization and design is done by Quasar – an interactive online agency. This site asks you to fill answer for some simple questions and for each correct answer sponsors would donate Torches, Candles, Milk powder, Match Boxes, Chlorine Tablets, Nylon Ropes, Tarpaulin Sheets and Biscuits to Bihar Flood Victims. Sponsors name and logo is mentioned in the right hand side of each question and some of the sponsors observed by me were Godrej, Chevrolet and Cadence. For each correct answer you get to know what you have donated to help the Bihar Flood Victims. The more people answer the questions, the more donations go to flood victims.

Initially I had some doubt on the authenticity of this campaign and hence I directly asked it from one of my business associates who works for Quasar and he confirmed that this is very much a real campaign and the donations are being given by the sponsors to Bihar Flood Victims. The site has this message displayed on top – “The more people play this game, the more help goes to flood victims. So click here to invite your friends. My first reaction as a user after submitting the answers was to send this to all my friends and acquaintances. Me and many of my friends have donated money and clothes to victims as per our means and resources but when I sent this link to them not only did they answer the questions themselves but most of them have forwarded this link to all in their contact list. When I put this link in my status message in all chat engines, almost 50% of my contacts in my list pinged me and asked, “what is this link all about”. A very very effective viral marketing example I must say! This definitely has the power to encourage individuals to pass on this message to others and hence has the potential for exponential growth and influence. And the best part is that it immediately connects to you and sending it to others is very spontaneous and intuitive. I liked this concept a lot and I think Quasar has done a wonderful job as far as conceptualization is concerned. Its really good to see such innovative viral campaigns not only for product promotions but for serious social causes like helping flood victims etc.

Internet shopping boom in India

Well, Rakhi season is here and as expected all my inboxes are flooded with promo mailers from different e-commerce sites about online Rakhi hampers and packs. After going through different mailers and hampers on offer, I settled for one of the Rakhi packs from rediff.com shopping portal. I have been sending Rakhi through online shopping for last 5 years I think. Though it is bit expensive than the normal post / courier service but I still prefer it over those primarily because of delivery guarantee and presentation / packaging. I have faced some irritating issues earlier when Rakhi was not delivered on time even after couriering it well in advance and once I remember I had sent the Rakhi and a small gift in a very beautiful packet only to come to know later that my brother had only received Rakhi in an open envelope without any gift inside . So, considering the assurance and convenience which I get while sending it through these e-commerce sites I find it to be justified to spend those extra bucks for it.

But I must say unlike few years back, this year it took me some time to make my purchase decision mainly because every online shopping was having some or other interesting thing to offer with almost nil price differentiation. Another interesting thing to be noticed was the way packets were described in these portals, instead of simply saying packet consists of 1 Rakhi, 1 card, etc. most of them were focusing on the packaging and the relevance of it to the tradition of Rakhi. Ehhh quite attractive and strong marketing so to say. E-commerce sites are learning it well to push online shopping esp. during festivals in India. Despite the price curve moving steeply upwards during peak season these sites are very much able to sell their products as there is a certain set of TG in Indian market now who is becoming used to the convenience of online shopping.

Infact last week only I had read an interesting article in ET about internet shopping catching up fastly in India. As per the statistics, eBay India is selling one product a minute and its not only software or tech product which is being sold, rather its surprising to know that one of the most common products sold online is jewelery. Here are some other interesting figures from that ET article [dated 3^rd Aug'08] about eBay India which reinforces the surge of internet shopping in India.

• On an average day a piece of jewellery is sold every seven minutes, a coin or note sells every 16 minutes, a stamp sells every 19 minutes, an apparel sells every 22 minutes and a book is sold every 27 minutes on eBay India
• 70-75% of buyers on eBay India are from age group of 25-30 years.
• It is jewellery that is the most sought product on this site.
• Buying trend wise electronic gadgets are popular among male buyers and jewellery is the obvious choice of Indian women.
• Apart from jewellery, apparel category is the other area which is a favorite among women buyers.

Apparel and jewellery being bought online in India, online shopping is really catching up then

Internet rejuvenating Indian Art Industry!

Yesterday while just casually browsing through ET, one piece which caught my immediate attention was how internet is changing the face of Indian Art Industry. Indian Art and Internet, oh wow what a lovely combination as both happen to be my special areas of interests – art out of passion and internet out of profession J. I immediately stopped over to read the complete story and I was quite happy to observe the shift which is happening even in Indian Art Industry because of this overall internet revolution. Not only artists are using Internet for reaching out to different markets but they are also using it for expanding their canvas of inspiration. While offline stores, galleries and exhibitions give artists a chance to promote large number of creations at one go but at the same time Internet gives them a very wide avenue for promoting their work to right kind of TG across different geographies at a very economic cost. Most importantly you get to see work of other people, you can discuss and share feedback with like minded people as well as it provides ample opportunities for an artist to study and research the subject of painting thereby expanding his / her creative horizon. While downside of it is definitely there with more chances of plagiarism and piracy but as per me the positive aspects of it outweigh the negative ones.

Indian Art industry is moving ahead quite positively and thanks to the internet exposure that prices of Indian works are growing northwards. As per an estimate by the creator of The Fine Art Fund, Phillip Hoffman, the size of the Indian market has grown from $2 million to approximately $400 million in the last seven years and to add to that as per Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at the London-based Christie’s, “Indian art is becoming a part of international consciousness, which is why we have seen a spectacular growth in this field”. More and more people outside are looking out for Indian masterpieces and famous artists are getting unimaginable prices too. Early this year M.F. Husain’s “Battle of Ganga and Jamuna” sold for $1.6 million in New York! $1.6 million…this is seriously some money man J.

As an amateur artist with a strong passion towards painting, I have always believed in the power of internet for promoting Indian Art to the right TG. Personally speaking I paint out of hobby and have never tried doing it commercially but I know of many good and senior artists who earn their living through art only and I know how difficult it is for them to meet their ends because of low potential in the local market. I know of this friend of mine who is a very good senior level artist but she was always confined to the limits of Indian Market. One fine day I helped her in building a website and we put her paintings in sites like e-bay etc. Though there was no miraculous result which happened immediately and of course she didn’t make any earnings in million dollars but results were not bad either. She started making money slowly out of online selling and atleast she gets lots of leads now through her website of people interested in learning painting from her. She has got steady income and now she keeps on telling everybody about power of internet and how it can help them in reaching out to wider sphere.

Reading that article in ET with the word “industry” suffixed everywhere after “Indian Art” instilled quite some hope within me. Wish, like many other industries internet revolutionizes Indian Art industry as well with more and more open minded artists who are willing to try out newer technologies and platforms.

Internet Spend in India

Was going through the “Indian media forecasts” report released by GroupM recently, the report has covered trends of different media quite comprehensively. Well, I will write my view-point and analysis of that report separately as I still need to go through some of the figures in details. Call it my special personal interest in this space or the nature of my job, but one thing which immediately caught my attention in that report was trend of internet media. Spend on internet media was Rs. 390 crore in 2007 as against Rs. 204 crore in 2006. And this spend is expected to become Rs. 624 crore in 2008. Here is the table which I have made out of GroupM April’08 report for internet spends.

Well, the good thing is that internet spend has increased by 91% since last year, a very commendable growth so to say and is further expected to grow by 60% in 2008, but the sad part is that the % share of media is just 2%!!! Now this is an abysmally low share of the total media spend considering the internet penetration amongst the urban India now-a-days. Had read it in last year report that on an average, Indians in metros and category A towns spend 9 hours a week on internet. And if I think of myself and me like lakhs of consumers who are working professionals and their life revolve around internet, I think this average time will surely go high. On an average most of us must be spending 5+ hours daily on internet and this is far more than time spent on TV or newspaper. Television for sure is restricted to few minutes on weekdays and few hours on weekends. Despite such high internet reach in most of the metros, A and B category towns, why is this % share of overall media so low?

Though more number of brands are advertising on internet now but still internet as a medium is taken in most of the cases just to complete the 360 degree circle. Also whichever company I have worked for, one key factor which I have personally experienced in planning an internet campaign is the fact that most of the media planners present internet as a lead generation medium wherein a small ad click will take you to a landing page asking you to submit your details! No freshness or uniqueness at all! One can hardly observe any innovative and engaging campaign on internet these days which is for brand building and not only for lead generation. Well, working for a company where leads play a critical role for sales team, I agree that lead generation is a very critical objective for any campaign but just spending few grands or max lakhs on internet only for lead generation and not for brand building is not at all justified for this medium.

When most of the big budget campaigns have advertising money spent in crores on traditional medium like television or newspaper why can’t there be money spent on internet as well? When money can be spent on hoardings or television where there is so less accountability, why on internet everything needs to be justified by CPL or CPA? I think a good internet strategy should have both angle – brand building followed by lead generation and marketers as well as decision makers should realize the importance of internet now. Internet as a medium is not only having high reach these days but it is also one of the most quantifiable medium. As compared to any other medium, internet can measure the performance of any campaign more accurately and precisely. Well, its time now that this medium should definitely be given its due!

Review sites: Making or breaking the brands?

Few months back, I remember referring to a very popular review site for reading some resort review where I was going to stay for a weekend trip. After seeing so many good reviews over there, I felt positive about that resort, the snaps posted were also quite nice and so made my bookings for two nights immediately. Well, the real pleasure came when we landed at the resort. There was a huge difference between the virtual projection and the actual experience. The resort was really shabby with hopeless customer service. Food was bad and unhygienic and the overall cost of stay was nowhere justified by the service. Infact a few kilometers away, there was another resort which looked promising enough but alas I couldn’t shift to this resort as I had already made my payment to this earlier one and at no condition, he was willing to return the same. On my way back I stopped for lunch at this second resort and while talking I asked the manager as to how come they have negative reviews on this review site whereas this other hopeless resort is having so many positive reviews and comments? He immediately replied back, “madam, don’t trust these review sites, the manager of other resort knows that you people in Bangalore refer to review sites and blogs before going ahead for a weekend drive and hence he himself goes ahead and writes lots of positive reviews about his resort and criticizes others through different ids”!

Well, this is not something new which I would have heard recently. Many other companies are facing this issue as well i.e., competitors bad mouthing them in online space through multiple dummy user ids by writing negative reviews or criticizing services and thus creating bad imagery in the market. Marketers are playing around with user generated content to the best of their advantage. There are many companies who have hired professionals to do reputation management (oh yeah now-a-days there is a full fledged profession with this fancy name) for them in online space. To my utmost surprise, there are specialized reputation management agencies these days who contact me for managing the brand reputation of my company in online world and if you ask what all they can do, you get one standard answer – write positive pages about your company and negative about your competitors. I can somewhat understand positive pages about own company but negative pages about others as competitors…hmmm quite a misguiding strategy I must say.

In today’s net addicted era wherein most of the consumers are actually spending majority portion of their lives with laptop and internet, user generated reviews play a huge role in creating an image or perception of any brand. Before making a purchase decision, almost all educated consumers these days check internet to get some reviews or feedback of the product. These review sites act as one of the key influencers in any buying behavior as the general impression is that a sales man will always try to hard sell the product by only highlighting the positives of any product whereas normal consumer feedback will give some genuine views about that product. Considering the trust and faith which a user places in these contents, I think such misguiding strategies are absolute felony. Most importantly it’s not only that particular product but in the long run even those review sites are going to suffer by such acts. If there will be no credibility of content who would like to visit that site again? Not sure if it’s possible to take any step in this regard in India but sites like mouthshut, techtree, indiareview should definitely think of some strategy to counteract the same in future. As far as I as a user am concerned, I now definitely don’t trust the reviews of products on sites like mouthshut etc. esp. if there are only good reviews about any product