The term ‘Brand’ has been defined in various ways. Amongst all available definitions, the following definition would suit the thought I am going to pursue in this article.

“Brand is a CONNECT between consumers and companies”.  This is a very simple yet powerful definition.

This so called ‘connect’ has undergone a seismic change recently. This change can be attributed to continuous evolution of technology which has really simplified a consumer’s life. Brands are continuously finding it difficult to establish a connect with their consumers and more so in this digital age. Earlier, brands had fewer, what is popularly known as, “moment of truths”. Consumers didn’t have access to much information. Hence choices were also limited. Marketers hardly focused on their prospective consumers. Advertising was seen as a potent weapon as a brand building tool than customer satisfaction and other elements of brand building. Customers had very limited options to voice their feeling about brands.

Digital has had a transformational effect on how brand business is done. According to Interbrand.com, Google was ranked 38th in 2005 out of top 100 brands whereas in 2009 it is ranked top 7th brand of the world. Considering the fact that Google stared its operations only in late 1998, it’s a huge achievement. Brands like Google, iPod, Facebook & YouTube have proved the notion wrong that brands take a long time to become the top brands.

Digitization has empowered the customers with unlimited tools to make them heard. Abundant access to information, thanks to Google, has left little room for brands to act smart with customers. 

Brand touch points have increased in comparison to what they used to be. More interestingly, customers now have the power to make them heard at every such point through Facebook, Twitter, Orkut to name a few. Brands are now aware that negative word of mouth spreads faster than positive word of mouth. Hence, brands are continuously employing “Online Reputation Management” tools to cater to disgruntled customers.

Digital has proved that brand building need not be an expensive activity. Brands are constantly exploring the power of ‘viral videos’ which are rather cheap to create and still give the brands great mileage. The recent “Real Beauty” campaign, Dove Evolution, by Dove on YouTube has close to 1 million views so far and still counting.

PR seems incomplete without ePR. Upsurge of blogs and review websites have made people trust their peer group more than the advertisements. Worse, users may give more credence to feedback posted by a stranger on a website more than what a brand is communicating.

Today, marketers are in a better position to understand online behavior of the users that visit their sites. Web analytics tools can be of great help in understanding what pages are most visited by users, what is the path traversed by users before making some purchase on your website, how many users are coming through paid media versus how many users are coming organically etc. Never have brands got so many insights to serve their customer better, all thanks to this Digital Age.

Brand building has become more comprehensive today wherein customer satisfaction, customer experience, customer delight get equal, if not more, weight age which probably only advertising once enjoyed. Digital empowerment has changed the rules of the game. It has opened up a bag full of opportunities for the brands. It has taken brands a step closer to their customers. And the good news is that you can be a top brand in few years if you are updated about the game. You are closer to your customers than ever before. But the point is: Are you listening?

Hi Friends. Very recently I came across some interesting questions which required knowledge of offline or Traditional media as well as Digital media. One example being, will priciple of Optimal Frequency hold good for a campaign(digital) wherein the Objective is SOV? I had put this question on my Facebook and few of my friends in the industry replied to my question. I am thankful to them for putting forward their interesting views. Following is the discussion that happened on my Facebook. Hope you will find it intriguing & useful. Do shoot your feedback/queries/questions.

Question Was: Is SOV based on Impressions or on Unique Users?

Ajay Gupte                                                                                    

Impressions. SOV (share of voice) is the share of the noise made and not share of the users reached.

 MP Singh

Is it possible in traditional space to figure out how many unique users can be reached at an SOV of, let’s say, 30%?

 Bharat Wadhwa

I think it’s important to know SOV in UU as well because you may not want to show your ad again and again to same individual. MP it depends on your goal what do you want to achieve.

MP

@bharat: need more explanation on your last line? 

Ajay Gupte:

@MP. No… The 30% SOV can only tell you the number of impressions generated.. That is if you know the total impressions generated by the competitive set… Once you have the number of impressions, you can find out UU if you know the average number of times (AOTS/Avg.Freq.) the ad has been seen. Impressions/Freq=UU

 MP:

@ajay sir: In online, Freq is under my control. So I can figure out optimum noise I need to make based on UUs.
Also, I was wondering if “Optimum Frequency” principle holds good when objective is SOV?

Ajay Gupte:

@MP: See SOV is dependent on 2 things

The noise you make and the noise everyone else in the category makes. Noise is equal to GRP or Impressions

GRP is nothing but impressions expressed in percentage terms of the size of the Target audience.  An SOV target is based on how much you believe you should be heard in relation to your competition.  Therefore in real terms you are not talking UU here. Here u are more concerned that your impressions are more than that of competition of course you will optimize these impressions of yours in a way that you get optimal UU (reach) and Frequency.

So therefore take an example your category is doing 10 million impressions a month. You want to have at least 50% SOV. so you need 5 million impressions.  Now suppose your target audience is 5 million people.  You may now say that i will achieve 5 million impressions by getting everyone to see the ad once. So you fix the max number of impressions at 1 and keep waiting till the 5 million UU is achieved. Alternatively you can say that the max no. of times the ad should be seen is 5 and you keep serving till approx 1 million UU is achieved.

So Whats Your Take?

I have another angle to talk on this deal.  Here are my points:

The chart below shows traffic on various search engines in India. Google is way ahead of the race.

Search Volume In India For June 09

According to me, as of now, Google has a better product offering than any other competitor.  Incidentally, Google also allows the second highest search engine called “YOUTUBE” (it has beaten Yahoo in search volume; though the searches would differ on respective platform). It would be interesting to see how Google responds to this move. Keep watching.

This paper looks at exploring digital medium for the same commercials we see on TV.  Video is the hottest new format for online advertising. Thanks to emphasize on infrastructural development, no of high speed connections are increasing day by day. According to TRAI, no of people of using broadband connections were 5.65 million by end of JAN 09. TRAI defines a broadband connection a connection with a minimum speed of 256Kbps. This makes consumption of online video rather easy. That’s why the consumption of online videos has consistently going up. That’s why YouTube is such a success today.  Following table shows the last year video views and expected video views in this year.

Source: Vdopia*

I have put a all possible points of comparison for everyone’s reference. And here is what they look like.

These are some of the quantitative differences between the two mediums. There are qualitative differences also like most of the young working professional are in office most of their time. Hence makes complete sense to run your commercial on online medium.

Though this comparison is not to de-sell or to sell any medium, the purpose of this comparison is to throw some light on advantages on each medium to achieve the client’s objectives. With the growth of Internet, media fragmentation, slower rate of growth of TV(if not stagnation) and changing media consumption patterns of people, advantages of internet cant be ignored even though it’s might not be able to offer reach(in Indian scenario) as compared to TV.

I think the concept of Long Tail has taken off rather well. Every month I happen to meet at least one new Ad Network.  Every time I have only one question for every ad network: What makes you different from existing ad networks.  Every time I get the same answer: We have more no of sites than the competition, better quality of sites, we can do Retargeting, Behavioural Targeting (which probably every ad network can do) etc. But the sad part is they don’t have the data to substantiate this claim. I have been asked many a times as to how to evaluate ad network. With my experience, I have tried to answer this question.

But before we answer the question, let’s understand how ad networks work on various Online Buying Models.

Ad Networks, by definition, are aggregator of thousands of sites which otherwise are very difficult to get hold of. They put sites according to their content. So, a site with financial and business content will be put under Business & Finance genre and so on. They are important from a digital media planning perspective. Ad networks help us reach out to these sites at much cheaper cost. Usually, ad networks are used for performance (ROI) reasons.

CPM Model:  Advertisers have the option of doing Impression buy on ad networks.  

Evaluation Point: Generally used when Premium Sites (let’s say CNBC, Wall Street Journal etc) are to be taken at rather cheaper cost. These sites are otherwise very expensive. Make sure the sites you are selecting under any genre are not available with any other ad network.  Never use two ad networks with same genres. Possibility is that you are wasting your money because chances of duplication are very high. Sites tend to sell ad space to different networks (depending on no of ad spots available on the page) on the same page. Bottom-line is: FOCUSED SITES @ MINIMUM COST.

Here is the one example of what can happen if you do CPM buy. Two banners on the same page.

Networks Using Ad Placements

 

 

CPC Model: Advertisers have the option of doing ROI buys on Ad Networks by paying for per click. It’s the most commonly used buying model.

Evaluation Point: To test the true potential of a network viz-a-viz other network, check how many clicks a network within a particular genre can deliver within a stipulated time frame and at what cost.  Don’t test network with, let’s say, 10000 clicks a week. Am sure every network can achieve it.  Test a network like 100000 clicks within a week @ lowest imaginable cost. Then you will get the true worth of a network. Bottom-line is: MAXIMUM CLICKS @ MINIMUM COST.

CPA Model: Another popular model to do ROI buy is to pay for per action (Lead, Registration, Acquisition etc).

Evaluation Point: Almost everything that applies to CPC Model evaluation, applies to CPA model too. Couple of additional important things that one can look at are Click To Lead (CTL) Ratio and the quality of leads. Bottom-line: MAXIMUM LEADS @ MINIMUM COST.

I hope this would a useful read for anyone looking to read about ad networks. Do comment for more discussion on the topic.

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!!!!

This is one of the ads that I have seen lately which promopted me to share it with everyone.

This is one the ads which POND’S came up with on the occassion of WOMEN’S Day in India. This is what I call the real BRANDING.

PONDS Celebrating WOMEN'S DAY

Enjoy!!!

Recenetly, I came across something which forced me to put it on my blog. I am talking about LENOVO’s leveraging OLYMPICS through BLOGGING platform to make the associations of TECHNOLOGY with the games and therey with the brand. But what’s special about this blog? People writing on this blog are not professional bloggers or most of them dont even blog. Lenovo has picked up ATHELETES from across the world and has turned them into BLOGGERS so that they can share their experience with the entire world. Fans from across the world would be reading about their players experience online.

Lenovo's Social Media Campaign

OLYMPICS, being a global event, will help LENOVO is having positive association with the brand(Lenovo being a chinese brand).

All in all….Good job by Lenovo

With summer setting in, cola giants have really turned the heat on each other. First, coca-cola’s  Sprite spoofing Pepsi’s YOUNGISTAN campaign(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_N-FVryV1I). Following the suit was Pepsi, taking on Thums Up commercial(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJxTQvdTsIY). I really enjoyed watching Pepsi’s answer to Thums Up. Must say, it’s a good job by ad agency. But there is flip side to it also. It is the first time when Pepsi as a Mother Brand has taken on any such spoof.  Coke, as a main brand, has never deviated from the brand vision. They let the other brands( Thums Up, Sprite) to take care of all such campaigns. Pepsi should have avoided this direct confrontation. The spoof(Sprite) could have been easily taken care of by any of their non-cola brand like Mountain Dew. 
But what I am sure is that both the brands will add to each others GRP’s. But who takes the cake is still remain to be seen. Lets just sit and enjoy the summer while both the brands are sipping each other.

I was just browsing on internet that I came across Idea Rocks India digital campaign. Just out of curiosity, I clicked the banner. I really liked the thought of FIRST ONLINE SINGING CONTEST, per se. But the execution of campaign has killed the essence of the concept. An idea is as good as its execution. IDEA forgot this. According to me, there are several implementational flaws in the campaign which flout both Digital & Branding Rules.

IRI is a big property that can be leveraged for a long time in taking this brand forward. Not having its own website, is the first basic fundamental mistake. Second, putting your brand as a microsite on MSN(or any other site) is the second mistake. Idea must have saved money and effort in doing this, but they have done a wrong thing to the brand. Redirecting users to this temporary site would mean losing out on an opportunity to engage the pre-qualified users in better way on the brand site(IRI), which is missing in this case. In an era where brands are trying hard to create communities/be part of communities, IDEA so far has kept users apart from making one such community. All thanks to the digital strategy.

What would happen to the site once the campaign is over? The digital agency is more at fault than the brand. Digital Specialists are not supposed to do these stupid mistakes. MSN does not provide any number on Impressions burnt etc. So measuring the performance in its entirety might be a big problem.

Wat saddened me the most was to see Microsoft promoting their “SILVERLIGHT” product at the expense of brand’s money.

Digital can give brand the leverage which no other medium can offer. Digital strategy should be conceived  considering the overall brand strategy. Any communication effort should add to the brand, not take it away from the brand.
How much this campaign would help the brand, I have my own reservations.

But the good news for the brand is that all is not lost yet. They can still retrieve themselves. But would take a lot of strategic thinking which has so far been missing. It would surely take an idea to change IDEA’s life now.