Brands and Social Media

Gaurav Mishra of Gauravonomics has compiled a list of Marketing, Social Media and Public Relations Blogs in India. Thanx Gaurav, for including my blog in the list!!!

Gaurav's post on why brands should embrace social media is apt-As he says,
Very soon, social media will be the only cost effective way to reach consumers, courtesy the decreasing cost of consumer engagement through this medium.

My take on this-
Social media helps build brand equity like never before..building the most valuable assets of the firm by adding to consumer knowledge by granting the average consumer ease of access and the ability to engage via an interactive medium.
This creates meaningful brand encounters, thereby deepening consumer brand relationshps and influencing consumer perceptions.

A case in point has been Unilever.As Unilever makes it to the no.1 position as the digital marketer of the year 2008, it is interesting to note that the campaign under discussion is for the brand called Suave. Unilever takes advantage of social media by using a neat online community called in the motherhood.The webisodes based on the personal lives of the community members obviously touch a chord with the consumer base.

All the best Gaurav...for achieving your dream of becoming the next marketing guru.(Gaurav is an Assistant General Manager (Brand Head Indica) at Tata Motors.)

Marketers and Wikipedia

As Pete Blackshaw gears up to write about 10 uses of wikipedia for marketers, Some of my thoughts about wikipedia-
1.Positioned as an encyclopedia, it is ostensibly a collaborative directory.So listing a product or brand in this directory makes sense...
2.Since a prerequisite to uploading data on wikipedia is citing references independent of source, the uploaded material automatically gets linked to several other sites and material about the product/brand on the web. It's hence a one stop shop for substantial amount of credible data on your product for a wannabe consumer, and the very fact that it is moderated grants authentication to the same.....
3.Making a brand figure prominently in google searches is obviously a foregone conclusion to why marketers should use wikipedia.....

As he wrote to us on the CGM group, i found his references to Wikipedia as a "trust broker" very interesting. The way the grand masters at wikipedia handle discussions, the level of "transparency", as referred to by Pete is commendable. Further, as the grand masters insist that Wikipedia is not a promotional service, articles on a brand or product eventually are written in an academic fashion.In the process the credibility gained by the brand is unmistakable!!!!

Social Media strategy

Graham's comments on my article on 'Building Loyalty the Southwest way ' on Customerthink pointed to the need for companies to have a well defined social media strategy as they venture out into the field to interact with their clients. Graham had a valid point as he was able to demonstrate the lack of engagement on Southwest's part as they used varied social media tools to engage with their customers.
The POST method demonstrated at the Forrester forum is interesting and approporiate to this discussion.
Using social media as an organisational strategy for listening to the customer is not enough. Two important aspects emerge here-
1.Engaging in a conversation with the customer.
2.Using the customer feedback to alter systems/strategies.
3.Using the social media tool to showcase this change in systems through incorporation of feedback.

Bob Thompson had an interesting point to add to the conversation-that of the need to try to use newer offerings of technology in an increasingly competitive market. After all, it is simply a way of staying a step ahead of your competitors.

Peoplecentricity or Customercentricity?

India recently witnessed the launch of the Tata Nano-the “people’s” car-The much awaited $2500 car for the common man. Tata Motors Limited is India's largest automobile company, with revenues of over $USD 7.2 billion.

A car which made it to the TIME most important cars of the century, however, rides on its “people-centricity”-touted as the people’s car…and the understanding that the common man in India wants to move from a two wheeler to a four wheeler…only affording it was a problem…the volume symbolized by the term ‘common man’ in a country like India is obviously a function of the population of the nation!!!! The near stampede , to get a glimpse of the car, that erupted in the Auto-expo where it was showcased is ample reflection of the enthusiasm of the “people”. All these “people” are obviously not in the potential customers category.

The world’s cheapest car, which may yield a transportation revolution, prides itself in being a people-centric endeavour. Some interesting observations-

1. A google search, uses the link www.tatapeoplescar.com to lead to an intrinsically social media driven website for the Tata Nano. Ranging from a Dream Car Configurator (create your dream car and spice it up with features list), options to share your first impression, Contests, Blogs, Forums-it’s all there.

2.Over 12,000 members are already part of the forum(the yet to be made available to the public car made its debut just a fortnight back)….is the volume an indicator of the “people” interested in the product rather than the “customers”? The volume does appear significant in such a duration.

3.The “ Online booking thread” highlighting an increasing demand for the car to be available online garnered 1000+ hits, resulted in a blog post from Subodh Marathe, Head of Marketing Services, Tata Motors…He says-”The option of online car sales is certainly worth exploring and your comments will help us design the right service.” Looks like they are doing the job of listening to the “people”.

The interesting issue here is-The word “people” seems to have more mass appeal than the word “customer”. All the people here cannot be considered to be akin to the word “customer” or can they? How different is the word “Customer” from the word “ People” ? Is Peoplethink a more important dimension than Customerthink ?

Tagcrowd of my blog

ahuja (8) blogging (43) brand (16) building (14) capital (6) co-creation (6) cocreation (4) collaborative (10) comcast (8) comments (9) communities (19) company (7) consumer (23) corporate (21) council (5) customer (13) develop (4) employee (6) equity (4) experience (4) generated (9) interact (6) interesting (5) knowledge (9) labels (7) leverage (4) links (7) management (6) marketing (11) media (25) networking (8) online (21) organisations (4) participation (8) pm (5) post (18) product (7) relationship (5) resources (5) share (4) site (4) social (24) sunsilk (4) television (6) think (5) tools (9) value (7) vandana (8) videos (4) web (24)

created at TagCrowd.com

TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating what is popularly known as a tag cloud or text cloud.Saw the same at Pete Blackshaw's blog and thought I should give it a try.

Building Knowledge capital through social media

A lot of discussion has already gone into social media's contribution to building brand/customer equity and as a tool to build networks of relationships/friendships- social capital as it is termed.
However, in this era of knowledge management and elearning, two more dimensions of social media’s contribution cannot be ignored-
1.A tool for building a company’s knowledge capital and
2.A tool for learning.

Organisations have started harnessing collaborative intelligence for learning leading to cognitive involvement of the community members. Research has already proven the positive correlation between interactivity and learning outcomes. Interactivity interfaced with technology not only increases learning effectiveness, but also enhances the knowledge base of the community which includes organizational employees, customers and partners.

Be it the Microsoft Developer Network which hosts a series of employee blogs to share tips on software, programming tips and solutions to programming issues or the GE research blogs, or the Sun Microsystem employee Blogs, the volume of company specific knowledge available on these is huge. Sun Microsystem CEO Jonathan Schwartz uses his blog for product announcements and discussion of new knowledge issues as part of his bid to interact with the community. Think of a layman’s ability to gain access to Sun’s whitepaper on multiplatform virtualisation through his online blog!!!!

The accumulation of this company specific information have also made these blogs/online communities virtual repositories to be tapped whenever required. For that matter, think of the quantum of knowledge that can be retrieved regarding a person’s work in an organisation once he leaves, through his contributions to his blogs etc. The human capital may be dynamic, but the knowledge capital stays with the organisation…

Cocreation through social media

In an era where companies talk about the new form of value creation-Co-creation, where companies are moving away from a company and product centred value creation to an experience centred value creation (Prahlad,Ramaswamy), participation is becoming a desired ingredient. Objectives of co-creation include identifying the right customer set to interact and after identifying the requirements of this customer set, alter product offerings as per requirement of the same.

Some interesting observations from research (Prahlad,Ramaswamy) on Co-creation.
1.In the emerging economic model of value cocreation, consumers and companies routinely collaborate to create personalized value.

2. Cocreation, is not the transfer or outsourcing of activities to customers or a marginal customization of products and services. It isn't scripting or staging of customer events around the company's offerings. Those kinds of company-customer interactions no longer satisfy most consumers today.
IT IS THE CO-CREATION EXPERIENCE(NOT THE OFFERING) THAT IS THE BASIS OF VALUE FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL.

It is hence, this procedure of participation which is important.
Co-creation may require a dedicated approach from the management to allow consumers to not exactly take over the brand, but definitely have a larger voice share. However the high involvement opportunity it offers with substantial value growth drives commitment from organizational leadership.

Kraft's use of co-creation
Consumers co-create 48 products they want to buyis a case in point.

Use of social media to build online communities for consumer engagement to leverage the collective intelligence and experience of the community emerges as a strong option for organisations interested in securing consumer participation...they may also need to focus on the experience they provide through these communities to the participating population.

There are consumers interested in getting involved in every stage of the Product life cycle from concept, through post launch and beyond. The bottomline is-there are passionate groups of involved customers willing to PARTICIPATE. It is upto the organizations to identify them, build relationships with them and leverage the immense power of the participating community for organizational growth.

The Blogging Council

And finally arrives the council for organisations using corporate blogging as a tool for interacting with customers/employees.
Developed as a forum specifically for corporates who blog, members already include-
AccuQuote,Cisco,The Coca-Cola Company,Dell,Gemstar-TV Guide,General Motors,Kaiser Permanente,Microsoft,Nokia,SAP,Starwood Hotels and Resorts,Wells Fargo.

The Blog Council is a community for official corporate blogs and bloggers that represent major global corporations.

Their mission is to address the unique needs of blogging in a corporate environment. It exists as a forum for executives to meet, share tactics and advice, and develop best practices. The Blog Council is here to help create:

Best Practices: Promoting corporate blogging excellence through best practices, standards, and training.
Community: Providing networking and partnering opportunities for leaders of the corporate blogging movement.
ROI: Developing metrics programs that help deliver measurable ROI from blog activities.

Let's hope this emerges as a structured location to understand corporate blogging objectives, outcomes and benefits...Looks like the first place these big corporates have come together to share their corporate blogging activities.

What's a Blog?

In this video at Pajama Market, Brian Brown offers an easy-to-comprehend tutorial on blogs that explains what they are and how they work.

So, what makes a blog a blog?

It's a Web site. This might seem too obvious, but for technophobes it might need to be said.
Adding articles is like writing an email. It's as simple as writing a title, writing a message, attaching an image and hitting send.
Readers can post comments. This interactive element differentiates blogs from many other Web sites.
Readers can subscribe. They don't have to check in all the time since they always know when new content goes up.

(Source:Marketing Profs)

Headhunting tools

An interesting tip by Ric McIver, following my post on Headhunting made easy using Web 2.0, a list of 50 freebie tools and resources that are frequented by prime job searchers.
50 Freebie Tools to Find Your Next All-Star Employee
Check it out!!!

Branded Online Communities move to Television

Branded Online communities, set up by companies for Building brand equity are now tying up with the electronic media for greater visibility. As the interest of the youth increases in social networking, with humongous volumes of youngsters not only hanging around networking sites, but also eagerly participating in consumer communities,these branded online communities have found themselves most wanted on Television.

In a recent developmentin India, Hindustan Unilever's SUNSILK GANG OF GIRLS, an online community , and Zoom Television have come together to present a singing reality show called Sunsilk Gang of Girls - Spotlight Mein.

In response to online applications at the Sunsilk GOG site, this new television series will present four talented girls in the country who will be groomed and mentored by maestros from the music and entertainment fraternity, in preparation for a live finalé performance in front of a big audience.Reality TV, it's success, the impact generated and the huge volume of viewership it draws is not new to us.

As branded online communities embrace Television, the euphoria created by such shows will further increase traffic on the site-increased membership is a foregone conclusion.

Kelly Mooney's thoughts in an ADAGE article on For Relevance, Think Three-Way throw light on how corporates can leverage such situations.By looking at the Brand, the consumer and online communities as three components of a love triangle, she reiterates the need for brands to intersect with online communities, to be able to connect with their consumers.

An excerpt-
"There are no diminishing returns when brands think three-way, when they "triangulate" to communicate in a b-to-we world. Online communities are an infinite resource bringing not only preexisting participants within the brand's range, but new i-citizens formerly uninvolved until their passions are sparked by a marketing campaign or message that inspires them to spread the love."

In Sunsilk's case,the three sides of the triangle are aptly covered- the brand connects to each girl and the fan community; the girls connect to the brand and each other -- all tied to the community or the event as the center.While acting as excellent repositories for information, such communities help the brand marketers by providing information to validate their understanding of the market, while further bifurcating consumers with respect to preferences, expectations, and level of brand loyalty.

The CRM Forum, Mumbai

was invited to conduct a session on 'Social Media and the Customer Relationship' at the CRM Forum organised by Marcus Evans at the Le Meridien, Mumbai, in October,2008. The event was aimed at achieving business excellence through an integration of information, people, policies, processes and technology strategies-effectively executing CRM on its own.

The CRM forum aimed at providing a platform to receive top notch knowledge in capitalising the concepts of CRM, latest trends in customer strategies and technologies, and developing organisation cultures to achieve customer satisfaction , along with advanced applications in the areas of creating a ynergistic partnership between marketing and IT to drive forward CRM initiatives, utilising brand strategies, the media, as wll as data warehousing and data mining.

The event unfolded with an interesting presentation by Dr. G. Shainesh, Associate Professor at the IIM Bangalore, India, where he talked about identifying the consequences of the shift from CRM with technology orientation to a business strategy. This was followed by an interesting case study presented by Mr Gautam Anand, Vice President, ITC Welcom Group on creating outstanding service levels and designing a service design.As several industry experts including Anupam Jalote, Chief Process Officer, Bharti Airtel, Dr. Wolfgang Messner, Director Capegemini shared their experiences, my session on Social Media, and its impact on customer relationships and consumer behaviour was well received.

As I focussed on Corporate Blogging as a potential tool for engagement and reducing the perceived indifference of organisations to consumers, Gaurav Lalla, Director of Internet Marketing,Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces emphasised the need of organisations to listen to customers and use the internet as a medium for the purpose.His reference to the utilisation of Second Life as an upcoming medium to conduct brand led dialogues with avatars was interesting.

The event was well attended by delegates from several sectors ranging from Banking and Insurance to hotels, healthcare, retail, telcom and airlines.

The age of Consumer Generated Media and the unhappy consumer

In an article on Comcast must die Bob Garfield on Ad Age, solicited ideas for a consumer jehad against digital and internet cable company Comcast!!! As a hapless consumer out to get back at an erring organisation, Bob's post garnered umpteen comments and suggestions. Some interesting ideas he received , specially from a Web 2.0 and CGM perspective ranged from posting on technorati, adding flickr photos or youtube videos of any damage done, choosing tags and suggesting that folks tag their own blog posts and videos with same to forming a Comcast service group on Facebook.

While other ideas included spreading good WOM for Comcast competitors, sending posts to equity analysts who follow Comcast, or calling up Comcast Corporate headquarters,
the most interesting comment however, was to buy the web domain ComcastMustDie.com, establish a blog and issue a press release(to drive traffic) so that all dissatisfied Comcast customers would have a forum to voice their opinions!!!!...sounds so much akin to a DELLHELL in the making...Comcast....are you listening???

Online videos and the marketer

An article by Jill Griffin, on Leverage the six stages of Customer Loyalty at Customerthink drew my attention...
"
In today's "connected" world, ideas drive buzz when they are:

Simple
Word-of-mouth friendly
Supported by tools to facilitate customer conversation

This three-step success formula worked exceptionally well for Blendtec, a small, Utah-based maker of high-end home and commercial blenders. The fledging company needed more business, so executives brainstormed: How do we earn more market awareness on a shoe-string budget? Their answer? Online videos with a simple, word-of-mouth friendly premise: CEO Tom Dickson, dressed in white lab coat and goggles, blending up a host of everyday objects (baseballs, a Tiki Torch, Transformers, an iPod, a video camera) in a light-hearted, don't-try-this-at home presentation schtick.

‘By Week 3, the company had dropped all other search engines from its budget.’
How did Blendtec facilitate online awareness and conversation? By posting the video on YouTube! Within a week, the Will It Blend? videos became a YouTube hit. Uploads followed on such other sites as Revver.com and Digg.com. At the end of the first seven days, the Will It Blend? video campaign had six million views. But that's not all. Other product makers, anxious to leverage the campaign's popularity, began paying Blendtec on average $5,000 to film promotions for their firms using the Will It Blend? format. Bottom line, the videos became a revenue producer in their own right. Awareness went way up, along with sales. Blendtec reported a 43 percent sales increase for 2006. "

The features of Web 2.0 have definitely added new dimensions to the way organisations can reach out to prospective clientele. With 36,594 subscribers and 1,192,464 channel views, brand visibility is a forgone conclusion!!!!

Marketers start to use social networks for CRM instead of ads

An ADAGE article on Marketers start to use social networks for CRM instead of ads strengthens my understanding on the uses of social media as a tool catering to customer engagement, loyalty and satisfaction. The key objectives of CRM, at the end of the day are Customer Aquisition and Retention, and social media has offered tools to cater to each of these objectives by strengthening relationships, building networks and starting a two way communication process with the customers.

While the ad age article traces how first time product users can connect with experienced ones on these networks, creating a rich customer experience sharing platform, my article on how Corporate Blogs can make organisations customer centric had focussed on how auto giant General Motors had used its blog to maintain and nurture its relationships with its customers. By allowing companies to build product brands, create a customer-centric image, and by giving people a contact point by attaching a face or name they can interact with, corporate blogs serve as for a for consumer redressal and help build intrinsic relationships between the company and it's customers.

Social media and it's contribution to CRM maybe a subject of discussion today...but will definitely provide companies with a competitive edge, in the long term!!!

The 5th P of marketing-Participation

After Product, Price, Place and Promotion, Mario Sundar aptly talks about Participation being the 5th element of the marketing-mix.

"If you were wondering where does Social Media Marketing fit into the classic “4 Ps of Marketing” model, check this out. Traditional 4 Ps of Marketing encompass Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social Media as well as social networking sites enable the Promotion aspect, especially the Word of Mouth part of it. (Related question I posed on LinkedIn Answers — 44 answers). Subsequently, the Word-of-Mouth component enables the 5th P of Marketing - Participation."

As the Web 2.0 mantra-
Create, Publish, Share, Connect, Influence and Collaborate, focusses intrinsically on Participation, the same is fast emerging as a tool for marketers to promote products, build brand equity, engage customers, and track customer satisfaction.

Consumer Reviews and the brand.

Effect of Consumer generated reviews on web site metrics, for a few selected companies , as per a Social commerce report, 2007, from e-consultancy and bazaarvoice, reiterates my earlier post on 'Peer reviews and consumer behaviour'.Consumer generated reviews are becoming an important source of consumer product adoption process.

As per the report, surveying retailers in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, the findings were as follows-

77% reported site traffic increases
56% reported improved conversion rates
42% reported higher average order values

At least 73% respondents felt that these reviews resulted in Improved customer retention and loyalty, while Improved site conversion rates and Better search engine optimisation stood out as the other benefits accrued with these reviews.

Social media is decidely fast emerging as a tool for organisations to gain competitive advantage over others.

Product reviews and the collaborative web

As customer/consumer reviews gain importance,and become an intrinsic component of the product adoption process, by influencing consumer behaviour, a google trend graph on these key terms looks like this-


Customer Review is denoted in Blue while Consumer Review in Red and Product Review in Yellow. The regions included in this trend chart are U.S.A, U.K., India, Australia and Canada.

For market intelligence to collect and disseminate information across the organisation, finding relevant information on products strengths and weaknesses can be undertaken through the following ways-

Independent customer goods and reviews forums-Epinions.com, Consumerreview.com, Rateital.com, Bizrate.com.

Distributor or sales agent feedback sites-Amazon.com

Combo-sites offering customer reviews and expert opinions-
The advantage of this type of review site lies in the fact that a product supplier can compare opinions from the experts with those from consumers.A search for the 'iphone' yielded 1015 resources while the 'Apple iphone' yielded 655 results!!!

Customer-complaint sites-

Putting Customer-reviews on company websites-As per a social commerce report,2007,published by e-consultancy and Bazaarvoice, surveying retailers in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, the findings were as follows-
77% reported site traffic increases
56% reported improved conversion rates
42% reported higher average order values

Consumer Generated media and it's impact on Brand visibility, product purchase and increasing customer-share is a foregone conclusion.

Brand Monitoring Solutions and Corporates

Following my post on Building Brand Equity through Social Media my feedburner stats showed an incoming link from a Brand Monitoring Tool from Unilever.

As Consumer generated media, thanx to the interactive and engaging web, raises issues with respect to brand vulnerability, it is increasingly important for organisations to have mechanisms to manage their brands and respond to consumer dialogues. If companies fail to do so, others will, and in the process also create oppotunities for brand damage.

A case in point here is 'Activestandards', an automated brand monitoring tool, created by Magus, for Unilever to manage it's brand standards across it's global web presence.

Building Brand Equity through Social Media

Paul Legutko's discussion at Customerthink
"......, but simply the fact that someone is staring at your company logo and creative for a certain period of time. This has an inherent branding value, and "branding" is something both marketers and management understand......high-volume sites can have significant brand-equity."
and Jim Sterne's response regarding brand impact, awareness and brand character attribution, can further be applied to the way major corporates are using the power of social media to garner brand dividends.

Coke, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Proctor and Gamble, Nike, Nissan, Pepsi are part of a trend where a large number of corporates are creating online communities and social networking sites, taking advantage of the interactivity that the internet as a digital medium provides, to capitalise on the huge number of cybersurfers.

With humongous volumes of visitors on these sites, organisations have successfully mingled customer engagement with increasing brand familiarity and distinction and focussing on solution importance, to try and create customer loyalty.

Hindustan Unilever's( India's biggest consumer goods company) brainchild Sunsilk Gang of Girls, promoting the shampoo brand Sunsilk, has a total of 579899 members in 34122 gangs. This has evolved into a huge medium where people participate, give their views and are really bonding with the brand. By discussing commonplace issues like hair care, shampooing and conditioning, hair tips, hair biology and hosting hair gurus by tying up with hairstylists like Javed, Sunsilk GOG has struck a chord with the readers. By tying up with leading magazines like NewWoman and Cosmopolitan,and Marjorrie Orr at Astrology.com, Sunsilk GOG has been able to delve into areas of interest for women ranging from beauty tips to love quizzes to astrology and with Monster.com to cater to their career aspirations. Typically catering to the youth interests of today, members can even watch funky music videos, download wallpapers and screensavers and participate in exciting contests, Sudoku and word search games.

With a traffic rank of 25,500 the Proctor and Gamble brainchild Beinggirl aims at engaging the female segment for P&G's products targetted for the female community. By giving females an opportunity to discuss issues close to their hearts, without giving up their identities, P&G has been able to provide a medium for interaction and developing relationships with its customers thereby facilitating brand loyalty. About 62% of the clientele of beinggirl is from China and 14% from the U.S.

Most of these sites, especially those catering to niche audiences, use the skills of online community managers to nudge the conversation, seed chat forums with threads, recruit others to take a lead in various topics, and monitor the dialogue

Nike's joga.com for football lovers, Coke's mycoke.com and Pepsi's pepsizone for young adventurers out to network, share photographs,videos,music and have fun, Nissan's community for car lovers discussing car models and their features......the list is endless......

Agreed that there are no ways to quantify brand loyalty as a result of such ventures, but as Paul said, as long as larger number of visitors can identify brands , logos and products, garnering brand dividends as a result of such ventures is a foregone conclusion.