Social Media ‘Experts’! Really?

I had thought to write a post on this earlier too but for some or other reason never wrote one. But my last few interactions at different occasions made me think about this term Social Media “Experts” yet again. “Experts” and that too with 6-7 years of experience in Social Media! Like really? Every time I hear this term, I feel exactly same as when I hear about being Startup “Gurus” from the mouths of those who have never run or worked in a startup even once.

Was interacting with this one such so-called expert who is supposedly consulting many startups on marketing and social media strategies. Well, in the name of expertise all that he had to offer was ideas to increase “likes” on Facebook pages. To add to that, one of his ‘killer’ strategies for low cost marketing was make ‘viral’ films for clients. If I have to quote verbatim – “we make viral films for clients which will increase their fans on their Facebook pages”. Felt like telling – dude, being an expert the least you could have done is avoided using jargons like “make viral films”. I have no idea what does that really mean? I think you can only make films and expect it to go viral, how exactly can you “make a viral film” directly? Needless to mention that at least I have not come across any of the viral films made by them naturally on my FB or Twitter timeline.

Attended a small meet on flexi-working culture in India last weekend, intro round of marketing professionals and here it was – 7 out of 10 participants were “Social Media Experts”! Did a quick check, one of them was somewhat active on twitter, two had less than 200 followers and remaining four were not even present on twitter. While interacting with them, realized that either they never felt the need to join Twitter or they joined but didn’t find it to be interesting enough to pursue. Yes, they all knew Facebook and Twitter but that was all about it! Few likes on whatever and few tweets on whatever gave them sufficient confidence to call themselves as “Social Media Experts”.

In yet another incident, a close acquaintance who has joined a luxury travel company in India in a senior position needed some inputs on his products and marketing. I got to analyze the product and past campaigns of the company and to my utmost surprise the company whose founders are based of India had actually spent lakhs and lakhs of rupees in online campaigns every month. The campaign was run by some digital marketing expert and in the name of online campaign, all that he did was Google SEM. In that too, client has been charged on cost per lead basis with an explanation that Google charges it like that and with rates as high as… well no idea for reference point as in my experience I have never heard of such high lead rates ever! Don’t even want to go into details of campaign management rather mismanagement, as I think it has the potential to become an independent case study on what not to do in SEM campaigns. To just give you a sneak peak – neither the campaign was configured anywhere in analytics nor the campaign code was enabled on landing or any other page for tracking! And this was of course done by yet another “expert”, yes his Linkedin profile does contain the word expert prominently .

Not that the misuse of this term is anything new to us but I think with each passing day, there is a noticeable growth in the number of these so called experts around us. Having managed social media accounts for companies where I have worked and few other brands, I think I can share at least my views on evaluating any candidate for social media management in general. Well this post is long enough for now, I will be back with my thoughts in a subsequent post soon.

Quick Bytes: I’m back and with a ‘bharat bandh special offer’ :-)

I’m back and this time after a really looooong break from this blog. Phew five months into Mommydom already and it seems just like yesterday. Oh yes, in case you don’t know, then let me announce it here as well that I’m actually Mommy Kanupriya now . It’s my new phase of life that has been keeping me busy and away from many things including my love for blogging. But I ain’t complaining. Like most new moms say, this phase of life is indeed the most special one, something which I can’t put in words ever and all the changes or adjustments are actually worth it. With things settling down a bit, I’m now looking forward to revive this blog again. Though have been somewhat active on my personal blog but was not able to manage sufficient time at a stretch to concentrate and write any post suitable for Marketing Chit-Chat.

Thanks to those who dropped me an email asking about my whereabouts and reasons for this blog being inactive. I have lot to share and lot to learn from all of you, so look forward to posts and comments exchange once again in this space. For today just a “Quick Byte” – how many of you received this email from Indiaplaza today?

I did and for a moment I couldn’t believe it. “Bharat Bandh Special Offer” – are you serious? In the name of this Bandh, while some were busy burning buses and some ranting about it on social media, here came a gem of a communication from a brand like Indiaplaza from whom I didn’t expect something like this. I mean what was that – a #WTH, a #Facepalm or a #Fail? Well, looks like the email communication guys seriously misunderstood the holiday on account of bandh to be a festival special holiday , otherwise why on earth would you announce an offer especially for Bharat Bandh? You know as I always say a prompt “chance pe dance” marketing is smart but then you better know when and how to capitalize on the chance rightly. After seeing this I think even offers in name of potato/tomato days would have been ok but a bandh special promotion? What do you think?

RA.One Marketing: Was definitely needed but how much?

Just watched another program bashing up Ra.One marketing campaign and how the film has been a dud till now despite a very well planned campaign. Well, first of all I have not watched the movie till now, so I wont be the right person to comment on the actual content of the movie. I’m aware of the basic theme, the marketing campaigns, supposedly the superior effects, technological edge, the characters and songs of the movie. But beyond that no comments on whether it’s good or bad.

Possibly one of the longest marketing campaigns in the history of Indian movie marketing spanning over a period of approx 10 months & with a lavish budget of Rs. 40 crores, Ra.One had indeed one of the most discussed maniac marketing campaigns ever. From global tours, to graphic novels, to digital marketing, to brand alliances, to presence on reality shows, to innovative merchandises, to physical toys, to digital games for ipods / ipads, to youtube channel, to google plus pages… phew and yes, before I forget, to even have Akon for Chammak Challo and Lady Gaga for the premier… I mean you name it and the movie had got it. Yes, I agree the marketing campaign for Ra.One was nothing less than an attack on your senses! Words like overdrive or aggressive promotion would be understatement for a campaign of that magnitude.

But I still do not understand why link up a promotion campaign with the average or failed performance of the movie. Since when a good marketing has actually made a bad product successful in the market? Can’t recall even one case study where a crap product has been a hit because of strong marketing. Despite, all the criticism on the marketing strategies and the need for it, I for one at least think that a movie like Ra.One needed the promotion push in the market. Here’s why:

• Content: The movie tries to venture into a different zone, the sci-fi genre that is still primarily untouched by many in Indian film industry. A third of the film’s budget has gone into special effects and Ra.One boasts of some 3,500 VFX shots in the entire movie. Considering the digital bang and effort which has gone into creating this kind of content, it does make sense to me to back it up with relevant marketing and engagement tools like digital games, innovative merchandises and graphic novels etc. Two of my movie buff friends actually commented – “when it comes to special effects, the movie has been made marvelously well. Whatever said and done, the movie has set up a benchmark and standard for others to match up to in Indian Film Industry.”

• Character: It’s not a general Bollywood flick with a pre-decided story line. This movie is all about an Indian super hero and that too a new brand. More than the movie, a character G.One had to be introduced, defined and established in the minds of the TG. A brand different from legendaries like Spiderman or Superman of this world. Now whenever there has been a need of such introduction, promotion has to be done. Take the case of any famous Hollywood flick and you’ll see a trend.

• Target Audience: Apart from regular SRK fan base, the movie was also targeted towards kids and anything around kids these days has to be marketed with that special imagery or the zing factor to grab their attention. In fact if we speak of the TG, it was sort of a shift from that typical SRK imagery where instead of wooing the women audience or presenting a family melodrama, it was the first time when he has tried to entertain kids primarily. And trust me I have met three kids in last one week who actually liked the movie, loved the character of G.One and merchandises of Ra.One.

Considering the attempt at a different kind of content, need to establish a brand in form of a character and an attempt to target a completely different set of audience, I think this movie needed the marketing buzz for sure. Now, whether a budget as huge as this was needed or promotion as aggressive as this was required is something really debatable. In my views, its yet another classical case of “how much is too much” and “create the hype only if you have the potential to sustain it” with which the campaign needs to be reviewed or evaluated and not with a direct correlation or one-to-one relationship solely between marketing efforts and product performance.

P.S: Despite all the criticism, I think I do want to catch up on this movie sometime for sure and if at all my views change after watching this movie, I will update the post again.

Volkswagen Vento – From “WHAT!” to “WOW!” to “WTH!”

So, my morning started today by updating my Facebook & Twitter pages about the new Volkswagen Vento audio ad and my day is actually ending up by writing a post on the same. The first experience was shocker or eerie enough as a consumer for me, resulting in immediate reaction on social media and the whole day analysis of the buzz on the ad is reflective enough to do a complete post

Needless to say the ad has managed to create enough hum-drum all across. Undoubtedly it was a media innovation and disruptive advertising at least for the Indian market. I don’t think I had ever come across anything like this earlier. In fact my reaction was exactly from a “WHAT” to “WOW” to “WTH”. When I suddenly heard my newspaper talking, for a second I was totally confused, rather shocked. I had to rummage through newspapers to realize what actually it was. And when I realized that it’s actually an ad presented in the form of an audio chip attached with TOI today, I was totally awed. Wow, what an idea! But then after some point when the voice went on repeating the same content in loop it became irritating. To add to that there was no option to switch it off; the only option left was to either fold the newspaper back or just throw that damn thing out. For those who missed (wait, did anyone actually miss to notice it) to see this ad, can check the video (by TejasNair) embedded at the bottom of the post.

Well, no doubt the ad was damn interesting and managed to grab the attention of almost everybody. Twenty two lakh chips were specially sourced for the one time exercise and the ad was targeted at the readers in 5 cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai & Pune. Total media spend estimated towards this 5 city campaign is close to INR 5 crores! Definitely a daring stand to spend this kind of money in just one day and that too only in 5 cities. But so what if it was only 5 cities, after all the consumers in these 5 cities have ensured to share their reaction with other consumers not only nationally but also globally.
Idea was great, so was the operational implementation but when it comes to execution of the idea, I do think that it was not properly thought through. Here is my feedback as far as the execution is concerned:

• The content was really boring considering it was an audio ad. Come on, you can’t just have the written content run word by word in the form of an audio clipping. There was definitely scope for a better tone, better sound quality & better content.

• Why O why there was no switch off button in that box? The loop presentation with repetitive content was the biggest reason for putting people off.

• Don’t you think there was an opportunity to brand that box with Volkswagen Vento? When you have spent so much, maybe a little bit extra could have added more zing.

• But this branding would have made sense if the device came with a switch on & off button and people would have liked to keep it. In its current state, many people decided to throw it off to shut it down! Bad call for action, no?
  

BTW was there any call for action in that clipping? Or Volkswagen Vento just wanted to create the stir amongst consumers by spending this amount of money? Whether this kind of spend is justified for such buzz is debatable. The ad definitely managed to be the talk of town everywhere, though it could have been executed better to serve other purposes of any campaign too. Overall good to observe this innovation coming from Indian market.

Aside: Wondering if this ad will give ideas to other money spenders to do something similar? OMG what will happen if say our politicians get inspired by all this and decide to take similar route? Will we have to hear their election speeches every morning along with our newspapers during political campaigns? Anyways they love to talk, don’t they???  Or say some Mr. Mahajan & Ms. Sawant decide to furthermore promote their swayamvars in their most happening voices through these talking newspapers? Eeeekkks!