Over the last one month several prospects have shown an interest to 'do something' on social media. There is so much peer pressure out there, that life seems incomplete without a facebook app and a twitter page; and lately 1 in 3 people ask me if we can also do something on Linkedin, now that it is open for all.

We hate to disappoint, but clients always look at us disapprovingly when we encourage them to explain to us what they want to achieve by building the next Facebook app. "We need to engage our users. We are looking for a really cool application, something that can go like crazily viral! By the way we have like very low budgets... maybe a Lakh or two! Can we build something like farmville? "

It is hard to negotiate such enthusiasm and start asking hard questions like "Sir - but why exactly do you need a Facebook App?" Prospects are dejected when we tell them that the risks of failure (of a Facebook App) far outweigh success - and it is important to mitigate those risks using a mix of many other social marketing options, which are equally interesting.

But first, what would you really like to do with your TG, we ask? Benefit from exposure, entertain, educate or have a conversation?





With the learnings gleaned from 30 odd facebook and orkut social apps (we developed in last 2 years), peppered with a few flops and some mega-hits, our prospects would stand to gain if they listened to our advice on what works and what does not. Social Media marketing needs a certain level of maturity, and it is best to get started only after you have covered your basics in digital marketing.

Experience Commerce team moved into their cool new office recently. Lot more space to accommodate a fast growing team, more meeting rooms and a lounge to relax and play. Come visit us sometime!

Pens are a physical commodity, you would never think that people would engage with them online on a daily basis. That's exactly what 1,000+ Facebook users are doing with Linc pens via the Facebook application ˜Linc My Diary"





Linc wanted users to engage with the Linc pens in a fun innovative manner leveraging social media. We came up with the Linc My Diary application allowing users to virtually touch and try out Linc's range of pens on their favorite online social destination Facebook.

The application allows users to write in their virtual diary using a variety of Linc pens. Each pen has its own personality - choosing Glitter gives you a feminine curvy font whereas Carbon Dark leads to a more professional font. Users can also invite their friends to see their diaries and comment on them, thus giving the application viral wings.




Linc My Diary went live on 3^rd September, 2009 and amassed 1,000+ active monthly users in first two weeks of launch, without any promotion or media push.

LINC is the latest addition to our suite of Facebook Applications, which includes brands such as BAILEYS, AIRTEL, AIRCEL, MAYBELLINE, KODAK, AMITY amongst others.

Our latest campaign that launched a week back, is titled the 'Fanatic Fans Challenge' for Club Royal Challengers Bangalore. EC team won the pitch with United Spirits Ltd, espousing our commitment to social media. We demonstrated our passion to take a "club website" completely social, far beyond a point anyone had ever dared to dream, till date.

We shared a common vision with the management to socialize the website and just give it up to the Fans. Moving forward as the site continues to evolve there will be shared spaces, between the club's editorial team, the cricketers, and the fanatic fans. There will be healthy interaction, exchange of ideas, stories and opinions, all leading to making royalchallengers.com the one and only destination for Royal Challengers Fans worldwide.

Continue to follow the progress as we move through uncharted waters. A current campaign is on to hunt out the TOP 27 bloggers, photographers and fanatic fans. These talented folks will form the core of the creative community and power the Fan Media Channel. A select team of 3 elite members will get to travel with the team, and provide the rest of us with a ringside view, up close and personal with players, coaches and support staff. The site will also feature live matches in a manner not seen before and we hope fans will turn on their TV and also tune in online to royalchallengers.com simultaneously. The experience will be exhilarating.

Read on the TGDC blog comments (http://www.greatdrivingchallenge.com/blog)

Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. These words of Donald Trump now have a meaning that I understand.

This challenge organized by TGDC is not just a life changing event for us participants but also a game changing event for the Marketing Industry. It shows that putting hoardings with hot models is not the only way of getting attention and getting people excited. It has proved that money alone cannot get brands noticed, but creativity alone can.

Being a publisher I am pretty sure that this challenge will become a case study in the 14th South Asian Edition of Marketing Management by Philip Kotler.

Read on Team-BHP Forum (India's hottest destination for Auto Fanatics)

I've been watching the GDC unfold from day one and gotta say : This was BRILLIANT marketing by HM-Mitsubishi. Not once in the past 5 years had so many people visited an HM-Mitsubishi website, or had their brands created such a buzz in the market. I know for a fact that other brands are watching closely and will be coming out with their own in-house versions of the GDC soon. Coming from a manufacturer which has effectively over-slept (while the competition walked all over) was most unexpected. I hope some of this new found vigour rubs off on HM's product planning division (new Lancer, EVO X anyone?).

GTO

Buzzed by a fellow enterpreneur

I must say that Experience Commerce did an immaculate job with TGDC and TGDC is by far one of *the most* exciting online contests that I have ever come across. I think you guys are wonderful and can give your competition (name suppressed) a run for their money.

Another fact that I really admire and appreciate was the way you guys handled all the tantrums that were thrown at TGDC. Shows some real character. I'm certain and positive that Team Experience Commerce will pioneer the Indian online space.

The first phase of our latest campaign " great driving challenge" for Brand Mitsubishi-Cedia, is now over. In just 3 weeks the destination served close to 6M page-views and attracted over 20,000 applicants. The traffic curve shows how EC team leveraged social media, to build a core base of supporters, towards the very beginning of the campaign.

Unlike media led campaigns, where the traffic peaks with bursts of advertisements (online/print/TV), the traffic on greatdrivingchallenge.com shows consistent organic growth. Only social media led campaigns, if successful, show this kind of healthy growth.

In just 3 weeks since launch, the online destination has logged 3M+ page views, and risen fast on Alexa.

Powered dominantly by 'Social Media' and supported by print (some radio & TV), this campaign is certainly a candidate case-study on Internet Marketing in India.  Google ' great driving challenge ' and discover for yourself how the event is being talked about on multiple blogs, forums, facebook, orkut and twitter.

Those of you who are following the success of the Mitsubishi-Cedia campaign "The Great Driving Challenge" (TGDC), here is an interim update. In just 2 weeks since launch, TGDC has garnered over 1Million+ page views and attracted 150K unique visitors. The traffic pattern is very healthy and devoid of any "media-led" spikes.

At EC we always measure our campaigns using the AIV metrics i.e. Adoption (A), Interaction (I) and Velocity (V). With an average of around 10+ page views and time-spent on site hovering around 8 minutes, interaction (I) within the branded destination is very healthy. Many of our partners have asked us how we are doing compared to the (now) world famous Queensland Campaign (Best Job) at http://www.islandreefjob.com/, as both of them are from the same genre.






The viral velocity experienced on this campaign is very good, and only time will tell if this interest level can sustained. Observing  the Queensland campaign, we have learnt that audience interest is likely to wane, once the results are announced. Only time will tell, how the GDC audience behaves.

Another interesting campaign we wanted to benchmark TGDC against is the well known (http://www.jaagore.com). Most people in media are aware of the 'advertising spends' on building awareness around that campaign. What you can see in the screen below are the traffic spikes which have a direct correlation to mainline advertising; this reflects the total lack of stickiness around the 'idea' and the resulting yo-yo curve. GDC is running on its own fuel, with online advertising driving less that 5% of traffic. That is a direct reflection of the power of social media.

EC launched Mitsubishi Cedia Sports - The Great Driving Challenge on June 22, 2009. For the next 8 weeks, the online destination will invite driving enthusiasts (couples only) from around the country, to apply for an all-expenses paid drive-away, lasting 12 days. A grand Jury will shortlist the finalists, based on the quality of their application, enthusiasm they demonstrate online, the support they garner on their social networks, their passion for the road, and also their ability to narrate the live journey through blogs, photos, videos online.



Day 1 turned out to be a 'myth-buster' for EC team. Here are some of the lessons learnt.




Busted Myth #1: Print Medium does not work for Internet Campaigns.

The GDC campaign started with a mainline AD (print), which garnered over 5000 unique visitors within few hours. We held back on a simultaneous release of online campaign, just to gauge the reach, quality of traffic and effectiveness in terms of conversion - it was important for us as a Digital Agency in India, to measure the ROI on print.  While the traffic volume was in line with our expectations, what turned out to be surprise was the very high quality (inferred from the super-low bounce rate (<6%), and conversion ratio >25%) of traffic - far exceeding benchmarks for brand supported destinations, that we seen in our past projects.

Busted Myth #2: Social Media Content is primarily generated by youths.

We assume that social media content is mostly created by youth, and it would be a challenge to ignite interest in the more mature community (25 years+) to apply online (writing blogs, uploading photos etc), while busy with their work, family, jobs etc. "Who will have so much time to spend online, creating applications", speculated a team-member when the idea was first conceptualized.  Guess what?  We have seen some awesome applications from many couples all ranging from 25-60 years old. Average age of applicants is hovering around 31. One applicant in his sixties, appeals to all in his application, arguing that they are the best couple because.. “29 states, 13 countries, 15000 KM per year drive and 35 years of experience. Beat that! ”

Busted Myth #3: Deep engagement in online marketing campaigns is a challenge, since we are dealing with the impatient generation.


Over 2000 people signed up in a matter of hours and over 50% had already started a meaningful application within Hour 3. By end of day over 300 people had completed a meaningful application, uploaded photos, mashed up their flickr streams, annotated a google map, and were ready to reach out on their social graph for testimonials and votes.  The average stay time for people creating application was over an hour. Our jaws dropped! We were prepared for a long haul to entice applicants to fill up their forms (blogs), but the core of the community had formed rather quickly.

Our take-away from the campaign thus far:

(1) "Print media" works amazingly well for such campaigns, setting expectation for users, who navigate to the website with a clear intent to participate. The crisp design of the site is a bonus, capturing attention in precious few seconds, and persuades the user to engage by signing up in 2 clicks.

(2) Do not underestimate the power of user-generated-content (UGC) from the mature Indian Audience (aged 25-45). The quality of user generated content witnessed thus far, is proof positive of the rapid ascent of the indian internet audience on the Social Technographics ladder.The social computing behavior of indian professionals, weaned on Orkut & Facebook, demonstrates their rapid evolution from joiners/spectators to critics/creators.



(3) The Indian Internet Audience has many other faces than 'just' the youth on Orkut and Facebook caught up in their world of pokes, scraps, games, chat and flirt. The other half of the audience, who are professionals with a busy schedule, juggling jobs, family, trips etc , seem equally interested to participate in the social web, when presented with a compelling idea.

EC team enjoyed a dream run delivering a branded destination (castrolcricket.com) for Brand Castrol, at the recently concluded IPL Cricket Championships 09. Cricket Fanatics converged on this destination to understand the current performance index of players and teams, based on their performance in T20 games.

Starting with over 10K unique visitors per day from the very start, the traffic picked up reaching an average of 30K within 2 weeks from start, and peaked at around 75K unique visitors per day near the finals. The site delivered around 5M page views and many more millions of exposures through its badge application on popular social network Facebook.

The traffic pattern witnessed demonstrated the power of social media, as advertising led traffic made way for organic search and direct visits. Over 20% of traffic was delivered by EC social media penetration alone and accounted for the steady rise from the 10K media to the 30K median.

[caption id="attachment_63" align="aligncenter" width="582" caption="Traffic Pattern on CastrolCricket.com"][/caption]