DO GOOD OR DIE

This is my second attempt at writing another ATTICUS paper. Do Good or Die is an attempt at understanding the paradigm shift from branding to service. The shift from making profits to being ethical and doing good to society and people. This paper explores how Return on Investment is making way for Return on Involvement. How Social Media and Social Responsibility is changing the way brands are marketed and its future impact on Earth and people living on the planet. How Social Media and Social Responsibility will help brands become more acceptable to people and society. It also explains how Sustainability will become the core focus of brand marketing in an era of increased globalization.

Do Good or Die

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London Olympics vs ICC World Cup

Just received a spam mail asking me to submit my CV for the London Olympics. So I went to the website to figure out more. The official website of London Olympics 2012 also has a section where they're seeking involvement from people to collaborate and participate in making the 2012 Olympics a grand success. They also have a dedicated section, giving details about tickets sales. Clearly someone is doing the right thinking and going about executing it to perfection. The best part, they're transparent, like it should be.

Now look at us in India. We're holding the ICC World Cup. Go to the website and you see the difference. Bad website. Hardly any information. Poor user experience. Absolutely no buzz. Not much talks about cricket in the cafes or college canteens. BCCI/ ICC didn't bother involving people before the games. No collaboration, no jobs for talented young people for making the games a grand success. Instead cops are beating up people waiting outside the stadiums to buy tickets. I mean, come'on. Even sports is corrupt in India. But why on earth is has to be like this? Why?

You see, success of a game depends as much on the level of involvement the organizing committee can create even before the games start. Thats why FIFA/ Wimbledon/ Olympics are so successful every time. the passion and dedication of the organizing committee to involve people right from the very beginning. Simple lessons for us to learn and then implement those learnings. Sports engage people. Sports brings people together. So why take that extra effort in alienating people and driving them away instead of making them partners? Yes I do feel very sad at the state of affairs in my country.

The Influence Index

Creating a benchmark or a measurement Index on the popularity and level of involvement of the most influential people in Social Media was long overdue. The need to quantify the kind of influence a person exerts in the social networking platform and understanding the breadth of a person's brand. The good thing is we do have an interesting Influence Index to refer now. However, the index needs further development to create a robust measurement model. Time Magazine recently conducted the most Influential People of 2010, who can affect our world.

The formula for networking index = (Twitter Followers) x 2 + (Facebook Connections) / 2

Now don't ask me what that's supposed to mean and how this calculation can give a precise Index of Influence but at least expert are working on it.

In my 2010 Atticus paper, titled "Do Good or Die," I proposed a measurement Index to understand the Return on Involvement of Brand in context to the level of Involvement a brand has with its fans, followers and people in Social Media. Now how do we go about doing it.

Step 1: Conducting a Social Audit of the Brand.

This audit includes understanding of the Digital Footprint of the brand where it gives us a clear understanding how deep the brand has managed to penetrate in the social media sphere, the Social Identity Audit that lets us understand how does consumer identify with the brand, then conducting a Social Engagement Audit that lets us understand how well the brand manages to engage with people on the Social Media. This leads us to understand the Social Capital Opportunity that a brand can gather in the Social Media platforms. The Social Capital of a brand is the most important component for a brand to play with.

Step 2: Engagement vs Involvement.

This step lets us understand the level of engagement vs level of involvement. It helps us identify and understand the process of involvement and where it arises from. Is it individual driven or community led process? Is is about collective responsibility or individual Maturity? Is it at the awareness level or concern level or at the edge to change consumer attitude/ behavior?

Step 3: The shift from ROI to ROIn

Return on Involvement is the measurement to ascertain the efficiency of a company's value in involving its stakeholders, shareholders and consumers to evaluate its social goals. To understand Return on Involvement of a brand we need to understand how transparent a brand is in it's entire value creation process. Second, how much Social Capital it can gather through collaboration and co-creation and finally how does the brand share its value to people of the world.

Step 4: Calculating ROIn.

This is conceptual formula to calculate Return on Involvement. Like most index and formula is needs more clarity and better statistical and mathematical model to create an universal unit as reference and measurement.

The Formula= (Total Audience Size on Social Media Platform/ Implementation cost of Social Activity) x Average Time Spent.

ROIn is a reflection of consumers' sense of belonging and feeling of being valued. ROIn is about bringing people together for a common cause that creates a ripple effect in the market place all contributing to social accountability. It is the measurement of the rate of productive output by collaborating with people on social media platforms.

Coming back to Influence Index, I think it will become an important measurement index in the near future as more brands join the social media platform. Just like TAM, GRP. TRP, INS etc, we do need a strong Index which will bind all social media activities and the level of influence and involvement a brand/ person has on the medium.

Please do share your thoughts and feedback. Maybe we can collaborate to create a robust measurement index for the Influence Ripple and Involvement.

Cheers.

Why can't you make the Angels more social

Facebook is indeed amazing. They've just introduced Sponsored Stories as part of their Marketing Solutions. Are agencies and clients in India listening?

Sponsored Stories from Facebook can open a floodgate of opportunities, if only marketers are willing to invest and involve themselves in this platform. Social Media is an essential part of the marketing mix but most brands from India who have a Facebook fan page for some reason restricted themselves to stupid status updates. Here's an example:

Axe started Axe Angel Club with more than 1,117,965 people liking the initiative. But when you look at the activities, you just cant stop and laugh. Mindless trivia and questions to get people to respond. That's hardly involving people to start a conversation. On the other hand if Axe started recruiting Angels among the 1117965 fans, it would have created more buzz than the brand could ever imagine. Now thats Return on Involvement. A great example of right brand, right medium but wrong message or maybe the digital agency of Axe India is too naive to think of better ways to engage their fans. Anyways. Facebook page of a brand is not to send stupid status updates but engage fans in a more meaningful way. Especially when you've created such a wonderful property called Angel Club.

Good Luck. Cheers.

Social Shopping - Will it be big in India?

After having worked with one of India's largest retail chain clients are often techno-phobic. Especially when it comes to incorporating technology and social media within the marketing mix. Marketers in India always tread with caution when it comes to using social media, user generated content etc though there are exceptions. But that old mindset of open shop, advertise, announce sale and you'll be flooded with footfalls haven't changed at all. Neither have retailers haven't changed their marketing approach to attract the techno-savvy, more discerning, experience seeking, global Indian shoppers.

My counter argument to the client has often been - its New Media, unless you experiment with it, you'll never know what's working and what's not working. The debate continued with endless hours of meetings without any consensus. After much deliberation, finally they agreed to have their own Facebook fan page. I kid you not. After one year of debate, discussion, yay, we have a Facebook fan page with more than 170470 fans. The fastest growing Facebook fan page according to AllFacebook.

The client was so excited that we were invited to a champagne party. Lol. In the party I was blunt enough to ask the client, what about engagement and involvement with these fans. Are we generating enough Return of Involvement? Obviously it wasn't a pretty question to ask in between merry making. But hey, I'm what I am. (I just made this up, anyway. Parties have stopped long back.)

Anyways. The world has moved beyond. Social Shopping and Social Commerce is the next frontier of growth and driving business for all retailers across the world. Groupon is the new lover boy of Social Media. Thousands of other Social Shopping pages are cropping up every day all over the world. So how will Indian Retailers cope with this new phenomenon? And how can retailers like Shopper Stop provide unmatched Social Shopping experience to tech savvy consumers?

"Social shopping attempts use of technology to mimic the social interactions found in physical malls and stores." Well, I maybe way ahead of the curve given urban consumers in India have just started to experience shopping in malls and spending leisurely hours hanging around in malls. Social shopping/ online shopping/ m-commerce/ e-commerce is much ahead of its time for implementation at the moment by most marketers in India. It's true however that many marketing organizations have already started experimentation but the numbers are really small. Personally I think as a marketer, I should always remain knowledgeable and aware of the changing consumer environment and be in a position to anticipate those changes about to happen. I might sound very geeky when say things like this in meetings, getting reactions hard to describe in words. The responsibility lies on the planners to inform their clients about these change points. Implementation of Social Shopping in the marketing mix depends on several other factors beyond a marketers control. Advent of 3G, increasing usage of mobile internet, increasing numbers of smart phone users, VAS and Apps, security issues, banking policies and finally Govt. of India's policy towards m-commerce etc. will together help create a conducive platform that enables the usage of social technologies as an effective marketing tool . Young India jumped on the social media platform much much later compared to the rest of the world. Computer illiteracy and low penetration were two key factors. However, things have changed now. 3G will indeed make internet access more easy and addressable in India, a very good sign. Therefore, social shopping will take its own time, exactly how Orkut & Facebook started its journey in India - slow and steady in the beginning and sudden spike afterwards. So it's important to keep tab on things about to hit us soon. Especially true for retailers who can enable these technologies in their marketing mix. They will stay ahead, desirable, driving imagery while generating more footfalls and making healthy revenues.

Here's a great example from Levi's

This is a serious subject, needs a holistic understanding and a new approach to marketing. Watch out this space for more. I would love to hear your feedback and comments though. Especially given the whole shopping environment around us is changing. Kirana stores to hypermarkets to malls to online stores to discount coupons to online shopping to social shopping. Ha.

To be continued...

The Economist & why Ogilvy understands them better...

The latest TVC's (via Campaign India) of The Economist made by Ogilvy India is another example of Branded Content. Excellent music, great execution and clear simple message said in the most interesting manner. Ha. This is one agency that gets it right all the time. How?????

Let me see if I can simulate the Strategic Planning effort of the agency and how they are building brand Economist in India. And I can be horribly wrong, might even sound like crap... but what the ...

It is important to know however that somewhere in-between the game plan lies the glue - The the insight, the creative idea, flawless execution, tone of voice, reason to believe ...

Anyways.

The Game Plan (3 yrs plan): The Economist way to enter India

Step 1. Launch The Economist and create awareness - (Print/ press, Outdoor, OOH)

Step 2. Create awareness and generate more subscriptions - (Digital, Activation)

Step 3. Hold back and observe - (Data Analysis, Research Findings, Return on Involvement Measurement)

Step 4. Reach out to a larger audience - (Television, Cinema)

Step 5. Hold back and observe - (Data Analysis, Research & RoIM)

Step 6. Interact with Audience - (Digital, Activation & Events)

Step 7. Dominant Media Vehicle - (Debate Forums, Digital Forums, CRM)

Naah. Can't be so easy.

Anyways but I do believe the issue lies in the tissue.