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Why we seem to only be measuring our lack of understanding of this medium ???

8 Oct

 



I stumbled upon this interesting video recently this indeed is extremely relatable on several accounts! It completely captures the scenario most brands would find themselves in- trying to define why they are here, what they should be doing and how should they be measuring it?

The need to be online,it seems, is driven more due to a practice being commonly being adopted rather than a pre-defined business objective. It is more about giving your brand a face on Facebook rather than clearly defining and building a social identity.

This becomes important to understand as because of this, it seems we end up measuring for the sake of measuring.

The ability of this medium to generate the minutest of details as far as the metrics are concerned is thrilling for brand managers who for the longest time have tried to accurately arrive at ways of determining the ROI on traditional media.

At the same-time, the nascency of this medium within the domain of branding in general, leaves many clueless.
We’re able to define the ‘how’s and the ‘what’s’ with the ‘why’ missing or vaguely addressed within our social strategies. To add to the mayhem, we have come up with a set of standard metrics for ROI,  which seem to be the be-all and end-all of a brand’s existence within the social domain.

In a nutshell, Facebook/Twitter Presence= likes, fans, followers and followers.

Yes metrics are good, they help build, structure and evaluate. But they can be awfully misleading and myopic.

Let’s take an for the sake of clarity.

A very base metric, ideally found at the lowest rung of any branding proposition is-reach. In simple words, to say how many people have you been able to approach?

A million fans seems to be an ideal benchmark for many brands (infact it often marks the season for festivity on platforms like Facebook and Twitter)

Let’s take a step back and ask, what do a million people on a page really mean?
A million new customers? 30,000 more customers or a mere 100 actively engaging fans? In each of these varying scenarios, what is the cost of acquiring every new fan? For every campaign/contest run, what have you achieved in the end? And at what cost?

Cheers!



Sustainable cities – Can they be a brand marketing opportunity?

3 Sep
We’ve recently been thinking a lot about how business could make good sense for the environment, and whether smart communication can create real change and an impetus for other businesses to do the same.
In fact a bunch of companies are already in the fray but the challenge is that most consumers are not buying into it (as their web voices would tell us). We explored the fuel free transportation culture across a few cities in Europe to explore whether such initiatives by companies could make their commitment more believable.
From a brand perspective the Barclays Cycle Hire program in London is a classic example; a concept taken from the bixi bikes in Montreal; Barclays committed to invest about £25m to the approximate cost of about £140m (borne by the council) over the next 5-6 years.
It brings Barclays obvious visibility and we hope some brand equity too.
We believe brand association that involves customers (like riding a bike in this case) builds a stronger connections than just passive outdoor (which in the case of corporate brand promotion would say we love the environment – Siemens Sustainability, IBM Smarter Planet?). Can more companies participate in aligning marketing to really changing and engaging with civic communities. Consumers now question the value system of brands and this is a smart blend.
For instance we see some good opportunities with car brands taking this space –  many of them are already investing in cleaner solutions electric, hybrid, hydrogen fuel cells and even the humble bicycle - {Mini (Photo attached), Peugeot, Daimler and Volkswagen’s recent think blue campaign}
These companies are now evolving to be more mobility solution providers than in the business of making cars…. reminds me of Levitt’s marketing myopia .. This is one business going through its transition (we’ve heard about Kodak, TDK ..) .. we’re yet to see how they solve the challenge that they almost created and still manage to keep business for future.
With urban centres mushrooming as ever, we urge more marketing money spent on building efficient city infrastructure – well spent, buzz worthy and holds you in good stead for the future!
  – Deepak

When you’re NOT selling, I’m sold

13 Jul

For those who know Hugh Laurie, you’ll love this one; for those who don’t – watch it anyway, see if you can make sense of it.

Fact is, this insanely funny man happens to be L’Oreal’s new male ambassador.

You know, when I first started watching ads on YouTube, I really enjoyed it. Only later did I figure why – It’s because I choose to watch them.

Television ads on the other hand are so imposing and formulised. They have the same damn thing to say over and over again and honestly, they don’t even care to variate the format in which they’d say it. It’s always about this pseudo aspirational world that we all supposedly care about and want to live in, with overpowering technology and superhuman qualities these products have to make our lives better.

Coming from an ad film maker, I think it’s kind of important to quote him when he says, “No one takes commercials seriously, neither the consumers nor the producers… It’s a concept companies have bought into and don’t want to go beyond. Almost lame to an extent where they’d make ads because they have a yearly media buy budget and they can afford it.”

What they don’t realise or maybe do realise and not do anything about is the fact that the damn space is cluttered and consumers are overloaded with information that barely makes sense. Brands in India or the ad film makers’ communication has hit a plateau and probably don’t see the need/urgency to go beyond.

Which is where, ad films like these have managed to tap into a space which is SO unique. It has the shock-value…before I give it away entirely, you MUST watch it to know what I am talking about…


Does this happen to you to? Fall in love with ads that are probably not even acknowledged as ads by the larger audience?

As a ‘content stylist’ for a digital communication agency, I am happy to finally be able to say – THIS is the kind of content that stands out – Its stylish, has a very high entertainment value clubbed with very smart product placement.

The beauty of this ad lies in the fact that its real – Even if this were a set up, having watched Hugh Laurie, I believe it’s not staged. There is no cinematic dramatisation of the product. Hell, there is barely a mention of the product or what it does.

I think I’ve said enough, now just tell me you love it as much as I do…

-heli

BEYOND ‘SMART’ BRANDING

27 Jun

‘SMART’ terminology nowadays, is increasingly being applied to a gamut of products and services. Although these offerings are differentiated from a utility perspective, the continuous use of ‘SMART’ branding by multiple brands has diffused the positioning it provides.

Everything from a metro card to a TV set envisages ‘SMARTER LIVING’ and ‘SMART CHOICES’ The question really is – ‘Can they SMARTLY demonstrate the concept with some amount of distinction?’

Perhaps re-think the concept of ‘SMART’ branding to make it more demonstrative and differentiated?

-Megha

Facebook’s got a NEW look!

24 Jun

If your workplace has banned you from using Facebook in office, you might just like what Diesel Jeans has to offer.

Be Stupid at Work – their latest digital campaign is an application is built for pretentious workaholics. :p

Supported by Adobe Air, it’ll load your Facebook feed into something that allows you to read your updates, post on your wall, comment and like other feeds. The beauty lies in the fact that it’s presented in the form of an Excel spreadsheet and is called the “Excellbook”.

Just try your hand at it and tell us what do you think? – http://www.bestupidatwork.com/

-

jason

Customer Service Branding

2 Jun

We believe that complaints are not just about resolution and closing tickets for brands but they are actually an opportunity to create brand ambassadors… here’s what we had to say at Gripel‘s Customer Experience & Service Quality Conference at Mumbai, India

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Deepak

The Boss

Clinton Jeff’s coffee date with Drizzlin

1 Jun

We recently met with Clinton Jeff – a tech blogger, to understand his experience with brands and if bloggers really enjoy good readership. Clinton’s funny, polite, knowledgeable and a fan of Nokia. His story goes somewhat like this…

Us – You’ve interacted with brands in India…Tell us what was the experience like.

“With the growth of social media in India companies are realizing that some bloggers have a significant amount of influence online which can impact brand perception/sales etc.

Nokia Global for example is an exception, it’s managed to interacted with bloggers across countries and do a good job of it; it’s made committed effort in building blogger associations and probably has not been given enough credit for that…What’s special about their association is, it delivers models on time to ensure content is relevant, gives us adequate time given to experience the product [2 months], for us to be able to do justice while writing the review. It’s internally well structured which allows the local teams to operate in sync with the global team.

This is debateable, but I believe, other brands will take 5 years to reach where Nokia is in building that relationship. Their outreach programmes are fun, interactive and demonstrate product capability, while for the rest, it’s primarily a PR driven initiative.”

Us – What’s your opinion on the content quality in India?

“Unfortunately, the prime focus is on SEO and monetization comes at a cost of outstanding content quality.”

Interestingly, Clinton had divided the blogger behaviour in India by region. He says, “The ones in Bangalore are enthusiastic, open to bloggers meets and discussions and generate insightful & fun content; whereas the ones in Delhi have a tendency to focus on SEO, happen to be a little money centric and portray a press mentality. Mumbai seems like an ideal mix of the two, bloggers here are enthusiastic, insightful and open to sharing but also focus on monetization.”

Us – Many social networking platforms are emerging and actively being adopted by a lot of people, how relevant is the blog proposition as a platform?

Let’s face it; it’s not an isolated branded proposition.

Clinton says, “Influence, reach, voice can be and is being extended across platforms but 140 characters won’t do justice to a review. I can only tweet my opinion; content styling depends on the choice of platforms. I write to ‘nth’ level of detail for my blog and my audience consumes that content.”

Drizzlin Notes –

Define your audience, set you targets, give them relevant content and you have nothing to worry about…it’s actually only as simple as that. Good content is the easiest to sell.

After talking to Clinton, we think brands need to loosen up a little. Bloggers’ meets are productive when they’re not just PR stunts but facilitate hard core engagement and leave them with an interesting experience to share. Lastly, Clinton justified that, “blogs are still a popular platform and will continue to enjoy good readership, given the fact you provide good content.”

PS – Quite a few bloggers are keen on sharing the views with us. Watch this space as we continue to find out if blogs are really dead or not?

Drizzlin scores high on Customer Satisfaction

24 Feb

We have been big fans of Seth Godin and Steve Jobs for their known talent of having awesome presentations skills.

So when AIESEC – the world’s largest youth-run organisation invited us for a simple workshop (that’s what they believed ;) ) on 5 topics - Online Brand Management| Brand Building| Importance of Social Media| Engagement and PR| Industry Research at H.R College, Mumbai (The most popular college in South Mumbai). Our best people (Heli and Jason) were been appointed to make this workshop awesome :)

Both got into the gear and started working on the presentation and bundled all the requested topics to create a FUN and INNOVATIVE Workshop for students called “YOU are the BRAND and the BRAND is YOU”.

We were on cloud nine when positive responses started flowing in from students and now we are happy to show you some of the feedback below:

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Finally, we want to thank AISEC and H.R College for inviting us to share our passion about social media through the illustrious platform of their institutions.

In case you missed the workshop, and if you’re keen on learning more about this unique subject, we’d be happy to take the next session in your college. Please connect with us at hello@drizzlin.com

- team

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