Pope Benedict XVI Goes Online….

Here is the ultimate news. Pope Benedict XVI has taken the online route. Pope made his debut on a site called XT3, the largest online Catholic community, dedicated to connecting people for discussion about matters that are important to them. BXVI is the name taken by the POPE to interact with the community members.

This is what POPE has to say:

Dear Friends,
Fifty days ago we were together for the celebration of Mass. Today I greet you on the birthday of Mary, Mother of the Church. Empowered by the Spirit and courageous like Mary, your pilgrimage of faith
fills the Church with life! Soon I am to visit France. I ask you all to join me in praying for the young people of France.
May we all be rejuvenated in hope!

BXVI

I had never thought that someone like POPE can even think of it. But Mr. POPE u beat me to it….

Pope has seen the value of Online……..God knows when some marketers will understand!!!!

Social Media: Are Clients Suffering From Myopia?

There is hardly any marketer who does not talk about need to leverage Social Media for their brand. So much so that some have added another ‘P’ (Participation) in already existing 4 P’s. It sounds really nice to hear clients speaking about social media. But when it comes to implementing the campaigns, they are back to square one. Most of the clients are doing online campaigns either because their competitors are doing it or because internet is probably the most measurable medium. Most of the times strategic thought is missing. Clients still create fire on not been able to see their ad on sites. When we broach the Social Media topic, clients by default assume it’s also as measurable as their banner campaign which unfortunately is not the case. Conversations can only be felt. They cant be measured. But clients are still number driven thanks to traditional media. Despite my efforts in explaining them that it’s not a number game, they agree to all points but at the end still ask for numbers. My client believes in making a community for every campaign they do. The campaign duration is usually one month. What makes it worse is when client doubts if anything is happening on social media coz the client is not able to see anything. It does not end here. No one from MARCOM/Brand team joined the community to drive the community. Campaign is over, so is the community. Client is of the opinion that if a community does not have atleast 800+ in a month, the campaign is a flop. All conversations in the community were discounted. Is this what is social media known for? This is the case with one of World’s best brand in India.

It’s clearly a case of clients failing to appreciate the strengths of respective mediums. Using any media for the sake of using it will not benefit the brand in anyway. My advice, trust the agency if as a client you are not sure about Social Media. Work with the agency and learn. Agencies know as much as clients do, if not more.

Brands and Blogging

Brands and blogging don’t enjoy a marriage made in heaven. Blogs have the power to change behaviour. If your brand is going to blog you need to understand what you want to change about it. This is uncomfortable because brands usually like changing consumer behaviour not the other way round. There are no ‘old’ or ‘new’ media – there are communications media and social media. Communications media are the natural habitat of brands. Their use of social media is problematic. Social media demand that you trade control for influence. Unless brands are happy with this they should stay out of social media.  Just use it to listen to the conversation. Social media is all about conversation. Brands only have a role if they can make the conversation more interesting. Media is only interesting as content distribution vehicle. And increasingly it will be free to use. Measureability of social media is an issue for brands. So far, social media can’t be measured so lets stop trying. We have to get comfortable with managing the immeasurable.

Is Internet For FMCG?

Is internet for FMCG? Answer is YES, it is. It’s true that not many FMCG companies are leveraging the power of internet. Probably they compare this medium with other traditional mediums like TV and Print which are high on reaching out to masses. Intenet, as of now, is not a “Reach” medium as we have only 40 million online users.  FMCG companies have heavily relied on TV and Print to reach out to maximum prospects and to build recall value. FMCG is considered to be a low involvement category which means that buyer is not actively involved in the purchase. He generally buys due to regular buying habit and generally buys a product with highest recall in his mind. Internet can help these companies in achieving the TOP OF MIND RECALL through its power of engagement. Games, Virals, Communities and Intriguing banners are some of the tools to create engagement. Plus spill over is minimum in this medium if we compare it other mediums like TV n Print. Look at some of the work done by AXE (AXE ACADEMY), SUNSILK’s www.Gangofgirls.com etc. These are very good examples of adding to the brand equity through leveraging internet’s power of engagement. Internet has the advantage of being highly measurable medium.For a FMCG company to be able to achieve good results, keep in mind the following points: 1. Be open to test the medium. Do not discard this medium straight away. 2. Set realistic objectives. Be clear what you want to achieve. For e.g. selling a toothpaste online would be too much for the asking. 3. Work 360 degree. Internet is not a substitute medium but a support medium. 4. Work closely with your online agency. Don’t think your agency is ripping you off. Dont worry. To conclude, I would say that TV and Print would continue to play a major role for FMCG players but at the same time, power of internet cant be ignored.

View Through As A Branding Metric?

When advertisers evaluate media spending, their main concern is return on investment. Online advertising is particularly measurable in this regard because immediate responses to an ad can be measured directly from the click to the purchase. Online advertising is also responsible for driving additional ROI by branding effect created by online ads which are not clicked by the user. Many advertisers do not track this effect which, if measured properly, can help in evaluating properly the performance of this medium.
Advertisers or agencies have stuck to CTR (which I guess is a DR metric).  For e.g. CTR of 4% is  considered to be good. But what about rest of 96%. Why is it not being accounted for? 96%  users have not clicked the ad but it does not mean that all of them have not seen the ad at all. This ad must have created some branding effect (awareness, recall, strengthens loyalty etc).  And users from this 96% may be buying your product/service after watching your ad but they are not being accounted for. For a campaign whose purpose is branding only, view through becomes important and cant be ignored.

At the same time, when we are touting the advantages of view through, issues pertaining to measurement of View Through should be answered before we go onto implement the same. One such issue is how do we separate users who directly visit our website regardless of if they have seen our ad or not.  For example, assume you are advertising a campaign online. Within the same duration, many regular users, who anyways visit your site, would also visit irrespective of ad exposure. How do we make that distinction? Answering such issues can help advertisers/agencies in evaluating their media spending.

How do we calculate View Through is another issue which we need to look at. In the end. we know that View Through effect does exist but how much does it add to the 
bottom-line, still remains elusive.

Viral Marketing or WOM Marketing

Word of Mouth is the act of consumer providing information to other consumers.
Word of Mouth Marketing means giving people a reason to talk about your product or brand and forward it to others. WOM acknowledges the importance of customers endorsing their products or brands. WOM is the most honest form of marketing. By its very nature, viral marketing campaign is unlike which has been done before which means there is no formula,no stats and no guarantee in advance. Results can only be proven retrospectively by which it can be too late for those results to have any more meaning than the knowledge that viral marketing works in priciple. Even the successful campaigns of past wont be able to replicate same kind of success if used by competitors. It’s very high risk and high gain means of marketing. Also the cost is not measured in financial terms but in the way customers perceive the brand. For this to happen, viral campaign must be able to stimulate emotional resposne from the prospects.

The campaign should not be fake otherwise same campaign can backfire. I am not sure if there is any empirical evidence which proves if it really makes difference to the bottomline. Much like television advertising, it is not always clear wheather people have purchased a product due to TV commercial or due to varios brand promotions across various platforms. All I can say is it works.

Brand Values- Searching Soul Of A Brand

Brand – the only exclusive asset the Companies have these days is not managed exactly the way it should be. Every brand has some core values or the key drivers that justify the existence of that very brand. These are the strongest of the associations that the customers have with the brand. These drivers eventually define, the identity, personality, communication strategy, extension and everything of the brand. Whatever operations you perform on your brand have to be in line with your drivers.Let us take an example: Dabur’s key driver is health & hygiene. Revlon’s keydriver is fashion & makeup. Let us assume that both the Companies come up with a body lotion and are ready to invest any amount to make it successful. They want to position it as a body lotion for the rejuvenation of your senses. Which one will be more acceptable to the consumers.Obviously Dabur. The reason being the associations that people have with Dabur. The associations of health, hygiene and natural products. On the other side, the associations with Revelon are of fashion, cosmetic, make-up that does not go with the rejuvenation (that is always internal).

The drivers play a major role in deciding the extendibility of the brand. The Communication strategy has to be in line with the brand drivers. What needs to be done is that the brand stewards have to identify the brand drivers and streamline their strategy accordingly. Well defined brand drivers are the soul of the brand and need to be taken care of .

Brand Activation: Bringing Your Brand To Life

Marketing, as we know, is all about waging war against competitive forces to win market share. For this purpose, marketers create warriors which win the perceptual battle for them, and these warriors are called BRANDS. Brands have proved their worth by earning premiums, decimating competitions and even beating time factors (as many brands are still leader as they were a century ago). Owing to this, marketers have stepped up their efforts to build their brands. They are building their marketing programs around their brands.Today, marketplace is replete with competition. Opening up of economy has led to the entry of foreign brands into the marketplace. These brands are also adding to the chorus. Advertising has always been seen as main weapon to build brands by the brand managers. Excessive reliance on this form of communication has resulted in “over communication”. Ad clutter has been increasing gradually and the future shows no sign of relief. Not only has this, advertising also lost its credibility if we compare it to what it used to be decade back. Reasons are many: More knowledgeable customer, comparative advertising, internet etc.Therefore, marketers are exploring new ways of supporting their brand. One such method is called Brand Activation. Brand activation can be defined as marketing process of bringing a brand to life through creating brand experience.Next question now is what to activate? Generally, the core features or brand values of a brand are used for activation. That’s what every brand manager strives to achieve i.e. communicating their brand values to their target customers. But a word of caution here: select only one or two features or brand values to activate. Don’t try to communicate each and every detail of your brand. One has to appreciate the fact that branding is based on the concept of singularity.This concept assumes a greater significance in case of services which are intangible in nature. Let me take example for both products and services to explain brand activation.

B.A. In Products:

Consider a hypothetical shaver brand “X”. Further assume that there are six other brands in this category. All brands are touting themselves as provider of smooth shave in their respective ads. But you are the smoothest one but how do you make your T.A believe of the same. B.A comes handy in case scenario.Create such a platform, where you can meet your T.A and give them free shave so that the can feel the “smoothness”. Allow them to interact with your brands as much as possible. You can do so with the help of road shows and exhibitions etc. Once you have done that, customers will be able to validate your claim. Also, they will relate to your ads.

B.A in Services:

It’s the people in services which actually activate your brand. Consider the case of insurance company which claims to be most caring company. But the problem is that every company is saying that. The company (lets say) which reaches the place of accident, will be considered as most caring.

Benefits of Brand Activation:

1. You can convey your positioning using brand activation.

2. It supports your ad claim if used carefully.

3. Distortion is minimum in this case.

4. It increases your brand salience.

5. Helps in revitalizing a brand. Horlicks is doing it through its campaign which is trying to change its image from fuddy-duddy to an exciting brand among children. Their Wiz-Kid competition across the country is the perfect example of brand activation.

6. Brand activation can elicit customer insights as people interact with the brand.

Limitations of Brand Activation:

1. Lack of initiative on part of brand managers is the major concern.

2. Lack of measurement matrices or indices is the limiting factor.At the end, I would like to say that brand activation should not be confused with the below the line activities. Brand Activation is seen as a tool to build brands through interaction with its target people whereas below the line activities, most of the times, are sales oriented