BBM for Android and iPhone - Is this a good communications strategy?

In the month of 2013, Blackberry announced that BBM would soon be available for Android and iPhone users. It will be the first multi-platform version of the instant messaging app which has 60 million active monthly users.

By October, over 6 million people signed up for 'information about BBM' at bbm.com. Over 2 million people found out ways to download the BBM application on their Android and iPhone devices unofficially using 'creative ways', as Blackberry would like to say.

As of November numbers, the news is that BBM on Android and iPhone is a big hit. It has been downloaded over 20+ million times. BBM's engagement of around 40 minutes per user is also higher than other multi-platform messaging platforms such as Tango and LINE.

It is a Branding Harakiri.

All the above sounds great. But are we missing the forest for the trees? Around 2008, almost all my friends had a blackberry, and all of them swore by BBM. In 2013, only very few have remained loyal to Blackberry, but all of them still swore by BBM. Only change is that they have added WhatsApp as an alternative to BBM for friends without Blackberry phones.

Still they were the privileged few to enjoy BBM service. Those few users are around 60 million. With BBM becoming multi-platform, these loyal 60 million users would surely feel a pinch in losing their exclusivity. This is something the Blackberry brand managers have missed in their enthusiasm to get into the instant messaging marketplace. They seem to have momentarily forgotten that they are primarily a device company, at least in the minds of the consumers.

Messaging Marketplace is fiercely competitive and commoditized.

In the instant messaging marketplace, WhatsApp needs little introduction since it is arguably the world’s most popular messaging application with more than 300 million people using it each month. It is number one in the biggest mobile app market, Europe boasting a weekly engagement stats of a whopping 160 minutes per user. It has reached the critical acceptance level to charge $0.99 for a one-year subscription - although it is free for the first year.

There are over 22 mobile messaging applications in the market such as GroupMe, Line, WeChat, MessageMe, Kik, Tango, Hike etc. Kik is one of the few messaging apps that doesn’t require you to provide your phone number. It is therefore in tablets that does not have a SIM card. There are also a few regional apps like the KakaoTalk of Korea. Then we have the Facebook messenger app that can't be ignored with its mega user base.

Surprisingly, Blackberry has decided to shift focus from its device business to this crazy competitive marketplace which is just about to get commoditized. I can't understand the branding and business motive behind this costly move. It is not only costly in terms of capital and operational investments, but also costly in terms of dis-illusioning its loyal consumer base.

Where is the revenue?

Blackberry had announced in September 2013 that it is planning to cut 4,500 jobs, or 40% of its worldwide workforce, in an attempt to staunch huge losses. The smartphone maker said that it anticipated a loss of as much as $995m (£621m) when it reports its second-quarter earnings.

Blackberry's Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said: "We are implementing the difficult, but necessary operational changes ...to address our position in a maturing and more competitive industry, and to drive the company toward profitability."

This is where I have a disconnect. How is multi-platform BBM, a drive towards profitability? What is the revenue model in this instant messaging marketplace? Putting ads onto the app is unthinkable, as such intrusions are taken very negatively by the generation of today. Subscription revenue is the only likely revenue model, which can be dangerous in a commodity market. Facebook has shied away from putting a subscription revenue model even then they had over a billion users hooked.

Games, video, digital stickers, music sharing are probably the other upcoming revenue generators, but that space has been already keenly fought by other players. Of the $58m, LINE made in sales in the first quarter of 2013, half came from selling games and 30%, or roughly $17m, from sales of its 8,000 different stickers. With KakaoTalk, which is thought to be on 90% of all smartphones in South Korea, registered users can choose from more than 100 games they can play with one another, and games alone helped the company generate $311m in sales in the first half of 2013.

WhatsApp has clearly identified communications as its mainstay. It doesn't intend to dilute its proposition by offering everything possible in the messaging environment. That is perhaps the reason of its ever increasing user base. It is profitable by its sheer subscription revenue.

I am not clear what is the revenue thought behind making this multi-platform BBM? How does a multi-platform messaging app sell a Blackberry phone or its services? It will perhaps erode the user base whose only reason for a blackberry phone is BBM. Whatever the revenue model is, it is surely going to be one difficult business to sustain for Blackberry.

Conclusion:
Both from branding and business perspective, I believe that Blackberry has got it wrong. It is wasting its energies in uncertain domains, rather than focus on the device division creating more exclusive Blackberry services like the BBM for its loyal retail and corporate customer base.

#greatestfan campaign - Reliance Life Insurance

"Sudhir is Indian cricket’s most well known fan. Let us support him" is what the latest campaign of Reliance Life Insurance says.  I have seen massive hoardings in Mumbai, heard radio commercials, and have visited their Facebook and Twitter profiles. I think the campaign is perhaps live on TV as well.

Every ad mentions it without fail that this campaign has no commercial purpose. It is a social responsibility led initiative from Reliance Life Insurance in support of the greatest fan of Sachin Tendulkar and India's favourite sport, Cricket. :)

I wonder, "why is Reliance being so foolish?" Why are they thinking that consumers are gullible and stupid enough to make believe anything on mass media.


What is even surprising is that the campaign is not in the news. There has been very little PR push around the campaign. I could find just one press release from Reliance Life Insurance that said 'Sudhir's passion is such that he does not have a regular source of income. He spends all his time cycling across the country (even abroad) following his idol Sachin Tendulkar. All this has led Reliance Life Insurance to come up with a social responsibility campaign to support him.'

The company’s Facebook page states, “For us, he is an embodiment of everything that comes in the way of planning for one's future. And that's why we have taken up Sudhir's cause and want to help him secure his future with a regular income. After all, retirement is definitive and needs planning before it becomes a shock.” If that is the fact, shouldn't Reliance be discouraging such fanatism?

I have been into communications for the past 15 years and I can say with certainty that consumers would look at this campaign as a desperate attempt by Reliance to take advantage of the media hype about the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar. The current perception of Reliance in the minds of the consumers of being a shrewd business house further adds to this conclusion. Consumers would not take it as a CSR initiative.

It is also a classic case of how a good opportunity is lost because of wrong execution strategy. The thought of helping out Sudhir is surely a good marketing idea, and a social idea. There is nothing wrong about being opportunistic to build business and profitability. But it has to be executed well.

The flaws of this campaign are as follows:

1. An initiative like this should not be taken to the mass media in the manner that Reliance did. More so, if the initiative was a CSR initiative. The disclaimer added salt to the wounds. Instead, it should have been a PR campaign with a local activation strategy. The media would have brought the initiative to the various mass media.
2. The campaign is not clear about what Reliance is actually doing for Sudhir. The campaign says, "As a part of CSR, Reliance Life Insurance is providing financial aid to Sudhir". If Reliance had taken up a few conclusive steps for the family of Sudhir, and informed us about the same through a PR and social media campaign, media then would have taken the message to the consumers through TV, Radio and Newspapers.
3. The campaign is asking consumers to join them in supporting Sudhir by texting 'SUDHIR' to a short code, by liking the company's Facebook page and by using the hashtag #greatestfan and following the company's Twitter account. But the motivation or rationale behind the same is missing. For example, Reliance could have said, "every 'life' or an 'SMS' has a value of 1 rupee. Each 1000 likes, Reliance Life Insurance will give Sudhir an insurance worth Rs. 1000/- as premium.
4. The campaign is just featuring Sudhir. It may not be a flaw, but India sure has many crazy cricket fanatics like Sudhir. The campaign could have been inclusive. The campaign idea could have taken all cricket fanatics as the target audience, with Sudhir being their mascot (or ambassador). An offer could have been weaved around the same. It would have been an honest attempt to support Sudhir and Cricket.

I have always believed that communication strategy and creative strategy have to be honest. And that there are ways to communicate any damn thing on earth without appearing dishonest.

Marketing Communications in the times of the World Wide Web.

Marketing Communications over the last decade has taken a big leap (of faith!) with the advent of interactive, super-fast, inter-connected world wide web and the myriad web technologies. All the critical pillars of communications - message, media, consumers, design tools, skill-sets etc have undergone a change.

Or I should say, the technological advances have brutally demanded a change in the way we think, create and execute brand communications.

The creative process required to roll out a print ad or a TV campaign is very different than the process of creativity required to create a message on the Internet. Building a website, designing a search campaign or executing a social media campaign requires a completely different kind of skill set.

Media, in the good old days was the kingdom of the media planners and the buyers, today the scene is fragmented. Adwords professionals are equally important media buyers and planners. With content aggregation and inbound marketing, the media is not even always a paid commodity. There goes the 15% commission revenue model.

With Internet and technology, the content is no longer uni-directional, aimed at the consumers. User generated content has become a major source of content. Youtube and the whole of social media runs on user generated content. They are interestingly multi-directional. Even TV, Print and Radio have not stayed uni-directional with the advent of tools like Shazam and QR code

Consumers of media have also changed in terms of time spent on each media, attention span and general lifestyle attitude towards brands. Television and Print have lost a good deal of youth in the age group of 15-24 to these new media. Even a cricket match is getting tracked through tweets and Facebook updates.

For the advertisers, it has not been easy. The tools, the terminologies, the knowledge domain is now not with one big agency. There are so many things to know to implement an effective advertising campaign. We need to not only know vector images, illustrator, TRP, Readership and the works, but also know Impressions, PPC deals, HTML5, JAVA, Email, SMS technologies and the whole new media related knowledge.

The client servicing teams and the other creative, studio and production departments of the bigger advertising agencies have not been able to cope up with the digital onslaught. With media and creative separating in around 2003, it only added to their woes.

A marketing company now has to deal with a creative agency, a media agency, a digital agency, a website agency and a technology company for mini interactive applications. At one end, it may be taken as a positive outcome that the industry is moving towards specialized businesses and services, improving the quality of services, helpful to the economy in general.

At the other end, it is diluting the concept of advertising. There is no single brand custodian. The advertising agency used to be brand custodian in the good old days, but the advertising industry has lost its credibility or ability to be the brand custodian. Today, there seems to be no unanimous decision on who is the brand custodian today. The level of confusion in the definition of 'brand custodian' is quite funny (and stupid).

In a 2008 HT article, Madhukar Sabnavis, Country Head – Planning and Discovery, Ogilvy & Mather India, once said, “The marketing director or the marketing head is the brand’s custodian.” MG Parameswaran, Executive Director, Draft-FCB-Ulka, once said, “The CEO of the company that owns the brand, is the brand’s custodian.” Lynn D’Souza, head, Lintas Media Group, says, “The brand manager is the brand’s custodian.”

The brand custodian is the person or team that knows the brand the best. Brand, from a marketing communications perspective, is what the consumers perceive or feel or believe; or what the consumers should perceive or feel or believe. The advertising agencies used to have an Account Planner or an Account Planning team that used to understand this aspect of branding. They used to understand the consumer behavior behind brands.

Understanding consumer behavior, or the interest to seek this understanding makes the basis for effective communication. The effort required to understand consumer behavior in this world of fragmented myriad media scenario is a big challenge. But it is a possible challenge.

The second basic truth about advertising is that it is exponentially effective if there is convergence of media. 360 degree communication in true spirit is the need of the hour (and always been the need)

For an advertiser and a marketing person, it is always easier to have one brand expert managing the whole gamut of communication. There is a need for a consultative cum outsourcing business model to provide an effective 360 degree communications services to advertisers.

We at TSO - The Significant Other, work in the this new media paradigm. We are working hard to make ourselves experts in consumer behaviour in terms of media consumption, branding and purchase cycle behavior so that we can create the most relevant message. We also tried hard to understand all the available media so that we can sent the most relevant message through the most appropriate media, through the model of outsourcing.

Outsourcing is the key to the execution of such a strategy. In effect, appropriate knowledge and experience in liasonning with all the myriad vendors is the key.

Amul Ads - Simple and Consistent Strategy

They are bloody consistent. The fact that I absolutely adore about AMUL.

We all know about their age old topical advertising. They do a great job in selecting a current hot affair and make an ad about it. There were even controversies when AMUL commented on national political events such as 'Emergency in India' in 1976.

AMUL Ad during the Emergency

Click here to see some of their fine ads that TSO - The Significant Other has compiled on their FaceBook page.

The cute utterly butterly 'Amul girl' is an icon of the middle class India right from 1967. Woah! Do we have any other mascot that old?

When Aamir Khan's Ghazini was released

The Amul girl is a hand-drawn cartoon of a young, chubby Indian girl dressed in a polka dotted frock with blue hair and a half pony tied up. 

The brief was to draw a mascot which is easy to paint in walls and outdoors. Those days didn't have those huge printing machines to print huge outdoor vinyls. The idea was conceived by an agency called ASP (Advertising, Sales and Promotion) headed by Sylvester Da Cunha and his Art Director Eustace Fernandez

Even the media strategy of AMUL was clear, crisp and consistent. Almost all of their print advertisements come in the top corner of the third page in the main newspaper. Earlier it was Times Of India where this media innovation was to be seen, now we can even see it in Hindustan Times.

In communications terminology, we call it a strategy to create expectations of readers to find a particular kind of content in a particular place. Like we always open the supplement of Hindustan Times, Brunch from the last page expecting the fixed format short & interesting interview of a celebrity.

If you refer to image below, this is exactly the spot in the 3rd page of Hindustan Times where you can expect an advertisement from AMUL.

Media Innovation - Amul

AMUL has just been ranked as the No. 1 Indian brand by Campaign magazine in its list of Top 1000 Brands of Asia for three consecutive year. AMUL is one brand which truly deserves this accolade. Although advertising plays a critical role in getting this coveted rank, the product management also has to be hailed and saluted. What would advertising do, if the product does not perform as per the expectation and perception that advertisements create.

There is so much to learn for Mumbaikars and Townies like us from AMUL started 65 years back in a small town in the state of Gujarat called Anand.

A Big Salute.

Google Network Vs Yahoo-Bing Network

Everybody knowing or having interest in search marketing would know that Google dominates search volumes. In the US of A, Google handles two-thirds of all search queries. However, can we ignore the network that accounts for one-thirds of the search queries that consumers type-in in the US?

The truth is that we know very little about the Yahoo-Bing Network (YBN).

This post is about a research done by AdGooRoo which sought to gauge the success of the YBN network in gaining market share against Google. The research report from AdGooRoo compared the performance of Yahoo! Bing against Google in six critical verticals.

Verticals basically referred to those industry segments that account for the majority of the total search traffic and click-throughs in the U.S. Search market. Comparing the paid search spends of these industry segments could give a representative idea of where each of the networks stand in terms of search effectiveness and outcomes.

The industry segments measured were as follows:

1. Retail (Shopping & Classifieds)
2. Financial Services
3. Travel
4. Education
5. Computer & Internet
6. Business to Business

This methodology of dividing the spends into verticals was interesting. It brought up a number of questions, such as

1. Which are the verticals where Google is dominant, and to what degree?
2. Is Google dominant in every aspect of paid search - Impressions, Click through efficiency, CPC, CPL etc
3. Can we compromise on impressions to get lower CPLs in some of the industry verticals? etc.

While the report had the obvious findings, it also had a few surprises. Please read on to get a quick gist of the report.

Impressions:

Google Adwords served more impressions in all the verticals except for 'Financial Services'. Retail as a vertical, is the biggest money-maker for advertisers and Bing was a distant second. The research was done in Q3, 2012 and Google had 7.3 million impressions more than YBN in one quarter alone, for 'Retail'.

Bing Ads performed strongly against AdWords in several other verticals in terms of ad impressions. It outperformed AdWords in the Financial Services vertical with 5.31 million impressions compared to 4.11 million for AdWords. Analysts have credited the popularity of Financial Services on Yahoo! and MSN for pushing Bing Ads into the lead.

Click-Through Rates (CTRs)

In addition to earning more search traffic, advertisers on AdWords experienced higher CTRs on Google network, with AdWords campaigns getting 2.4 to 5.9 times higher CTRs than those on YBN during the same period.

Interestingly, for advertisers who were active on both the engines, quite a few of them got higher CTRs on YBN including Citicards and Fidelity Life. Quite obviously, it was found that among the 39,000 advertisers surveyed, 55% of them were running ad campaigns on both AdWords and YBN.

Otherwise, the competition in terms of CTRs was completely one-sided favoring Google. The biggest discrepancies came in Financial Services (3.53% compared to .81%), Travel (4.14% to 1.27%), and Business to Business (3.12% to .60%).

Cost-per-Click (CPC)

Not surprisingly, CPCs for YBN were invariably lower. There is a price to be paid for Google’s successful track record with AdWords. While CPC data was fairly close in each vertical, the Computer and Internet vertical saw a CPC rate on AdWords that was 117% greater than Bing Ads.

As a result of lower CPCs, impressions were cheaper on the YBN. It varied from 76 to 90 percent cheaper on average. YBN therefore can be taken as a brand awareness medium giving high visibility at a lower cost.

For a lead generation campaign, YBN may not give high volumes, but can bring in leads at a lower cost per lead. It can prove to be very useful for brands who cannot handle high volumes of leads coming into the system.

Conclusions:

As an advertiser, I would suggest presence in both the networks. It would only put a multiplier effect on the search outcomes in terms of lowering of cost and increase in volume of leads.

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.

SEO in the age of Social Media & Content Aggregation

SEO - Search Engine Optimization, refers to the act of making a particular website easily accessible on various search engines. 

If I am looking at buying an LCD TV, I would most likely type 'LCD TV Review India' on BING or Google to find out the best LCD TV on offer with the most favorable reviews. This search should find the SEO optimized website among the top three search results for me to read on.

As an experiment, when I searched for 'LCD TV Review India' on Google, the results thrown at me completely surprised me. It led me to this blog in an effort to re-think on the SEO strategy in the age of Social Media and Content aggregation.

Google Search Results for "LCD TV Reviews India"

Shockingly, I didn't find a single television brand website. Lets assume that SEO strategies of brands have not evolved in India and that it is a simple scenario of bad SEO practices on the part of the television brands. But , there was another surprise. The search results had social media, verticals and content publishers. 

So the pertinent question to ask is that even if some of the brands had done a great job of SEO, would that have been enough for brand recognition and engagement?

If you see the search results, we see www.techradar.com, www.mouthshut.com, www.cnet.com and the likes offering content of importance and relevance for the customer. If this is the pattern of search results that search engines throw up, the presence of the brand in these websites would become a must for a better search marketing strategy.

These websites form the eco-system called Social Media and Aggregated Content. Social Media is primarily user generated content and content aggregation is about websites publishing reviews, opinions, comparisons etc.

And yes, social media is not only about Facebook and Twitter !!

It is important for a brand today to have a search strategy that involves SEO, Social Media such as blogs, user review websites and content aggregation. It involves writing content, placing content and coordination with content aggregators.


Next Blog: SEO & Inbound Marketing



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.

Communications - Always the Understated.

Financial Accounting, Acquisitions & Mergers, Forex Management, Product Strategy, Sales Strategy are all big job families respected as those hard skills that one needs to acquire through first class education and years of experience.

They are the science of a business. Communication is a soft skill. How can that be a science? #Joke

Secretary Sandra writes an internal email to all the employees launching a new bike parking space, and that is communication. Product manager, Victor writes the product details with the laundry list of all important features for the website guy to simply upload, and that is communication too. Everybody does communication in some form or the other.

Hence the over-riding perception that communication is everyone's cup of tea. #anotherjoke

#FACT
Communication is the science of understanding consumer insights, their behaviour carved out of age, education, income, customs, traditions and experiences; and arriving at the creative strategy; and executing it in the relevant media such as TV, radio, Internet etc.

#FACT
Communication too needs to have a 5 year vision, annual objective, brand positioning strategy, cost strategy, media strategy, production and procurement roadmap, technology strategy and HR resource planning.

#FACT
Communication unlike yester-years, has become measurable to a great extent. Father of modern advertising, John Wanamaker's words "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" was before the advent of technology. He would have been a happier man today.

#FACT
This is the age of technology and forms of communication, as I write is evolving towards the use of the Internet, Mobile and other web technologies. Communication experts need to be those geeks who are creative, understand consumers, knows the technicalities of production, knows technology, knows media and the business of a revenue model to stay profitable. 

#FACT
India has a communications school in a remote village called Shela in Ahmedabad called Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) that attracts the best of students, who could have gone to the IIMs. MICAns understand the ways to know consumers and construct consumer insights.

#FACT
Communications make or break perceptions. And Perception is the brand's reality.

It is time that brands wake up to the fact they need to consider communications as a critical element in the business model. I understand that it would always stay as a cost centre, but it needs to be looked at a cost centre that directly impacts revenue through brand building, sales, social awareness and employee motivation.

Facebook Vs Twitter: 5 points of Difference

There are quite a lot of things to say when there is such a title - Facebook Vs Twitter. But I would limit myself to what I feel. It is not what I have read. It is not what I have heard.

To me, as a marketer cum advertising personnel, both strive on user generated content. They are what users update, upload and share. They are what users are. They are what consumers are.

But they are different.

#1
I see a major difference while searching content. In facebook, you just can't search for consumer content. It is all about your friend's network, a business page and their latest updates. On the other hand, twitter sometimes is better than google in giving you consumer voice, brand information and sales message. Comments, images and short URLs are all part of the search feature. Any user could search the wide user generated content.

#2
Twitter is non-personal to a great extent frank, candid and opinionated.. The users are not bound by his friend circle to act, say or behave in a certain way. Twitter has an independent universe not limited to a set definition. Facebook on the other hand is about friends, groups and business pages. It is limited to the followers and friends.

#3
Twitter is about content, whereas Facebook is about friends

#4
Twitter is about sharing and reading anything of interest. Facebook is about networking and keeping in touch.

#5
Facebook can give instant popularity to an information in a community or within a closed group, whereas Twitter may need hard work and strategic placement. Facebook is therefore better for brand awareness, whereas Twitter is about brand engagement.

MTV India perhaps thinks IPOD has no future !

The brand marketplace is flooded with examples of brands losing focus on their core strengths and diversifying into known or unknown territories in the rationale of killing brand fatigue and expanding the brand reach and therefore loyalty.

So, it is not embarrassing for MTV to think on similar lines. It is anyway pretty obvious to think of reality programming to be the natural progression from music.

What surprises me however is that MTV is (or has become) deaf and blind to consumer speak and programming quality. More so, when MTV is known to drive deep into the culture of its consumers.

A quick search can give us consumer speak on websites such as MouthShut and Yahoo Answers. They all shout 'Where is the Music?', 'Where is the M of MTV?' Click on the links to get a sample of consumer speak.

About the programming quality and conscience, the lesser said is the better. Crunch for instance, is the most sleazy show that is made for youth in the name of reality. It has obscenities, cleavages and everything that a 15 year old should not perhaps watch. Above all, where is the music element in MTV Crunch, for that matter in Splitsvilla, Roadies and StuntMania.

MTV used to quite admirable around a decade back till the whole "Kyonki Saas...etc" wave hit them real hard on their conscience. That was the soap opera TRP revolution.

They had overtaken [V] in the early 2000 (correct me if I am wrong!) to become India's top rated music channel. It was admirable how MTV localised content completely tailored to the Indian youth. The channel embraced Bollywood and launched a nationwide hunt for new Indian veejays. One winner was a former Miss India. It tapped into young people's passions for cricket and fashion. It came up with a few hits, notably MTV Bakra - in which the host, Cyrus Broacha, played gags on unsuspecting people. So popular was Bakra that friends of Bollywood stars or famous cricket players often contacted MTV to ask Broacha to play a bakra on the celebrity. Broacha had become so famous that he interviewed Bill Gates when the Microsoft chairman wanted to speak to India's young people about AIDS.

It was quite amazing that one country's MTV looked (still does) very little like the another's. Bill Roedy - President of MTV Networks International, once said, "MTV India is very colorful, self-effacing, full of humor, a lot of street culture. China's is about family values, nurturing, a lot of love songs. In Indonesia, with our largest Islamic population, there's a call to prayer five times a day on the channel. Brazil is very sexy. Italy is stylish, elegant, with food shows because of the love of food there. Japan's very techie, a lot of wireless product."

The problem started when being the No. 1 music channel wasn't a big enough business for MTV. With so many general interest channels, MTV could not command premium prices for advertising, even on its popular shows. Moreover, television viewership in India is extremely fragmented. MTV had to compete with regional music channels aimed at viewers who speak Tamil, Telegu, and Punjabi. A prime-time 30-second spot on MTV typically sold for roughly 8,000 to 11,500 rupees, whereas the rate was multiple times for a similar spot on a General Interest Channel like Star TV.

The popularity of Star and Sony made it hard for MTV to attract viewers, because India is still the kind of place where families tend to gather around the TV set. Because most young viewers watched soaps such as Kyonki or Jassi, media buyers didn't need to advertise on MTV to reach them. Alex Kuruvilla - Ex MTV India Managing Director once said, "How do you beat the story of the mass players who can deliver a high number of eyeballs? That is actually the single biggest challenge we face as a niche channel"

Initially, MTV responded quite creatively, I would say. To go beyond the selling of 30 second spots, MTV started inviting advertisers to help it develop new programs. For example, MTV and Honda came up with a show called Roadies that follows a set of boys and girls who drive motorbikes across India.

When Unilever wanted to launch a deodorant called Axe, with the theme of "long-lasting freshness", MTV staged what it called the world's longest dance party (55 hours) in a suburb of Delhi, attended by 15,000 people and certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Lycra introduced its brand to India by sponsoring the MTV Style Awards. For Microsoft, the channel designed a show called Web Watch to promote its MSN online network.

But then I guess MTV got carried away. It seemed that revenues could only come through fiction based episodic content. Kuruvilla had said, "Right now the media consumption model for us is snacking. We want to migrate that audience to more regular appointment viewing every week."

Kuruvilla and his team didn't understand that biscuits cannot become meal and fight for brand loyalty during lunch and dinner time of consumers. It will always remain a snack, and be extremely profitable at that.

In 2004, MTV India, in collaboration with Balaji Telefilms, launched its first fiction serial ‘Kitni Mast Hain Zindagi’. The show turned out to be immensely popular. The number of episodes were extended from the initial 39 to 107.

I have my reservations if it was the content that made the show a success. I have three reasons for the show's success. Firstly, it was produced by Balaji which was producing the hugely successful Star TV show "Kyonki Saas...". So there was a huge media hype around it. Everybody in India knew that MTV is coming up with fiction serial much like Star and Sony. Secondly, MTV did a great job by doing a nation wide casting to build anticipation for the new soap. MTV had held open tryouts for the show in more than 100 cities, big and small, across India. About 7,000 people showed up for a Delhi casting call. That was one of the biggest audition ever. Lastly, it was a novelty that the great MTV is doing a fiction serial. It must be good.

The obsession and the short-sightedness continued with renewed vigour after the success of the initial fiction and reality content. When it comes to bottom line, revenues and profitability, it is quite easy to stagger and take the most obvious strategy in short term view. For instance, who can doubt the statement, "Sex Sells".

Today MTV is more famous for Roadies, Spiltsvilla and Crunch. I call them sexy fiction. The creative programming content includes slangs like BC and MC, lot of legs with mini skirts being the compulsory dress code, close-up of cleavages, slutty behaviour, hugging, kissing and (would you believe) massaging. Obscenities are beeped in the television episodes, as there are regulations. So MTV has come up with an innovative way of making the youth listen to the obscenities. These programmes are broad casted live on YouTube. One of the MTV executives tells me that there are no regulations on the Internet. Wah!

Can someone take MTV to jail!!! Where is their moral and social responsibility towards the youth of the country? The majority of the MTV viewers are between the age of 15 to 25 years.

Of course, it would be unfair to say the MTV has completely stopped doing good music. We still have shows like Coke Studio, Roots and Sound Trippin. Although Coke Studio Season 1 was dissappointing, yet overall they are good content. You may want to listen to this great track by Papon.




There is a strategic and a communication question that we need to ask ourselves (communication / marketing professionals). Has Music lost its charm among the youth? Of course not, I would assume. If music still sells and would always sell, why MTV could not sustain itself with music alone? Is this about a dearth of creativity among us that MTV fell prey to sexy programming? We tend to miss the point that sexy content gives superficial and flirty TRPs, which actually spread negative brand perception. The same eyes ogling at MTV Crunch would, at one breath, condemn MTV for doing such shows.

The question is: "Would IPOD lose its market share and profitability if it could only play music?"

MTV as a brand needs to be more resilient, not to succumb to easy TRP tactics. There are enough creative opportunities present in the field of promoting good music, and music transcends all age groups, social strata, caste, creed and religion.

If regular appointment viewing is what brings in the ad revenues, it can come in with music as well. Indian Idol is a great example!

Ideas that went viral and how!

Viral marketing, viral advertising or more pertinently the surprise of a 'million hits on facebook/youtube' basically refers to a creative output that spreads like wild fire and reaches millions of us in a very short period of time.

A creative output that encourages a certain set of the society having high social networking potential to share it.

A creative output that convinces the other certain set of the society having the curiosity to view or experience it.

With Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, viral marketing has become more pronounced in our day to day lives. Recently we saw the Flash Mob video at the CST Railway station, Mumbai. Please click here to experience the video if you haven't already. It has clocked 1,745,676 views as I write this blog.

Then we have seen Sonu Nigam taking advantage of the viral "Why This Kolaveri Di" to promote his son with a very methodically edited video of his son singing Kolaveri Di. The original video has clocked 21,839,944 views, not considering the other youtube edits of the same video. Even the Sonu Nigam engineered video has garnered 2,877,936 views.

A few generations back, viral ideas travelled through word of mouth, then I remember them travelling through MMSes, now they travel by the WORD OF MOUSE !

Speaking of word of mouth, the best example of an idea going viral, outside of the virtual world, is of course 'Harry Potter'. This series of books written by Ms. J. K. Rowling has been translated into 65 languages and has sold more than 325 million copies in more than 200 territories around the world. The Harry Potter films produced by Warner Bros. Pictures have grossed $3.5 billion worldwide at the box office.

MMSes as a medium for spreading virals also attained huge eyeballs and gossip. Stories of two bollywood movies - DevD and LSD were based on the phenomena.

Do you remember the Ashmit Patel - Ria Sen MMS clip? It has again re-surfaced on youtube and is gaining popularity. You guys have to hunt for the link yourself on this. You can click here to hear an interesting news on it though... Hai Rabba, Ashmit! kuch to sharam karo..!

MMS virals were more of pornographic content, probably because MMS travelled from peer to peer and the mobile device is extremely personal. It was like how many men read a classic novel before going to bed alone!

Whatever said and done, pornography has limited scope in the society. MMS was soon bowled over by the social networking websites. Today is the generation of Youtube and FaceBook. And here comes the word of Mouse!
  
Some of the interesting epidemic that the mouse had spread:

1. Charlie bit my finger - again ! (395,738,061 views)
2. David After Dentist (103,648,602 views)
3. Talented Fat kid Dancing to Dhinka Chika (1,541,922 views)
4. A blog that has received over 2700 comments and over 1 million page-views - An open letter to a Delhi boy written by an amateur cum 'celebrity-now' blogger Shahana Nair Joshi

Going by these phenomena, it is obvious that the dream of every brand manager is to have at least one viral campaign in their careers. The biggest question still remains, how to create a viral campaign?

There are quite a few brand campaigns that have gone viral on youtube. Click on this line to sample a few.

The new Nokia Lumia - The Amazing Everyday video is going viral as we speak. It has clocked over a million page views already. 1,034,928 views to be precise. It has surpassed Samsung's "The Next Big Thing" Galaxy S II Commercial. Going by this, can I pressume that Microsoft has finally arrived into the mobile OS market? Perhaps, yes. Perhaps, no.

There is also hope for the old popular commercials to go viral today. If the brand has the ethos intact, why not re-popularise the old commercials.. The 1984 Apple Macintosh commercial is a case in point. It has received many millions of views. One of the many youtube uploads of the video has garnered 8,797,112 page views.

This world of viral marketing is the new challenge for every creative mind in the advertising and marketing industry. There are no easy answers or theory, just like there is no theory behind why Lady Gaga has the maximum number of followers on Twitter, followed by Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian (can you believe this?) and Britney Spears.... I cant name the line-up. It is gross. But it is a fact. Is beauty really skin-deep?

Honestly, designing a viral campaign would mean the final stamp on knowing not only consumer behaviour well, but also a generation to its bone marrow.


Till the time I can't create, Let me just spread.

Indigo Airlines - Intelligent Branding

Just boarded my flight back to Mumbai after a wonderful evening at MICA, Ahmedabad. In my mind, I am thanking the MICA team for booking the tickets with Indigo Airlines.

Indigo never fails to surprise me with their brilliance. The crew, the hostesses, their marketing ideas, the in-flight announcements, their time adherence, their customer service... the list is endless. They know their business well.

No surprises that they are the most profitable airlines in a time when kingfisher has become pawnfisher with no money to pay for fuel.

So how Indigo pleased me this time...

1. Quite obviously, the hostesses were looking better than ever. They were wearing a hat that we normally see on international flights. And very pleasantly, they had the same stylish haircuts!  
2. Most interestingly, they were wearing a cute badge on their left sleeves saying 'I am going international'. What a great communication idea to talk to existing customers! It could have said 'We are going international'. Most marketeers would have written it that way. But there is a reason why Indigo is also the best employer in the transportation industry. The 'I' factor will make every hostess will feel proud of the message and own the message which will positively affect their service standards.
3. Have you ever seen Sandwiches photographed like this? A top cross-section view. The in-flight 

   

   Inflight Magazine of Indigo

   mag is top class and no-nonsense. 1 page each for veg and non-veg food, two pages for snacks, two pages for munchies, one page for juices/drinks, two pages for full page ads clubbed together, 4/5 pages on Indigo merchandise, and 3 pages about Indigo. Interestingly they talk about various awards inside a simple trophy mnemonic in the merchandise pages in an unobtrusive way.
4. I was delighted to hear 'please do not forget to save your work that you might have done on your laptop before switching it off'. How do they arrive at such great ideas when every other airlines are simply being so usual and normal? 

Thank you Indigo for a great flight. We have just landed in Mumbai. I will surely show my gratitude by traveling with Indigo every time.

All the best.

To be in the advertising business...

It was 2004 when I had decided to leave the advertising industry with a strange depressing feeling in the gut. It was yesterday that I was thinking about that day while I chanced upon this blog on Campaign India by Babita Baruah.

It was aptly titled "Where have all the Young Men (and Women) Gone?" It was a summary of the current perceptions doing the rounds on the account management role and of the fact that the young minds are looking elsewhere for jobs.

If we decide to take the summary seriously, then we have to try to understand the causes that have led to this situation. We have to quickly put some structural changes in place so that the industry again starts attracting Account Management talent.

Are we clear about the role of Account Management? Are the young minds clear of the expectations from the the role of Account Management Executive? Is there a need to change the role itself or just changing the perceptions surrounding it, is sufficient?

I consider it a big tragedy that the other more popular name given to an Account Management executive is 'Client Servicing Executive'. Who would know it better than the advertising industry that perception is the name of the game. But we decided to not care. We decided to be myopic.... I remember fighting with my seniors to not have 'Executive - Client Servicing' on my Visiting Card. It was such a non-issue for them.

In Advertising Industry parlance, an 'Account' means a client and hence 'Account Management' simply means managing the advertising budget of the client in the most effective and accountable way. Sounds logical and simple, but do we practice that?

A full-service agency was a farce in my times. Every department actually worked in a Silo. Worst is that we had a department-wise client servicing (CS) person for the same client. One CS for mainline creative, one CS for media planning and buying, one CS for PR, one CS for outdoors, one CS for online media... In such a structure, it is impossible for one executive or one account management team to have knowledge about all communications/advertising solutions available for the client to spend his budget. So, how would a single Account Management team be responsible for adding value to the client's business profitability, to manage the advertising budget of the client? The reality hence was obvious. Client Servicing executives became glorified peons for the clients managing day to day deadlines and other operations.


There was a time when I thought 'Was I the only one who knew 'mainline creative work, studio/production work, TAM/INTAM, media planning, online media, PR, Outdoors...?' If not all, an account management guy should understand the nitty-gritties of media planning and mainline creative work. However the strategy was planned otherwise. The big 'stupid' bosses decided to split media and creative as two different business units. It reduced agency remuneration from 15% to 5% and even lesser. And it made account management function irrelevant.


Apart from money, we work for a sense of fulfillment, respect and appreciation. Lets club these needs into one word - Recognition. To get recognition, we need to add tangible economic value to business. How can an account management executive add economic value to the client's business in a compelling way, which would deserve a respectable remuneration/return from the client? A copy writer writes creative copy. An Art Director makes the layout with brand colours. What does an Account Management Executive do? 


Simple. An account management executive designs and executes 'Communication Strategies'. A marketing team expects a strategy covering TV/Print media, Outdoor, Online/New Media, PR and Below the line activities. It is not necessary that an account management executive needs to be an expert in every media, however he needs to be a generalist. He needs to be a business analyst from the communications point of view.


Once the clients see such value, the revenue model can be worked out. If McKinseys of the world can demand crazy loads of money, so can full service advertising agencies.


With the revenue model of the advertising industry becoming lucrative, the industry would be able to attract talents from IIMs and other top end institutes. 


Then there will again come a time when the ad execs will smoke a cigar...