And like it happens with some of us, the numbing effect (post the realisation that you are infact audible to many many people out there) comes in and you wonder…’Gosh what am I going to say?’ You stutter, mumble or strike a conversation with a completely irrelevant context and the uneasiness is on wide display.

This is a phenomenon actively demonstrated across some brand pages as well! Think of a prestigious bank and a leading electronics company both relaying movie songs (with the brand connect vague or entirely missing)?!

Honestly, there is ample reason for paranoia. Unlike other mediums, this one can potentially give you a degree of responsiveness from users you never pre-empted, which could be problematic if your vague about your own branding attributes.

This is the rational behind the existence of ‘me-too’ branding approaches that are any day safer but far from being distinctive and fuel a widening perception gap between who you believe you are and who you actually are.

But the end to this ordeal really is in believing you do have a story worth sharing and only you can narrate it best. And to do that you need to know your attributes and build on them, it’s worth the effort as they define you distinctly, make the connect more relatable and this alone is your most engaging proposition.

So for e.g. If customer service is your story, harp about it, if it isn’t think talk about another USP. Either way build a conversation that is rational and relevant enough to be sustainable! Even though movies may seem more popular as conversation starters, why would I as an end user trust or be remotely interested in your taste for movies if they are not what you make or sell?

- Megha

We know and understand:

a) Your company values reflect on your culture and have a direct impact on your employees.

b) The challenge of finding the right talent in a cost effective manner.

c) Employees spend at least 8 hours a day at a work place; it should probably offer more than just money for their services.

We also know that you know:  A happy work environment keeps employees motivated and pushes them to perform better each day; hence increasing productivity and efficiency.

We assume: You’re doing multiple things for your employees to keep them motivated, happy and satisfied…

Our question is: Are you communicating the same to build on your employer branding proposition? And do you see the impact it can have?

Being an exceptional employer and telling your brand story is what builds your brand’s perception and makes you an ‘employer of choice’ amongst current and potential employees. It reverse the hiring cycle and attracts the right talent to come work with you.

Hit the link below to know our take on Employer branding : Empower your employees.

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?

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!

I am enthused thinking about how brands can use interesting in-store experiences at their point of sale to communicate more about themselves. I recently came across some that triggered the thought ..

A sport shoe maker (Nike) flagship store with a vert ramp with live skating events, an inhouse DJ, computers to shape your shoes…

A fashion retailer (Desigual) store with an in house seamstress ..

Another fashion retailer (American Apparel) with none of that but a great customer support staff and some punchy designs to go with it…

Though these stores have done quite a bit from the average bland product stores .. but I think there’s an opportunity to do better..

I see retail points as the best ‘owned media’ space – the term now largely gets used for online properties like a companies website, facebook/twitter page etc. .but I think the offline counterpart is the actual origin of a great communication channel (it’s this experience that later goes online).

The fundamental aspect of a store should be it’s story, well they can’t have a story unless the brands they represent has one … to focus on the scope of this piece I will assume that a brand already has a story or else definitely needs to make one…

I walked into a Timberland store recently; in a conversation with the sales person he seemed to take interest in a recent trek I took… I found that as a great expression of interest for what is just the niche for this brand .. but the story just ended their. This is a new store launch in Mumbai, their first ever in the country…. I would have thought that they would publish a booklet about places to trek near Mumbai, call a select group of enthusiasts to say a weekend out in the nature, and perhaps even have an ecologist tell us more about the biodiversity of the place. By the way, Timberland has a big environment agenda in case you didn’t get it. It would also be great to have some of that on the walls of their beautiful store, Timberland has been a major participant on the environment agenda worldwide… do they not really think that, that’s where they can get my attention? Gain my trust? … I can buy shoes from them and never really know anything about them or them about me.. because we both aren’t talking .. and the brands need to do a bit more talking this time.

So here’s how I think retail brands can make most of their stores:

1.     Bring your store interior in tune with your values. Values when deeper to humans and society are felts stronger than product propositions themselves.

2.     Train your staff – a cordial staff makes your day – there when you need them and giving you the pleasure to indulge on your own when you want to.

3.     Create engaging opportunities – it’s a great chance; give them more than your product, give them a reason to connect with at a deeper level.

- Deepak

I log on to my Facebook page and come across a barrage of updates that scroll on and on featuring each little detail of what we’ve all become used to sharing on the platform. On checking with some friends I realized that they no longer even care about those updates … I thought of checking if we were already seeing a trend here?

I typed “facebook popularity” on google and here’s what I see…

FB users in the US have reduced from 155.2m to 149.4m in the month of May, there are similar figures in Canada, Norway and the platform is now known to wane across the western world. Facebook’s growth that averages at about 20m a month worldwide reduced to 13.9m in April and 11.8 in May this year. Quite a contrast from the 2007 Time’s article that portrayed Facebook to be exceeding Porn as the most prominent activity online.

Meanwhile Mexico, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines and many other emerging markets have registered strong growth. But we understand from our work across markets that the web is creating a homogenous psychographic across the world and feels like there is already a “Facebook Fatigue” with its early movers anywhere in the world. Trendy Marketers, beware – we might just be round the corner for a new trend on the web?

Data Source: PC World, Al Jazeera

-Deepak

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.

Ah!  I Wonder – how my co-workers are going to be? How long will it take for them to like me and me like them? I wonder if they think I’m snooty…(its usually because I am shy) ? Will all the girls at work be right out the “mean girls” movie? Will I ever understand their “private” office jokes and how long will it take to be part of the “inner group”? Argh!

TO MY PLEASANT SURPRISE

My first catch up was an invitation to the office to meet the team over a drink in the evening- I thought to myself – hmm…interesting!

Next- a phone call to enquire what kind of drink I would prefer…..wonderfully surprised, but my suspicious mind says, ‘its too good to be true- what’s wrong?’

Then the fearful entry – Hardly! The office had an informal air though I had walked into the middle of  a formal discussion. It just so happened that there were 2 of my future colleagues who had a little time to spare and indulge in a conversation with me. 10 minutes later, I was laughing with them like old friends – it only got better from there! Few drinks with the team and my aching mind and my racing heart was finally at peace!

The following two weeks was a mix of Soaking up and Learning

New ways of working

Company philosophies

Personal traits (I think I’ve kinda figured them out now)

Office politics (which doesn’t exist- damn! hehe)

My first assignment

My core project

Offsite Lunches

After work “follow up” discussion @ WTF

Mid afternoon dance session

Invitation for a weekend getaway and

An after work party

2 weeks later: I feel like an old furniture at drizzlin in a good way – its’ an awesome feeling to be so involved and to be an intrinsic part of a new team.

Thanks guys for the perfect welcome. It’s been lovely meeting you all and I look forward to working with you.

Cheers

- Rajni

I recently read an interesting post by WILLIS WEE on Penn Olson Blog where he took the effort to pen down the reasons why.

Okay… if you aren’t still aware what had happened- here are few known cases from the past:

Pizza Hut, Cadbury Bournville, FCUK, Kingfisher and Fastrack’s official Indian fan pages had been pulled down by facebook!

The reasons being- mysterious, nobody knows clearly what happened and I assume they’ve had run some contests/sweepstakes on their wall (which is supposedly violative or spamy)

Most interestingly enough, when Cadbury Bournville page was disabled it turned to into Google buzz (how strange?!) 

                                                   image courtesy: www.penn-olson.com

I’m in complete agreement on the violation of “facebook promotion guidelines” by brands/businesses (both large and small) which is increasingly happening today.

But, my questions being:

- Shouldn’t facebook at least have warned page admins before powering-on their disable button?

-Shouldn’t facebook be answerable to the fans on those pages? (Google buzz citing is not funny!)

- Shouldn’t that important, must-read “facebook promotional guidelines” be made more visible/prominent to page creators/admins?

-Shouldn’t it also flush-out most lame apps (like- today’s horoscope, friend of the day etc. that we/our friends use) that spam our news feeds every day if contests by (renowned) brands are considered  spam?

Perhaps the number of fan pages are growing because more and more big/small companies have started seeing it as a free medium to connect with their audiences.

But, I feel its now the time for facebook to clearly draw a line for their premium and free offerings. Be more responsive, helpful and not just flaunt an attitude of being “the number one social network” in the world. Peace.

-Sabir

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