Just few days back I had tweeted about my declining interest in some of my favorite blogs. Reason? Posts on those blogs now are obvious enough to make out that they are paid and not the real ones. And yesterday I got to read this report, which states that paid reviews are gaining momentum as social media marketing trend.
As per this recent report by Gartner, by 2014 between 10% and 15% of all ratings and reviews on social networking sites will be fake or paid ones as against the current percentage of 1% to 2%. Due to increased consumer reliance on social media sites, companies are now spending more in order to get attention and build positive content on these channels.
“With over half of the Internet’s population on social networks, organizations are scrambling for new ways to build bigger follower bases, generate more hits on videos, garner more positive reviews than their competitors and solicit ‘likes’ on their Facebook pages,” said Jenny Sussin, senior research analyst at Gartner. “Many marketers have turned to paying for positive reviews with cash, coupons and promotions including additional hits on YouTube videos in order to pique site visitors’ interests in the hope of increasing sales, customer loyalty and customer advocacy through social media ‘word of mouth’ campaigns.”
The report also predicts that with the percentage of false social networking reviews increasing, chances of backlash will be more both in terms of media attention and Federal Trade Commission lawsuits. You can read the summary of the report here.
Fake reviews and paid likes? Considering the consumer presence and engagement with social sites it had to happen but my question is why? If you ask me, I still have not come across even a single such sensibly executed paid campaign that I can accept or appreciate either as a consumer or as a marketer. “Like us on Facebook and win prizes”, “Follow us on Twitter and get discount” – digital medium is flooded with such offers and promotions these days.
Offers and promotions to attract relevant audience are still understandable as once they are associated with your brand you can try to engage them in interesting ways but buying out random followers and likes just to project a huge fan following? OK, you bought likes, have a huge fan following on Facebook and large follower base on Twitter, then what? Are they reading your communication? Are they engaged with your brand? Are they interacting with you on these channels? In most of these cases, answer is no. Then what business objective is getting served with these randomly bought followers? Even for paid content, positive posts written with a balanced approach may help to boost your image to some extent but then if it is not backed up with product / service fulfillment then what? Your same post gets backfired with numerous negative comments and ratings. And this I’m speaking of “smart” paid content, let’s not even discuss the ones written in a way that self advertise those posts being fakes and not real ones loud and clear.
These gimmicks (or shall I call them modern day internet scam) may help you achieve your short-term goals but in the long run? Well, I have no idea! Not only these can lead to loss of brand credibility but can backfire as well in an uncontrolled negative way. To add to that, it would also impact the core essence of social media being i.e., engagement and interaction! So, what do you think of these campaigns? Do you think social media will also meet the same fate as email or sms marketing? Can you make out the difference between real and paid content? Have you liked any page for any incentive and if yes, did you unlike the page once you were incentivized? Would love to hear your views on these.
Until few months back, Amazon used to sell 48 Kindle copies for every 100 physical copies of books that it offered in both formats. But the figures definitely seem to have taken a dramatic change now.
Amazon.com, one of the US’ largest booksellers, announced on Monday that for the past three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, has outnumbered sales of hardcover books (via).
Now Amazon is selling 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition. The figures do not include free Kindle books.
As far as overall digital book sale is concerned, even there is an upsurge. In past four weeks, sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books, a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the site.
The growth rate of Kindle sales tripled after Amazon lowered the price of the device in late June to $189 from $259 and as per the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales have quadrupled this year through May.
Amazon had earlier also predicted to sell more of e-books as compared to physical books and the recent statistics undeniably cast a notable change in favor of their estimation. There is definitely need for this product in certain consumer segments, moreover e-books are eco friendly and easier to store as compared to the physical ones. So, does this mean physical books are on their slow path to extinction now? What about avid readers like me who still prefer to read the physical books? Will the affordability, accessibility and convenience factor to store books affect my consumption behavior? Though Kindle as such has not been doing that great in India but considering the book market in India (India is the world’s third largest English language book market and has been growing at about 10% per annum for several years) and availability of more affordable products like Infibeam’s Pi, will the global trend of e-book outselling physical books apply to Indian market too? Would be interesting to observe some statistics from Indian e-book sellers to come out with a better comparison between international vs. domestic market but as of now from all the global trends, e-books definitely seem to be picking faster than estimated and that too in a short span of time.
A quick observation on my blogging or social networking circle and it always makes me think about the new generation, internet-savvy moms all around me. The way these moms spend time updating about their babies in blogs, Facebook etc or the way they seek and discuss info about parenting on different websites, you definitely know that this section of consumer has definitely arrived on digital medium now. Yes, the presence maybe only in metros or selected cities, but nevertheless the population doesn’t seem to be worth ignoring for sure. And When I read a recent report about the arrival of digi-moms ( the term surely sounds nice ) in India, I wasn’t surprised a bit on the statistics mentioned there. The survey dealt with the online behavior of over 3,000 mothers across eight countries in Asia including India, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea.
As per the study conducted by Microsoft Advertising and Starcom MediaVest, Mothers in India are becoming increasingly Internet-savvy, be it for shopping or keeping in touch with family.
87 per cent of the mothers surveyed in India said that the Internet is now an important part of their lives.
As many as 50 per cent said they had made online purchases in the last one month.
While Indian mothers spend 56 per cent of their total time on the Internet either for work or study, 90 per cent of them use it to connect with family and friends. As many as 75 per cent defined going online as their “me-time activity”.
About 81 per cent of the mothers in the country prefer reading newspapers and magazines online, and books top their list of shopping items.
More than 90 per cent of the moms agreed that good brands or products were worth talking about, and over 72 per cent said that they can persuade friends and family to buy the same products.
Well, the figures are definitely encouraging and the terms like online being “me-time-activity” for most of these moms definitely seem to be so relatable (I’ve many friends who were working earlier but after motherhood they are either on partial sabbatical or have decided to be at home full time, these women actually think their online time to be a ‘me time’ when they can connect with their friends, colleagues , fellow bloggers etc.) but when you think of the brands reaching out to this section on digital medium, you wonder why kids or parenting related brands are not spending their money online? I have seen it in quite many cases where the discussion on some forum is all about motherhood or kids but then the corresponding advertisement on the page would be of some general insurance company or online share trading offering. Not that a woman won’t be interested in it, there may be some for sure but would have been better to see some kiddie brand or women oriented products using online medium to reach out this new generation of digital population. I know acceptance of this medium is still a challenge in most of the industries and despite so much of evangelization there are hardly few Indian brands who have really explored this medium in the right way. But when the presence of your TG is just so obvious, why not try it out? As far as I’m concerned, with or without this survey report, I think I can see this segment increasing in internet world quite clearly
I have recently written a post on Word of Mouth Marketing at pluggd.in
Excerpt from the post: “Word of mouth” marketing is an age old concept now and from bigger organizations to start ups, almost everybody wants to take this free marketing path. While some think that WOM is something which will happen on its own, some go ahead & incentivize their customers to spread the word and then there are some who take extreme steps of contracting paid outsourced help to create positive word of mouth for their brands. Despite this being “known-by-all” concept, how many startups are there who genuinely have been focusing on this free marketing route and targeting the consumers who can be influencers for fresh leads? Read more on “WOMM – The Evergreen Strategy for Free Marketing” at pluggd.in
As far as understating this concept is concerned, Word of Mouth undoubtedly seems to be one of the simplest marketing terms but when it comes to execution, this is one of the trickiest of the lots. See these for e.g.,
A popular networking site bombarding by sending emails through dummy user ids with following subject & content:
Subject: I’ve never seen anything like this before!
Excerpt from the email content: I came across this recently and since then, I’ve met some pretty interesting people and think you must try this out too. This is really good and different, just click this link and be my friend.
Well, frankly speaking one does not care a bit for any new networking site which asks you to join only because you can make friends with interesting people there! At the first look itself this mail looks just so artificial.
A newly launched e-commerce site sending the following message in your Facebook account again through dummy user profiles:
Hey there! I have been using thisxyz.com and I find it to be pretty good site for all your online book shopping needs. Collection of books there is just so great and you get some amazing discounts too. All you have to do is register and start your shopping now.
I actually landed on this site esp. because it mentioned about a good collection of books and it didn’t take me more than a second to realize that it was just another sham message, an effort by some newbie to spread the positive word without even having the basics in place. Forget the discount, the collection itself was pathetic. Even very popular books were not available and the search as well as browse functionalities were just too hopeless. Yes, the message managed to get me there, but only once. The experience was sad enough to ensure that I don’t go back there again, more so when I’ve multiple other options available.
In an effort of spreading the positive message amongst the crowd, most of the companies actually forget that word of mouth can only be encouraged and not forced; it can only be facilitated and not faked. Owe it to the simplicity (at least the presumed simplicity) of implementation, most marketers just jump on to it without realizing the repercussion of over-doing it or doing it the sham way. Today’s consumers are smart enough to smell the scam and if they do, then such unnatural messages actually backfire and tarnish the image of the brand instead of building it further. Even though the word “marketing” is attached to this term, still word of mouth marketing is not about creating the word on your own, it is marketing the word created by your consumers; more importantly it is about providing reasons to your consumers (either through your product or service) to speak up and then utilizing this buzz within your marketing framework.
Note: Like my experience with Flipkart, do you have similar experiences with any Indian or International brand where you’ve been so impressed that you’ve created the WOM for it on your own? Would love to hear your anecdotes here.
Sometimes even the most important thing can be communicated in such a simple way and an interesting communication always adds to the beauty of any promotion campaign.
Visited the Café Coffee Day next to my office and the two cappuccinos served for me and my colleague looked like this
Need I write anything more? Nahi na…the messaging on coffees brought smile to my face and personally speaking, I liked it.
Myntra, a Bangalore based personalized merchandising company has done a tie-up with Café Coffee Day to promote its IPL special t-shirts and jerseys in CCD outlets. Instead of the whole outlet being painted with danglers or streamers, this was the communication to me as a customer and my immediate reaction was – “what’s this about, can you tell me more details”? As a customer it appealed to me at the first exposure itself and made me curious enough to ask for details. No heavy bombardment with the messaging yet the connect with a potential customer established at the first point itself
The worst thing that can happen to a bad product is good marketing…but what about the case where the product is bad and the marketing is even worse? Hmmm…then I guess it becomes a case study on brands like IBIBO with title – “how not to market a product”. No, seriously wasn’t balti ad enough that IBIBO has come out with yet another innovative campaign “why play akele”? Not one, not two, rather they have a whole series of creatives for this campaign but what is interesting is to decide which one of these can be crowned as the worst of the lot? This or this or OMG this i.e., the aunty ad on radio, well my vote clearly goes to aunty ad on radio! Every time I listen to this one on 94.3, I can’t resist myself from changing the channel, even if it means listening to kannada songs for a while on mirchi. I detest this ad so very much!
On a serious note, I’m wondering what exactly could be the reason for IBIBO to go ahead with such a crappy campaign? Millions of money spent just like that, effort wasted without any thought on promoting a product which by nature should have been actually promoted through a viral route. A copied concept which due to lack of any innovativeness decided to take the paid marketing path only leading to further disasters enroute. Neither the messaging is right, nor is the execution. To add to that the overall tone of the creatives is so suggestive & absolutely repulsive for the relevant TG of the campaign. I’m wondering is it me or is it everyone who finds these creatives to be totally absurd and disgusting? I think it won’t be a bad idea to do a quick survey on general reaction towards this campaign & send the results to IBIBO marketing team…maybe it can save us from further tortures of “why play akele” kinda campaigns in future.
Public service initiative : May I please request all of you to take out few seconds and just give your opinion below? It would be interesting to observe the results, though I don’t have any doubts on the outcome.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in my post are personal & I request readers to express their own judgements & take their own call.
Update on 8th Mar’ 2010: This poll is closed now for voting as per the expiry timeline of the poll. I will be publishing the result of it in my next post, for now you can just see the % of results by clicking “view results”
For quite some time, I have not blogged about movie marketing mainly because of two reasons – 1.) I think like all other industries, even marketers from Bollywood were lying low due to economy as well as industry specific reasons and 2.) Like typical herd mentality, all marketers for past few months have been using almost ditto strategies again and again for their movie promotions – same website, social media, contest, reality TV presence etc. etc. Nothing new or innovative was coming out which could be discussed or talked about. But well looks like this monotony is going to be broken with the release of Paa. Not only the trailor but the promotion and presentations too are interesting enough to generate curiosity amongst the audience. Here are some of the new strategies which the marketers are using to promote this movie:
Brand Auro: Despite the fact that one of the biggest brands of Bollywood is playing the lead role of the movie, what is interesting is that the movie in all its promotions and appearances is focusing on Brand “Auro” and not Brand “Big B”. The promotion started with a teaser campaign with just a glimpse of Auro and at first look I actually didn’t recognize that it was Mr. Bachchan himself. Since then I’ve seen the promotion of this movie in different reality shows as well as television programs but everywhere it’s Auro who has been the focus and not the star-cast like other movie promotions.
Smart messaging: These days in cinema halls you won’t be surprised if you get a sweet chide like – “Stand up for the national anthem, or I’ll tell Paa”, or “Switch off your cell phones, or I’ll tell Paa”. This is how the movie is being promoted in theaters via slide shows and messages. Interesting and surely catchy!
Engaging properties: Apart from the regular engagement properties like on-ground events and contests, online website, presence on social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, channel on YouTube etc., this movie has been creating a difference through some other interactive promotions too, for e.g., the apt placement of Auro Dance within the cricket match. During the recent series, whenever a wicket was taken a small figure of Auro used to come on the screen, doing that unique “Auro dance” (you can see this dance on its official website as well). On the occasion of children’s day, contests like “Paa and I” where a child can be the father for a day or “I Love my Paa” was organized and all the contests received enthusiastic participation from the kids.
Good to see a fresh movie theme with fresh marketing initiatives. This is a low budget film and hence not much money has been spent on promotional activities but even with a small budget, I think the movie has created enough buzz in the market due to its intelligent strategies. And who needs a large budget to promote a film which has got 67 year old Amitabh Bachchan playing the character of a 13 year old kid. The most expensive element in this 16 crore film is actually Big B’s make-up which accounts to 10 % of the overall budget; no wonder his looks in the film is topic of such a high interest amongst media as well as audience. Mr. Bachchan’s make up for his character Auro is actually going to be one of the strongest marketing pulls for this movie.
OK…It’s official now. I’m SERIOUSLY addicted to Farmville and there is no denying the fact now. Howmuchsoever I tried to resist this game by blocking all Farmville updates or ridiculing my friends who have been playing it during work hours, but ever since I went to this app with a thought to just have a casual glance on this thingy called Farmville, there has been no turning back. This game is really addictive and I think after a long time I’ve become crazy for any game like this. Yes, when I had opened my Facebook account, I definitely enjoyed few apps but beyond those initial ones, rest I just visited more from a purpose of checking those out. But Farmville is a different story all together, the devotion is so much so that every night when I come back from work the first thing which I do is check out on my crops and harvest the ready ones. And I think I am still not as compulsive user as some of my friends are, someone now dreams of gaining XPs whereas someone wakes up at midnight to harvest his crop, there is one who smsed me his Facebook password to harvest as he was stuck in a long meeting and one who called up and shared the password so that I can harvest his ready crops as he himself was travelling out. Such is the user-involvement in this game!
No wonder Farmville has got 58+ million active users (as on 14th Oct’09) and it has been topping the list of social games ever since its launch on 19th June’2009.
Close to 60 million users in just 4 months??? That’s really some statistics in the history of social games! So, what could be the reason for this historical success of the game? Well, there are actually many but I think the key reasons which can be attributed towards the phenomenal success of this game are:
Engaging/Stickiness: Oh, this game is really sticky to its core and this is one of the biggest reasons for so much of repeat visits to this app. You buy crops with Farmville coins, sow them in your farm and if you do not return to your farm on time, your crops wither and die. That’s a loss of money and negative impact on your balance! So, one has to return to this game again & again if you want to make more or do not want to lose your money there. A lovely way to keep the users engaged.
Networking: With Farmville on Facebook, there is a possibility of networking within a networking site. You can ask your friends to be your neighbors in farm and there are different ways by which you can visit your neighbors and earn reward points in the game. So having neighbors is advantageous and within social networking arena of Facebook, it gives you another chance of farm networking by interacting and helping your friends. Now I do get actual messages like, “visit my farm as I’ve revamped it completely” or “check out the new tractor and decorations on my farm”
Viral: It spreads like crazy in your community and there are many interesting reasons for the same, be it free gifts which you send or receive from your friends and later can use those to make money, sharing the wealth of your success or helping stray animals, all have some rewards attached which motivates you to spread the word more and more. You automatically end up doing these making this game truly viral in every way.
Communication: Zynga content guys definitely know the art of communication, each action has a prompt for communication and most of it is in either such an interesting language or are encouraging announcements of your advancements that you actually end up publishing your updates to your friends. And these updates act nothing less than a trigger to your friend to go and do some more farming in their farms.
Design and innovation: I personally love the UI of this game, I mean the colors and graphics of those fully grown crops definitely give you joy of a different kind. To add to that, constant innovation by Zynga team in terms of new farm additions like those beautiful flowers, Indian flag etc. or themes like the Halloween ones are nice additions for the users.
Monetization: Farmville is not just another free social game, it has got a well planned monetization strategy in place too. And by money I don’t mean Farmville coins or cash, I definitely mean hard cash in terms of real $. Thanks to the addiction of this game that once players are hooked on to it, they actually end up spending “real” money in buying “virtual” goods. On any given day 500,000 tractors (which are $20 “virtual” Farmville tractors) are sold on Farmville. No wonder, Zynga the company behind Farmville is making good money and has been profitable every month since September 2007.
Last but not the least, I’m wondering if success of Farmville has some connection with users’ psychography too? The fact that quite many Farmville users are actually Indians, makes me think if it has something to do with roots of Indians being in farming and agriculture? Also in other countries too, amidst all hectic life and work stress people are heading towards peaceful farms in reality, so is setting up a virtual farm somewhere helping them relive the same experiences online too? Has Farmville’s growth got anything to do with user’s inclination towards pastoral lives and is it serving “this” intrinsic need in the virtual world?
All that glitters may be gold this diwali: It’s that time of the year again which most Indian marketers wait with bated breath, there is festivity all around and thanks to better market condition, Indian consumers are looking forward to splurge this festive season both in offline as well as online shopping. Read More…
Wish all readers a ‘bagful’ (after shopping ) & prosperous diwali!
Makemytrip does it again and this time I love it. In fact just saying “love it” once can’t justify my delighted reaction towards the campaign, I mean I seriously loved it esp. the official atyaachar anthem. It’s a riot and simply terrific! It’s one such viral campaign which you definitely feel like promoting on your own. I seriously went ROFL listening to the lyrics of the anthem and the tone in which it has been sung is brilliant.
Makemytrip has launched this online campaign www.offisialatyachaar.com to promote its weekend packages. It’s a movement against work stress, impossible deadlines and long work hours which Make My Trip has presented in a very interesting way. The home page reads: Impossible Deadlines? Graveyard shifts? An atyachaari Boss? Work has taken you for granted for way too long. It’s time to act. It’s time to break away! Join the protest. It has sections as – Offisial Atyachaari, Offisial Atyawear, Offisial Anthem, Offisial Downloads, Offisial Outburst and all of them are just fantastic. You need to navigate through the site on your own to experience the fun. The movement has already instituted its presence on Facebook, now I’m eagerly waiting for its appearance on twitter too. What I liked about this campaign:
It’s FUN and brings a big smile on your face.
It establishes an immediate connect with the TG.
It promotes the product in a very intelligent way; in fact there is very less of branding in this overall campaign but still it creates that impact both from brand as well sales perspective.
It’s interactive properties like atyachaari jokes, sicknames for bosses contest, ringtones, wallpapers and my personal favorite – smashing a real office as protest to atyachaar . I think these are really wild and innovative stuffs.
It’s a viral in true sense, you really feel like sending this link to your peers and colleagues.
From concept to execution, I think both EURO RSGC & digiVaasi have done a great job. I’m only wondering why haven’t they started promoting this campaign at least amongst its members? I don’t remember receiving any email or message unlike that Gajodhar campaign which frankly speaking I hadn’t liked much. By chance I went to Make My Trip website today to check some ticket price and glanced upon their banner ad. Hope they start promoting it soon to spread the buzz and till the time they are not, I think I as a fan of this campaign would like to do it through my blog & tweets , now that’s what I call a true viral, ain’t it?
) in India, I wasn’t surprised a bit on the statistics mentioned there. The survey dealt with the online behavior of over 3,000 mothers across eight countries in Asia including India, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea.
