Tag Archives: Social Media Marketing

Facebook! What’s up with you?!

6 Jul

It’s quite strange for me to repetitively come across instances of facebook pulling down Brand pages in India.

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.

(Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion. The views expressed above are mine and alone and does not not relate and/or reflect to any thoughts by Drizzlin Media.)

-Sabir

“Some went to marketing schools but probably didn’t clear their exams”

28 Apr

Jason and Sabir, two of our very smart boys, went on to an expensive tour to IAMAI – 7th Marketing Conclave. Let’s find out a bit about why they actually went and see if they did anything remarkable there.

Our very special inquisitive employee, Kavita  was put onto this task. Questions thrown at them were simple and what they said was something on these lines…

Why did you go?

Jason: The objective was simple…learn, network, develop a perspective and communicate ours

Sabir: To understand their perspective of our business, internet and digital marketing…

Who all were there?

Jason: Speakers like Vivek Bhargava – Communicate 2, Rameet Arora – McDonalds India, Abdul Khan – Tata Teleservices, Salil Kapoor- DishTV and Bobby Pawar – Mudra. That’s a non exhaustive list… :p

Sabir: …and us, Drizzlin reps ;)

What was our learning?

Jason: We got a deeper understanding of what the industry perspective is… A few CMOs like Ronita Mitra – ICICI Bank, Sanchita Ganguly – Asian Paints, Aditya Save – Marico Industries had a strong opinion of the power of internet, changing markets, evolving businesses and most importantly perception.

Sabir: Yeah, I agree…

a)    We gauged, there is lack of confidence and a sentiment of fear of investment in this medium of marketing…the constant question is around is ROI.

b)    People’s understanding of this medium is very basic, which restricts them from opening up to it, hence considering it very naïve and new.

The effort gone into organising this event, bringing all CEOs, CMOs together is highly commendable. It made the audience think and discuss the impact of internet.

Jason: To add to it…

a)    We realised its very crucial for marketers to understand, that engagement with the customer is an important aspect for brand building; now there’s an opportunity for the same via mediums like Mobile, Social Media, Interactive Television, etc.

b)    We also believe the internet offers the most valid customer data but the challenge lies in choosing the right agency or tools and understanding the power of that data.

c)    Some brands do understand the importance of empowering their employees to talk on social media. We appreciate that kind of collaborative attitude of businesses towards the medium.

The event was a good starting point for marketers like us to understand the things not to pitch to our prospective clients :p

Demonstrate these opinions –

Giriraj Bagri, Castrol India – “Mobile is a medium and good content is what needs to be created”.

Rameet Arora, MC Donalds India – “Creating properties with good content, Mobile analytics will be the focus, QRD Technology looks interesting for experimentation.”

Hitesh Oberoi, Info Edge India Ltd. – “I prefer to start early rather than sitting as spectators measuring the (digital advertising) medium.”

Those were just some insights on our visit at the conference…stay tuned to know more about what we’re up to.

Developing a Global Brand

27 Apr

We believe the web’s a fair playing ground for all brands to become global ..here’s what we had to say at CII Conference on Marketing at Hyderabad, India

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Deepak
The Boss

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