Casebook1 © IndiaSocial
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Disclaimer: All logos and brand images are properties of respective owners. Casebook1 CONTENT
Evalueserve – Using LinkedIn 6 Foreword 41 for lead generation and brand building
Guest Article - Doing Good in the NASSCOM – Acting as a catalyst for growth of Digital Age - Prema Sagar 8 emerging & start-up companies 45
Breakthrough: Ringing the Bell Guest article - Communities will be 11 Against Domestic Violence the next big thing in 49 Marketing - Jessie Paul
Blank Noise: Raising voice against sexual harassment 16 Guest article - Creating Raving Fans Through Social Media - Toby Bloomberg 55
Pratham Books: Engaging the community to 24 bring a book in every child’s hand Fastrack: Capturing the imagination of youth 59 online
Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation – the Heart Kids Tweetathon and how Twitter helps save lives 30 Hard Rock Café India – live in concert on social media 64
WWF – Getting India to switch 34 off their lights for Earth Hour Axe Angels Club – building virtual engagement 73 via ‘real’ personas
Guest article – Social Media: Reinventing the Guest Article – Why social media can be so 4 rules for B2B players - Hari V. Krishnan 38 unsocial - Anurag Batra 77 CONTENT Casebook1
Viewspaper: Creating and strengthening the Nokia- email with ease campaign 81 voice of the youth 121
Nokia – Reaching out to the influencers in Bollywood Buzz - Assessing the effectiveness of “Search for N” 125 UTV movies’ online advertising 86
Guest Article - Dear Brands, Let’s Get Social - MTV – Using social media to narrowcast 129 Faisal Farooqui 89 to the Indian youth
Cleartrip – How the brand “travels” through Channel [V] – Building buzz using Twitter and social media 132 mobile social networking around the re-launch 93 © IndiaSocial Mahindra Homestays – engaging travelers Guest Article - Doing the math on social media… 136 and enabling owners 101 - Karthik Nagarajan
Jiyo Life Movement – Guest Article - Are you missing the digital using content as the honey 141 revolution? - Ramanujam Sridhar 103
Mitsubishi Cedia Sports – TATA DOCOMO – Fighting the telecom 146 the Great Driving Challenge 106 incumbents on social media front
Samsung Corby Color Wars on Twitter – Generating Buzz 113 5 Foreword “ Revolution’s now for the evolution well set, “ excellent across various sectors. work undertaken their work some andover sharing 35ofthemparticipated FebIn 2010,we invited brands andorganisations to showcase social mediainIndia. around views andastrong of knowledge repository expert platform to showcaseindustry bestpractices, casestudies, space –physical andvirtual. We have created itasaneutral engagement, sharing, andcollaboration learning inavibrant socialmediaeco-system forstakeholders intheIndian evolvedIndiaSocial from thisneedto together bring and strategise more effectively. ‘empirical data’ to align theirinternal stakeholdersto brace up these changing trends butwould struggleintheabsence of comeoften intheway ofvigilant marketers whocould see waspractices dispersed andnoteasilyavailable. This would happening, butinformation aboutlearnings, casestudies, best There was alsoasensethat whilesomegoodwork was more. relevantsocial media,itsROI, to metrics evaluate success and there were many of aquestionsbeingaskedabouttheimpact had become mainstream was beyond any doubt. However, this was theheadlineofourinaugural post. That socialmedia When we announced thelaunchofIndiaSocial TM in2009, [email protected] IndiaSocial.in Lead Community Manager Amita Malhotra
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It made logical sense to compile existing case studies and some the radio in nineties without going the whole hog. Hari V exciting new ones alongside expert views in one single location Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India speaks about which would be easy to download, consume as well as share how companies are using social networks effectively to with others. The release of IndiaSocial CaseBook 1 sponsored find and acquire new customers and Karthik Nagarajan, by HP, in association with NM Incite is a key milestone on this Head of Nielsen Online India shares how discussion forums, journey of evolution. message boards and review sites are the most underrated social segment. Here are 5 reasons why the IndiaSocial Casebook is a great resource for marketers and all those seeking to understand There are many more interesting insights and perspectives social media usage and impact in India – by Anurag Batra (‘Why Social Media can be so unsocial’), Jessie Paul (‘Communities Next Big Thing’), Toby qq One stop shop for case studies, best practices around Bloomberg (‘Social Media Strategy – 10 steps to create social media across verticals ranging from not-for-profit, raving fans” and Faisal I. Farooqui (‘Dear Brands, Let’s Get B2B, lifestyle, telecom, travel, and more. Social’) qq Straight from the horse’s mouth - These case studies are qq Know where you are - this resource will hopefully set you in the voice of people behind these campaigns - they have on your path of social media discovery; if you are already been authored by brands, organisations and their partners on one – it will enable you to benchmark your initiatives themselves. and if you are already a pioneer – it will hopefully inspire you to set higher targets.
qq Right questions to get the right answers – we didn’t make © IndiaSocial it any easy for the brands and organisations to be featured We would like to thank all the brands and organisations who as a case study. An exhaustive set of questions on the have shared their insights and learnings through their case objectives, reasoning, approach, impact and measures studies and helped us create this wonderful resource. We of success were built-in to ensure that the outcome was would also like to thank our lead sponsor HP and associate of very high quality. Many wrote to us how the form sponsor NM Incite for their support and encouragement. compelled them to ‘think through’ their own initiatives and ‘We are grateful to George Skaria, Founder, ThoughtSpring understand the gaps. and Former Editor, Indian Management for all his guidance and inputs on the Casebook. A special word of thanks for qq Experts Speak – we have tried to amalgamate diverse my team at IndiaSocial and Blogworks - Neha Chandok, S. views from stakeholders across the spectrum of Swetha, Megha Talwar and Rajesh Lalwani who have all helped marketing communication in India. Prema Sagar, Principal from conception, editing, production and marketing of the & Founder of Genesis Burson Marsteller speaks about IndiaSocial Casebook. how social media’s reach and speed of delivery impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR) and on the other We would love to hear your feedback on this edition of the end, leading branding consultant and Founder Brand- Casebook and suggestions on how we can produce an even Comm, Ramanujam Sridhar talks about the challenges better one next time. Also, we would be soon announcing the around clients experimenting with social media much like IndiaSocial Case Challenge 2. Stay tuned! 7 Using the power of the social media, a company can multiply the effects of its CSR efforts
In the hustle of business, we often forget that the wealth we create means nothing unless it leads to positive change in the lives of people. People—individuals, who together form society, who together build economies, who together create movements. Corporate organizations have the means to
effect positive change in the lives of these people. When they
speak, they are heard. And when they speak on popular digital Doing Good in “ platforms, the potential for that change increases exponentially. “ This makes social media a catapulting mechanism for corporate the Digital Age social responsibility (CSR) efforts. As CSR evolves, it is becoming less about companies donating a certain amount to NGOs and more about becoming directly involved in a sustainable way as facilitators or even conveners for social change. This means that companies need to up the level of engagement with all the stakeholders for an initiative— the people who the initiative targets, the implementers, the fund providers, and the potential facilitators. And the pace of this engagement has to be swift, almost constant. So what, then, could be better than social media platforms for this?
Given social media’s reach and speed of delivery, a multiplier Prema Sagar effect spreads the message that a CSR initiative wants Principal & Founder to push. Here is a sample. In May, social responsibility Genesis Burson-Marsteller. organization (RED) that supports people with HIV/AIDS, released a documentary on the effects of antiretroviral drugs on these people, and since then, more than one million people Casebook1 have seen it on YouTube. Susan Smith Ellis, the CEO, recently save the lives of critically ill children who are either orphans announced their next goal at the Mashable and 92Y Social or from less privileged families. The foundation focuses on Good Summit: Ensure—using the social media—that no child communicating through viral marketing, its website, Facebook, is born with HIV/AIDS by 2015. Given that this goal needs a Twitter, YouTube and Picasa, besides traditional media. The high level of social engagement, Susan says, “Social media will traditional media is in turn multiplied via the digital channels. be the engine of our success.” This confidence comes from Digital has been a great enabler for the not-for-profit sector having leveraged social media effectively since the initiative’s particularly due to the lack of the ability to use traditional inception in 2006, enabling them to raise $150 million since routes easily. then. Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, realizes Susan and (RED) aren’t alone in their realization of the power the influence of digital media for social good, perhaps more of social media for change. MTV, Nike, PepsiCo, Intel, and than anyone else. Chris is the man behind Barack Obama’s several other organizations have integrated social media into phenomenal popularity on the Internet during his campaign. their CSR strategy. There aren’t many examples of Indian After his success as Obama’s digital campaign manager, Chris companies doing this, though. The efforts in CSR and the decided to use his learnings in the social sector. Today, he is efforts towards harnessing the digital media are in two different building a social network specifically for this sector. silos. So while they may be using social media, it somehow doesn’t include their CSR efforts. In most large organizations, however, the challenge is to make social media a part of the overall vision. It usually enters © IndiaSocial NGOs, on the other hand, who bridge the gap between through the marketing or public relations route and only then corporate organizations and the beneficiaries of their CSR goes into the CSR space. It is an organic transfer—as the initiatives, are increasingly realizing how powerful a tool social company spreads word about its offerings and achievements’, media can be. The Bell Bajao campaign against domestic ‘doing good’ enters the conversation somewhere down the line. violence is a case in point. Given the limited funds they have But the real leverage of social media will come only when it is access to, NGOs realize that they have a constant need to conceived as a part of the CSR strategy from the beginning. innovate if they want more people to join hands with them. That is because social good needs engagement that goes And so they are naturally drawn towards the digital media beyond conversations and raising awareness—though these are space. important as well.
Genesis Foundation, which treats children in the areas of The success of an initiative depends on converting the cancer, heart, thalassemia, organ failure or extreme deformities, conversations into a call for action. The floods in Leh were uses unique events for fund-raising to meet their objective – to a recent example of this. After the initial emotional reaction
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to the calamity on the social networks, the discussions soon Dhoni wants me to. I will do it because I feel for the tiger, moved to mobilizing relief funds and material for the region. and because I want my friends to see me as a person who While this is not an example of a CSR initiative, the same goes beyond daily ‘selfish’ pursuits to care about larger issues principles can be applied there. The idea is to tap into the concerning the world. And that is when I ask my friends to join emotional energies of the most number of people and help in the efforts. The role of Aircel was to initiate the idea and to them channelize it towards the common social goal. make sure it is visible in the places that I frequent—including the digital space. Once an idea is out there, its ownership remains only partially in the hands of the company. In the social media realm, the Ultimately, every person believes he or she is capable of idea is absorbed by the individual and made his or her own. greatness—if only their voice could be heard. Social media And that is how it should be, since this sense of individual does that for them. If a company can harness these disparate responsibility is the ultimate tool for any social initiative to voices, they can become advocates of the initiative and amplify be successful. If I feel I want to save the tiger, I will not do it its effects. And for both, the company and the individual, for Aircel. I will also not do it just because Mahendra Singh it instills a sense of satisfaction that they were able to do something for the greater common good.
10 Company Details: Name : Breakthrough
Number of Employees : 11 to 50
Category : Not for Profit organization
Case submitted by : Sanjukta Basu, Program Coordinator – Internet and community outreach
Website : http://bellbajao.org
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/BellBajao
Twitter : http://twitter.com/bell_bajao
“ Breakthrough:
Ringing the Bell Against Domestic“ Violence Casebook1
Breakthrough is an innovative, international human rights organization, working to transform public attitudes and advance equality, justice, and dignity using the power of popular culture, media, leadership development and community education. Through initiatives in India and the United States, Breakthrough addresses critical global issues including violence against women, sexuality and HIV/AIDS, racial justice, and immigrant rights.
Background
Bell Bajao is a 360 degree campaign, covering TV, radio, press, Mobile video vans, with internet as one of the most exciting Executive Summary media.
One of the main reasons that make the Bell Bajao campaign Domestic violence is one of the most recurring, yet least special is that it has been able to sustain interest amongst spoken issues in not just India, but all over the world. the Social Media users even after a year of its launch via TV and Radio. The Bell Bajao blog has become one of the few qq Because of the unique nature of internet as a medium it platforms created by an NGO for user generated content. is possible to act, share and learn about various sensitive The online activities carried on by the Bell Bajao team are issues very easily without much resource spends. So, we interactive, responsive and attentive of what others are wanted to create this online space for conversations on saying. The campaign does not merely use the online space the issue. Prior to our site, there was no such space in the to showcase its work but sees it as a place to share, connect Indian context where people could talk about domestic learn and reach out. violence, where people could share and learn and reach out
12 Casebook1 qq Also India is a young country; with many enthusiastic and Twitter and YouTube. Instead of a traditional website, we dedicated young people out there accessing the internet. decided to create a more dynamic user generated site. We We wanted to catch their attention and channelize them continuously partner with popular bloggers to create content. towards this pertinent cause At the same time, we learn from the blogosphere – we keep a keen eye on what youth are writing, understanding what their qq Thirdly, we realized that the radio and TV ads were for a problems are, how they articulate them and what solutions do limited period of time, so we needed a space which could they look for. We also integrated our offline activity with the keep the campaign alive, so the interactive online space. online space, in order to bridge the digital gap. So, we used tools like Twitter to live-blog a training workshop in Lucknow. Stakeholders Budgets: We never had any resources or budget dedicated to Our main stakeholders were the youth present on the internet, the project to begin with. We are a small non-profit with limited which are capable of bringing a change in their respective resources, every penny we spend is spent strictly according to homes and neighborhood. We wanted to appeal to the youth the terms of the grant. by breaking out of the traditional image of an NGO and use latest cutting edge technology to spread the message. Planning & Outreach
We started with background research and due diligence. We Approach © IndiaSocial saw a lot of other websites that were operational in this Objectives: Initially, our main objective was to create an online field and we looked at those websites to see how they were space for people to discuss this issue. A huge number of young handling similar issues. We looked at what was available in the people facing violence, particularly in their homes and families, Indian context and went through the process of seeing what have no space in the Indian context to even talk about it, let we wanted to communicate on our website. We wanted to alone take action. So, we felt that there had to be an online make the site engaging and youthful. iteration of the Bell Bajao campaign. Then we started creating the content. We had never done Strategy: Breakthrough strategy, in all its campaigns, is to any activity in the online space before Bell Bajao website, so change human hearts and minds to build peace, achieved by everything was a learning process for us. While we created using pop culture, community building, unique partnerships content in-house, we approached a website designer for the and shared learning. In the Social Media arm of the Bell Bajao design/ development. campaign too, we applied the same formula. We created online presence on popular Social Media platforms like Facebook, The online content was very different from the offline content.
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Quick Tips: Impact – Outcome It was received with great success, people just loved the Strategic partnership with key players is very campaign. Since we were on Social Media, they could directly important. connect with us via our blog etc.
Outline your purpose - One of the challenges qq 80 percent of the blog traffic we got in the first 8-10 we faced was that we didn’t know how to months came from directly typing ‘bellbajao.org’ or from collate offline online components, activities, direct search results with ‘Bell Bajao’ as the key words. resources on the site and yet keep it simple. qq The campaign has sustained itself well online- our blog sees We went for a redesign within 8 months of at least two posts a week from users. The blog continues launch. This time, we started by outlining the to remain an interactive and dynamic space, with users main purpose of the website. eager to comment and share their experiences.
Be clear about sought action - one of the first qq Many women shared stories of violence sometimes faced things we wanted from our visitors was to by themselves, sometimes by their friends and family. take some action. So we have put things like, We ensured, and continue to do so, that we reply to all ‘Be a virtual rights activist’ ‘download tool’, messages, give out all information sought by them and ‘contests’ right at the front. extend all other possible help to our stakeholders qq We have been successful in collecting voices and views from various men, For mass media, we created traditional media products celebrities and like flyers, brochures etc. But on the website, we had a otherwise, for our downloadable tool kit, which had information on how net users initiative, ‘Bell can become virtual rights advocate (an online version of our Bajao-Champion training program), hosted contests, polls etc. Voices’ – this was launched with We post informative, engaging and stimulating news, links, the second phase videos, blogs, articles and photographs pertaining to violence of the Bell Bajao against women on a daily basis for our audience to engage campaign. The intellectually.
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champions are mostly men and boys from various walks Testimonials of life who are seen as great youth role models capable of inspiring change Here’s a list of all the press coverage we have received. Besides, every other day we receive emails from friends around In Social Media, measuring the impact has always been a the world who want to collaborate with us and create a similar challenge. We earlier thought the more hits our google analytics campaign in their country. Many bloggers have written about show the higher the success, but then does it really work that the campaign and linked to our blog. Here are a few of them: way? Blog traffic only show how many people visited the site, it doesn’t reflect how many people took any action! qq Indsight.org qq So, we also measure number of people are using the qq Anneofcarvesville.com downloadable tool kits or number of people are spreading the Bell Bajao message in their communities qq Indiaoutsideindia-Devayani qq We received emails and testimonials where people shared qq Blog.Dawn.com how they have benefited from the site Awards and mentions Cesar Robles, Communication Officer of PyD Vietnam, emailed
us on how they found the information on the site, particularly Our social media efforts have been recognized worthy of © IndiaSocial the FAQs extremely useful and therefore used them in their forming case studies- for India Social and Tactical Technology campaign against domestic violence in Vietnam. Collective (http://www.tacticaltech.org/- in progress). We have also been honoured as one of the thirty youth icons of South Strategy and Execution Asia by Kindle Magazine Blogworks helped us pro-bono in the background research; What Next there were other friends too who helped with overall strategy. The main campaign Bell Bajao was created pro-bono by Ogilvy Bell Bajao is now a popular site with fairly good blog traffic but & Mather. For the Social Media initiatives, we got pro-bono we still have a long way to go. The Bell Bajao campaign itself support from various people. To name some, Rajesh Lalwani of is going to enter its second phase, with that there will be some Blogworks helped us pro-bono with research and due diligence changes in the site. We want to make it simpler, with even prior to the launch of the Bell Bajao website. A list of all the more cutting edge interactive pieces and more action items media partners and supporters is here. for visitors. We also hope to add language dimensions (blog in Kannada, Hindi).
15 Casebook1 Company Details: Name : Blank Noise Number of Employees : N/A Category : Not for Profit (Other) Campaign Duration : Long Term Case submitted by : Jasmeen Patheja, Founder Member, Facilitator Blog: http : //blog.blanknoise.org/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ blank.noise Twitter : http://twitter.com/BLANK_ NOISE
Blank Noise: Raising voice against sexual harassment
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discussions are impacting the way different stakeholders in the Blank Noise is issue of street sexual harassment are organizing their practice a volunteer led which in turn creates space for collaboration. collective that was Blank Noise as an idea that transferred via several events and set up in 2003, campaigns! seeking to address street sexual Background harassment/ violence. Blank Noise is a volunteer led collective seeking to address street sexual harassment/ violence.
It intends to:
qq Change the perception of ‘eve teasing’ as something which is a joke or prank, to one which the public takes seriously and assumes responsibility for Executive Summary
qq Explore, define, question, trigger debate on the boundaries © IndiaSocial When Blank Noise began work in 2003, ‘eve-teasing’ was between wooing, flirting, violating, ‘teasing’, approaching, largely considered a non-issue, which would often elicit a harassing in public spaces smirk or gesture of vague sympathy. Over the years we have witnessed, and perhaps participated, in the increasingly qq Attempt definitions around intangible elements that mainstreaming of the issue of street harassment and violence could be considered to against women which has now attained enough significance constitute harassment: to have become a major poll issue during the current General for instance ‘looking’ Election campaigning in Bangalore and to be consistently covered by national and local media through reportage, comic qq Define and emphasize strip and targeted campaign. those acts and processes which are very tangible Dialogue occurs on the internet and in public spaces. The and clear-cut rights internet based dialogue creates a resonance with women and violations men from across the world. Ideas that emerge from these
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Build a relationship between women and cities: to imagine and safety pins, chilli powder)and yet enable us to see the city as a place to which we belong as these everyday decisions were citizens with rights rather than the often touted constructs of never discussed. The issue of fear Image Courtesy: Blank Noise us as someone’s mother/sister/ experienced by women in public daughter/ on the street spaces was never seen as an issue. It was always just ‘eve-teasing’, qq Bring into focus street sexual harassment as an issue that something to be dismissed as concerns both men and women trivial.
qq Bring women to question their notion of fear and threat I remember day dreaming while thereby also bringing into debate notions of class and taking a walk in my neighbourhood caste- i.e. who do we fear? Why do we perceive a certain and then suddenly being grabbed person as a ‘threat’? Which person becomes threatening? by an unknown, unidentified man. When do we feel threatened? I yelled back in rage and shock and began to walk after him. Along qq Generates research with public participation and equally the way I asked people at the auto emphasizing on information dissemination, thereby building rickshaw stand for help and was knowledge with appropriate forms of media – internet simply told ‘he ran away’. (Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Orkut), posters, videos, street actions. I remember sharing this incident with friends at college and the Blank Noise was initiated in 2003. One of the earliest responses ranged from: responses I received was :“Why talk about ‘eve-teasing’? Why not something more serious?” ” It happens, ignore it.”
I arrived in Bangalore at the age of 18 to study fine art. Over “How come it happens only to time I realized that I moved through the city hyper-alert, you?” cautious, with a clenched fist, a ‘don’t come near me’ attitude. My friends would only go out in groups, or with a male friend. “What were you wearing? Be more If they went out they knew exactly where they were going, careful!” how they were going, what they were going to wear and most importantly how they were getting back home, what they were Another incident , another day, carrying in their bags as weapons of defense(pepper spray, walking in my neighbour and a
18 Casebook1 cyclist spat over me. It was humiliating. I remember throwing initiating conversations, events and ideas about street sexual away those clothes. I couldn’t understand what I had done to harassment. be at the receiving end of this irrational, sudden attack, and I couldn’t understand how people around me weren’t recognizing Approach this as an issue. I was aware that women in varying degrees feared public spaces but were not talking about it. The various projects initiated under Blank Noise are-
There was a need to form a collective that would address the qq I never ask for it: I never ask for it has evolved through issue of street sexual harassment. Blank Noise was created various stages since the first idea in 2006. I never ask for it when I was in my final year at art school (Srishti School of Art attempts to seize the notion of ‘she provoked’ or ‘she asked Design and Technology) with a group of 9 students who were for it’. No woman of any age, colour, or character ever willing to go through a process that would involve them, their deserves to be sexually violated or what is lightly dismissed personal accounts and testimonials. As an art student I was as ‘eve-teased’. deeply interested and motivated by art practice that could work qq Twitter announced: Tweet what you wore when you with communities, that could exist in public, that could heal, experienced any kind of sexual violence and add provoke, question. I was interested in work that could be built #ineveraskforit Women and men from across the globe via participation, that could be a dialogue or collaboration. retweeted the message and as a result hundreds such tweet testimonials have been gathered. Tweeters have been © IndiaSocial Stakeholders provided image options for their twitter page. Every volunteer is a stakeholder. Blank Noise volunteers, who qq Facebook announced: I NEVER ASK FOR IT. The event are almost equally both male and female, come from varied ask people on Facebook to change the Facebook backgrounds and cities/towns and, since many campaigns are status message to what they were wearing when they conducted on the Internet, tend to be urban, English-speaking experienced any kind of sexual violence and add ‘I NEVER and largely within the age group of 16-35 years. They find ASK FOR IT’. Blank Noise through social media events, college workshops, media reports and friends. && Change the display photo to an image from Blank Noise,
Blank Noise tries to introduce the idea of a volunteer as an && Take a photo of the garment worn at the time of agent. Each volunteer (also called an ‘action hero’) has a experiencing any kind of sexual harassment, local network that he/she can influence and interact with,
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&& Message to your friends/ family/ colleagues/ male or qq Museum of street weapons of defense (year 2008. female and get them involved. Medium. Internet. Blogspot. Facebook): This project examines fear and defense mechanisms or tools women Both Twitter and Facebook events were used for virality adopt to deal with the city. The museum of street weapons spreading the message of questioning the notion of blame. In is a compilation of weapons and confessions ; everyday parallel this campaign is also being directed towards organizing objects that have become weapons of defense such as clothes collection drives. A nationwide campaign asking safety pin, Baygon spray, talcum powder, a heavy bag. women to send in one garment they wore at the time they experienced street sexual harassment. Each garment was a qq Excuse me? Compilation of misdirected terms. Build it like witness and a testimonial to the experience. The garments you heard it: (year 2007 medium. Internet/ BlogSpot) is a were installed on the streets of various cities in the form of a compilation of food names, objects, statements, songs, that travelling exhibition. Blank Noise has been receiving an entire women have been called or referred as while out on the range of garments from saris, salwar kameez, school uniform, streets. swim suit etc. This campaign is to challenge the assumption that ‘women ask for it’; ask for harassment/ violation because qq Step by Step Guide to Unapologetic Walking (year of the clothes they wear. We are seeking to state that all kinds 2008. Medium poster + t shirt): is a compilation of of women, all kinds of socio eco backgrounds, all age groups, things to remember while walking; to ensure the walk is at all times of day and in any kind of garment have experienced unapologetic. violated and that there is no such thing as ‘asking for it’. qq Blank Noise blogathon (2006): Blog event asking bloggers Twitter and Facebook have led to interest from women across to share their experiences of street sexual harassment. As the world and we are working towards have clothes collection a result hundreds of bloggers participated leading to a mass drives across cities not only in India but across the world. online catharsis. The viral transfer of testimonials went qq Things to do at home on a hot summer from one blog to another and the anonymity of the medium afternoon/ I never ask for it (year 2009 created a space for people to speak fearlessly. medium. Internet): collects proverbs This event established street sexual harassment / statements and sayings in different languages violence or ‘teasing’ as that which is experienced that imply women ‘ask for it’. E.g.: jithe gur almost every day and is seen as ‘normal’ but uthe makhi/ ‘where there is sugar there will as that which alters one’s relationship with the be a fly/ if you are a girl guys will be after body and the city. This event established ‘eve you.’ teasing’ as an urgent issue. While the event took place on the internet, the testimonials spread
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because the mainstream press hugely supported it. This street sexual violence event brought emails from volunteers from across the country wanting to have Blank Noise chapters in their cities. qq 2 years ago a known person emailed us saying she was This event made ‘eve-teasing’ an urgent instead of a ‘trivial’ at ladies satang in Calcutta and she overheard a group of one. women discuss the project and its ideas. We would never know of this kind of impact, which reaches a non-internet Impact – Outcome audience and how it influences them. Each person engaging with the project brings a unique dimension to Blank Noise With Blank Noise our aim was to build a collective and to have and takes away something that is meaningful for the street sexual harassment be recognized as every person’s concerned individual issue, irrespective of their gender. qq Blank Noise has been built by hundreds and perhaps It is challenging to measure the impact of Blank Noise and we thousands of people. There are those who have blogged are still grappling with methods that would help us understand about it, spoken about it, tweeted about it. Individuals it. have contributed both online and on the streets of various cities. The collective itself is multitudes of conversations, qq If impact is measured solely by the number of people in the conversations that exist amongst a group of friends, Blank Noise community Orkut (2000+) Facebook (3063+) random people in public, on Facebook, twitter, blog posts. Google groups (3000), Twitter (600+)and the stat count © IndiaSocial blog hits per day, it excludes information such as how many qq The press has supported Blank Noise through the individuals started thinking about street sexual harassment years. The press takes the project to another audience/ as an issue that concerns them? participant. qq How many men and women took the conversations Credits – Strategy from the internet to their personal lives, to their home and friends? Individuals who participate in Blank Noise Volunteers/ action heroes who proposed strategies and ideas push their own notion of fear, comfort, boundaries thus bringing about a change in them. This personal shift makes Credits – Execution a volunteer an ‘Action Hero’. Action Heroes challenge themselves in public. They walk the streets without apology Jasmeen Patheja has been supported by the following and do not believe it was their fault, or that they deserved institutions for Blank Noise: Srishti School of Art Design and to be sexually assaulted/ ‘ask for it’ if they experience Technology,(2004-2005), Sarai CSDS Fellowship (2005),
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Akademie Schloss Solitude Germany, Ashoka Innovators for the What Next Public. Blank Noise has been fluid and organic since its start but now Testimonials needs another kind of structure as issues of sustainability emerge. At this point Blank Noise is moving getting registered Founder member Jasmeen Patheja was made a fellow of as a non profits organisation. While it would continue to work Ashoka Innovators for the Public for work towards Blank Noise. with volunteers it will also now focus on employing staff. At Blank Noise we have events planned that need a certain Blank Noise was commissioned by the Bronx Museum of Art, scale for its public engagement, it needs a generous budget to participate in a retrospective show looking at public art as well. Blank Noise has survived on enthusiasm and spirit practice. Blank Noise was selected as a new project working in from hundreds and thousands of individuals, but we also need this art practice. The show was titled Street Art Street Life, and to be able to sustain ourselves and are grappling with these Blank Noise was commissioned to create a video installation questions. We hope to get registered by April 2010. based on street interviews with men and women across 5 cities in India; Moments of a Long Pause.
22 Click here to go to IndiaSocial IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #1, Long term initiative Pratham Books – Engaging the community to bring a book in every child’s hand
Company Details: Executive Summary Name : Pratham Books In its simplest, what we seek to do is create a social Number of Employees : 1-50 publishing strategy for Pratham Books. We began with Category : Not for Profit Institution content and context in the form of our published content and the cause which we used to initiate a conversation Campaign Duration : Long term around the subject of reading and children. Over time, Case submitted by : Maya Hemant, Content Manager we have been able to establish some sort of authority, as Website : http://www.prathambooks.org it may be, in this space and with time, we hope to build trust within the little community we curate. And this, over Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/prathambooks time, translates to engagement and loyalty. Have we been Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/prathambooks successful? It’s too soon to tell but we’d like to think YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/user/ we’ll get there because we have an awesome community. prathambooks Blog : http://blog.prathambooks.org/ Casebook1
how we can improve. It has, we hope, been received well and Pratham Books even enthusiastically. was established as a not-for- profit Public Charitable Trust to Approach enable children whom the market We followed a very unstructured approach to our social ordinarily would not reach, and media efforts. It really did begin as an internal experiment therefore to democratize the joy of to document the work we do and highlight work that others reading. Pratham Books’ mission do in the same space. It’s been far more successful than we is “to see a book in every imagined it would ever be. child’s hand”. The initiative had its roots in an internal need to highlight work done within the organization and work being done in this space We’d like to think that we spread the love, so to speak, but externally. It has not been driven by a strategy or any clearly realistically, we’re going to have to build a platform sometime defined goals and objectives. However, we now have these in soon to engage our community to co-create and do so much place. more to contribute to the cause of a book in every child’s hand Objective: The objective is to catalyse the creation of content for children’s reading and to find and fill gaps in the current © IndiaSocial Background market structure.
The background to this was to find a way to share our work, Strategy: The strategy is simple – it’s to be a clear, authentic internally at first, and then externally. The need was to and community voice for reading as a social good. document and discuss internal and external strategies and later on, to create a community around the cause. The reason Goal: The goal is ultimately to put a book in every child’s hand. to do this is because we cannot put a book in every child’s hand alone - we needed help to locate, distribute and co-create Duration: The duration is open ended – we’ll be doing this as content. long as we exist. Budget and resources: The resources and budgets are not Stakeholders formal – we all contribute to the efforts internally and we have one person who anchors this effort both internally and The stakeholders, when we began, were all internal. Now that externally. we have a community being built, we are always listening as to
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The technology resources are all free and as below: children and then moved onto having sessions with entire classes. On 20th March, 2009, we managed to hold a qq Blog: A resource which talks about publishing, reading, Skype storytelling session between kids from Akshara literacy, kidlit, learning, non-profits, events and more. Foundation’s community library and a class from Central Manor. The purpose is to go beyond being just a publisher. qq Twitter: A space where we can engage with the Through these activities we are encouraging reading, community, share ideas, ask for help, get feedback, listen learning and connecting children from different communities to complaints, participate and mobilize people to help us and backgrounds. Channels used: Twitter, Skype, Blog with our vision of ‘a book in every child’s hand’. qq Inviting people to remix/repurpose our content: As a qq Scribd: Uploading our books frequently so that they can publisher, we have a lot of content available which we want be read by more people. Also, for our Creative Commons people to access as easily as possible. In our attempt to do licensed books to be remixed/ repurposed by the so, we have managed to license some of our books under community in whatever way they wish to. Creative Commons licenses. Now, if we can’t publish a qq Facebook: Updating information from the blog and book in Assamese, but a teacher in Assam wants to do so, information about the events we do and communicating she doesn’t have to worry about copyright infringement. with the community We have also put up some of the illustrations of our books so that people can remix or repurpose them. Channels qq Flickr: Documentation of the work we do and also to upload used: Scribd, Blog, Flickr our Creative Commons licensed illustrations so that they can be remixed/ reused. qq Facilitators/connecting organisations and people: @Anorakmagazine found us on Twitter and asked if they qq YouTube: Documentation of our work and to inform people could send us some back issues of their magazines to share about some of the initiatives we are participating in. Also to with kids in India. Once the books arrived, they were sent inform people about our books through book trailers. to the community libraries run by Akshara Foundation. We also helped coordinate a drawing project that Anorak Planning & Outreach Magazine wanted to involve the children with. Now, some of the kids have their work published in an international qq Skype reading sessions: This project started after a few children’s magazine. Channels used: Twitter tweets were exchanged with a librarian from Central Manor, Pennsylvania. We started off by people from our qq More access to our books: We frequently upload several organization having Skype reading sessions with a few of our books on Scribd so that they can be read and downloaded by people. Channels used: Scribd 26 Casebook1 qq Audio books for the National Association of Blind : This qq Participatory community: Through our social media efforts, project started off because of another blog post (on the more people are aware of our work and several authors, Helen Keller Talking Library project) that got automatically illustrators and translators have offered to work with us. updated to our Twitter account. @owos then messaged us Channels used: Blog, Twitter, Facebook to tell us about a similar initiative Radio Mirchi had started. Then another tweep (@barkhad) told us that she had Impact – Outcome registered with Radio Mirchi but they didn’t get back to her. So, we got in touch with Radio Mirchi to talk about a blog We measure our impact solely by points of serendipity post and while we were talking, she asked if we would be catalysed. interested in having our books recorded by Radio Mirchi for qq Skype Reading Sessions: Increased interest in reading. the National Association of the Blind. We also requested if The Skype session held in the community library was @barkhad could record one of our books and they agreed. even attended by some of the parents and they were very So, our Twitter friend went offline and recorded a book in excited that their kids could chat with children in another their Delhi studio! Channels used: Blog, Twitter continent. The project continues to evolve as we are now qq Passing it on – the book edition: We read about a bunch of looking forward to more Skype sessions between the kids, kids in Kolkata who went around with a van full of books to creating learning projects which encourage creative thinking reach kids who didn’t have access to books and even went and writing amongst the children at an Akshara library and © IndiaSocial on to teach the kids how to read. After reading about this a group of children at Central Manor initiative, one of our trustees volunteered to sponsor some qq Inviting People to Remix/ Repurpose Our Content: It has Bengali books if we could find these kids. We mailed the taken some time for people to start experimenting with our news bureau which published the article, but were unable content, but we are getting more queries about how people to get a response. So, we decided to see if the Twitter can help us translate/review books/create more content, community could help us. Within half an hour of sending etc. Microsoft approached us to repurpose our content into out a tweet, we had a volunteer who said he would get us a DVD format. The project is currently being tested with the information and by the next day we had an address and two NGOs (Nanubhai Education Foundation and Akshara contact number. Within a few days, Bengali books were Foundation). OLPC (One Laptop per Child) has used our sent by us to these kids. From this story, we decided to content in Nepal. An advertising agency in Brazil wanted to start an initiative which would allow our online community use one of our photographs and we’ve had another enquiry to participate…to help these kids as well as other kids. about using our photographs on a website. We’ve also Channels used: Twitter, Blog, Facebook seen a creative interpretation of our illustrations and our
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qq Facilitators/ Connecting Organizations and People: We are trying to see if there are more activities that can involve children and Anorak Magazine. Anorak Magazine also wants to send more books to be reviewed by the kids which can Quick Tips: then be kept in their library… thus adding to the reading Be patient, authentic and culture we want to build transparent to see the results of qq More Access to Our Books : Measure impact through the social media. It takes time for number of reads and downloads registered for each book people to listen, trust and engage qq Audio Books for National Association of the Blind : Radio with your cause but once you Mirchi has finished recording some of our CC books and manage to gain their trust, they are have now offered to record more of our books (in multiple willing to be your spokesperson, languages) for National Association of the Blind recommend you to other people, help with initiatives you start, etc. qq Passing it On – The Book Edition: The initiative is in its initial stages and we are still getting opinions from people, Be frequent with communication but as we gather more information about people who have and reply to positive as well as books and people who need books, we are slowly and negative comments. Transparency steadily building a useful resource which will ensure that is the key and people will always books reach more kids. appreciate it. Credits Strategy
The awesome community we have, the writings of Gaurav Mishra, and Gautam John (from Pratham Books) Credits – Execution
illustrations were also used by an organization as part of a Manisha Chaudhry, Mala Kumar, Sandhya Taksale, Purvi Shah, fun activity of creating stories from the images Gautam John and Maya Hemant
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Testimonials qq http://www.boingboing.net qq Beth Kanter (SlideShare deck) qq http://globalvoicesonline.org qq http://beth.typepad.com qq http://www.desipundit.com qq http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2010/02/ social-media-and-the-bottom-of-the-pyramid. html What Next
We’ll keep at it – do more, attempt greater © IndiaSocial transparency and create more touch points. We’re also building a social publishing platform and hope to create more content to put a book in every child’s hand.
29 Company Details: Name : Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation
Number of Employees : 1-10
Category : Not-for-profit institution
Campaign Duration : Short term
Case submitted by : Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian, Chairman
Website : http://www.chdinfo.com
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ pages/DrMani-Children-Heart- Foundation/113480708677410
Twitter : http://twitter.com/drmani
IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #2, Short term initiatives Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation – the Heart Kids Tweetathon and how Twitter helps save lives Casebook1
Executive Summary
In an innovative use of social networking site Twitter, Indian heart surgeon Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian does an annual event to raise awareness and funds for children born with congenital heart defects – by staying awake for 24 hours non-stop in a day-and-night Twitter marathon – the Heart Kids Tweet-a-thon.
The 2008 event raised just under $9,000. And even in the midst of a deep recession, the 2010 event held on February 14th, brought in close to $5,000. As the Foundation’s cost to sponsor a child’s operation is around $1,250 the Tweetathon alone will be responsible for healing more than 10 little hearts! Background
Starting out as a “Heart Kids Blogathon“, the blogging marathon for CHD awareness has been an annual event since © IndiaSocial 2003 and a mainstay in efforts that have helped raise over $130,000 for the Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation and The Dr.Mani Children Heart already sponsored 63 heart surgeries for Indian children from Foundation is a non-profit trust under-privileged families. that raises awareness about Congenital Heart Disease Stakeholders in children and funds A large network of small business owners, entrepreneurs, social expensive, yet life-saving workers and generous, caring donors has supported Dr. Mani’s heart operations for work for ten years, and rallies behind the fundraiser. children born with heart defects. Approach
Each year’s event starts out with an ambitious target – and the
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aim is to both build awareness about the deadly problem posed As word-of-mouth is the main vehicle of promotion, the by heart birth defects, and to get concerned supporters to join costs to run the program are negligible, with over 97% of the a “47 Hearts Group” and make a contribution to help fund a funds raised, going directly to cover the expenses of a child’s child’s heart operation. treatment Many donors continue to support the effort and remain as Planning and Outreach regular contributors, allowing the project to grow and scale steadily, even if slowly, over the years. The non-profit trust has Conducting the annual blogathon/ Tweetathon involves a been in existence for 7 years, and is growing in visibility and sequence of activities that rope in ‘influencers’ who have impact. the attention of large audiences, as well as loyal supporters who have been active in helping spread word about the CHD awareness effort.
Early notification of the event is spread to this core group through email messages. Other social media channels are used, like You Tube videos, Twitter itself, Facebook (through a fan page), blogs and networking with a community of bloggers and discussants on message boards.
During the 24 hours of the event, Dr.Mani tweets (posts messages on Twitter) every half hour – and engages in discussions with others on his Twitter list, all the while focusing the chat on the topic of congenital heart defects and what they can do to help. Impact – Outcome
The Heart Kids Tweetathon raised $9,000 in 2008 and $5,000 in 2010 in 24 hours (or shortly within that time frame). Each year the event reached around 500,000 people through Twitter networks, some of whom became supporters, sponsors and donors.
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qq Seth Godin, in “99 Purple Cows”: http://www.b–different. Quick Tips: com/purplecow.htm qq Squidoo: http://www.squidoo.com/dr-mani- Relationships with influencers is the key to sivasubramanian-is-a-linchpin Success - People are more likely to help and support those they know, like and respect qq http://www.niche2.com/testimonials.php – so the focus must be on becoming that person before asking for help! What Next
The Heart Kids Tweetathon is just one channel of awareness building that the Foundation is engaged in. Other aspects The impact also continues for much longer than the one- include getting corporate sponsorships, putting in place day event, as people who have heard about the effort and “business with purpose” initiatives where business owners remember later on about it, do come back to make a donation commit to sharing a part of their revenues for funding a child’s or help spread word. operation, getting larger organizations like the Rotary and Lion’s Club to sponsor some operations, and growing “47 For the Foundation, the bottom-line metric is the amount of Hearts Groups”, each of which will be responsible for adopting
funds raised, the number of operations sponsored, and the © IndiaSocial and raising enough funds to cover the cost of one child’s extent the message of CHD awareness spreads among the surgery. community we are trying to reach. The short term target is to fund 47 heart operations in 2010. Testimonials The longer term target is to do 47 operations every month! qq Fast Company magazine: http://www.ezinemarketingcenter. com/DrMani-FC.pdf
33 IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #3, Short term Company Details: initiatives Name : WWF India
Number of Employees : N/A
Category : Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by : Prashant Deorah, Puretech Internet Private Limited
Campaign Duration : Short term
Website : http://www.earthhour.org/
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ OfficialEarthHourIndiaPage
Orkut : http://www.orkut.co.in/ Main#Community?cmm=60087030
WWF – Getting India to switch off their lights for Earth Hour Casebook1
Executive Summary Background
Earth Hour is a global awareness programme WWF India is one of Earth Hour is a global awareness program by by WWF to create awareness on climate the largest conservation WWF to create awareness on climate change change and fight global warming. People organisation engaged and fight global warming. It was initiated in participating in the Earth Hour voluntarily in wildlife and nature Sydney in the year 2007 when 2.2 million choose to switch off their lights of their conservation in the homes and businesses turned their lights homes and offices for one hour to make their country. off for one hour to make their stand against stand against climate change. For the first climate change. In 2009, the need was felt time in 2009, WWF India took the initiative to promote the concept of Earth Hour in India to bring this campaign to India. and WWF India took up the responsibility. The task was to spread awareness about this Approach programme in India and encourage people to participate. The overall objective of the campaign was to create awareness about global warming and An interactive and informative Earth Hour get people to participate in the Earth Hour India site was created asking people to
initiative by switching off their lights on 28th © IndiaSocial register themselves. Social media channels March 2009. on Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr were created and these were used to engage with people Our approach to achieve this goal was to create an India and direct them to the site. Within 18 days, the Earth Hour site specific site for Earth Hour and get people to register got 1,23,704 visitors; 28,484 people registered on the website themselves to support the campaign. In order to drive people to participate in the Earth Hour event; the Earth Hour Facebook to the site, various social media channels were created and a Cause got 19,059 members; the Orkut Community got 4,547 sponsored online ad campaign was undertaken. members; the Flickr photostream received 1,700 views; the Twitter channel got followed by 321 followers. Earth Hour Stakeholders 2009 was a huge success and the programme is on its way to another successful year in India now. Stakeholders we engaged were the general public who were online.
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Planning & Outreach to 0.88%. The average CPC for the campaign (Rs. 6.25) was also much lesser compared to the average CPC paid by Indian qq Create an India site of the Earth Hour campaign where advertiser (Rs. 16.20). local content was added and made interactive to encourage participation and exchange of opinion. The site asked The interactive elements like the quiz got 3,732 visits and people to register themselves in support of the campaign. ‘Share you Ideas’ got 535 visits. Interactive features like a quiz and a ‘Share Your Idea’ were added to engage the users. What Next
qq To raise awareness about the site and the campaign, we Earth Hour 2010 is coming up in March 2010 and WWF India is undertook a paid online ad campaign on the Google site and again gearing up to make Earth Hour a tremendous success in its network sites. India.
qq An Orkut group, Flickr photostream, Twitter account, and a YouTube channel were created to engage with people on these platforms and share interesting information and multimedia.
qq A Facebook Cause page was created. Impact – Outcome
Within 18 days, the Earth Hour site got 1,23,704 visitors; 28,484 people registered to participate on the website; the Earth Hour Facebook Cause got 19,059 members; the Orkut Community got 4,547 members; the Flickr photostream received 1,700 views; the Twitter channel got followed by 321 followers. Earth Hour 2009 was a huge success and the programme is on its way to another successful year in India now.
The paid advertising CTR beat the industry average of 0.55%
36 Click here to visit HP
“ Social Media:
Reinventing the rules for B2B“ players
Hari V Krishnan Country Manager LinkedIn India Casebook1
At business forums across the world and here at home as well, him a lot if he hired consultants. Instead, he activated a poll the one nation that runs through all conversations is India. on LinkedIn asking fellow professionals for their insights which With the Indian economy taking huge strides to sustain and in turn helped him decide the right price for his service at no move beyond 8% growth, local businesses from SMEs to large cost. scale operations will contribute to the growth and emergence of India as a global economic superpower. India’s internet population today stands at 63 million users, of which 10 million are broadband users. The increasing number Consumer facing businesses have had the advantage of using of affordable connectivity options available for users in India is multiple mediums to reach out to target audiences. So whether enabling businesses to reach out to a wider audience. India’s it is print, broadcast or online; the accessibility, reach and mobile revolution is testimony to the fact that Indians take nature of the medium has allowed for consumer brands to to technology easily. At one point in time, having a landline identify and engage with audiences easily. On the other hand, telephone was not only difficult but a privilege. Today, India B2B organizations have traditionally relied on trade publications has more than 650 million mobile phone users, with landline and events to engage with stakeholders to drive business subscribers comprising only a mere 35 million subscribers. development efforts. The downside of trade publications is their limited reach geographically and in terms of numbers. The evolution of the online space for B2B professionals has given rise to the development of niche sites. However, even The ability of social media platforms to reach out to and popular and traditionally ‘consumer’ networks like Twitter and engage with stakeholders irrespective of geographic barriers Facebook are potent tools from a B2B point of view. The total © IndiaSocial can create a multitude of opportunities for the B2B industry. Indian social networking audience grew 43 percent in the past In an eMarketer survey, 46% of B2B respondents said social year, more than tripling the rate of growth of the total Internet media was perceived as irrelevant to their company, while only audience in India. (source) As social media goes mobile, the 12% of consumer-oriented marketers had the same problem medium presents a great opportunity for B2B marketers to (source). The value for B2B professionals lies in the ability of reach out to a mass audience in a cost-effective manner. A the social media platform to engage with stakeholders on an small example that can highlight the potential of mobile for on-going basis, thus redefining the way professionals in India B2B businesses is a ComScore report stated that for the period and abroad network. For example, a platform like LinkedIn has July 2009 – July 2010, Twitter usage in India grew by 239% enabled businessmen to find partners in international markets (Source). However, this did not include mobile users. Now to source and sell products. Rajeev Gangal, a LinkedIn member imagine if mobile users were included, this number would have wanted to know what professionals in the niche molecular increased significantly. A microblogging platform like Twitter discovery field, pay for an insilico physio-chemical property allows for quick updates to share knowledge and insights. lead optimization service. An activity like this would have cost
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So how can B2B professionals benefit from social media of niche audiences. File sharing services like Box.net or Huddle- platforms? For one, the core of social media platforms is about Space when integrated with your LinkedIn account enables creating engagement opportunities for members, whether it you to share white papers and presentations highlighting is in a social or a professional setting. Whether it is Twitter, your proficiency in a particular subject and showcase thought LinkedIn or B2B powerhouse AliBaba.com, as a professional leadership. seeking to showcase market expertise, it is essential to engage with fellow users. As users post queries and seek advice, your According to a recent survey, 2 out of every 5 companies response can be seen and valued as having knowledge about globally have successfully used professional social networks your industry. to find and acquire new customers. In India, 52% of the respondents claimed new customer acquisitions through social Apart from sharing insights, social media platforms can be used media. In addition to these findings, the importance of content to drive business development efforts. This is evident from is visible from the 64% of respondents, who have audio or the fund raising activity conducted by Viedea Capital Advisors visual animations on their company’s profile. who first looked to LinkedIn when they needed to a Mumbai based digital media firm was seeking investors. With the help While consumer brands continue to increase online spends, of LinkedIn’s network, they identified investors from Europe for B2B marketing spending on social networking sites is predicted the media firm while sitting in their office in Bangalore. Today to rise 43.3% in 2010 (Source) with 39.2% of B2B marketers they use LinkedIn to drive more than 50% of their business say they plan to boost their marketing budgets in 2010 development efforts. With the reach and impact of social (Source). As B2B marketers begin to increase online marketing media, staying engaged also means creating opportunities. spends, the top areas that will see growth include web site development (70.7% plan increases), email marketing (68.6%), As a B2B professional looking to establish your expertise on a search marketing (62.3%), social media (60.3%), video social media platform, content can play a large role in driving (50.7%) and webcasts (46.0%) (Source). your company image. High-impact and shareable content can help establish you as a leader among peers. The high impact As social media usage in India increases, the potential of this of multimedia coupled with the multiplier nature of social platform is limitless. As B2B professionals continue to increase media, allows simple webinars and podcasts to take your their presence and engagement levels on social networking message to a large audience in a cost-effective manner. Your sites, the online platform will help define and drive the next content needs to be relevant since B2B professionals comprise stage of growth for them in India.
40 Company Details: Name : Evalueserve
Number of Employees : 1001-5000
Category : B2B (For profit corporation)
Campaign Duration : Long term
Case submitted by : Sandra Winkler, Global Head, Marketing Communications
Website : http://www.evalueserve.com/
Evalueserve – Using LinkedIn for lead generation and brand building Casebook1
consumers realize that LinkedIn is their professional profile of Evalueserve provides knowledge services to record.
a global client base, including Investment, The result is a notable Commercial and Retail Banks; Insurance increase of sales Companies; Private Equity Firms; leads together with Corporates; Consulting and Research Firms; a better image of the Law Firms; and Intellectual Property Firms. Evalueserve brand Evalueserve’s expertise covers areas, such and the individuals as Financial and Investment Research, working at Evalueserve. Business Research, Market Research, Intellectual Property, Data Analytics and Background Knowledge Technology Services. Evalueserve has a global Sales and Marketing team. Client Engagement Managers in client locations are supported by the Sales Support teams in our India, China, Chile and Romania Executive Summary centres. Identifying the key contacts at organisations for the initial al contact and scheduling meetings with these contacts The virtual nature of Evalueserve’s business model called for has been a challenge. Cold-calling without the right background the use of web-based technologies to support our sales and information has not proven to be successful over the years. marketing efforts across the globe. Using LinkedIn, a team Reaching clients through traditional media (press releases, member in India can initiate contact or create awareness white papers, etc.) has been useful in general brand building, about Evalueserve with prospective clients, adding comments but to create greater impact for our present and prospective to forums, asking or answering questions, etc. Clients also clients, and get them to recognise us as a large knowledge proactively approach us with queries, as they see our activities services firm we required a more direct approach, which on the network. Viewing profiles of existing and potential LinkedIn provided. clients helps in the client research process. LinkedIn helps the sales teams to identify key contacts and gauge their interests Evalueserve certainly is not the first company to use online by viewing their forum posts or the events they attend. Most networking for business development and marketing purposes. But as Evalueserve is a global company that works virtually
42 Casebook1 in many ways, it is a good case of how modern business is developed and large networks are built without face-to-face Quick Tips: meetings. Lead generation: An effective keyword search Stakeholders can be used to reach out to the right people. A useful tip for lead generation is to check Sales team, Sales Support team and Marketing the list of people who have viewed our profile. Communications team This lets us know who is interested in the company, and the prospects thereafter are Approach more than cold calls. Many of our Sales Support team members had started using Confidentiality: A key challenge was to ensure LinkedIn in 2007 and many of Evalueserve’s Client Engagement the confidentiality of our clients and project. Managers in Europe and the US had already been using LinkedIn Therefore, a Social Media section was added to the global Media Communication manual, qq For branding, the Marketing Communications (Marcom) and an e-learning module was developed to team has been encouraging the controlled use of forums
create greater awareness on the subject. © IndiaSocial for the distribution of white papers, articles, etc. or for
answering questions asked by members, researching events and more
qq New white papers are systematically posted (excerpts or links) in relevant groups or forums.
qq Selected professionals of Evalueserve regularly browse LinkedIn forums to post advice on queries
qq The Marcom team also regularly checks forums and questions, and arranges answers/forum posts to be 43 Casebook1
published. Guidelines for Social Media have been included The table below shows the percentage breakup on Lead in the global Media Communication manual. generation and Brand building for 5 key target verticals from an India perspective. Planning & Outreach Vertical Percentage Break Up The Sales team carries out classic research of profiles to Healthcare 30 identify key contacts within the client organisation or targeted organisations. Client information is also gathered from LinkedIn BFSI 25 to prepare for meetings. InMails are sent or connections through groups or forums are established. For branding IT Telecom 20 purposes, managers or subject-matter experts post or answer questions, or are active in LinkedIn groups. Groups and forums Automotive Logistics 15 are used to post company links or excerpts of white papers/ Energy/Chemicals 10 articles Impact – Outcome Strategy and Execution Self Lead generation: The Sales team gains direct access to C-Level people without having to go through numerous rounds of calls with secretaries. Using LinkedIn, one gets to know the What Next focus of the profile being contacted and can customise the LinkedIn is now an intrinsic part of Evalueserve’s sales and pitch accordingly to garner maximum interest. This helps us in marketing strategy. In addition, we are also leveraging other reaching the right audience, saving a lot of time and improving social media networks in Germany/Europe like Xing. The Sales our success rate. Brand building: By posting white papers on and Marketing teams use LinkedIn on a daily basis for business LinkedIn, we have received several requests from traditional development and brand building. media or blogs. Several Client Engagement Managers have also received messages through LinkedIn about their posts. Our next step will be to increase the use of LinkedIn across We have also noticed the influx of external recommendations the organisation and to add the use of online social and on LinkedIn. Using LinkedIn for marketing has helped us to business networking tools to the tool kit of each employee improve our visibility and catch the attention of our target and increase training and awareness (an update on the Media audience; traditional media is still used as a tool to reach out to Communication manual and training is currently underway). a more general audience.
44 NASSCOM – Acting as a catalyst Company Details: Name : NASSCOM for growth Number of Employees : 51-100 of emerging Category : B2B (Not-for-profit institution) Campaign Duration : Long term & start-up Case submitted by : Avinash Raghava, Regional Director companies Website: http : //www.communities. nasscom.in/
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ nasscomemerge Casebook1
Executive Summary
The NASSCOM EMERGE Community website is a private meeting place where NASSCOM members and non-members NASSCOM® is the can interact and work together with each other. The purpose premier trade body and of the NASSCOM EMERGE Community is to help senior the chamber of commerce of the management/thought leaders of SME organizations with a IT-BPO industries in India. NASSCOM is forum to exchange ideas, learn from other decision and opinion a global trade body with more than 1200 makers and use the key takeaways to improve their businesses. We all gain when we all contribute. members, which include both Indian and multinational companies that have a Background presence in India. NASSCOM’s member and associate member companies are As NASSCOM, we have been very limited to connect with only broadly in the business of software members of NASSCOM. We were looking at how we can build development, software services, software a community for start-ups and non-members of NASSCOM. products, consulting services, BPO services, There was a need to create a community where we could leverage the strengths of some of the established players and e-commerce & web services, contribute to the eco-system. engineering services offshoring and animation Stakeholders and gaming. Predominantly meant for the burgeoning SME community which is growing stronger by the day. Their exponential growth obviates the need to share insights and best practises. Of course, other stakeholders who do not fall under this category can also join the forum and participate. In a nutshell, it is a platform for management practitioners who feel the need to communicate with one another and be aware of what’s going on. We have been able to reach out to our members, non- members, academicians, the VC community and the student community.
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site has become an indispensible meeting place for members to partner with each other and also share feedback on our initiatives. The community has helped us to put together 3 conferences (EMERGEOUT conclave) and initiatives like EMERGE 50, EMERGE Product Showcase and help us plan in our global delegations. Credits Strategy
qq Groupsites.com & Iridium Interactive
Approach Quick Tips: Earlier, NASSCOM was considered to be a “big boys” club and Find your evangelisers - build a core group who that we were not doing enough for our SME members. We believe in contributing and helping the eco- © IndiaSocial started exploring ideas on how we could build a community system partners for start-ups and non-members of NASSCOM. The members of this community would leverage on the strengths of some Organise off-line meets – this helps companies of the established players and contribute to the eco-system. to build a comfort factor with each other This is how this initiative took shape and today we boast of a community of 3200 members who are just a click away. Take a buy-in from the senior management Impact – Outcome Use an off-the-shelf product rather than building a customised solution based on our The community site has been live for almost 18 months now. requirements. We have been able to get participation from 3200 members, to be part of the community site. Presently, there are more than Recognise key people from the community at 780+ discussions running simultaneously. So wide a reach regular intervals. at a throwaway annual price of 25000 INR. The community
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Credits Execution What Next
qq The Evangelisers team for EMERGE community We are looking at getting the buyer community involved in our discussions. We are keenly looking at identifying some Testimonials partner associations overseas who can help in enabling some partnerships. Building a consortium approach and making sure A story in Outlook business – http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite. that we have enough mid-sized companies who come together com/link/go/65155926 and work with each other. Also, to have a deeper engagement with the student and the start-up community. Providing some Another set of testimonials can be accessed at: essentials which are like a tool-kit for them. EMERGE Partner qq http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/ eXchange is a trusted collaboration network. It is a platform show/110497 to collaborate and complement with like minded companies. Companies can partner with each other on technology, sub- qq http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/ contracting of projects, post leads, seek help and outsource. show/149405
qq http://nasscom-emerge.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/ show/166559
qq http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2009/07/the-nasscom- emerge-50-listing-announced/ (Refer to the comments section)
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Communities
will be the next big thing in “ Marketing
Jessie Paul Managing Director Paul Writer
Padmaja Nagarur B2B Marketing Evangelist Paul Writer Casebook1
Country Manager - India, LinkedIn says, “We are big believers in communities being the source for the richest business “…the aim of marketing is to insights.” With over 7 million professionals in India alone, Hari make selling superfluous. The believes that LinkedIn provides them with tools to engage in aim of marketing is to know and meaningful business development and brand building activities. understand the customer so well Salesforce.com is tapping into its customers for new product that the product or service fits ideas through IdeaExchange (it has already generated over him and sells itself 10,000 ideas as of Sep 2010). “Why can’t all enterprise software be like Facebook?” asks Jeremy Cooper, RVP- - Peter Drucker Marketing (APAC), Salesforce.com. Chatter is doing just that allowing users to form a community within their business for secure collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
India offers commendable examples of early adopter B2C brands like Flipkart, Ching’s secret, MTV - India to name a few, In the past, marketers have had to invest time and research who continue to leverage the power of social media. But B2B effort to gather information about what customers wanted. stories in India seem to be few and far between though there But the growth of community platforms has made it much are significant references available globally - Dell, IBM, Cisco, more convenient for marketers to engage with customers and Salesforce.com. While the common belief is that B2B is directly and generate business insights. Marketers have always about selling to an organization, one must remember that the used paid and earned media, and there is now a third one, end-buyer is always an individual. Therefore the fundamentals “owned”. Paid media comes as a privilege to marketers with of community building are the same for B2B and B2C (Source: generous budgets and earned media promises credibility. But No Money Marketing, by Jessie Paul, Tata McGraw-Hill, 2009) today’s successful marketers have realized that there is an opportunity to narrow down the space you want to own and Here’s an easy-to-remember framework (CRISP) to help one get own it creatively using sophisticated digital tools/social media. started. Communities belong to the category of “owned” media which comes at little or no cost. Coherence: Communities are held together by a common interest. It maybe something that the members are passionate Firms such as LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, Groupsite and the about, a common goal, a common project, or merely the likes have realized the emerging power of communities and preference for a similar lifestyle or profession. Communities are actively looking for ways to monetize them. Hari Krishnan, must address the common interest and maintain consistency in
50 Casebook1 topics posted and discussed across platforms. Interactive: Communities tend to have their own life cycle (ref image below). And until the point that the community becomes Relevance: People join communities because they either have self-sustaining, members will continue to rely on its founders the urge to contribute or intend to learn from their peers to keep the dialogue on. Therefore, what matters is not just of similar interests. So, it’s only fair for the members to presence but the promptness and quality of the interaction. expect that the content is kept as relevant as possible. Well orchestrated contributions and moderated discussions always Simple: Information is cheap and abundantly available but helps. insight is rare. So the focus of the community’s efforts must be on providing insights which are crisp and simple to comprehend.
Pervasive: If you build it, they will come - is the biggest fallacy of community building. You have to make an effort much more than just building a community. Be present across platforms © IndiaSocial and communities where you think your audience could potentially be. Participate in a quality conversation to lure them into your community (follow the Hub-and-Spoke model).
Some of the few active communities in India who are doing well on the CRISP guidelines include Source:How To: Manage a Sustainable Online Community by Rob Howard (www.mashable.com)
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Nasscom Emerge, CIO Association of India and Dell SMB. Dell is one among the few corporates in India who understands, that businesses respect peer advice to help Nasscom Emerge, which started as a blog, has grown to solve problems and learn new strategies for success. Early be a 3000+member community with active presence this year, Dell took the Take Your Own Path campaign to the across relevant social media platforms. The community was next level and started a Business Trailblazers community, an initiated and is driven by Avinash Raghava (Regional Director online destination where entrepreneurs from all over the world - NASSCOM North) who set out to build an ecosystem to can share their own stories, connect with other experts to get fuel the SME growth. They have also introduced an annual advice on how technology helps them grow their companies. conference, awards and a mentorship program to sustain Dell doesn’t intend to actively sell but they’re the only ones the momentum of community’s engagement. (More about who are currently addressing this community. Nasscom Emerge’s success story is available here). If you’re still wondering why we haven’t made a reference to CIO Association of India is another example which has Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others, it’s because we believe managed to build India’s largest member-driven network of that the next big thing are not the social media tools but CIOs (over 1900 CIO members), offering a niche platform communities built using these tools. And organizations who fail to address the career, technical and organizational needs of to realize that, will be left friendless. today’s IT leaders. It isn’t surprising that Cisco has tapped into this vibrant community to form the CIO Human Network Club.
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Creating Raving Fans Through Social Media
Toby Bloomberg Casebook1
daily lives who hold the credibility. The oxymoron is that many Toby Bloomberg of those discussions are taking place online within social is a widely recognized for networking communities. her expertise in combining The challenge for marketers is how to authentically become social media with traditional part of that trusted circle. Brand managers are beginning to marketing values while maintaining discover the secret that entertainers have always known. The the authenticity of digital more an artist can provide a behind the curtain experience conversations. Toby’s blog Diva the more people will become loyal customers who attend Marketing, launched in 2004, is movies, watch TV shows, see concerts, buy books and bring their friends. The same holds true for business. In fact, many listed on the Forbes list of the customer loyalty programs use the term “raving fans” to 20 Marketing and Social Media identify heavy users. Blogs By Women. Social media initiatives can support your business and marketing goals in multiple ways from creating awareness to increasing the value of your brand. From a marketing perspective, it offers a unique way to build trust by connecting It seems to me the more “high tech” we become, the more we with customers and prospects in the social communities where long for “high touch.” they “live.” As important is how social platforms encourage peer-to-peer interaction where raving fans, on their own Interestingly, that personalized interaction extends to how volition, help you extend your grass roots marketing efforts. people are making purchase decisions. Findings from a July Benefits include: 2009, Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey indicate that 70% of consumers trust online peer recommendations more qq The brand telling its own stories, when it wants, how it than advertising. http://ht.ly/2GF48 wants without the filter of the media
In a world where marketing messages are overwhelming and qq Developing authentic relationships without the guise of ubiquitous, it’s not a surprise that our customers are gravitating commercial hype to finding information way they always have - - by asking people who have experience with the product or service. It is qq Creating digital word of mouth buzz about issues important the people who bring your brand into the moments of their to your customers
56 Casebook1 qq Building a broader digital foot print on search engines -- Experience has taught us that while a step into the social web making it easier for people to find the information about may initially increase awareness the challenge of consistently them that they want to share extending and maintaining the goodwill of an organization’s online reputation through digital conversations is based on how qq Providing avenues for your “raving fans” to tell their stories well the details are managed. This ten step overview will help about your product/services and in doing so influence their guide you in the process. networks
Social media is often thought of as a young person’s media. However, it is not just your teenager’s world any longer. There are people from all age groups who are active in social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. According to Pew Research the fastest growing segment is Baby Boomers.
On the surface, social media appears fairly simple to implement. Since it is frequently part of our daily lives managers, who have not studied its business impacts, often delegate the development to junior staff or even interns. Big © IndiaSocial Mistake.
Leveraging social media, as a business strategy, goes beyond a simple status update or a series of tweets. To be successful social media demands the same respect that you would give any marketing initiative. It requires a sophisticated strategic approach that is integrated, monitored and flexible to respond to market opportunities. For the most part, this takes a combination of skills and experience in: strategy, marketing, customer care, your brand values/promise, an understanding of how social media impacts the brand and the enterprise on a long-range (and short-range) basis and excellent communication skills.
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10 Steps To Create Raving Fans With Social Media qq Approach all social media initiatives from the point of view of the Social Media Values Mantra: Ethics, Authenticity, qq Identify which social networks your target audience is most Transparency and Passion engaged e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Live Journal, etc. qq Understand it is the people who work for your brand who qq Determine your target audience’s expectations of how it should be telling brand stories wants to interact with your brand in the social web qq Encourage your customers, and make it easy for them, to qq Understand the culture of each “community” where you tell their stories intend to participate. qq Identify a social media champion who has experience in qq Ensure social media tactics are integrated and supportive of marketing, social media, with excellent communication business goals/objectives skills who understands your brand value and promise
qq Set expectation including determining what is success. Social Media may be a new way of marketing which goes Keep in mind it will involve some nontraditional tracking. beyond traditional messaging to adding value to the customer. However, at its core, it’s simply one more way of bring a qq Ensure the entire enterprise’s social media direction is personal connection to how we have always conducted aligned and cross business unit internal communication commerce. Done well it can create raving fans who lend their processes are in place Fastrack: Capturing the credibility and extend awareness of your brand to networks you may not have considered. imagination of youth online
58 Company Details: Name : Fastrack Number of Employees : 1001-5000 IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Category : Lifestyle (Brand) Campaign Duration : Long term Winner of Position #2, Case submitted by : Anshul Nanda, Assistant Brand Manager Long term initiatives Website : www.fastrack.in Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ pages/rack/22353108376 Fastrack: Capturing the Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/ fastrack imagination of youth online YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/user/ fastrackworld Flickr : http://www.flickr.com/ photos/20714224@N02/ Mobile : http://www.smsgupshup.com/ communities/FT Casebook1
Fastrack, launched in 1998 is a brand of watches from the house of Titan Industries Ltd which is the market leader in the watches category in India. It was spun off as an independent brand of watches targeting the urban youth in 2005.
Executive Summary Background
Moving from outsourcing our social media initiative to an in- Fastrack is essentially a youth brand, and what better way to house program has allowed us to engage and really connect get in touch with our target audience of 15-25 year-olds (SEC with our audience in typical Fastrack fashion and style. Having A,B) than having a presence on the very platforms that they college-interns run this Fastrack initiative has been a great step use daily? Social networking is a big part of today’s youth in being able to speak the language of our customers/fans. and we have made it a big part of us, extending all our online The essence of the brand being communicated in real-time initiatives to incorporate our social networks and com munities. and in a manner that is acceptable and easily understood by our customers is our constant thought as we go through daily With this step forward we worked on tapping the pulse of the customer queries, feedback, comments, suggestions & brand youth by answering queries, getting feedback about the brand announcements. Our initiative is focused around the experience and our collections and campaigns, engagement, resolving we deliver to the fans and both current and potential, driving complaints & doubts and interacting with ‘Fastrack Fans’ daily, them toward a better, and more personalized connection with 24/7. the brand. At the beginning we jumpstarted our initiative by linking all our existing properties to the new social media platforms we
60 Casebook1 joined. Facebook, Flickr and Youtube were the first networks even create unique profile pictures and tabs on our Facebook added to our consumer outreach. The great response we fan page for every scheme and campaign. received pushed us to integrate even more and we created the URL re-direct http://www.fastrack.in/facebook to take fans We then jumped right into Twitter allowing us to connect with directly to our fan page. Since its inception, this link has been fans on a more individual basis, answering queries directly, used across our billboards, take-ones, contest forms, emailers solving customer issues, giving out store addresses and the and all offline forms. like. On the flip side, we have also taken offline activities and brought them into the world of social media with a fine A major component of success for this fan page was the use example being our Twitter Contest where we asked fans tweet of Facebook social ads to create awareness of the brands pictures of our billboard signs announcing the launch of our presence on Facebook. In the larger picture we have led all our latest accessories segment. campaigns, both offline and online with social media links on our microsite and landing page, previews on our communities Stakeholders & applications dedicated to display our latest collections. We Our entire social media initiative is geared toward our existing and potential customers. As one of the 1st Indian brands to take on social media in a big way, we have endeavoured to stay ahead in terms of what we do for our fans and the experience © IndiaSocial we give them. They whole-heartedly embrace this as organic conversations burst onto our communities, fans upload pictures with our products, share our celebrations & store launches and a host of other social media activities. Approach
Fastrack was one of the first brands to use social media to engage with potential and existing consumers. We started with two communities on Facebook and a Twitter account in September 2007. We worked closely with Blogworks to create relevant content and monitor conversations. From April 2009, we started to get all the work done in-house and worked with college interns to create relevant, engaging and
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(15-25 year olds), we will continue on our way to engage with Quick Tips: our audience in as fun, entertaining and rewarding way as we have done so far. Speak in same voice as the customer - It’s essential that the person in charge of Planning & Outreach social media is in touch with both the brand and the people it is trying to communicate to. What we’ve done best is turn the social media marketing on its head, so that instead of out-sourcing the work, we have They need to be someone who understands shed that layer so that we can deal with our fans on a much the essence of the brand, yet speaks the more personal and real-time basis. To do this we have taken on language of the fans/followers college interns who walk in the shoes of our TG and talk their lingo. This allows for two things. Build a hub - it is good to have a hub from which most of your activities and updates are qq One, the essence of the brand is better communicated from localised so as to have a better reach, focus an in-house person and maximise participation. This is what we qq Second, we are able to talk with our customers from the have with Facebook being our main platform same level as them rather than as a big company. The sheer and centering our communications with the growth of our communities, the numbers of interactions fans on it. On the same Facebook note, it was with the brand and appreciation we have received for our a good idea to move from Facebook Groups to timely responses to queries and updates/previews stands in Facebook Pages where we have a lot testimony of this. more tools to analyse data about fan Another sizeable chunk of our time goes into gearing our interactions and additions. campaigns around our social media communities, whether it be by releasing ads a few days in advance on YouTube/Facebook or putting up an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at our Bikers more importantly, unique content – such as origins of the photo shoot, putting up sketches of our watches before they Fastrack logo, behind the scenes working of the brand coupled launch or linking back contests to our communities as done with innovative contests (myexbox) and campaign/collection with myEXbox. Working our campaigns this way has allowed updates. The presence of the brand on the digital sphere – us to expose not only ourselves, but our current fans/followers both in terms of reach and budgets – has only been getting to the other like-minded Fastrack-loving youth out there. larger and given the relevance of this medium to our audience
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Impact – Outcome Most of our pre and post-analysis is measured through online tools such as the built-in ‘Insights’ for Facebook pages, Our main objective was to reach out to all the existing Fastrack tweetreach.com and twitteranalyzer.com for our Twitter customers/fans and allow them a closer interaction with the account. From Insights we can discern the numbers of fans we brand. add per day, the interactions per week, the number of views for pictures (on Facebook & Flickr) and videos. For Twitter we get qq In less than a year we have grown from approximately details such as number of followers online at a time so we can 2,100 fans on Facebook in April ’09 to over 47,500 fans maximise how many people we reach with our messages, and as of Feb ’10 – that’s a 2262% growth in 10 months! the growth of our follower-base to coincide with campaigns/ Updated- In September, 2010 Fastrack are 5,97,659 fans collections. qq Not only has our fan count increased but so have the interactions, going up from about 10-20 a week to almost Strategy and Execution 700-800. Comments on our posts have touched the 150 Blogworks – Oct 2007 – Apr 2009 mark at times. What Next
One of the initiatives we need to quickly close is Ecommerce © IndiaSocial which would be a great avenue for us to delve into, working out linking direct customer queries to sales and closing the loop in terms of connecting online interactions with retail transactions. This would take the social media exposure of Fastrack to reach new levels once we introduce an online retail experience to our fans & followers
Currently we’re on Facebook with 5,97,659 fans , Twitter with 2,200+ followers, Mobile community (via SMS GupShup) with 19803+ members and Youtube and Flickr. What we are aiming at is not just the numbers, but engaging better with our fans, be it through Ecommerce, more engaging, insightful content or even linking online interactions to an offline format.
63 Company Details: Name : Hard Rock Cafe Number of Employees : N/A Category : Lifestyle (For Profit Corporation) Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Adhvith Dhuddu; Founder and CEO, AliveNow Website : http://www.hardrock.com/ Blog : http://www.hardrockindiablog.com/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ HardRockDelhi Twitterq : http://twitter.com/HRCIndia YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/ hardrockcafeindia
Hard Rock Café India – live in concert on social media Company Details: Name : Hard Rock Cafe Number of Employees : N/A Category : Lifestyle (For Profit Corporation) Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Adhvith Dhuddu; Founder and CEO, AliveNow Website : http://www.hardrock.com/ Blog : http://www.hardrockindiablog.com/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ HardRockDelhi Twitterq : http://twitter.com/HRCIndia YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/ hardrockcafeindia
Hard Rock Café India – live in concert on social media
Click here to visit Blogworks Casebook1
connect and engage with Hard Hard Rock Café is a chain of Rock’s audience. Also, there theme restaurants in present were scattered and unorganized globally and present in 5 groups/pages on Facebook touting the Hard Rock brand and talking locations in India. Its unparalleled about events. Many of these memorabilia collection, which were unofficial, unprofessional, consists of more than 70,000 inconsistent and not properly pieces that are rotated from maintained. There was no restaurant to restaurant, provides centralized social media strategy the world’s most comprehensive for the five Hard Rock Café’s “visual history” of rock ‘n’ roll. across the country, whether it was Facebook, twitter, a blog or any other social media space for that matter. Therefore, we put a plan together to help Hard Rock leverage the social media space in an organized, professional and consistent way but also make sure that the tone, voice and engagement was fun, interactive and conversational. Executive Summary
This case submission is a brief overview of how AliveNow Stakeholders helped five Hard Rock Café’s across the country (Mumbai, The three primary stakeholders in this project were Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi) leverage the social media space in the most optimal way to connect, communicate qq Hard Rock Café the organization-Hard Rock because it and engage with the avid audience and fans of Hard Rock café. is their brand we were managing social media and our performance would be measured by how well we could Background leverage the social media space for Hard Rock.
Hard Rock India wanted to leverage the social media space in qq The fans/audience of Hard Rock-The fans and audience of an optimal way to engage, communicate and converse with Hard Rock because it’s their response to our initiatives that their ardent fan base. With five Hard Rock’s in India, close to primarily determines how successful our strategies were 40 events every month across the country and thousands of both in envisaging them and executing them. The response foot-falls every week, there was tremendous opportunity to from the fans has also been very supportive.
66 Casebook1 qq AliveNow, the social media agency managing the Hard Rock The Facebook page started off as a portal for information account - as a social media firm, the best way to prove to dissemination about the regular events at Hard Rock, and after anyone that we are good at what we do is to do the best a substantial fan base was built, we started engaging the fans we can for our clients. through contests, feedback, questions, etc. With the click of a mouse we had a reach of close to 30,000 Hard Rock fans in Approach India via the different social sites.
Facebook: We started off by creating individual fan-pages qq This was leveraged for many purposes, for example: to get on Facebook in the most professional manner, and each fan feedback from fans about what international artists they page now can boast of high following, a crisp look and active would like to watch live at Hard Rock Cafe, what prices engagement. With a cumulative total of approximately 25,000 they would be willing to pay, what time of the year would fans (or Likes) in less than a year, the Facebook presence is a be ideal for them, etc. success. qq Besides listening to them, about what bands they want to qq We continue to add hundreds of fans (or Likes) every day hear at their local Hard Rock, we also regularly conducted as many migrate from unofficial groups/pages and as contests on Facebook and gave away food vouchers, more individuals discover Hard Rock’s active social media free entries, etc both to engage with the fan and to help presence on Facebook increase the fan base. © IndiaSocial qq We also made it much more easier for Hard Rock patrons Our overarching social media strategy on Facebook for across the country to discover their social spaces by Hard Rock India was to engage fans on a continuous basis, including the Facebook, twitter and blog URL information communicate to them about events every week, and to help on all Hard Rock posters, Hard Rock menu’s, and many increase foot-falls in the Café during live band performances other off line ads and promo’s. This significantly helped in which are Hard Rock’s signature events. increasing the fan base These Facebook pages were built with many best practices. To qq Individuals who are most likely to become fans or followers name a few: of your brand online are the ones who visit your cafe and qq They were URL optimized (i.e., Facebook.com/ are familiar and accustomed to the brand. So translating HardRock”YourCity”) - For example, Hard Rock Mumbai’s cafe customers to online followers is crucial, which is Facebook page is located at www.facebook.com/ why we made sure that information about these spaces is HardRockMumbai. shared in the cafe via posters, menu’s, standee’, etc.
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qq They had regular and customized FBML tabs - With the use discontinued support for “Boxes” the left hand sidebars are of these FBML tabs, we were able to communicate to fans no longer displayed on the pages. about special events using posters, calendars and promo’s. qq Spam control: as the number of fans on different Hard qq The audience was kept up to date about event info and any Rock Facebook pages increased, they became targets for other relevant info. Besides having an updated standard spammed posting and uninvited advertisements. Because Events tab on Facebook, we also had an FBML tab called, these pages are actively managed, spam was usually “July Events” where we designed an awesome calendar removed within 2-3 days and many users have been deleted with details of each event of that month. This calendar was as we’ve noticed they just become fans to spam the wall image mapped and if a user clicked on any of the events, and comment boxes. it would redirect them to the blog which had a detailed overview of the band and the event. qq They adhered to certain high standards set by Hard Rock International. qq Photos of all events were regularly updated on Facebook in a professional format. We also encouraged fans to tag qq All Facebook pages (and even other social media sites) themselves in those photos if they spotted themselves in were search engine optimized. the event. qq Fans were kept engaged: we regularly ran contests, asked qq The audience’s feedback/grievances/suggestions were all interesting questions, conversed with fans, conducted taken very seriously and communicated/passed on to the surveys and feedbacks, and did much more. right person inside the organization at Hard Rock. Twitter: Alongside, we created a single twitter page for all the qq The Facebook page was integrated with the twitter page, five Hard Rock’s in India to make sure all updates on the blog the blog, mailing list sign up page, and many other Hard and Facebook are mirrored on Twitter. With close to 1,300 Rock India social portals. followers on Twitter, and regular re-tweets, and @mentions, Hard Rock India’s presence on Twitter is very conversational. qq We tried to actively communicate to the fans of existing We regularly reply to all queries on Twitter, which is extremely groups/pages (which were all unofficial) to migrate to the important. There are also a large number of @HRCIndia official page for accurate info, etc. (This activity continues mentions with exciting and optimistic messages about how a even today.) follower had an amazing time at a particular Hard Rock Cafe.
qq Custom left-hand sidebars with links to relevant events As we regularly tweet about events, contests, surveys, etc, we were created for the Facebook page. NOTE: As Facebook follow best practices to tweet with hash tags so that followers
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qq A live twitter feed was integrated into the blog in the right hand sidebar.
qq Fanboxes for all five Facebook pages were integrated with the blog in the right hand sidebar.
qq We designed a custom wibya widget which appears are the bottom of the blog with a welcome message and links to many of Hard Rock’s social media portals.
qq Every post/article displayed was “ShareThis” enabled, so visitors could share the post/link on various social networking and social bookmarking sites. can use those hash tags when they tweet. For example, there are standard hash tags for all cafe’s, i.e., #HardRockPune for qq Every post/article also had the Facebook Like button Hard Rock Pune and so on. integrated with it. This way anyone who visits the blog could “Like” the article and simultaneously share it on their Blog: The Hard Rock India blog which is also designed, profile. We definitely saw a good spike in traffic after we
developed and maintained by us is located at www. included Facebook like buttons for each article as fans were © IndiaSocial hardrockindiablog.com. The blog was a critical part of the sharing these posts on their personal Facebook profiles. strategy because this was the only space with a high level of We also regularly emailed all the band managers about the maneuverability in terms of content, design and placement. coverage of their band in the blog so that they could share The blog served as a central source of information for it with their fans too. everything happening at all the five Hard Rock’s across the country. Because we expected significant traffic on the blog, qq Sidebar tabs with Facebook recommendations box and we had to make sure this blog was integrated with and Facebook recent activity box was also incorporated. This connected to all the other social media spaces. Here are a helped visitors who have logged into Facebook get an idea few things we did to enhance the blog’s connectivity and of what type of content their friends were browsing on the appearance. Hard Rock India blog. qq The blog had icons with links to Facebook, twitter, YouTube, qq There are tabs on top to city-specific events. So if anyone LinkedIn, Mailing list and RSS feeds in the right hand browsing the blog just wants to know what’s happening in sidebar. Hard Rock Mumbai, they could click on Mumbai on the top
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tab and the list of events at Hard Rock subscribe to the mailing list. This turned Mumbai would show up. out to be a great success as we collected close to 700 unique email ids, and some qq We focused quite a lot on the blog amazing feedback right from the fans. For design and article design. Every post/ a brief period of one month, we also had a article has a custom header designed small contest going where every individual with details of the band playing, the who joined the mailing list enjoyed a free Hard Rock location and the date. beverage at Hard Rock! So, of all the email ids collected, close to 70 percent was qq All posts/articles on the blog were very through this promotion. well tagged. So any visitor just looking coverage about just a particular band Integrating social media with on-ground could easily find their coverage by marketing/strategies: This was and clicking on the band’s name under tags. continues to be one of the most critical parts of our Social Media strategy for Hard qq Tagging of articles and optimizing them Rock. We realized very early on that running also helped tremendously to search ads was an “easy way out” method to get engine optimize the blog. Our analytics fans to join Hard Rock Cafe. Not only was it another financial also showed that we were receiving significant amounts of commitment for Hard Rock, but it would also be unwise on our traffic from Google and other searches, and this is because part not to leverage the existing network of Hard Rock’s five of our continued efforts to search engine optimize the blog. café’s and the hundreds of customers they touch each week. qq Many links on the blog were also Apture enabled. It was important for us to convert foot falls into followers on social media and convert those followers back in to foot- E-mail list/E-mail marketing: What started off as a small part falls every week and every month. We’ve clearly achieved of the online media strategy mushroomed into something this because Hard Rock’s social media presence is robust and significant and relevant. Hard Rock already had someone continues to grow from strength to strength without a single designing their mailers and another vendor handling the Rupee spent on advertising. Just to repeat that, not a single distribution to the database. But because we wanted to get Rupee has been spent in advertising for Hard Rock’s social fans on Facebook, followers on twitter and visitors to the blog portals but we’ve got a healthy base of close to 25,000 fans on the mailing list, we created a simple form which served (or likes) on Facebook, about 1,300 followers on twitter and two purposes for the fans: For them to give feedback directly close to 5,000 hits on the blog every month. to Hard Rock managers about anything they wanted and to
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Comprehensive social media analytics: Easily, the most qq The average traffic on the blog is about 4,000-5,000 important part of the social media strategy was to measure unique visits per month with about 8,000-9,000 page the success of our initiatives. We preach to our clients that views per month, and these numbers are only going up we cannot improve something that we cannot measure. So analytics for social media was tracked very closely and more qq On Twitter the HRC India account has close to 1,300 details about the numbers, etc, are shared in the Impact/ followers with many of our tweets being regularly re- Outcome question given below. tweeted. The second was our ability to successfully create a Impact – Outcome professional and well maintained presence on vital social media channels. Awareness in branding and marketing is very As mentioned in the Approach/Strategy section, quantifying important and a huge majority of the Hard Rock fans are now the social media initiatives is very important to analyze the aware of Hard Rock India’s active presence on social media. success of a social media strategy. The numbers are sufficient to say that the audiences now visit The first achievement was in terms of sheer numbers. these pages regularly for information and updates. qq With no ads and no separate marketing budget to promote Besides this, the impact and the outcome can be seen on Hard Rock’s social media space, we were able to populate the Facebook pages, the blog and twitter itself. With regular close to 25,000 fans on Facebook over 1 year period engagement, contests, information updates, we were able to © IndiaSocial achieve what we initially envisioned for the Hard Rock brand in India on social media. Testimonials
“Although we have all known that social media is and will be playing an important role for marketing, there has never been clarity on how to make it an organized effort. Until AliveNow approached us all our initiatives were on an ad hoc basis, now since we have outsourced this piece of to them we have a plan and a vision which is to increase our following and ensure we deliver the right content which is relevant to our brand and hence increase awareness which ultimately is the goal
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What Next Quick Tips: In the first year of Hard Rock Cafe’s social media presence, we Never make competitions or contest established the brand on the social space and have built a good too complicated - Even if a complicated fan base. Over the next 6 months we’ve planned a lot of new initiatives for the Hard Rock brand on social media in addition contest sounds very creative and to improving their existing portals. interesting, people don’t have all the time in the world for a social media contest. So Some planned initiatives include: keep it simple and make sure it’s fun and qq Increase activity on twitter, with more engagement. We’ve engaging. been having quite a few Facebook campaigns, so we plan Don’t just disseminate - Trying to use to increase the number of twitter contests too. the social media channel purely to push qq Integrating Hard Rock’s social media presence with the events, push sales, spread information, social media presence of different rock bands in India. We etc will only make the platform boring have begun this activity but will be focusing more on this in and mundane. It’s critical to engage, ask the coming months. questions, listen to feedback, qq Activity on YouTube and some other video sites will begin. converse, etc. qq More co-ordination on integrating on-ground and online strategies.
when starting any marketing initiative. We know we have only qq And lots more. hit the tip of the iceberg and over time we will innovate and with AliveNow’s experience, and hope to be leader’s in our industry.”
- Amit, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, JSM Corp. (JSM Corp is the holding company for the Hard Rock brands across India)
72 Company Details: Name : Axe Number of Employees : N/A Category : Liefstyle (For-profit Corporation) Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Ekalavya Bhattacharya - Sr. Manager – Product / Social Media Website : http://www.axetwist. zapak.com/ http : //www.axeplay.zapak.com/ http : //axemusicstar.zapak.com/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ axeangelsclub
Axe Angels Club – building virtual engagement via ‘real’ personas Casebook1
AXE is a cool, iconic, youth brand available in more than 60 countries around the world. Launched in India in 1999, the brand has the dominant share in male deodorant market in India.
Executive Summary
Axe brand communicates through advertising, the various ways it helps men attract women. The task at hand was to One of the important steps in planning for the initiative was create the same brand positioning for Axe on four key social to identify the five angels for the Axe angels club (given the networking platforms Facebook, Twitter, Orkut & Big Adda . success of the initiative was driven to a great extend by the level of real-time representation of the club). Approach/Strategy qq Based on certain parameters, we shot with 8 young models qq At the outset, the objective was to create one of India’s on various beautiful locations across the country. As the largest and most well engaged fan pages on Facebook, theme of the potentially 10 lakh strong community was to which reaches out to more than a million users on a daily be based on these 8 ambassadors, each Angel was given a basis. set of interests and a profession which gave us a large base to power content in the community. qq We wanted to give the users, who played the AXE Inxtinct game a better and a more realistic brand experience qq Drove engagement through user generated contest where we asked users to take a picture of them with a qq Hence we activated the 5 Angels from the game across note saying: I love AXE. XYZ is my Music Star (For Axe Social Networks. Music Star promotion). We got 200+ people adding their qq This gave us an opportunity to connect with users on a photographs. daily basis, rather than simply a one point interaction while qq Asking users to update their status messages and playing a game or watching a TVC.
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uploading user generated videos created a lot of buzz in the qq This club is run by the Angels. Currently we have 5 community. moderately active angels and 3 super active angels. qq We launched highly engaging applications, games and virals && Alisha – Fashionista, Film Critic on Facebook which directed the users and their network to && Sophia – The cute college chick the community && Rhea – The musical rockstar! Planning & Outreach && Simran – The hot Punjabi kudi && Tanya – The Gym Babe qq We started off with 5 Axe angels who would drive the && Lydia – The corporate hottie audience to join the official Axe community – The Axe && Kelly – The sexy bartender Angels Club. The challenge was to make the AXE Angels a part of the daily lives of thousands of users && Natalie – The bold Biker babe Quick Tips: Don’t sell but engage - Rather than ‘Selling’
the brand, we made these 8 angels the © IndiaSocial brand ambassadors which helped us attract fans towards the brand, not only in terms of awareness, but also in terms of trials, purchase, consumption and repeat purchases. Give a face to your brand to build better connect - It became far easier to connect to the audience with a face; especially when that face was that of a character and more and more consumers continue to interact with them daily, driving user generated content and virility to the community.
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qq Over the course of last 9 months the Facebook page has really grown. Apart from the girls living and showing off a sexy Axe life - they connect with the TG on what would be interesting to them. i.e. Cricket, Football, Music etc
qq Topical conversations - Guys love women who know their Sport!
&& During the IPL, each Angel supported a different team. This allowed us to maximise conversations and we used the IPL to our benefit!
&& Similarly during the Football World Cup, the Angels again supported different teams!
qq There are regular contests, product sampling and surveys; TVC’s are released here before they hit the channels.
qq Updates and posts revolved around the latest Axe 2 cities, we are now recognised as one of the most active fragrance, introducing fans to the product and educating Youth brands in India on the digital medium. them about it with content bringing out the ‘Mischievous qq Now at 4,50,000+ fans, Axe angels club is in the list side ’ of Axe Men of top 5 Facebook fan pages of India and reaches out to qq We avoid pushing the brand on the page but once in a while 1.2 million users on a daily basis. If you add up the total the brand message is subtly put out and people appreciate minutes spent on AXE Angels Club on Facebook in the that too. month of August, 2010 it comes to – 49,650,000 minutes! That is nearly 50 Million minutes! Impact – Outcome What Next qq The Axe angels club is now one of India’s largest and most well engaged fan pages on Facebook. && To hit 1 million fans
qq Apart from Sales having increased in the Tier 1 and Tier && To be the largest and most engaged community by the end of the year.
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“ Why social media can“ be so unsocial
Anurag Batra Chairman and Editor-in-Chief exchange4media group Casebook1
I am from the generation that grew up without ACs, mineral Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done there is surprise it’s water or even toilet paper. It was a magical time, without not better.” internet (and obviously no social media), where relationships ran deep and interactions were full of quality. Instead of playing Internet is the great equaliser. It is the medium that allows a virtual Farmville on Facebook, we played with marbles, ‘gilly- everyone to post their comment in the cyberspace, regardless danda’ and cricket with real friends. The physical touch wasn’t of creed, social position, or gender. Everyone is allowed an missing – what mattered was the one-to-one contact, and it opinion, and the internet keeps a record of every opinion that took time to connect with friends and acquaintances, and build has ever been shared on it. This, however, poses a problem, relationships. where all opinions posted are less-than-sterling; in fact, it has come to a point where the content of social media and its Today, all of us suffer from the dual syndromes of ‘paucity seriousness is under doubt. Exclusivity is the new mantra, and of time’ and ‘partial attention disorder’. We have a million you are now known by the friends that you do not keep rather simultaneous things to do, and prefer to do all these things than the ones that you do. Let me put it this way – there are in virtual space, which allows for ‘multi-tasking’. Let me ask plenty of people who try to market their wares to me under you a real question – if you have a thousand friends on your the grab of conversation, and that just dilutes efficacy of Facebook account, and are still alone at home on a Friday night the media – quite like sms marketing on the mobile phones. hunched over a computer screen, how many friends do you Also, I hate the fact that there is no depth in social media really have? In the virtual space, if you are not updating your relationships – there is no pain or effort involved in building profile on Twitter, Facebook, and the dozen other social media lasting relationships, and breaking a relationship is as easy as sites, do you even exist? blocking a person from your contact list.
It’s interesting to note that the internet, digital media and To me, social media is an untamed animal – for those who social media are forcing human beings and marketers to know how to respect its limits, it’s a great tool for keeping become publishers, and marketing and connecting is becoming in touch with the world around (even casual acquaintances). more about the relationships and lesser about the medium of The problem comes for those who do not know the limits of communication. I am reminded of what Seth Godin said - that social media. I think it’s interesting when a person wants to “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but broadcast an opinion to the world, but I draw the line at people about the stories you tell.” Social media is no longer a small who keep updating their Facebook, Google Chat and Twitter movement; it is a force, and for the average marketer, it is no status on a minute to minute basis. I know of too many people longer about whether to use it or not, but how to effectively (and colleagues) whose productivity in their work has been use it – and that’s the real trick! As Avinash Kaushik tweeted severely hit due to their overindulgence with social media. I “Social media is like teen sex. Everybody wants to do it. am reminded of a recent decision of a technology firm which
78 Casebook1 banned the use of laptops and other social media devices in the success of Apple is based in no small part on the ability meetings. After all, imagine making a presentation to a room of Steven Jobs and his “chat with his friends” at any Apple full of open laptops and active cell phones – how many people announcement and at the annual Apple convention. While it do you think are actually paying attention to the presentation? is true that Apple has done a brilliant job in creating a brand essence that is both authentic and desirable, people still feel From a purely marketing perspective, social media shouldn’t that they know Steve Jobs and that Apple isn’t just a cold, be the destination, and while it can be a value-add and the tech company. He has been able to connect on a real human icing on top, it shouldn’t be the main point you want your level using technology to help reach the masses, and yet many customers to be. There is no relationship building in the social still feel like Apple is interested in them. This brings us to an media world that can match the loyalty you get from physically important point – the real essence of the relationship is built on interacting with customers and talking with them “face-to- how you treat your customers in the real world rather than just face”. Even when a store is virtual, you can still connect with the virtual world, how your employees interact with them on a your customers on a real human level. A phone call now and “one-to-one” basis, and how authentic your brand is. then to the customers telling them how appreciative you are for their business goes a long way. The point is, social media is Ultimately, social media is just a tool to stay in loose contact great at keeping loose contact with customers, but it’s not the with the world around you, and those who live just by social main driver of real customer relationships. I was reading that media will die by social media. © IndiaSocial
79 Click here to visit NM Incite Company Details: Name : Katalist Viewspaper Private Limited Number of Employees : 51-100 Category : Media (For Profit corporation) Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Shiv Bhaskar Dravid, Founder and CEO Website : http://theviewspaper.net
Viewspaper: Creating and strengthening the voice of the youth Casebook1
don’t have enough writers we will run out content. Therefore Launched in this activity has been constant from the day we started. The August 2007 - The Viewspaper more successful we are with our marketing efforts the more is fast emerged to become India’s content we are able to generate which directly results in largest youth paper. Based on the greater readership and revenues. citizen journalist format, the organization has grown to a network of 5 sites with Stakeholders a UK edition and verticals in ads, careers, Our target audience is any person less than 35 years of age. health and pet care. The Viewspaper However, till now we have mainly focused at college and network is receives 150000 visitors a school students. Within this we have targeted the young and month and till now around 4000 opinionated individuals. people have contributed to it. Approach
The very objective why Viewspaper was started was to get more and more young people to share their views and therefore getting more and more people to express themselves has been one of major goals and we constantly work towards increasing Executive Summary these numbers.
The Viewspaper is the voice of the youth and the more writers As we are a startup we have always had limited funds to and contributors it gets the stronger the voice becomes. This market ourselves and therefore we have used various channels is what defines Viewspaper. We have used both the physical and have relied heavily on writer referrals. and virtual medium to build a community of highly active individuals. The actions taken have not been for a one time When we started we used extensive poster campaigns in campaign but to build a long term closely knit family. colleges and schools. We also conducted presentations at various education institutions across the country. We also Background used voluntary recruitment groups who would go and talk to people, organize presentations and put up posters. We built a Since we don’t have any staff writers, getting more and more community of Viewspaper ambassadors who promoted The people to write and contribute is core to our business. If we Viewspaper across various colleges in the country. These
82 Casebook1 groups were responsible for geographies and would constantly that there is an extremely strict application process to become get support and guidance from the main organization. a writer with The Viewspaper. So for a person to become a writer he has to fill in a query form after which he is provided When we launched on day 1 we had 0 writers and by using with some information over email. He then has to fill out an all these techniques we got 30 writers in our 1st month and extensive application form which includes writing 2 articles touched a writer base of 700 people by the end of the first of 500 words each. After this the application is reviewed and year. the person is informed about his selection or rejection. What this means is that we have had 4000 writers who have been As we grew we started employing other marketing methods selected till date to write for The Viewspaper but the number such as emailing and Facebook Advertising. In July 2009 of applications that we have received is substantially greater. which is when most college students have summer holidays we sent out 1,00,000 emails and had around 500 queries To keep our writer base engaged, we have also held events and coming in, out of which we finally selected 150 people. We organized meetings and gathering from time to time. These generally found that for every Rs 1000 that we spent on efforts have resulted in greater referrals. Facebook we would get around 50 people to write in who would be interested in writing for us. It is important to note To achieve these numbers we have not taken help of any agency and we have had a marketing budget of Rs 10,000 per month over the last 3 years. © IndiaSocial Planning and Outreach
We used Poster Campaigns
qq Presentations in Schools and Colleges
qq Organising Workshops
qq Organising Social Gatherings
qq Emailing
qq Facebook Advertising
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qq An online and offline engagement and recognition program This has resulted in the following:
qq Merchandising qq 5 sites Impact – Outcome qq 20000 articles contribute (approx) qq 6343 published articles It will be difficult for us to put number here as this would mean analysing the entire marketing effort of the last 3 years but the qq 4000 contributors (approx) numbers below should give an idea of the outcome and impact. qq Contributors from 20 countries qq Total marketing budget of the company over the last 3 years - Rs 7.2 lacs Credits – Strategy & Execution qq Marketing budget to recruit writers - Rs 3.6 lacs We have used no external agency. All marketing effort has been done in-house. Testimonials Quick Tips: http://www.livemint.com/2008/02/04225924/This-media- portal-presents-vie.html Don’t be stuck in silos - SEO, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tv/brand-equity/ Social media, design, email Showcase-The-Viewspaper---Voice-of-the-youth/ marketing writer support etc all videoshow/5890907.cms influence our ability to get more writers. Efforts on Social media http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Youths-in-the-Capital- also had effects on SEO and design find-their-own-voice-create-niche-in-media/334078/ played a huge role on conversions http://www.tubaah.com/details.php?video_id=114804
http://www.tedxyse.com/
http://bit.ly/c426gB
84 Casebook1 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Ashoka-and-Staples-Announce- are now looking to build a writer base in the UK. There is also bw-2423678322.html?x=0 a possibility of us moving into regional languages which we believe will be an extremely challenging. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6710082.cms We have built a community of intelligent and thoughtful young What Next people on limited budgets. Our objective is not just to get another Facebook fan or a twitter or RSS follower. That in our In the recent months with the launch of our topic specific opinion is a spur of the moment, one time action. We have verticals we are now trying to target people who are interested always tried to bring in people who are committed and willing in a certain topic such as advertising, health, careers, fashion to put in their time and effort by committing a certain number etc. Therefore, our target audience is now expanding from of articles to us. It will be interesting to note here that the college and school students to young professionals working in average number of contributions per person to the Viewspaper specific sectors. We have plans of launching 50 new verticals is 5 which means that a person is spending at least 10 hours in the next year which means that we will be targeting 50 of his time in writing articles with no guarantee of whether it of such sectors in the coming months. Apart from this we will be accepted or not. That in our mind shows the kind of are now looking to find people who will commit even greater committed and loyal community we have been able to build. amounts of their time to us by creating video and audio content for us. Our foray into the UK market means that we © IndiaSocial
85 Company Details: Name : UTV Movies Number of Employees : N/A Category : Media (For profit corporation) Campaign Duration : Short term Case submitted by : Imran Khan, Research Manager, The Nielsen Company Website : http://www.utvmovies.com/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ utvmovies
Bollywood Buzz - Assessing the effectiveness of
online advertising Casebook1
Background Launched in February 2008, UTV Movies is UTV Motion Pictures decided to engage with Nielsen’s Online one of the 24-hour premium Hindi movie division to understand how movie-goers react to the PR/official channels that is the brand extension of UTV promotional activity leading up the release of the movies, along Motion Pictures - one of the largest Hindi with how movie-related multimedia goes viral. movie studios in India. In addition, we gauged the effectiveness of UTV’s online advertising by measuring the reach and “buzz worthiness” of The Nielsen Company is a global information the paid ads and multimedia content of the upcoming releases and measurement company. Nielsen’s (images, songs, video clips) BuzzMetrics services deliver trusted brand metrics, meaningful consumer insights and Stakeholders real-time market intelligence to help clients apply the power of consumer- UTV Motion Pictures’ marketing and research division generated media (CGM) commissioned the study, under the stewardship of the CEO of to their businesses. the UTV group. The results of the study would be used to re-allocate the © IndiaSocial Executive Summary marketing spend across the various consumer touch points (print, radio, TV, online) The research was conducted for UTV Movies in Q1 2010, using proprietary Nielsen Online tools to measure the buzz for Approach 6 movies that were released in the same time period. Project time frame: 6 months (Jan 2010 – June 2010) The study measured the impact of paid vs non-paid online advertising-- by comparing audience metrics on consumer generated media (CGM) and traditional online portals.
The results were used by the client to take a closer look at whether the websites they were currently advertising on, provided the maximum “buzz for their bucks”
87 Casebook1 Quick Tips: -Nielsen used its AdRelevance application to determine the sites on which UTV’s banner ads ran and the typical page Buzz via paid vs. non-paid - We determined impressions that the sites get that there is higher buzz being generated -BuzzMetrics was used to analyze the conversations about the through non-paid advertising, compared to paid 6 upcoming UTV movies, and uncover whether the links from advertising. UTV’s paid/promotional sites were being shared by consumers (to determine its viral effect) Where are you putting the money - The sites where the maximum ad spends were made, Planning & Execution were not necessarily contributing to the “buzz” i.e. links which were being shared by consumer, Using proprietary online advertising measurement and hence going viral (AdRelevance) and social media measurement tools (BuzzMetrics), Nielsen Online (NOL) was able to: Our analysis furthers the cause of using social media to qq Determine the sites where the maximum conversations measure the impact of online promotional activities by about Bollwood movies took place checking what consumers are saying and how they are qq Determine the reach of the online properties where UTV reacting, rather than just gauging them, based on clicks has advertised its upcoming films through and page impressions. qq Determine what are the drivers of buzz surrounding the Credits Strategy and Execution upcoming releases and how movie content is shared (how do they viral) Self Impact What Next
qq Nielsen Online was able to determine the leading social The study has helped UTV take a second look at its allocation media forums on which Bollywood discussions take place on offline/online promotional activity. And for online: the and analyze what specific aspects of upcoming movies do results bring forth the idea that consumer generated media users converse about (CGM) sites/discussion forums are vital properties on which to advertise, rather than just traditional online properties. qq By using audience measurement tools, Nielsen Online Traditional non-CGM sites may provide the reach, but CGM determined the reach of CGM sites compared to portals sites provide maximum impact!
88 Company Details: Name : MTV India Number of Employees : N/A Category : Media Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Sharda Mandal, Manager Digital, Viacom 18 Pvt. Ltd. Website : http://www.mtvindia.com/index.html Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/mtvindia Twitter : http://twitter.com/mtvIndia
MTV – Using social media to narrowcast to the Indian youth Casebook1
MTV, launched in 1996 is one of the India’s leading multimedia youth platforms. It caters to the interests of 15- 34 year olds, offering them an exciting mix of music and non- music programming.
Executive Summary
MTV India has made its presence felt in the online world through the various social networking sites. We have an active account on Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and You Tube with a huge fan following & with this active online presence MTV has stood true to its new motto ‘Beyond Music Beyond Television. This has been the best way to enhance engagement with our valued consumers and further extend community of followers. Stakeholders Dedicated online users between the age group of 13-30 Background
MTV is one of the most powerful youth brands globally, it Approach was imperative to develop this brand in India beyond the qq To capture the audience where they are most engaged TV channel. Social Media and Networking were important platforms and progressive to connect with the youth of India. qq To create online platforms to engage with different It was imperative for MTV India to develop a science for demographic groups consumers to connect with this brand via a media of their choice. qq To develop compelling online content
90 Casebook1 qq To showcase MTV as an approachable medium ensuring them closer to the BRAND, our SHOWS and our VJs that there is certain element of belongingness amongst the youth qq Running regular contests and giving away prizes. [FB Freak (Fan of the week), MTV-HITS, beat that tweet etc.] qq Use social networking platform to deliver information, to enrich the consumer experience and ensure that they qq Sharing exclusive content/uncensored footages become a valued and loyal consumer. qq User generated content through these social networking Generate wider online footprint through online marketing and sites are also used for on air shows. Social networking media promotions (FB, Orkut ads) and strike How has this initiative been received by them so far – relevant eyeballs through TV. The number of fans is an answer to this question: qq Campaign used a mix of TV, online and in-channel promotions to popularize the initiative and urged interested qq Facebook – 7,99,624 fans to sign up, become members of the MTV community on Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Astons and in qq Orkut – 3,43,148 show promotions qq YouTube – 2,724
qq Online Media and Social Media were the primary platforms © IndiaSocial qq Twitter-1,47,782 followers and were used to drive engagement with the Digital Show. Ads on Facebook and Orkut. FB One of the fastest growing communities on Facebook and presence on MTV India website widget Orkut. We have innovatively combined the aspects of social networking with personalization and in a process of building qq Word of mouth and status updates. loyalty through compelling brand experience. We successfully track the conversations taking place within the framework Planning and Outreach of social networks. As an organization we are leveraging the Youth centered activities that appealed our fans power of these new social networks to create innovative & are stated below: original brand experience.
qq Connect consumers to brand MTV Impact – Outcome
qq Link to the sense of aspiration and bring qq Orkut community numbers have increased to a growth of 3,43,148 members. 91 Casebook1
qq Facebook fanpage now has a magnificent 7,99,624 fans. Quick Tips: qq Twitter profile has 1,47,782 Think about monetization - followers as marketers move in, users move out! qq You Tube channel started in Also when the users submit inaccurate Nov has 2,724 subscribers information on their profile, our marketing efforts might not be aimed at the right qq Also, is – audiences. && #25 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – India Develop long-lasting relationships - provide a customer-centric experience && #12 – Most Subscribed (All that combines community and social Time) – Directors – India networking, consumer-generated
&& #74 – Most Viewed (Today) content, viral and – India word-of-mouth marketing.
&& #27 – Most Viewed (Today) – Directors – India
&& #70 – Most Viewed (This Week) – India What Next && #25 – Most Viewed (This Our purpose is to provide a unique destination for like-minded Week) – Directors – India consumers and our brand to interact with each other and && #33 – Most Viewed (This develop advocacy. This is an ongoing process and will continue Month) – India as long as possible. We are due to create unique experiences on social media platforms, allowing consumers to relate with && #16 – Most Viewed (This different attributes of their personality. Month) – Directors – India
92 Company Details: Channel [V] – Building Name : Channel [V] Number of Employees : N/A buzz using Twitter and Category : Media Campaign Duration : Short term mobile social networking Case submitted by : Sanjay Mehta, Co-Founder, Social Wavelength and Sameer Agarwal, around the re-launch Director Marketing, Rocketalk Website : http://www.channelv.in/index1.php Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ channelvindia Twitter : http://twitter.com/channelvindia Casebook1
Social Media platform as well, as the core TG for the brand Channel [V] is a was very active on the space. A decision was taken then, to music and entertainment utilize Social Media along with other marketing initiatives, for channel, and part of the this re-launch. Star group, owned by More specifically, the new platform of Twitter was identified News Corp. for these two specific campaign activities, as being the perfect platform for the impulsive and viral run that could be obtained for these campaigns. Executive Overall, during the launch phase of the channel in July and Summary August, all the popular Social Media platforms, viz. Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, and YouTube were used. Channel [V] was in a unique position in terms However what we would like to highlight in this case study, of having a focused TG are a specific couple of Twitter based initiatives that were that was well aligned to employed. the Social Media usage profile in India. With a Stakeholders clear objective of creating awareness about the new “Bloody Cool Channel [V]“, the qq Primary stakeholders - consumers and potential consumers, Social Media campaign identified and executed, especially via of the television channel which comprised the urban and Twitter, worked quite well. Also in doing so, it got Channel [V] semi-urban, educated youth, largely in the sub-25 age going into the active realm of Social Media, and engagement group, in India with its users. qq Secondary stakeholders to be engaged included the senior Background management within Channel [V]
Channel [v] was being re-launched in a new avatar, with Approach/ Strategy significant changes in television programming, positioning, tag line, style, etc. Almost like a rebirth. This was in August 2009. qq The most important communication that we needed to get out was that Channel [V] was changing. So ‘change’ was The time was ripe then, to extend the engagement to the one of the key buzzwords
94 Casebook1 qqBeyond that it was important to However what we would like to highlight in this case study, communicate ‘WHAT’ this change was are a specific couple of Twitter based initiatives that were about. In a simple quick communication, a employed. different logo after many years, for a well recognized brand, serves the purpose of Activity 1 was called iSawTheChange. communicating that ‘some change was Use of Twitter afoot’. It was important then, to see how we could get the logo in front of maximum qq We created a web page where we put a collage of our number of people various popular characters and icons, from over the years. Over a period of 15 days, we would make one small change qqKeeping these objectives in mind, the on this graphic every day goal was identified as being able to reach out to maximum number of people with qq The challenge to the users was to track the image daily and the communication of “change” and the identify that one change. And once they did so, they had visibility of a new logo of Channel [V] to convey their answer to us, via a very small form on that same page. qqThe duration of this specific launch phase campaign was going to be about 1 month, qq Along with their answer, we asked for their Twitter © IndiaSocial from late July, till the launch date of August credentials as well. And in doing so, we (after their 22, 2009 permission) sent out a tweet on their behalf, that said, ‘Hey @ChannelvIndia I saw the change on http:// qqThe overall budget for this one month iSawTheChange.com . 10 Daily Prizes and 10 iPod Nanos to phase, including the fees paid to Social be won!’ Wavelength, was around Rs. 2 lakhs qq As this tweet reached the followers of the participant, more Planning & Outreach intrigue was created and others would click and reach the same URL and many of them participated too. Overall, during the launch phase of the channel in July and August, all the popular qq This contest was played around a 1000 times, and the viral Social Media platforms, viz. Facebook, impact of the tweet stream enabled the brand to reach Twitter, Orkut, YouTube etc. were used. multi-fold number cumulatively.
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Activity 2 was called On Yours. campaign in the real world
In this case, an application was qq We did measure the growth of Twitter followers, Facebook built, which allowed people to fans (as an accompanying by product), the conversations register, and then opt to swap generated, the RTs that we got, the stats on the two web their personal Twitter Display pages, etc. Pictures, with the new Channel [V] logo. The swap would work All in all, these numbers all represented results beyond our on a random basis for 50% of expectations. While we were trying to create communication time. Or in other words, on a that the TV channel, Channel [V] was changing for the better, random basis, half the time, the user’s own personal DP was we also achieved a great secondary objective. visible, and for the other half, the new Channel [V] logo was visible, as the user’s profile picture. Credits Strategy
The inducement for people to do this, was in terms of qq Social Wavelength, Mumbai, represented by Sanjay Mehta. gratification. Any user who stayed registered for at least 5 In fact, the strategy was completely thought out by them, days, was given a Channel [V] T-shirt (of course, with the and we simply sanctioned the same messaging of the changed channel, and its new tag line, ‘Bloody Cool’). And for lucky few, there were bigger prizes Credits Execution involved. qq Social Wavelength, Mumbai, a team led by Mihir Karkare, There was excellent adoption of this activity. We generated handled the execution good participation. Testimonials Impact – Outcome qq On Aug 13th, 14th and 22nd, 2009, respectively, There was a great participants in both activities, and through @ChannelVIndia was rated as 2nd, 4th and then ‘The Most their participation, the message reached to a vast audience Popular’ Twitter user from India. Details in presentation referred above. qq While the activity of iSawTheChange would have been visible to more than 100,000 people, the changing logos qq Medianama’s coverage of the activity at On Yours created a buzz equivalent to a large billboard qq Manuscrypt / Manu Prasad’s coverage of this activity
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Quick Tips: The medium is all about viral factor. If we make the application fundamentally tuned to be viral, we are giving ourselves the best opportunity to spread the fire. Gratification is good. But it does not have to be very expensive. A simple T-shirt is enough to generate interest and excitement. A little debate does not hurt. There were some who questioned the logic on the On Yours Channel V’s exhausted was a reality game show that activity. Why do people trade in their DPs, for required 6 finalists to stay awake for more than 48 hours, doing impossible tasks… example? And why were they seeing Channel [V] wherever they looked on Twitter. But while Task © IndiaSocial there was a sense of critical feedback here, it helped in keeping the interest and the buzz alive. qq Channel V was re-launching. V-Exhausted was to be their launch contest-reality show on TV
What Next qq They were seeking a low –cost marketing solution that could penetrate Provincial India for high brand visibility The launch phase itself, was a one-off effort. However it at low cost and that enabled rich media creation, showed us the merits of interacting with our stakeholders sharing and consumption on Social Media. Since that point in late August 2009, we have continued to engage our TG, and created several other specific efforts and many ongoing activities, on Social Media. Approach We have used Facebook, Twitter and Orkut, to promote shows qq RockeTalk replicated the same on its social mobile on air, call for entries to reality TV shows, and for completely environment, using a programme called Wake-a-thon! independent Social Media specific activities as well.
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qq A new build was developed for Channel [V]. qq 8 RockeTalkers selected to play Although the campaign was available on the basic RockeTalk environment too && Tasks given every few minutes, videos posted live
&& Inbox messages sent to all promoting the 8 finalists Planning & Outreach
qq Launch activity: Wake-a-thon Outcome
&& Sample - You can win a Digital Camera; simply qq Channel V/Wake-a-thon Videos viewed - 2,54,431 answer 48 questions in 12 hours. Think you can qq Channel V contest questions attempted - 43,729 do it? Be part of 12 hour Channel [V] Exhausted Wake-a-thon from 21st Aug 11 pm to 22nd Aug qq Channel V/Wake-a-thon banner impressions - 27,50,111 11 am. We will send you the details shortly in your inbox. qq Unique users who saw Login message about Channel V - 1,98,466 && Audio jingles promoting the contest auto-played when page rendered. qq Impressions for System Buzz sent for show introduction and TUNE IN - 27,50,111 qq Qualifying stage: preliminary contest
&& Short-cut to fame – inviting user-generated video content
98 Click here to visit MediaNama Click here to register “
Doing the math on social“ media…
Karthik Nagarajan Director, Online Division The Nielsen Company Casebook1
Yesterday, I read a press report that said Asia has been So where are these conversations declared Facebook’s fastest growing theatre (apparently a term used internally by Facebook to denote different market happening? regions). While the Indian user base at 13 Million is certainly While social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and Ibibo not the largest, it definitely is among the fastest growing have become a part of prime time folklore, the most underrated markets. The report goes on to say that when adjusted for social segment are the discussion forums, message boards and the Indian internet-using population, this FB user base grew review sites in India. Below is the list of top 10 forums in India, from being 11 of Indian internet population in Jan 2010, to based on volume of conversations in the last year (as measured over 18 percent in June 2010. In a recent survey that we by Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics tool). did at Nielsen, among social media users, more than 57% of respondents claimed that they started using Twitter only in the last 12 months. That means that one out of every two Twitter Notable boards Demographic/Site Description users, signed up post August 2009. Now, think about this - forum.santabanta.com Bollywood celebrities and about 2.1 Million smart phones were sold in India in 2009. entertainment This number is expected to double over the next 2 years. This india-forums.com Hub for Indian TV and movie is likely to further fastrack social media adoption. news and gossip in.answers.yahoo.com General Q&A site These are amazing numbers! And the more I think of it, the pagalguy.com MBA admission/Business school more I am convinced that we are at the beginning of what prep forum seems to be a mini social media revolution in India. Call me a apnicommunity.com General interest forum with high romantic, but I don’t recall any other web trend that we as a volume of entertainment and country embraced so early and in so much volume, as we are humour posts doing with social media – not even e-commerce. funonthenet.in Celebrity and entertainment What does all this mean to you, if you are a brand? More forum people will interact with your brand online. Communities will indiamike.com Travel and tourism site popular be formed and captive audiences will be created. But most with foreigners living in India of all, you will get to Listen – to uninhibited, unprompted and forums.bharat-rakshak.com Indian defence and military passionate conversations about brand experiences. And I think affairs-interest that is a luxury that marketers of today have – the ability to bollywoodhungama.com Bollywood interest forum tune in to the all important consumer’s mind and to do that in bcmtouring.com Indian travel and auto enthusiast close to real time. website
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While it is clear that we as an online market are obsessed means a teen forum. In fact, 37 percent of ‘heavy users’ of SN with our films (like most of the markets in the world), it is in India are between 20-30 years old and the age segment that interesting to see generic sites like Yahoo! Answers and is most likely to click on an ad in a SN site is the 31-40 year Pagalguy.com in the top ten. Innumerable brand-related reviews olds. Having said that, if you are a ‘youth’ brand, you need not and conversations happen on these platforms everyday. get disheartened by these numbers, as 3 out of 4 teens have Nothing brings out the importance of these forums more than become fans of at least one brand online and 60 percent of 15- the fact that 50% of consumers in India, use social media 20 year olds spend at least 30 minutes a day on SN sites. sites to help them make purchase decisions (Source: Nielsen consumer confidence survey, 2010). And online product With all this action happening on the social media market, reviews are the third biggest influencer of buying decisions the million dollar question for marketers is ‘OK’. So who is (only after family and friends). This is especially true for tapping into this today? And who are doing it well? And most consumer electronics and durables, where 3 out of 4 social importantly, what are the best practices? This is precisely media users have read an expert review in the last 12 months. where this initiative by India Social cannot be lauded enough, for this book is your one-stop-shop answer to all of these What about the SN sites? Aren’t they questions. all about teen talk? As I conclude, the overwhelming feeling that I get is, that ‘if I were asked to write this piece a year from now, the numbers This probably is among the most incorrect myths about the would have grown exponentially’. And I believe that voice is © IndiaSocial online market in India. While the average age of people on SN definitely not coming from the romantic, but the researcher in sites definitely does not begin with the number ‘3’, it is by no me.
103 Are you missing the digital revolution?
Ramanujam Sridhar Communication Consultant, Author, Columnist, Teacher, Trainer, Cricket Enthusiast and a Passionate Social Activist Casebook1
In the eighties, some of my classmates went to the US to It is all in the attitude honey study further and I was a bit envious of them. The reason? The US was going through a “sexual revolution” or so one read and Belonging to generation X, I believe we are different. We are here I was sitting in India where even the green revolution was unable to accept generation Y as our equals and peers, as a flop. When they returned a few years later a little rounder if my second son says quite succinctly “Dad, the problem with not much wiser, I asked them eagerly about their experiences you is that you are a dangerous combination. You are both a and they said rather shamefacedly “I missed it. It just passed teacher and a parent. Teachers lecture and parents advise. You me by”. Now when I see the digital revolution taking over the do both!” So maybe it is time for us to do more introspection marketing the world over, I am reminded of this incident. Is if we are to understand youth and their medium better. Are our generation, which has its fair share of industry leaders, we still in the world of print and television while they are missing the digital bus? Now why am I saying this? Consider online? The other challenge is technology. Some, not all, of this. What is the greatest challenge that Indian marketers our generation are technologically challenged. I wonder how are facing. To my mind it is simple “Heads of marketing in many of you have seen this commercial for R world, a value companies are in their forties, Managing directors are in their added services provided by Reliance communications. As it is fifties, while consumers are in their twenties!” Enough and a few years old, let me jog your memory. There is a class of more has been said about the Indian youth market, its size, its young school children who are being taught. A parent of one complexities and its obvious potential as a market. What does of the children is standing outside the class, desperately trying the Indian youth particularly urban youth have similar in broad to get his young kid’s attention. The kid desperately looks the © IndiaSocial characteristics to youth the world over? They are a plugged-in other side. His friends draw his attention to the fact that his community and are either on the mobile or on the net 24/7. dad is outside and he comes out reluctantly from the class, They can bare their souls to complete strangers unlike us who only to be asked by his dad how he can see the score on his are tighter than clams. They have the attention span of nano mobile. The kid looks at his father disdainfully says “Bus button seconds and are bored easily. They are not satisfied with what dhabao” and gets him the score in a flash. As luck would have they are born with and what to equip themselves with to meet it, Dhoni hits a six and the father does a gig in the corridor, the demands of the world. If that means preparing for IIT so to the disapproving glares of two nuns who pass by. It is a be it. If that means taking a year off from school to compete in brilliant commercial which addresses the consumer insight of Indian idol, then that too is par for the course! So where is the how children take to technology like ducks to water while their problem? parents struggle to come to terms with it.
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Opportunity beckons To them life is one long thirty second commercial. They do not understand the online medium, much less create for it. I was at a seminar recently where one of the speakers asked Clients too are experimenting with the medium much like radio an interesting question to a group of Managing directors of in the nineties, without going the whole hog. I believe that PR agencies “How many of you have Facebook or LinkedIn while there are changes around us that we can all feel good accounts “I am not going into the answers here. But my about, I do not wish us to have the Indian mentality- “Look question is simple. If the next generation is in a different how much we have achieved in sixty years”. Yes, but there is medium, should we not try to understand and harness it, for so much more to be done. I think, perhaps the best expression our own good? How long can we keep talking about being that comes to my mind when we talk of India and the online “technophobes” and take pride in being “pencil and paper” medium is that “we have miles to go before we sleep”. And types? The same challenge is with advertising agencies. if we do not traverse those miles now, we will end up having Today’s agency heads have been reared on the picture tube. sleepless nights.
106 Company Details: Name : Tata DOCOMO (Tata Teleservices Ltd) Number of Employees : 501-1000 Category : Telecom (Brand) Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Shitij Jain, Brand Manager Website : http://www.tatadocomo.com/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ tatadocomo Twitter : http://twitter.com/tatadocomo YouTube : http://youtube.com/tatadocomo Orkut : http://orkut.com/tatadocomo
TATA DOCOMO – Fighting the telecom incumbents on social media front Casebook1
Background Tata DOCOMO is a leading Telecom service Why Social Media? provider. The brand When Tata DOCOMO was planning to enter the Indian market stands for doing the as the 9th GSM operator, it faced entrenched incumbents new and its spirit of and strong brand communication barriers from other telecom innovation. operators. However Tata DOCOMO was determined to change the game and cut through the clutter through pure innovation and doing the New.
At the very core of the Social Media strategy was the idea of Executive Summary humanizing a telecom brand and make it warm, friendly and conversational. Many independent observers refer to Tata DOCOMO as a “child The strategy was simple yet engaging. of Social Media”. In effect that is quite close to being the Reach out to every corner of the strategy for Tata DOCOMO even before the time the brand was web and to every possible TG not officially unveiled. as a corporate brand but as a friend willing to engage the consumer in a Social media has helped Tata DOCOMO connect with the one-on-one dialogue on anything and youth of India like few brands have managed. Even after everything pertaining to the brand, every telecom brand launched per second tariff the brand its offers, its deficiencies as well as continues to be the fastest growing telecom brand. Our fans anything to do with telecom per say. are passionate; they love the open, honest and approachable The desired outcome was clear in brand ethos. Social media is the focal point of making this everyone’s mind – to build the most happens. Many brands have been on social media but few have loyal set of beta customers who will probably been a “friend” to each of their fans individually. A champion the brand in their micro- friend who chats with them, solves their problems, engages communities at every moment. them to design products and services and even hear and act on criticism. It takes a lot of effort to achieve this, and the fact Social Media became the first that we do is testimony to the impact of social media to our opportunity which had not been picked business up by most Indian brands in June
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2009 leave alone the telecom operators. It was unchartered Tata DOCOMO has constantly launched consumer waters but we knew that Social Media connects us with the engagement programs with a heavy social media angle. exact TG that the brand wanted to associate with. It further This has helped us build repeat engagement points with a had the wow element and was clearly doing the New. The large number of our fans. Be it “dietsms” which was rolled perfect reason for Tata DOCOMO to draw up an extensive out exclusively through social media, “Ageekthing” which strategy to harness the power of Social Media and build the involved Orkut and Facebook applications, gadgets and brand with its consumers. automated Twitter tools or “Happy DO Year” which could be played through Facebook, Twitter or Orkut. Stakeholders qq Address and resolve complaints – Even before the launch of The stakeholders were the youth of India specifically 15-24 social media engagements, a dedicated customer response urban. The entire execution is highlighted in the next point. mechanism was laid out for priority resolution of all social The response has been phenomenal. Today Tata DOCOMO has media grievances / enquiries. Top management at Tata direct fan/follower base of more than 3 lakh and a secondary DOCOMO has taken great pains to make sure that literally reach of over 6 million. Today there are more than 1.5 million the buck stops when an issue is raised through social views of Facebook Status updates alone with a very high media channels. From activation problems, network issues, engagement percentage. handset settings or billing related matters, every single issue has been promptly addressed and resolved. Comes as © IndiaSocial Approach no wonder therefore that initially the Tata DOCOMO Twitter account was nicknamed the “unofficial helpline”. The Tata DOCOMO social media strategy qq Crowd sourcing – Very early in the social lifecycle of the has been carefully built brand, Tata DOCOMO realised it had hundreds of well on five pillars. wishers who were all brimming with ideas on new product- service offerings that could be a real differentiator for the qq Build consumer company. The social team has repeatedly engaged with engagement – its beta consumers, collecting feedback about usage, Build engagement preferences, bounced off product ideas and pretested beyond the day to concepts to help the product team develop compelling day and one-on-one product service offerings. interactions with our fans and followers, The icing on the cake was when we involved our
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technology savvy Twitter followers to hack into a social Twitter game launched by Tata DOCOMO as part of the geekthing contest and suggest ways to prevent others from doing Twitter typically has a more evolved and techy audience than so. Many of the recent product service launches like GPRS that of the other Social Media platforms. Tata DOCOMO packs and parts of the buddyNet program have been built acknowledged the importance of these thought leaders and on crowd sourcing inputs. made sure they got their worth by following the brand. All products, offers and schemes were first announced to our qq Build brand advocacy – Continuous engagement and Twitter followers before they were allowed on any other media. proactive problem resolution has helped Tata DOCOMO On many occasions Twitter followers were given teasers and build extremely loyal fans on social media. Innovative ways prelaunch feelers much before the product was even in a state of recognizing such efforts through fan of the week on of launch readiness. Today Tata DOCOMO has more than 8850 Facebook and Twitter has further enhanced the cause. followers and we know most of them by name.
qq Micro communication – With close to 100,000 direct We have solved their telecom problems, passed on their followers and over 6 million secondary reach, all messages to relevant people in the company and brought about communication from Tata DOCOMO enjoys a sizeable resolutions or simply just said a hello when someone was instant audience. However, our social team remembers missing in action for an extended period of time. the names, occupations and past communications with thousands and thousands of our fans. This helps us micro communicate with each individual building a personal touch Quick Tips: and therefore a high impact to our messaging. Social media engagement is not Planning & Outreach about shouting promotions and offers - The key is to be able to have a two A dedicated Social Media team at Interface was built to way dialogue with consumers. Paying execute the plan. Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, YouTube accounts lip service get one nowhere, were opened up and optimized even before the brand launch took place. The website itself actively solicited visitors to sign it is important to define specific up to the Tata DOCOMO communities months before it became strategies that are relevant to the a fad for others. The Social Media team set about targeting brand and implement each of the Social Media platforms differently. them with rigor.
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Facebook Media, Tata DOCOMO has reached out to less popular social networking and community portals in India. It carries through Facebook clearly has a large influential community that was the same brand promise of being everywhere that out potential identified right at the start as being a major influencer of brand consumers could be however small the reach of the portal advocacy. Tata DOCOMO set about creating conversations might be. among its fans on Facebook. Like Twitter a one-on-one communication was maintained with all its fans helping resolve Third Party blogs and forum problems, providing information and escalating issues. The community was kept engaged through a variety of status The Tata DOCOMO strategy with respect to third party blogs updated including discussions on TV commercials, jingles, and forums were both proactive and reactive. Everyday 100s product service launches and fun and games. and 1000s of blogs and forums were scanned or any mention of Tata DOCOMO and whenever a user had posted a question, Orkut comment and complaint, the Social Media team made it a point to go and respond to resolve (wherever necessary) every Orkut has a mass user base and was identified as an important post or comment. Tata DOCOMO has gone ahead and created element in managing mass sentiment around the brand. The official accounts on hundreds of blogs and forums and have forum has been used both as a community feedback tool as always responded through its official id. well as a platform where free discussions were enabled on specific topics (either product-service related or band related). Impact – Outcome © IndiaSocial The platform has also extensively been used for contests to keep community members engaged. Today, there are more than qq Each media of the social media strategy has helped Tata 58,500 fans on Orkut. DOCOMO build a strong and loyal fan base amongst the youth and has unmistakably taken ownership of the YouTube innovator platform this firmly establishing the brand YouTube has been a central repository for all brand commercials essence of do the New and videos. Tata DOCOMO has made a departure from the qq The brand values of honesty, transparency and sincerity traditional way of only uploading videos created by the brand have been well established in the minds of consumers. Tata to also showcasing user generated content, specifically DOCOMO social presence is not seen to be a marketing animation videos submitted by users at the create.tatadocomo. gimmick but a genuine effort to connect and engage with com platform. Hi5, MySpace, BharatStudent, Rediff MyPages. every fan and follower with sincerity and with the authority In continuation of its strategy to be omnipresent in Social to solve their problems
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qq Tata DOCOMO has significant Klout on Twitter even when mention parameters like strength and passion outscore compared against global heavyweights. Today Tata Docomo competition by a good distance Twitter Klout is equal to that of AT&T, though it has been achieved in a very short period as is evident by the meteoric qq Grade of 87 means the Tata DOCOMO Facebook account rise displayed in the graph. ranks higher 87% of all Facebook accounts.
Credits Strategy & Execution qq The social mention parameters like strength and passion outscore competition by a good distance Interface Business Solutions (interface.co.in) is our Social Media Strategy and implementation agency and the success of qq Grade of 99.8 means the Tata DOCOMO Twitter account Tata DOCOMO on social media would largely be attributed to ranks higher than 99.6% of all Twitter accounts. The social the team at Interface.
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Testimonials http://www.prasanthp.com/2009/12/docomo-and-social-media- marketing/ There are many independent reviews of Tata DOCOMO’s social initiatives, a few are listed below: http://2020social.com/social-media-in-india-tata-review/ http://microreviews.org/social-media-presence-indian-telecom- What Next majors-1-Facebook/ Social Media remains the cornerstone of Tata DOCOMO’s http://microreviews.org/social-media-presence-of-indian- consumer engagement strategy. Having established the social telecom-majors-part-2-Twitter/ base, we are now looking to change gears and take social media to the next level – leverage our social reach to impact http://microreviews.org/social-media-presence-of-indian- the brand in real terms be it acquisitions or revenue. telecom-majors-part-3-website-and-blog/ © IndiaSocial
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Company Details:
Name : Samsung Mobile Samsung Corby Number of Employees : 5000+ Category : Telecom (Brand) Color Wars on Twitter “ Campaign Duration : Short term Case submitted by : Ankur Sharma, Digital Manager – Generating Buzz Website : www.in.samsungmobile.com Facebook : Twitter : http://twitter.com/samsung_ mobiles Casebook1
Brandtology, earlier this year (shared in detail below) derives At Samsung, we see every challenge as an that there has been an exponential (123% ) increase in the number of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 opportunity and believe we are perfectly brand mentions) over the previous quarter, taking Samsung to positioned as one of the world’s recognized #4 in the Index (against #7 in the previous quarter). leaders in the digital technology industry. The Samsung Corby Colour Wars on Twitter as part of our Our commitment to being the world’s Social Media campaign is likely to have contributed to this best has won us the No.1 global market jump (given that the index also showcases Twitter as the share for 13 of our products, including buzziest social channel). Our own post-activity analyses show semiconductors, TFT-LCDs, monitors and over 3000 mentions of Samsung Corby, amounting to nearly CDMA mobile phones. 6,15,000 exposures. From a total of 3284 tweets with brand mentions in the 12 days, 2853 tweets were from the teams and other fans, leading to an overall exposure of around 6,15,750 exposures at Executive Summary the rate of 0.09 INR per exposure, our expense on the activity being a total of 58,000 INR. © IndiaSocial Samsung Corby Colour Wars was an initiative by Samsung Mobile India during the launch of its touch-phone, Samsung Background Corby – an affordable and stylish touch phone, the first of its kind, for the Indian youth. In India, the Corby brief was Samsung Mobile is the market leader globally for full-screen to connect the dots around three key words – Youth, social touch phones and has been focused on its touch phone networking and colour. Samsung Corby Colour Wars brought all strategy to grow its market share in India. In Sept 2009, the aspects of the brief together. company launched Corby S3653, its first mobile handset designed to support the highly connected lifestyle of today’s We chose Twitter as the main platform for connecting younger mobile users, complimenting the Company’s existing stakeholders (supported by Facebook, Slideshare, and blogs as touch screen strategy “touch for every lifestyle”. The Corby other touch points); chose a viral format to make it attractive was a crucial launch for the brand given that it was the entry to youth and brought out Corby colours at, literally, every little point for the company in the youth segment. step of the activity. The task at hand was to position Corby on three key planks – The Digital Brand Index 2.0, jointly brought out by Edelman and colour, social networking & youth. As an important element of 115 Casebook1
the product itself, social media had a significant role since the qq Top three Corby team leaders, who reached a certain set task was to create a unique experience for the customers on target of followers over the activity duration of 12 days, social networking platforms that would create awareness for could win a Corby. Team members / followers of all 5 teams Corby and build association in the product category. combined also stood to win a minimum of ‘two’ Samsung Corby handsets, selected through a lucky draw Stakeholders qq The Team Lead with the maximum number of members/ Taking Youth and Social Networking as the foci for the follower in the team would also win Rs. 10,000 in cash initiative, it was aimed at socially networked, online savvy qq Ensure that ‘experience is the reward’ and everyone feels youth both influencers and potential customers for Corby. The like a winner at end of the activity choice of medium for the initiative – Twitter allowed engaging with the stakeholders extensively given its viral nature. Duration
Approach qq Planning: 20th Oct – 30 Oct
Objective qq Execution: 02 November – 13 November, 2009
qq Create buzz and generate conversations around Samsung qq Evaluation: 14th November – 18th November Corby in the launch phase to help the brand take a strong Resources allocated position in the youth and touch phone segment. Choose a viral format that connects Youth, social networking and qq Five Corby phones for winners colour as three key concepts associated with Samsung Corby qq Rs 10,000 cash prize for the final winner
Concept Budget
qq Five active, vocal Indian users were invited to form a Corby qq Rs 58,000 (MRP of a Corby phone = Rs 9,600) Colour team each (based on the 5 colour options for Corby available in the Indian market) Planning & Outreach
qq Corby Colour Wars team leaders approached friends and The internal discussion by the team was to make Corby Colour asked them to follow the ‘team colour’. To join / follow a Wars like ‘Big Boss’ with twists, turns, and soft controversies team, all participants had to ‘tweet’ the team’s hash-tag to generate talk and excite participants. ONCE (vote would be counted only once) 116 Casebook1
Identifying the five Corby team the level of participation by the leaders). Based on certain parameters – young (target group for Corby), highly vocal (to leaders: ensure enthusiasm) and having a strong network (to ensure reach), the team identified 12 target team leaders and reached One of the important steps in planning for the initiative was out to them for participation. The following five team leaders to identify the five leaders for the Corby Colour Wars (given were finally selected after securing their approval – the success of the initiative was driven to a great extend by
S.No. Name Bio No. of followers on Twitter 1. @Praval - (Praval Singh) Head - Strategic Solutions 1,279 at Media Redefined - A social technologies firm
2. @Sensonize - (Mohnish Nagpal) 18 yr old blogger, student, 5,611 geek, content broadcaster and (EVIL) Tweeter. CEO of @Limespace Networks. © IndiaSocial Netrepreneur by Day, Super Hero by Night 3. @Dhempe - (Hrish Thota) Knowledge Management 2,809 Professional, Social Media Enthusiast, Amateur Filmmaker
4. @baxiabhishek - (Abhishek Baxi) Geek / new media guy / 2,278 photowalker / microsoftie / windows7 PC / blank noise guy / critical movies fan / windows mobile 5. @monnikinom - (Monik Pamecha) 14 - Blogger, Web Developer, 17,675 Online Marketing Enthusiast, G33k, Watches lots of Movies, Loves Soccer, his comp and 117 twitter Casebook1
Introducing interesting twists to drive conversations and build engagement:
qq Twist in the tale # 1 – proposed team leads allow change of vote once – lots of back-forth-tweets emerged. Team leads didn’t agree
qq Twist in the tale #2 – brought down the number of followers to win, to 200 per team – renewed interest in the game at end of week 1
qq Offered continuous back-end suggestions & support to the teams on how to build supporter base
Actively engaging to ensure the fun quotient was high:
qq Predictions and prophecies – periodically shared the tally of the team leads always preceded by fun videos, songs, riddles
qq Undertaking exit polls to drive interest among participants and push supporters Sensonize came back with a vengeance into the game and qq Amplifying the natural twists in the game went on to win the 2nd place
qq E.g. A team leader wanting to quit – teasing, challenging qq Taking a strong stand against spam and engaging with and successfully getting him to jump back with renewed participants having identified the bots energy qq Facilitating the competitive build-up among players in a Team leader Sensonize wanting to quit the game spirited manner
This is how Samsung Mobile pepped him! qq Team leaders luring supporters by offering prizes at own behalf ranging from movie tickets, lockerz invites and even declaration of contributing 10% to charity
118 Casebook1 qq Building hype for the grand final qq Exposure – the total exposures received from the activity were 6,15,750* qq Periodic polls to evaluate the participants’ sentiment qq Great excitement among the participants
Touch points and channels used
Brand Samsung Mobile also utilized the thriving Corby community on Facebook as a channel of getting more participants over Twitter by sharing periodic updates, content.
The real highlight were the touch points and channels set-up by the participants that helped build greater visibility - qq Blog posts by team leaders & supporters * Exposures – sum of all the tweets mentioning the relevant qq Facebook event page set up by leaders & supporters keyword, each multiplied by the number of followers of the person tweeting
qq Give-aways offered by team leaders on their own behalf to © IndiaSocial win supporters! qq Engagement with stakeholders – From a total of 3284 tweets with Samsung Corby mentions, 87% came from the qq Tracking mechanisms being put in place by the participants participants. themselves Impact – Outcome
As elaborated earlier, Samsung Corby Colour Wars did successfully bring all aspects the brief together. In doing so, not only did we generate huge buzz across the platform and other Samsung Mobile touch points for Samsung Corby, but also seeded Samsung Corby as the youth phone in the touch- screen segment.
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qq Three of Samsung Corby Colour Wars hashtags among the && Samsung ranked #4 among the top 10 buzziest brands top 25 most trending topics in India* in India, jumping 3 positions from the previous quarter July-Sept
&& 123% increase in the no. of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 brand mentions). It is noteworthy that the number of tweets (with Samsung Corby’s mention) were 2853 contributing 56% of overall brand mentions
&& Twitter was the top channel of buzz with 76 per cent of all mentions (118,150) found on the micro-blog platform
qq The activity was able to connect the brief with strategic objective of positing the Samsung Corby as a youth touch phone. Credits – Strategy
Blogworks – strategic social media solutions Credits – Execution qq On Slideshare.com, the Corby Colour Wars Terms & Conditions document came into the “Hot on Twitter section Blogworks, Starcom (Buying) 8 times in the duration of the contest
qq The findings of Digital Brand Index, an independent survey Testimonials conducted by Edelman in association with Brandtology qq “At the outset, thanks much for an opportunity to get for the period Oct-Dec 2009 validated the impact of involved in the fun Fun, yes, ‘coz for me the idea of the Samsung Corby Colour Wars on Samsung’s overall engagement was fun. And the way the tweets from @ presence online Samsung_Mobiles motivated/teased/commented, everything
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came out as an entertaining and involving (very important) qq “Shimauli the Chief Buzz Officer of Buzallong highlights the initiative rather than a hard lined marketing effort. Kudos to Social Media Marketing campaign by Samsung Corby” in the team (and the individual managing the Twitter account)! a Blog post by Sorav Jain that compiles the Social Media It clearly showed the hard work put into the effort.” – Highlights of 2009 Abhishek Baxi, Team Leader, Corby Colour Wars What Next qq “SamsungCorbyWars was fun! No matter who wins but it was a feeling which I could compare with the tug-of-war Samsung has created Social Footprints and the engagement is we did in high school”. – Praval Singh, Team Leader, Corby growing. The Social Media journey for Samsung Mobiles has Colour Wars been received with great acceptance and initial excitement, and we’ll be building on that in the future. © IndiaSocial
121 Nokia- email Company Details: with ease Name : Nokia Number of Employees : N/A campaign Category : Telecom (Brand) Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Songita Verma; Founder and CEO, Bloggers Mind Website : http://www.nokia.co.in/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/nokiae72 Casebook1
Background Nokia started its India operations in 1995. Nokia was primarily associated with mobile devices and Nokia has established itself attracting users towards email solutions was a challenge. as one of the market and brand leader At the same time, there was a compelling need for people to in the mobile devices market in India. access email on the move as it helped people work smarter. An The company has built a diverse product in-depth consumer behavior study was conducted online that portfolio to meet the needs of different helped derive that the major bottleneck was its complexity to consumer segments and therefore offers set up. The common user was perplexed with the way email devices across five categories needed to be configured and relied on their organization IT ie. Entry, Live, Connect, heads for help. Explore and Achieve. Stakeholders
The stakeholders engaged with were:
Executive Summary qq Business executives © IndiaSocial Email with ease campaign was launched in April 2009. The qq Entrepreneurs and SMEs KRAs were to: qq Help handhold mobile users in setting up their emails in 3 simple steps qq Educate them about the fact that mobile emails are easy to set up and they can do it themselves qq Clear perceptions around email configuration and the myth that it can only be handled by IT heads/geeks, increase adoption. A holistic consumer education and advocacy program was launched that reached out to over 10,09,822 active online consumers and helped increase adoption significantly.
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qq Senior/top management executives. qq E75 as a preferred option Approach qq Tap into a wide segment of mobile users across the various Social Media touch points
qq Build thought leadership for Nokia in the mobile email Duration: April 2009 till date. segment The campaign was initiated in April with the launch of E75 qq Drive wider adoption amongst both advanced and aspiring (Nokia’s business device) and was later merged into Nokia E72, users the latest business device from Nokia, thus ensuring a long qq Increase awareness on Mobile Email and its benefits term approach and optimization.
qq Establish the fact that it’s easy to set up mobile email Resources: An expert panel with 8 specialists on email, 4 buzz specialists and campaign lead. qq Establish thought leadership for Nokia in mobile email Build a community Planning and outreach qq Step 1: Create a pull for early adopters (awareness) The initiative was very well received amongst professionals qq Step 2: Build advocates (credibility) from different walks of life, individual entrepreneurs and business professionals. qq Step 3: Trigger adoption (conversion)
Counter negative perceptions around mobile email, change qq Capture the audience and build a communication channel: consumer mindsets Capture a large audience via an interactive online widget that allows consumers to submit their queries and get qq Launch an education program expert tips. qq Create awareness features and benefits qq Influence and engage through an interesting two way qq Develop a platform which can be used to address email dialogue: Launched a dedicated community for Eseries and related queries other S60 users to interact and generate conversations around email on mobile Build conviction around the ease of use in setting up mobile email qq Build a panel of experts to generate credibility: Created qq Trigger conversations a panel of experts aimed at addressing and resolving consumer queries established trust amongst consumers qq Ease of use, benefits looking for a solution. 124 Casebook1 qq Spread WOM through influencer relations: Seeded the E75 amongst influential bloggers to experience and demonstrate Quick Tips: the benefits of email on the go, how to use NMS and set up corporate emails. Adopt long-term strategies and build campaigns that are sustainable. Reach out Impact – Outcome to consumers and provide them a platform to speak up and share their problems qq Generated over 26,709 conversations, 12,987 comments and impacted over 8,72,8000 consumers over a period of 3 Shape opinions via specialist guidance and months build consumer confidence qq Facebook and Twitter pages attracted over 3,000 fans and Understand the pain points of consumers generated over 10,098 conversations, averaging 4092 + conversations per month at multiple levels and help them graduate to the next level. qq 16,098 direct conversations triggered around Nokia Messaging and setting up corporate emails
qq Developed an Indian mobile email community with over © IndiaSocial 13,000+ members, generating over 2500+ conversations What Next qq The online help widget generated over 3000+ queries, over Take the campaign to the next level and leverage on the current 2000 tips have been shared with consumers helping them user base. resolve their issues qq Use the power of influence and awareness to build qq Over 3000 profiles captured, close to 1000 consumers have advocacy and spread the word across a larger audience. acknowledged that the tips shared have allowed them to resolve their issues qq Drive higher adoption and activations for Nokia Messaging (email solutions).
Credits – Strategy & Execution qq Broad base the campaign to younger generations and middle management/students Self
125 Company Details: Name : Nokia Number of Employees : N/A Category : Telecom (Brand) Campaign Duration : Long Term Case submitted by : Songita Verma, Founder and CEO, Bloggers Mind Website : http://www.nokia.co.in/ Facebook : http://www.facebook. com/pages/Nokia- N97/112286308784600?ref=ts Twitter : https://twitter.com/_NokiaN97
Nokia – Reaching out to the influencers in “Search for N” Casebook1
Nokia started its India operations in 1995. Nokia has established itself as one of the market and brand leader in the mobile devices market in India. The company has built a diverse product portfolio to meet the needs of different consumer segments and therefore offers devices across five categories ie. Entry, Live, Connect, Explore and Achieve.
qq Communicate the seamless experience via Nokia’s Ovi Executive Summary Store on the N97. A high decibel Social Media campaign was kick started with a virtual treasure hunt called “Search © IndiaSocial The Nokia N97 was the first touch device in the high end for N.” The hunt was to find clues that were centered on Nseries segment. It was positioned to make one’s internet various aspects of the N97 such as the personal home experience personal through it’s customizable home screen that screen, widgets, QWERTY keypad, etc which allowed us to allowed one to select widgets of their own choice and create familiarize the consumers with the device. short cuts on the home screen itself for instant access. The Considering that the N97 was the flagship touch device in the KRAs were to: Nseries category, it had it’s own learning curve, as it was a qq Establish the category ‘personal internet’ and create completely new interface for consumers. Also, the experience excitement around widgets (since most people were not of Ovi store was an important consumer experience and aware of what widgets are) the idea was to cultivate new habits of accessing widgets and apps, on the move. In the pre-launch phase alone, over qq Reach out to the technology leaders and explorers and 9,000 conversations were generated, that helped build huge highlight benefits of N97 excitement around N97 and the personal Internet experience.
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Stakeholders Build engagement
Technology leaders are those who stay ahead of the qq Engaged with consumers through Nokia Nseries and N97 technology curve and like to stay connected all the time. These community pages on Facebook and Twitter are essentially the super geeks and young explorers who like to have the best of multimedia and productivity. qq Drove conversations around N97, seek first impressions and discussions around key product attributes
Approach Duration:
Campaign objectives/goals May 2009 (5 Day activity)
qq Create a WOW around Quick Tips After the end of the contest, all participants were reached out N97 as a high end to and were converted into long-term advocates, as part of our internet device and Use networks that communities. build excitement around are influential and widgets command a high Resources -
qq Drive activations for reach A team of 5 Social Media specialists, 4 from the digital Nokia’s Ovi Store. activation team. qq Build excitement: in the Planning & Outreach pre-launch stage qq Identify the right web partners: Partner with sites and blogs qq Launched ‘Search for N’, a virtual treasure hunt in having huge popularity and credibility amongst technology/ association with popular technology bloggers and portals – mobile followers. rope them in as web editors to drive the contest. qq Create interesting content: Develop the hunt clues qq Build buzz around the upcoming N97. and questions in an innovative format that makes it a qq Capitalized on the reach and popularity of the web editors worthwhile experience for the consumers and reach out to the tech and geeky community. qq Deliver it through an interactive format: Design an interactive hunt for people to follow the clue and discover
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the answer, yet Impact – Outcome make it simple and interactive qq A whooping number of entries achieved over 5 days – maximize qq Total entries: 32240 participation. Participate through qq Correct Entries: 21790 ‘Search for N’ qq An incremental jump by 34.84% on the 4th day and Widget. 25.26% on the 5th day
qq Make it qq Crossed 4691 entries on the 1st day, adding an average of compelling for 5000+ entries on each day from 2nd till 5th consumers through qq More than 1000 participants waited anxiously every 360 buzz: Reach out morning for the question of the day to consumers across qq Triggered over 6000+ conversations, 4000+ comments, social media touch points, create hype and excitement 30000 views around Search for N, inform and invite a large number of people. qq Over 32000 consumer profiles were captured The web editors: Thinkdigit.com, Techtree.com, Fonearena. Credits Strategy & Execution © IndiaSocial com, Digital Inspiration and Brajeshwar.com Self The working mechanics: qq Participate in ‘Search for N’ What Next
qq Sustain the engagement and continue to drive adoption for qq Choose your web editor Nokia’s Ovi Store. qq The contest was on for 5 days qq Leverage on the captured user base to build positive WOM qq Each day, the web editors posted about a compelling around the upcoming Nseries internet enabled devices and feature of the device and the task for the participants apps. to find the clue, guess the answer and submit it on the contest widget embedded on the sites. qq Use this as a platform to launch new products.
129 Dear Brands, Let’s Get Social
Faisal Farooqui Founder and Chief Executive Officer MouthShut.com Casebook1
On September 15, Financial Times carried a feature Apple service center in Delhi. They promised to resolve the intriguingly titled: “Diligent shoppers offer opportunity to issue in three to four days but couldn’t, or rather didn’t even manufacturers”. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way round after fifteen days. Finally, a review on MouthShut.com was when manufacturers were supposed to provide opportunity what caught the attention of the Head of Apple India. Pradeep to shoppers? That’s how it has had always been. The article was promptly given a new machine and even when that started states that today, two decades after the Indian market posing problems he was given a refund. opened up its doors, Indian consumers are amongst the most demanding. And the Internet has definitely changed the way We have to understand that Social Media is 24X7X365 things used to happen in the “good old past”. Before buying phenomenon. If the Internet revolutionized communication, a product, the average, city-bred Indian consumer does the Social Media has completely changed the way people use rounds of various websites including MouthShut.com to scour the Internet. Blogging, micro-blogging, product blogging, for reviews. No more is it a case of a product being doled out making and consolidating relationships is just the initial phase to the hungry-for-choice consumer and he happily lapping up of Social Media. Internet history has not seen something like whatever is being dished out to him. this boil in the browsers. Social Media is the harbinger of a revolution which has started redefining opinions and breaking It would be presumptuous to say that the good old way of stereotypes. doing business – manufacturing a product and using general advertising methods – is over. However, it would not be Social Media is the democratization of information, © IndiaSocial erroneous to point out that the focus points have definitely transforming people from content readers into content changed. At the risk of sounding too generic, let me just say publishers. It is the shift from an editor-wall-reader model to an that with the advent of Social Media, the consumers have open system deep rooted in conversations between authors, gotten aware of their right to speak their minds and brands are people, and peers. Social Media uses the “wisdom of crowds” now aware of this right. to connect information in a collaborative manner.
If the consumer is not happy with the deal he has got, he Companies are aware that their customers are talking about gets grouchy and lets the whole world know about it. Pradeep them and most are involved in adopting ways and means to Chopra, a prolific blogger, once had a problem with ICIC adapt to this new reality. An increasing number of brands are Bank. When three visits to the branch did not help matters, he now aware that there is something known as Social Media tweeted about it and the problem got resolved in the next two which is extremely viral and can make or mar their equity. days. In December of 2007, his Apple Macbook started giving Hence, agencies are being hired, Social Media cells are being him problems. Plastic was chipping off near the keyboard and set up within organizations to see what is being written on the battery would suddenly stop functioning. He gave it to an the Internet and understand what can be done. The buzz is
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extremely volatile; there is excitement in the air and all efforts brands are sensible to realize the growing power of the online are made towards listening to what the customer has to say. consumer and try to engage him rather than antagonize him.
Worldwide companies are increasingly participating on A few misconceptions also need to be addressed. Social Media platforms. In India, too, the trends have been very encouraging. I know for a fact that big brands like There is this notion that if you want to engage your target Eureka Forbes, Club Mahindra, Ezeego1, Kaya, Cox & Kings, group, then you must bombard them with marketing strategies Makemytrip.com amongst many others have jumped on to the and initiatives. Today by merely being in touch with your Social Media platform. On MouthShut.com we have seen some audience you can engage them and keep them hooked on of the biggest brands talking to their customers and resolving to your brand. More than a marketing strategy work out a their issues using the Corporate Blog platform. Going beyond communication strategy for them. Keep in touch with them and resolving issues, presence on Social Media platform is an you’re sure to have touched them. affirmation of such brands’ commitment to their customers. Its My suggestion to brands looking to engage their customers is: importance lies in the fact that your customer knows you are Do not perceive Social Media platform as a quick fix solution. there to listen to him. That according to me is the biggest plus. Patience is the key. Float around with your ears and eyes open Since Social Media is at an evolving stage, some companies and your customers will float with you. do falter in trying to come to terms with the rabble against Everybody is a winner in the Social Media space, no doubt them. The chatter of the consumer does get to them. Some about it. Remember Brand Managers, your average consumer is still believe that by thundering “SILENCE” like a primary school far more vocal today. He does not need a Letter to the Editor to teacher, the noise that consumers are making will die down. voice his opinion. His voice is far stronger than what it is today. Those who try arm twisting techniques do not understand All he needs to do is sneeze which will create a viral effect. the might of the internet savvy consumer. Nothing is going to One blog on any platform can make or mar your image. So just silence him. He is going to go hammer and tongs at a brand don’t sit there and bombard him with marketing initiatives. if he is not provided the desired service and quality. But most Listen to him and talk to him. That’s how he likes it.
132 IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #3, Long term initiative
Company Details: Name : Cleartrip Travel Services Pvt. Ltd. Number of Employees : 101-500 Category : Travel (Internet – Online Travel Agency) Case submitted by : Hrush Bhatt, Founder and Director, Product and Strategy Website : http://www.cleartrip.com/forums Cleartrip – How Blog : http://blog.cleartrip.com/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ cleartripfanpage the brand “travels” Twitter : http://twitter.com/cleartrip through social media Casebook1
Launched in July 2006, Cleartrip is one of the leading online travel companies in India. It is based on a straight forward premise of “making travel simple” for its customers. Stakeholders
We believe that for any social media strategy, the customers (or the end users of the product) are really the most relevant Executive Summary stakeholder to engage. Our social media strategy has been built around this belief. Cleartrip has upheld integrity and transparency as foundational values of our brand. Embracing these values has made it easy We’ve used our various social media touch points to gather for the brand and the organization to have an active social feedback and improve products, provide troubleshooting, offer media presence–tapping every viable social media touch point customer service. we can to engage customers in dialogue and share with the online world. Background
Cleartrip’s web marketing strategy is still evolving and it sees the web as just one part of the overall marketing strategy. Cleartrip’s initial marketing strategy relied heavily on print and television advertising to build brand awareness and search advertising to drive traffic. After establishing a threshold of brand awareness using traditional media, Cleartrip now uses online display ads for brand building and product launches, something we were not previously investing in.
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We have multiple cases where extremely irate customers (the qq Twitter Cleartrip episode by Kiruba Shankar, post 1 and 2) have been vocal on their blogs or Twitter and we’ve successfully reached qq Facebook out to them, taken care of their problems and turned them from complainers to evangelists. Our openness and willingness to admit our mistakes (the Kiruba incident, post 1 and 2) has Quick Tips: established a high level of trust and preference among savvy users of social media (1). The proof of this lies in the level Assess strengths and weaknesses of tools - of chatter around the Cleartrip brand as compared to other align your budget with your goals and use the brands: most appropriate tool to meet that goal. If the goal is brand-building, display ads, viral and Approach social media are good tools; whereas, if the We’ve always been early adopters of social media tools. Social goal is traffic-building, nothing beats search media marketing is easy if you avoid the cardinal sin of using advertising the platform to deliver a sales pitch. It’s counter-intuitive, because marketers want to sell; but the key to success Measuring and tweaking - lay out the metrics
here is not to be selling, but to be building relationships and for a campaign in advance of its launch and © IndiaSocial encouraging conversations around the brand. constantly look at the data for patterns. Simple things like words and colours should Planning & Outreach constantly be tweaked, tested and measured to see which creative execution is best at We have used the following channels/touch-points to announce meeting goals product launches, share interesting information/statistics related to the travel industry, educate the customer about this Choose where to focus - Being present on segment, and share our opinions on happenings in the online all outlets at all times can actually be very travel segment and the online world at large. confusing because all web marketing is qq Cleartrip Blog highly measurable and marketers often find themselves drowning in a glut of data and qq Cleartrip Customer Support Forum unable to measure cause and effect.
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Impact – Outcome Strategy and Execution
Social media is too new, but the key measure here should be Team Cleartrip.com how much “chatter” is being created about the brand. On Twitter, for instance, Cleartrip far outstrips its competitors as What Next the most referenced and recommended online travel brand. This “chatter” demonstrates that we have a high degree of We’re fairly happy with how all our social media initiatives are engagement with our customers. faring. The next challenge for us here is to scale the initiatives up and get a little more organized with respect to how we There are three key ingredients to executing a successful online use these media as a company. Until now, all of the effort has marketing strategy been unstructured with ad-hoc support from various team members as necessary. Moving forward, we need to get more structured and involve more people from within the company in connecting with customers via social media.
136 Mahindra Homestays – engaging travelers and enabling owners
Company Details: Name : Mahindra Homestay Number of Employees : 11-50 Category : Travel (For Profit Corporation) Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Japa Ghosh-Head of Marketing Website : http://www.mahindrahomestays.com/ Blog: http://blog.mahindrahomestays. com/ Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ MahindraHomestays Twitter : https://twitter.com/indianhomestays YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/user/ MahindraHomestays Casebook1
Mahindra Homestays is a unique Indian accommodation network. Launched in 2008, and initially targeting the UK and Indian tourist markets, it brings together a large number of premium family homes that have quality guest rooms.
They want to talk with brands, discover information and explore a relationship. For brands, this is a powerful Executive Summary opportunity. The obvious benefit of being involved in social media is Mahindra Homestays has quickly established itself as a exposure: directly, it’s a chance to market and create sales, digitally-literate, self-assured and colourful brand that relishes sometimes immediate, sometimes years later – a way of dialogue and collaboration with its audience. Through capturing and developing an audience; indirectly, it’s a way of innovative blog content and social media initiatives we have improving and building on search engine rankings. built the necessary foundations for any travel brand looking for success in the modern online marketing environment. For a new brand launching in India and in the UK we wanted to explore the exciting opportunities available to us through social Background media marketing. Once it was an exception to find a brand involved in social Stakeholders media. Now it is an expectation. The stakeholders we engaged through the initiative were our People want to find products and services using the familiar homestay owners who are delighted that we have provided tools of their online travels: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to this platform to engage with their visitors and prospective name a few. customers.
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Video has provided a great opportunity for the homestay qq The India Travel Blog: We created a branded blog on the owners to engage with the initiative, through a profile their website, designed to draw traffic and ultimately send it to property, giving viewers the opportunity to get a real insight the main site. We developed content strategically to appeal into the homestay experience and get a taste of the hosts’ to different target audiences and niches, from yoga lovers personality and the sort of hospitality they might receive. to dog owners interested in pet-friendly accommodation. Approach We used keyword techniques to capture search traffic on certain useful terms – particularly longtail keywords where Although, the time and resources across different social media we saw an opportunity to get plenty of success. And has varied throughout the initiative we have chosen to work we used lively editorial to communicate the brand in an under six guiding principles and we feel these values have interesting way and encourage dialogue. aided our success. Our output over six months has included: 30 highly popular qq Be honest – we act responsibly and truthfully when things-to-do articles covering key locations; features on representing our brand in social media Indian culture, history and traditions; stunning Indian photography collections; video tours of properties; original qq Be interesting – we ensure we communicate worthwhile, engaging messages that people enjoy © IndiaSocial qq Be open – we communicate in an open, collaborative and sharing way with the people who engage with us qq Be dynamic – we strive to demonstrate innovation, originality, enthusiasm and a clear sense of purpose in communications qq Be committed – we are dedicated to keeping our activity regular, timely and relevant qq Be strategic – we plan and execute communications intelligently for maximum results
We’ve applied these principles across all the Mahindra Homestays social networks. 139 Casebook1
competitions and offers; and we have recently started Having created publically accessible channels for podcasting. The blog receives 6,000 visitors a month. communication they are able to participate directly via Twitter and Facebook. qq Facebook: Strong social media assets create confidence among customers, especially in an unfamiliar brand and We are in regular contact with homestay owners via email and new product. We created an attractive Facebook page telephone to provide regular updates about the initiative and with intelligent use of apps and features and we set about how they can get involved. finding our audience. With conversation and user-centric initiatives such as our ‘Photo of the Month’ contest we Impact – Outcome have grown to 4,500 active fans. We use the Facebook page to seed our blog content, answer customer enquiries qq • Blog: Traffic to our blog has been increasing steadily and push fans to the main site at any relevant opportunity. since launch and currently with over 6,000 visits per month. Almost half of this traffic has come via natural qq Twitter: For us, being on Twitter was not simply a matter of search engine rankings. With a new brand and targeting following the trend. Early on we saw an opportunity to use a new market (UK) we have been able to build brand Twitter in a powerful way to find our audience as they are awareness early on in the travel research process. For making accommodation decisions. We developed a Twitter example, those searching for things to do amongst Indian page which we use in much the same way as Facebook, to destinations have a strong change of being exposed to the seed links to the Mahindra Homestays website and respond to discussion. But we also use it to build relationships with travel journalists, bloggers and travellers across Quick Tips: the world. Our approach is proactive; time is spent, for example, searching for current conversations about ‘hotels Weigh results- Time spent on in India’ or ‘flights to India’. When appropriate we step into social media must be weighed up with discussions with useful and timely contributions. results achieved and we strive to balance our resources across the different qq YouTube: Our 26 videos including host-led tours of networks depending on which generate accommodation as well as a short Kerala travelogue from some well-regarded UK travel writers have brought over the best results. 21,586 views on YouTube. Mahindra Homestays videos dominate the search results on the leading keyword term ‘India homestays’.
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Mahindra Homestays brand. By offering useful destination qq Facebook: Each month we review the ‘Insights stats’ that content within a friendly community such as the blog Facebook provides along with information provided through enables us to reach our audience. We use analytics on Google Analytics. One year on we’ve had 30,000 visits to the blog which is fully customised to help us measure the our fan page. effectiveness of the blog. A year after the launch we asked our fans whether they were Although all blog visitors are being exposed to the brand more likely to choose a Mahindra Homestay while travelling (we avoid selling on the blog) a key aim is for visitors in India compared to 12 months ago and all responses were to then explore the main Mahindra Homestays website. positive. Currently 10-20% of all blog visitors navigate to the main site and are more engaged that other types of referrals. For Testimonials example, a blog visitor spends 50% more time on the site and visits 35% more pages. We’re also delighted that blog Mahindra Homestays was recently announced winner of visits lead directly to online bookings. Wanderlust magazine’s Eureka – Travel Innovation award. We feel that the social media marketing initiatives have been a key qq Twitter: It is harder to measure direct results with Twitter. factor in building awareness of the brand. We limit our time on Twitter to four to six hours each month. Our initiative was profiled in The Hindu Business Line – September 2009. © IndiaSocial Our links to new blog content have been re-tweeted by a number of high profile followers (such as Times Travel in the What Next UK) that provides peaks in traffic. We will continue to build our social media activity around the qq PR coverage: We do use Twitter to communicate with the blog and look to integrate this activity more closely onto the travel trade. One follower had a request for accommodation main site when it is re-launched. Our aim is to continue to coverage in Delhi and we were able to act upon this. build the blog as a resource for travelers and to strengthen the community.
141 Company Details: Name : Club Mahindra Jiyo Life Movement – Number of Employees : N/A Category : Travel (For Profit Corporation) using content as the honey Campaign Duration : Long term Case submitted by : Arun Nair, Senior Manager - Marketing and Head - Web Initiatives Website : www.jiyolife.com Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/jiyolife Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/jiyolife Casebook1
Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd. Is a part of the USD 6.7 billion Mahindra Group, one of India’s leading Industrial Houses. Started in 1996, the company’s flagship brand ‘Club Mahindra Holidays’, today has a fast growing customer base of over 79,000 members and 23 beautiful Resorts at some of the most exotic spots in India and abroad.
Executive Summary Background © IndiaSocial
Club Mahindra, India’s No. 1 Holiday brand launched a new The community page idea was an extension to the Club brand campaign that aimed to re-position the brand. Jiyo Life Mahindra - Jiyo Life TVC which highlights the finer nuances of is the new tag line for the brand and this will bring the brand life. Social Media was identified as an integral part of the brand closer to people, by encouraging them to commit to spending campaign and we wanted to create a momentum in tandem time on, participating in, creating and sharing - moments that with the TVC. allow them to live life fully. We decided to focus on Facebook as our primary channel for One of the largest and most active fan pages among Indian its prolific reach and the captivity of the medium. It also helps brands on Facebook is Jiyo Life. Our brand charter - A call to that Facebook is one of most popular website in India and 2nd live life to the fullest and finest - Jiyo Life is a movement for most visited site with over 13 million registered Indian users! users to break free from stress and relive the smaller joys of daily life. It’s also sharing one’s blissful moments with like minded people of the page.
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Approach
Below, are the highlights of the fan page activities -
qq High quality admin posts for increased and consistent interaction by users
qq Posts had to be interesting as we wanted users to share our posts with their friends
qq A detailed content strategy for Facebook page was thus, planned for admin posts to match user sentiments
qq Regular features consisted of polls, contests, fan photo of the week and others
qq We created custom tabs and landing pages on our fan page
Objective
qq To let the user experience the brand in interactive and innovative formats thus making the brand more memorable
qq Build a large community base on Facebook of active users (to reach 50,000 fans in 4 months). Aim for a large number of posts/uploads from users
qq Drive traffic to the Jiyo Life website through Social Media activities, Facebook being primary.
qq 4. Infuse the term ‘Jiyo Life’ in the users posts and conversations, as a generic term (Eg ‘Google it’)
144 Casebook1 qq Optimal use of Facebook advertising which was a good source to build fans through branding Quick Tips: qq Constant monitoring of ad performance and accurate Customise content basis user interest - targeting led to low cost of fan acquisition Jiyo Life page is a classic example of how qq Aligning of offline events to the Jiyo Life page for higher an initial laid strategy had to be amended engagement with users after user interaction. Isn’t Social Media all about that, users and their interaction? Results We were quite pleased to transform our strategy with new plans based on user In conjunction to the 5 brand objectives, we achieved them all - significance. qq Received over 40,000 interactions from users on admin posts. qq The Facebook fan page visit ratio is 1:3 viz. one user qq We aspired to create 50,000 members on the page by 31st has visited the Jiyo Life fan page at least 3 times on an July which we comfortably reached by 15th July. The page average!
also had over 150,000 wall posts by users (including over © IndiaSocial 2000+ images uploaded by them) qq The Jiyo Life Facebook page made it to the Top 5 organic search results within a couple of days of launch qq We received over 65,000 visits on the Jiyo Life website through our Social Media activities qq In terms of engagement, we have observed a large number of friendships blossomed amongst the users of the page. qq Literally, every 3rd post/comment on the Jiyo Life page by There is a strong bond created amongst them. a user has the term ‘Jiyo Life’ coined in the phrase qq On an average, every admin post receives over 100 Apart from achieving our objectives, we crossed a number of interactions within a single day milestones qq Optimal use of Facebook ads has given Jiyo Life ads more Impact than 100 million impressions! qq Within the first 15 days, we crossed 10,000 fans on the qq Close to equal Male:Female distribution at 46:54 (Facebook Facebook page India M:F – 68:32)
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qq Every admin post also receives over 75,000+ impressions What Next (which is much higher than our fan base, clearly stating that users are sharing our posts with their friends) Our focus remains on building the user base to greater numbers but at the same time maintain quality interactions and posts qq On attaining 50,000 fans, we introduced offline events by admin and users. We want to make the Jiyo Life movement to offer more engaging activities to the users called one of the biggest online communities. We want Jiyo Life to the Jiyo Life Zone. The Jiyo Life Zone was a fun zone be infused as a conversational term for the users to a great held on weekends across major cities of India. We got a extent! tremendous response with large number of footfalls across all the cities.
qq Jiyo Life Zone received over 10,000 visits to our website + over 1.5 million impressions on the Facebook posts Testimonials
User testimonials from the fan page:
Rakesh Mathur: Thanks to the team Jiyo Life to have started a platform like this where all “positive thinking” and “live for today” kinda people could meet....!!!
Renu Sehgal: I have just joined Jiyo Life but have found it to be an amazing platform for positive thoughts. The team members and the people who are a part of it are also amazing. Thank you Jiyo for being a part of my life.....:)
Monika Sharma: Thanx jiyo life!!...4 providing me the stress relieving tips article bcoz...really my stress is reduced...actually it was topic of my presentation..!!!:)thanx a lot!!...waiting 4 the second part of this article!!!
146 IndiaSocial Case Challenge - Winner of Position #1, Short term initiatives Mitsubishi Cedia Sports – the Great Driving Challenge
Company Details: Name : Mitsubishi Cedia (Hindustan Motors Limited) Number of Employees : N/A Category : Auto (Brand) Campaign Duration : Short term Case submitted by : Nidhi Makhija, Digital Marketing, Experience Commerce Website : http://www.greatdrivingchallenge.com Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ greatdrivingchallenge Twitter : http://twitter.com/cediatgdc Casebook1
Stakeholders Hindustan Motors Limited (HML) is one of the India’s Though the campaign was digital-led, it included on-ground pioneering automobile events and was not going to be a success without team work. manufacturing company The brand campaign was supported by Contract Advertising and Flagship Company of and the on-ground event was wholly managed by Encompass. the C.K. Birla Group. It was important that the finalists derived the same experience off-line as they had experienced on-line and all agencies did a terrific job.
The brand – Mitsubishi – remained supportive of every request made by the contestants, agreeing to last minute giveaways. Executive Summary Approach Hindustan Motors (HML) well understood the sentiments of a Cedia owner. Consumer research reiterated that a loyal Cedia Our vision was to engage a community of travel fanatics owner loved to get behind its wheels and just drive. So when around the idea of a long-drive – a getaway. Each applicant it was time to launch the new Mitsubishi Cedia sports, HML couple was provided their personal blogging space on the site wanted to reach out to their target audience and engage to share past travelogues, travel pictures, videos, and their the travel fanatics in conversations around “a long drive”. travel plans. By making the event open for “couples only”, we This vision led to the creation of (one of) India’s largest and ensured the entire family & friend network was rallying behind most buzzed digital-led campaign, aptly titled “Great Driving contestants. Challenge”. The central idea of the campaign was powerful and appealed Background to the workaholics to take a break from their daily grind and escape on an all-expenses paid 10 day Trip in a brand new We wanted travel aficionados from all over the country to come Mitsubishi. together, driven by a mutual passion for enjoying a long drive. The Web was a natural medium for engagement, as it provided multiple social platforms, diverse communities, and tools to encourage participation, conversation, and consumption of content.
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Once the core audience was engaged with the campaign idea, we supported the launch with an Internet ad campaign. Quick Tips: However, we received more quality audience from Facebook, Blogs and organic search than paid Internet advertisements, Social media content is only created by youth thus making TGDC a truly ‘social media powered’ campaign. is a myth - Married couples with families The campaign extended for two months during summer 2009. and kids to look after, and jobs that take over most of their days make time for their TGDC saw 2,000 sign-ups in the first few hours itself; over passions on the internet too. The average 50% had already started meaningful applications by Hour 3. age of applicants ranged from 25-60years, By end of Day 1 over 300 people had completed meaningful with a median around 31. applications, uploaded photos, mashed up their flickr streams, annotated their Google maps, and were ready to reach out on One couple in their sixties defended their age their social graph for testimonials and votes. in the application, arguing they were the best The average stay time for people creating application was over couple because… “29 states, 13 countries, an hour. Our jaws dropped! We were prepared for a long haul 15000 KM per year drive and 35 years of to entice applicants to fill up their forms (blogs), but the core experience. Beat that!” of the community had formed faster than we dreamed possible. © IndiaSocial Results qq Total Testimonials Cast: 13,000 + qq Unique Visitors in a month: 6,50,000 + qq Alexa India Rank: 551 qq Page views in a month: 69,00,000 + It was important for us as a Digital Agency in India, to measure qq Max page views for a day: 7,50,000 + the ROI on print. The traffic volume was in line with our qq Blog Citings: 120 + expectations, and our gut feeling came through as we saw very high quality of traffic – a super-low bounce rate of <6%, qq Total Votes Cast: 3,20,000 and conversion ratio of >25%. This far exceeded benchmarks for brand supported destinations that we had seen in our past qq Sign ups: 18,000 + projects
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Credits – Strategy “I’ve been watching the GDC unfold from day one and gotta say: This was BRILLIANT marketing by HM-Mitsubishi. Not Experience Commerce once in the past 5 years had so many people visited an HM- Mitsubishi website, or had their brands created such a buzz in Credits – Execution the market. I know for a fact that other brands are watching closely and will be coming out with their own in-house versions Contract Advertising and Encompass of the GDC soon. Coming from a manufacturer which has effectively over-slept (while the competition walked all over) Testimonials was most unexpected. I hope some of this new found vigour rubs off on HM’s product planning division (new Lancer, EVO “The Great Driving Challenge is not only a path breaker in X anyone?).” – Read on Team-BHP Forum (India’s hottest automobile marketing but also a lodestar in the convergence of destination for Auto Fanatics) new media with traditional media. It represents how seamlessly we can integrate digital media with traditional media and What Next maximize reach, frequency and impact.” – Pritam Saikia, Head of Marketing, Hindustan Motors Wait and see
150 ThankYou
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