blog

Consumers buy Experience

2010-06-03T02:48:39+00:00

Individuals are increasingly besotted with media, creating and consuming at a frenetic pace. The numbers of screens that demand our attention have increased, and a jamboree of marketing messages are pouring in from the roadside to our bedside. What is left? A spoof video on Onion News Network (ONN) paints the future of marketing, when Google might decide to allow phone-calls (on the new Google phone) for free, but in return whisper contextual ads via bots listening in on the conversation.

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users' Ears

(Follow this link if you can't view the video embedded above)

The fallout is predictable. Publishers already know about the increasing attention deficiency of their audience, and brand managers (who care to measure) are fretting about lower recall. Amidst all this cacophony, how much does your carefully crafted “message” really matter?

Brands have two key attributes (a) the image and (b) the experience. Traditional marketing has focused on winning the battle in the consumer’s psyche hammering in the image (name, sign, symbol, color, message). Fragmentation of media has wreaked havoc with the exposure strategy. Even for mediums that deliver, uncontrolled frequency and volume of messages (triggered by publisher greed) have led to consumers tuning out. How good is a cover-on-cover in your daily newspaper, if it comes every alternate day? You just flip the cover. You tune out!

Internet Media Version 1.0 made the mistake of accelerating the hammer-it-in approach – though adding depth to the dimensions of ‘context’ and being ‘just-in-time’, and of course it professed (to brand managers) that it offered interactivity! But all it did in name of interactivity was coerce the consumer into reading more marketing material on a micro-site and fill up a form, which was certainly helpful but only to a point. Then Brands get greedy, and fascinated with acquisition of databases for pennies, start ‘hammer-it-in’ again, now spamming with emails and SMS, till the irate consumer tunes out yet again.

Consumers don’t buy products or services anymore; they buy the ‘experience’. We believe that amidst all the marketing noise, what sticks in the consumers mind (and thus creates recall) is the experience, and more often that you would like to believe the experience with your brand starts online!

Savvy marketeers, who are bold to bet their money on brand experience, know that it is a difficult game to play. It is relatively easy for consumers to fall in love with the dog, slouched back as couch potatoes, but when he calls the helpline and is treated like a dog himself it is game over for Mr. Phone Company. Solve that problem Mr. God of Advertising.

We believe the web is an integral part of your customers experience lifecycle. For high engagement products and services (like an automobile, travel service or telecom provider) the web is the more compelling medium where the consumer is going to come back again and again. From the point of curiosity, to the point of sale, to the point of customer service, for him web will be a natural touch-point. For low involvement categories, the web can accentuate the positive. You will still need the mass medium to blow your horn, but differentiate the web experience and you can come out a winner; and that can only happen if the experience we deliver, blows away your consumers mind!

Thus Experience Commerce

Because, consumers buy experience.

You’re in social media? So you tweet all the time?

2010-05-06T09:49:14+00:00

“Hi meet Nidhi, she does social media!”

“Social media? So you get paid to twitter and facebook?”

That conversation has been on auto-playback every Saturday night when friends introduce me to someone new… I’m sure that’s how most ‘digital marketers’ get introduced. While some might be happy with their “Social Media Rockstar” cap, I’d fall into the group that isn’t so thrilled with the mass-media-induced-synonym of “social media” as “twitterati.” As a marketer who works with the online medium, I do far more. There’s management of online communities, infusing social media features into websites, coming up with concepts that can go viral, executing campaigns, playing the Google-Search-Rank game, monitoring Adwords, finding social media tools that will automate tasks and make work easier….. and so on and on and on. Yes we handle some some of our clients’ Twitter and Facebook presences. But that’s by no means a majority of what we spend their time on.

At the end of the day, unless you’re using social media as a customer service tool or to keep fans informed on latest happenings and offers, you should only be on social media if you have something meaningful to say.*

*Or alternatively, are serious about listening to customer complaints and suggestions. I could go on forever about the ‘could be benefits’ of Twitter, my point is, Twitter is not the answer-to-all-problems, but a very good tool that can be beneficial when clubbed into a greater marketing strategy.

This post was inspired by the following brilliant ad by Economic Times

Case Study presentation at “Think Digital” with Google

2010-05-01T03:13:58+00:00

Social Media Case Study - Mitsubishi Great Driving Challenge

The Video linked on the concluding slide ” Highway Karma” can be viewed here >

The Pied Piper of Palo Alto

2010-04-28T05:32:59+00:00

It’s another facebook article when I've just finished one, but the hype and hullabaloo around facebook won't let me ignore it. My views may seem absurd, exaggerated and anti-social but in my defence I have my black hat on while writing this.

The current trend of adapting to the new facebook api's before the next site in your browser window, reminds me of the story of the pied piper of Hamlin. The new pied piper from Palo Alto plays his annual social tune to which all of us joyously sway and dance to, not really knowing what’s the final destination. We are busy enjoying the journey. We love new apis, new scripts, having our empty white-spaces on empty white pages filled with smiling thumbnails branded by the famous blue 'f'. In no time we would have our sites ready to be showcased on facebook’s ideal api adoption examples list.

My black hat whispers to me "what is all this leading to?” Isn't facebook making us dance to its own growth? It is in the process of building infinite scaffolds across the internet. Soon the scaffolds will turn into solid rigid supports making it omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.

With all the connect scripts and widgets, its like having small baby ships (the facebook scripts) on our websites each communicating with the mother ship (facebook.com) all the while without we knowing.

Remember the movie independence day ?

Seems creepy when I think what the mother ship did in the movie!!!

Facebook id is now fast achieving what open id couldn't. Many sites do not have a site login and rely on facebook id for logging in. They violate the "do not put all your eggs in one basket" rule. While we do get a share of our average 10-15% traffic from facebook we repay it with nearly 2x returns. Looking back we are all facebook's brand ambassadors. If there was a CPM on the facebook button, that would add up to a hell lotta money.

Facebook is tipped to be the Goliath of the social world. Not too long before there was a Goliath named Microsoft. Do all Goliaths want to rule the worlds they created and nurtured?

A few days ago like all other facebook pages you could comment on facebook's facebook page (reminds me of recursive acronyms like GNU and wiki.com/wiki) viz http://www.facebook.com/facebook. Come f8, users can no longer post on facebook's facebook page, they can only comment on what facebook has written.The last user written comment seen was on Monday 26th April ‘10. A current snapshot of the page show there are no user posts, all being purged by facebook.

Doesn't facebook believe in a fair social world? Food for thought? Unless you are done eating the social pies.

Twist of f8

2010-04-27T07:03:31+00:00

Dear Facebook,

Your f8 is quite an event,a code changing event. I was working on launching a "not so yet another" facebook app.The facebook API was in place; this was just another app tour which I was so familiar with.

And then f8 happened ...

The next day I opened my facebook page and wanted to rattle on some code on the dev console. Opened my bookmarks http://developer.facebook.com/tools.php ; Oopsie Daisy - Page not found. The Dev console has vanished. Soon I will access my data using the graph API and the social tools.

Am I complying to your plan? Was this your plan?

Being the epicenter of the social wave you surely can change the APIs overnight and developers would scrap their code and rewrite. Would developers do the same if there was a competing social network who took better care of their "contributors" ? Maybe not.

The documentation does state that the older APIs would be around till June 1, but after an app is launched and is a month old, would I go under the hood and take down a well oiled machine and try powering it up with a new API? Hell no! The clients do not care about the new APIs and nor do my users. So I will end up burning the candle at both ends and power it with your new APIs to avoid the trouble.

You could call me ill-informed, maybe I did not use Google, to the best of my abilities, to find out more in time about f8. No, I could not view the live web-cast of f8 because my darned internet was not up for a web-cast. The least you could do, is place a notice as you normally put up, when you launch a new feature, telling the developers that the console is going to be moved. A weeks notice would have been greatly appreciated.

The change was too sudden to go live with the APIs after f8. Maybe the apps could have been tried with the new APIs in a newapi.facebook.com sub-domain for a while. I'm sure you could have come up with far better ideas than these.

Things are a little inconsistent at the moment in this transition period. By the time they stabilize and developers feel happy about mastering the new facebook API would it be time for the next f8 ?

Your truly,

http://www.facebook.com/amythical

Chillaxed at Goafest

2010-04-16T10:06:15+00:00

The EC team is not just about business and technology. Yes we work hard, but we can party harder.

Catch Team EC amidst all the action at Goafest 2010.

EC wins first metal at ABBY Awards

2010-04-12T02:40:45+00:00

Mitsubishi Great Driving Challenge wins Silver ABBY for Integrated Digital Campaign, beating Vodafone ZooZoo (which got bronze).

The metal looks like this.

and here is Team EC collecting the same.

Heard of ‘viral’ growth? The graph looks like this.

2010-03-30T02:55:08+00:00

The incredible success of our social media led campaign to garner fans and fanatic fans for CLUB Royal Challengers (both on the Website and Facebook pages), needs no further evidence; (see the graph below). The exponential, hockey-stick curve which is every social marketeer’s dream, has now come alive for us; and honestly is a treat to see the numbers leap, everyday. Team RCB has given a big helping hand, notching up 4 wins on the trot, and providing content ‘on-demand for the fans (smiling, singing, blogging whatever) and the traffic is just pouring in from around the world.

While industry pundits continue to wax eloquent about digital extensions to multi-crore advertising blockbusters (Tiger, ZooZoo et al.) and social media pundits mash-up and re-tweet the same, sterling examples such as Royal Challengers social-media powered website, fly completely below the radar.

Not a surprise, because traditional media has been given a ‘pass’ by fans who, instead, gorge on more exciting and original content churned out daily by Club RCB fans themselves on royalchallengers website . The crowd has taken over, and the website is now source of ‘original news, pictures and anecdotes’ for traditional media.

Instead of running gimmicky campaigns promising fans the world (and delivering peanuts), Team EC has carefully nurtured a small group of fanatic fans who are treated as esteemed guests of the Club. There is 2-way communication on several channels (including the coach). Several fans are now accredited and provided special access to players, post IPL parties, free-tickets to watch the match as group titled “Mighty 14”. We say this, because it is important for organizations to understand that the road to “engagement” does not often end by adding one new ‘fan’ on a facebook page - many a times it is just the beginning.

Coming back to the topic of “viral growth”, what we are seeing on Club RC is the result of 3-4 month long intense curation of content and profiles on site. We had the ‘core audience’ engaged and active long before the crowds arrived. A well-oiled machine was just more effective in converting casual visitors to fans.

Readers, we assure you that the journey does not end here. Whatever be the outcome of IPL 2010. Club RC is ready to raise the bar and take fan engagement to the next level.

Cricket Analysis “on steroids”

2010-03-19T02:40:57+00:00

IPL 2010 is off to a great start, with a bigger bang than ever before (so says the TV pundits). At EC, the entire team is currently immersed in cricket. You are all aware of our good work on Royal Challengers; but today we would like to introduce you to our BIG launch of the season which happened last Friday, just hours before the start of the first IPL 2010 match.

Welcome to Castrol Cricket (V 2.0), the new watering hole for all cricket pundits and fans of 20:20 - a format of the game which defies convention. In a T20 match, as you are aware, anything can happen any time; but there had to be a way to go under the skin of the game and analyze the performances. Not many people are aware of the key segments which define the T20 format, for ex. QUICKSTART, POWERPLAY etc. For the avid fan however, getting performance data of teams/players in these segments is crucial to understanding how they are doing and how the teams stack up against one another prior to a match, or in-play.

So if you are a cricket lover, may we ask you visit Castrol Cricket, and check out all the cool new stuff in store for you.

This project is delivered in close collaboration with mainline agency M&C Saatchi, Sports content provider Sportz Interactive and Brand Castrol.

The site is a complete departure from the 'yawn inducing' cricket portals, which all mash up the same news, celebrity blogs, tiring analysis and scores. It is refreshingly different, providing an ability to visualize cricket data like never before. What are the top performances in this tournament? Do you have an answer? - if not go check out Castrol Cricket, and find out why the top scorer is not necessarily the "top performer". Aha!

The other big hit on the site, is the live scoreboard, which is clearly designed for the cricket buff, who wants to know that little something extra, than just runs/over/wickets. The hero of our score-board are the "live worms" which keeps measuring performance (of both teams) after every over, measuring something that is not intuitively visible by looking at the score. If they travel together, you know the teams are going neck to neck; if they travel apart, you know for sure you can call the match way ahead of time. A sophisticated algorithm keeps track of dot balls, run rate, wickets taken, catches missed, computing live performance index on-the-fly.

So as Royal Challengers chewed up Rajasthan Royals on the night of 18th March, it was very clear to Castrol Cricket fans that the match could be called very early on.

But Castrol Cricket is not all about numbers; there is plenty of room for fun. Take the card game for instance - it is very addictive and can beat even the more ardent supporters of the game. Try it sometime.

Finally what is a game of cricket, if you are not rooting for your team and betting on a six-pack beer with friends and colleagues. Buddy, there is something for you too. Before you settle in as the "couch potato" for the evening and cheer lustily in front of your 42" LCD, why not head out to the Castrol Index zone and run a quick compare of teams and individual players. Trust Castrol Index to give you more returns on your money (or beer whatever). Just kidding folks

Let us know how you like this new stuff.

and in case the match is on right now, get the live scores right here.

EC bags GOLD AWARD at IDMA 2010 - For Best Use of Social Media (Great Driving Challenge)

2010-03-12T07:34:16+00:00

A hearty congratulations to the EC team for winning their first award! And that too a GOLD! We now have proof to back up our claim that The Great Driving Challenge is India’s best social media campaign of 2009! Thanks to the committee behind the Indian Digital Media Awards 2010 for recognizing our work. We promise to deliver a lot more kick-ass digital marvels!

Our award inspired in-house artist Prashant so much, he whipped up this masterpiece in the wee hours of the morning.

It showcases the team effort aptly. Starts with the 10,000 applications received for the Great Driving Challenge. Continues to show the Top 100, the server crash we faced because of multitudes of visits… the issue of fake votes we painstakingly resolved to the final shortlist of Top 3 and winners of the Great Driving Challenge being announces. And right after that, EC passing the finish line at the IDMA 2010 with a beautiful crystal globe in hands!