General Mills Yogurt Brand Yoplait on Twitter.

Twitter is a media that consumer brands of today cannot ignore, or be careless about. With Twitter and Facebook  the brand has to be active, living and breathing 24/7.

The brand has to post, read and respond every minute of the day. It has to do all three keeping the brand positioning and attitude in mind.

I have come across an article which gives a good example of how Twitter and Pinterest among other social media is being used by a Yogurt brand called Yoplait from the house of General Mills.

You can either click here or read the article copied here in my blog. Courtesy: http://sproutsocial.com

Why General Mills Yogurt Brand Yoplait Sets an Example on Twitter

When you start with a popular consumer food item, especially one like flavored yogurt, it’s that much easier to create a great brand presence on Twitter. We spoke with Alexandra Heide, Community Engagement Specialist for General Mills’ Yoplait brand, to get her take on the value of incorporating what she calls “joy” into Yoplait’s Twitter account.

The tone of Yoplait’s Twitter account is always upbeat. Whether it’s tweeting about who to watch on the red carpet at the Oscars, or links to innovative yogurt recipes, the brand posts a nice mix of product and non-product related tweets. The common theme is always fun and positivity. “Just like the way people enjoy our product, we like to provide Twitter content in bite-sized portions,” says Alexandra.

The brand also appears to have subtly associated itself with health and social issues by posting links to promote events like Athleta Esprit de She and International Women’s Day. This is not only a way to reiterate the positive theme of the Twitter account, it’s also a clever way to post content that’s relevant to the brand’s target audience.

Let’s take a closer look at how Yoplait uses the overarching concept of fun, along with specific strategies like posting images, soliciting feedback, and using social media management tools and teams to carve out a commanding presence on Twitter.

A tangible way that Yoplait contributes to the success of its Twitter account is to post lots of fun and colorful visual content. Following a strategy we’ve long espoused, it posts pictures from its Instagram account, including generic upbeat images like the one above. Of course, it posts lots of product shots as well. These are usually accompanied with some thought-provoking copy, such as “What challenges are you facing today?” As you might expect, Yoplait also has vibrant image galleries on Facebook and Pinterest and occasionally cross-posts these pictures to Twitter. The net result of all these images in its Twitter stream is that Yoplait’s followers are exposed to numerous visual impressions of the brand in a way that never seems like advertising. The visual strategy on Twitter is obviously working. Alexandra confirms that its visual content always gets the most interaction whether it’s “a picture of yogurt pops or a cute baby animal.” 

Other tweets that you’ll see a lot of when you peruse Yoplait’s stream are solicitations for feeback, suggestions and input from its followers. “We get a lot of product suggestions for new flavors and new products,” says Alexandra, adding that they’re always interested to hear what their fans think of the brand. 

It’s evident that fans are obviously paying attention to the brand on Twitter because the account is filled with retweets from happy consumers. Perhaps because of the health-conscious connotation of Yoplait yogurt, a lot of celebrities like Chris Tucker and Carmen Electra have been willing to lend their endorsements to the brand as well.

Business Modelling - India as a Market !

India is supposedly a hot market for the world, and the entrepreneur enthusiast. A rising urban consumer population with increasing disposable income is becoming a target market of choice for many aspiring businesses. Absolute number of consumers in India and especially in the Metro cities, gives a positive shade to any initial discussions about new revenue models.

Innovation in Internet technology and India being a country with a huge pool of IT experienced working class is giving rise to a lot of business ideas at various stages of incubation. E-commerce, Payment Gateway and Mobility related business ideas are discussed at almost every coffee discussions between professionals.

Quite obviously, almost all of these businesses are targeted at the retail consumers. Starting from global business ideas, which have become successful such as 'The Facebook' and 'Twitter', to smaller business ideas that are sprouting in every Indian city, every business is targeting the retail consumers.

Target Market definition and its true potential builds on a business model. Going by the normal belief that 1 out of every 100 business ideas fail, it is critical that this target market called India is studied and understood a bit more incisively to get business and revenue objectives accurately and realistically.

India is fragmented.

It sounds like a no-brainer, and we tend to get blind by accepting it as a common place argument. We need to go beyond the fact that India is fragmented. It is not about demography. Businesses need to deal with the softer aspects of psychology to ascertain the consumer demand for a particular product proposition.

The need is to delve into the fragments and its associated consumer behavior, attitude and mindsets. India is divided into a rural and urban mindset. Within urban mindset, we have original urbanites, second generation migrants and first generation migrants. Then there is the mindset of highly skilled labour, semi skilled labour, self-employed and marginally employed labour.

Access to media is fragmented. Access to free office Internet, Smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, Television, Radio and newspapers is not homogeneous, and hence information consumed is not uniform. As media is a critical element in forming lifestyle related attitudes, it creates fragments that are not easily comprehensive. Similar is the extent of globalization of the mindsets. Similar is the adherence to religious and cultural beliefs.

India is rigid.

It is bind to its traditions and customs for thousands of years. The best examples of it, are to analyse the long rule of the Mughals and the continual charity / religious work by Christian missionaries. India has stayed a Hindu majority country. Christian missionaries have invested and created schools and hospitals all across the country. 'Don Bosco' and 'St. Mary's' sound like initiatives of the Indian Government. It is unfortunate that Indian Government didn't have the vision to create such brand names for education in the country. Irrespective of these facts, India has stayed bind to its traditions, customs and religions. Parents send their kids to Don Bosco to pursue English education with a chandan, or saffron, or kesar, or kumkum tilak on their heads.

The simple conclusion to draw from this discussion is the fact that changing behavior in India is not so easy. India is an elephant that takes time to analyse and arrive at decisions regarding change. Kellogg's is a classic case of surprise that the top management of Kellogg's got when they entered India in the early nineties. Introducing cereals as breakfast to the Indian consumers met with unexpectedly strong resistance. In the US, corn flakes are had with cold milk, whereas in India, it was hot milk when consumers slowly started accepting corn flakes as their breakfast cereal.

Famous brands such as Mercedes, Coca Cola, Citibank experienced similar surprises because they had been blinded by figures. They all forgot to understand India qualitatively.

India is price sensitive.

Every Sunday, Big Bazaar has a 5% discount. India is one of the country where credit cards are available without any annual fee. A Rs. 2 increase in Petrol prices creates traffic around petrol pumps to save Rs. 50 to Rs. 100. India saves by being price sensitive. There is greater trust on holding Gold for future, as compared to any other savings and investment schemes.

This psycho-cultural trait is pertinent to any revenue model to arrive at a realistic earning potential of a business. Fee income business in India is therefore a doubt. Consumers in India seems to have a belief that they are doing a favour by deciding to buy the product or the service. Fee income, if packaged upfront could face huge consumer resistance. The value of convenience is not realized against the opportunity cost of the service being inconvenient. The consumer benefit of providing convenience therefore has to be looked from the point of gaining consumer acceptance, not as a revenue opportunity from the end consumer. The revenue opportunity exists among intermediaries, and in the supply chain coming together to provide the convenience.

India is a potent B2B market as well.

This fragmented retail consumer base gives rise to immense risk in terms of conceptualizing a business and can therefore lead us to this B2B marketplace. The B2B marketplace in India is comparatively homogeneous and offers equally potent business opportunities. Importantly, it is not a targeted marketplace by one and all.

B2B business is about enabling another business or business processes. The target market for B2B business can be one large corporate. One corporate can make the business profitable and sustainable.

Online Payments as a business opportunity is attracting a lot of entrepreneurs and investors. India being one of the most progressive countries with advanced payment systems like NEFT, RTGS, IMPS, ACH and NFS, transfers of money between bank accounts have become enabled through varied means. With IMPS, mobile payments is a robust reality. With ACH, cash collection and management assumes a new paradigm.

The argument is that online payments business can either be targeted at providing convenience to the retail consumers, or be targeted at businesses to make their payment processes simpler, operation-efficient, cost-effective and audit friendly. And it may be just easier to target businesses. So it is imperative that unlike what is commonly observed, business modelling requires a strategic thought towards B2B potential, apart from focusing on the retail consumers.

Conclusion: 'Business Modelling' is a huge discussion. This blog post is an attempt to give cues to further analyse and arrive at a target market definition that has the maximum business potential. This is not exclusive, and is intended to farther thinking in the direction proposed by the blog.

Comments are welcome. We can add to this discussion for everybody's benefits. I would be glad to answer questions with regards to any confusion or fluidity.

The author has an experience of 12 years in the integrated branding, communication and financial domain involving traditional as well as digital media. He can be contacted at durlov@kuhipaat.in for consultancy and project execution.

SEO & Inbound Marketing

I can't help but start with some of the great Seth Godin quotes when I am dwelling the topic of Inbound Marketing. I love his quotes even otherwise.

He says, "If you can’t sell to 1 in 1000, why market to a million?". He also says, "People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves."

These statements make the basis of Inbound Marketing. Lets understand Inbound Marketing before really delving into how SEO would help it.

Let me intersperse this blog with some of my favourite Seth Godin quotes. Would that be boring. Please allow me. "Why waste a sentence saying nothing?"

Traditionally, and most marketers today, generate leads and fill the top of their sales funnel through bulk email blasts, SMS push marketing to legal or illegal lists, trade shows, seminars, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing and advertising. These are "outbound marketing" activities where a marketer pushes the message out through different media options hoping that it will reach the target consumer. 

Although there is a high probability that the message would reach the targeted consumer, yet there are a few basic concerns.

• The message is a generic message designed to appeal the large target consumer set.
• The message is one among millions of other messages targeting similar TG profile.
• There are consumer & Government activism to block generic messages using Spam filters, Caller ID etc and frequent shifting of channels.
• Once the message reaches the target consumer, the follow up communication strategy is not existent. Mostly the marketing team broadcasts the message, and then the business teams tries to track leads and conversions. 

Basically, it was about buy, beg and bug consumers spending millions of advertising dollars to sell. These days are getting over, quickly, with consumers in control of the information they receive.

"Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late."

Inbound Marketing is the change. Its the Marketing 2.0. It is about the practice of bringing warm, qualified leads into the sales funnel and follow them up through communication till they explicitly or implicitly express dis-interest. The basis was again Seth Godin's Permission based marketing.

"Permission Marketing is just like dating. It turns stranger into friends and friends into lifetime customers. Many of the rules of dating apply, and so do many of the benefits."


Half of Inbound Marketing is about great marketing content. And the second half is about having strategies and techniques to engage the interested consumer till conversion. Human beings have a finite amount of attention. The attention is therefore spent only on things that interests you. Once great content attracts the attention, inbound marketing is supposed to capture that attention, engage with the attention, make a relationship to exchange more content. The attention would either become a customer, or become an ambassador of the brand/product. 

SEO - Search Engine Optimization plays a critical role in capturing attention of consumers searching for content that resonates with the content provided by the brand. Search engines have become the default option to search for content. Students search before asking their teachers. Employees search before asking their peers or bosses. 

"Expectations are the engines of our perceptions."
"If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place."

SEO as I discussed in the previous blog, is not only about making your website optimized to be found in all relevant search keywords, but also about creating content in the social media and other Internet eco-systems. The latter simply means that others would equally work hard to get your content across to relevant consumers. 

For instance, if you write a post in www.mouthshut.com, mouthshut would work hard to get that searched by relevant keywords. Then if you share that post through google plus, twitter, tumblr etc, they further work hard to get that searched.

Finally, even if your relevant website page is coming in the second page of the search result, the same content may come right in the front of the search result through other websites. 

This is called Content SEO, and not Website SEO.

"Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death."

Let your content be that idea. Use proper SEO techniques and inbound marketing strategies as light and air, or they would starve to death.


The author has an experience of 12 years in the integrated communication domain involving traditional as well as digital media. He can be contacted at durlov@kuhipaat.in for consultancy and project execution.