At the risk of reinforcing my (somewhat fallacious) positioning as a  ‘Social media’ guy (I am a digital marketing person- and a proponent of engagement led marketing), here is an interesting and relatively new (end June 2010) content on digital (mainly social media, I would say) strategy from a leading brand.

A session by Alexandra Wheeler- Digital Director at Starbucks.

Listing the video along with the presentation here- as noticed on the Digital Buzz blog

Some key points from the presentation (you’ve heard a lot of this before- and the reason might be that it is becoming standard practice now across many firms)

• Social media is about relationships and engagement- so be authentic and don’t outsource your voice (Hmm…not outsourcing your voice could be debatable- and I would argue it does not play with all brands across all situations)
• Digital within Starbucks fits within a larger integrated marketing strategy ( I like this statement. As someone exposed to all marketing disciplines- especially within the digital domain- no one can vouch for this more than me)
• Revisiting Starbucks digital (social actually) strategy- some key success areas were- building a coalition (finding a common cause with the community); making a commitment and acknowledging mistakes when they were made. Crowdsourcing ideas worked for them -the “Free WiFi”  idea came up from the “My Starbucks Idea” platform and an organic community build-up led to ‘real’ fans coming in contact with the brand
• I love the importance they laid to curating content. Content became an engagement vehicle (something I’ve been reinforcing the whole of last year- and continue to do so) Creating great content and seeding it meaningfully scored high points (what I have called GermFeeding and GermSeeding)
• We need to put resources behind digital/social- Completely agree. To make it a committed effort- this needs investment in right people, tools and processes.

Enjoy the talk and the presentation below:

Following up on my much earlier post on some practical uses of Augmented Reality for marketing, here is one on what it could look like in the future- have seen many around the same topic, but this one struck- and thought should share. If for nothing else, then for the pure eye candy and the ‘cool’ factor that marketers are mostly after.

The setting could be in your kitchen.

Enjoy.

Governments are largely reactive in nature. Things move with a heavy foot, there are processes to be followed, and ‘corporatization’ is frowned upon. By ‘corporatization’, I largely mean ‘marketing’.

The fundamentals governing this thought process have ground in the fact that governments need to be largely ‘welfare’ units, ‘not-for-profit’ organizations. Which they should be- but with a broader perspective.

Marketing is so synonymous with greedy profit churning and pushy sales calls, that it is almost a bad word- and because of lack of hard data supporting usefulness of each marketing initiative, governmental organizations find it easy to leave it alone. Not to be touched. From a useful discipline that allows one to make their ideas reach relevant people, it becomes a cryptic, pseudo-relevant science.

There is little specialist talent, therefore, within governmental organizations to proactively take marketing initiatives.

Things, however, are changing. Not only do we see political parties and political candidates using the power of new age marketing techniques and tools, we also see some governments taking a pro active approach towards connecting with their stakeholders.

And from what I have seen in the recent few years, fewer government organizations have used new marketing  opportunities than those within Singapore.

Specifically from the ‘Social Media’/engagement standpoint, there have been some recent successes that I noticed- I will list some of them here- mostly from top of mind recall, but I am sure there are more cases out there.

Like most new things, these initiatives have not been without their share of criticisms (ample to find that in Singapore) and execution hiccups.

But the highlight is not about how great the campaigns were, how flawless the execution was or how measurable were these campaigns.

Many of these campaigns were none of these, and many probably failed miserably at achieving the desired results.

But what is worth highlighting is that they tried. It is BIG DEAL in governments. These are government or quasi government (aided or assisted with government control/stake) organizations. These are not nimble enterprises. The fact that they take this ‘risk’ of venturing into hitherto unknown territory and risk mockery or failure, is HUGE. To me, it is important enough that these campaigns saw the light of the day.

Time does not permit to dissect these campaigns, but I hope to, sometime in future. And also, my point of view on how they could have been better or what could be the next steps following up from where they left it.  As of now, just listing some details on these campaigns.

• Singapore Tourism Board (STB):
  • Aided by their agency partners, STB seems to have undertaken a few non-mainstream initiatives
  • STB Crowdsourcing Ideas from public: Following up on their roadmap to year 2020, STB launched a website asking the common person on their vision of how to improve this sector in 2020.
  • STB blogger connections: STB now has a section on their website featuring Blogger perspectives on Singapore.  Bloggers talk about new stuff, their experiences, and bring in a slightly different side of the life in Singapore- which could be of immense interest to the visitors who want to get the story from individuals not corporations.
• Reach Singapore: The organization entrusted with community development in Singapore, had launched early some basic steps in connecting and reaching out to the community, specially the youth. Setting up the ubiquitous Facebook and Twitter communities were basic attempts, but the fact that some initiatives were as early as 2008, is interesting to note.
• Senior ministers in the government now actively engage digitally- and participate in forums. This is seen even ‘offline’. Last year, at the omy.sg (a bilingual site in mandarin and english) Blogger award night, the Chief Guest was Mr George Yeo- Minister of foreign affairs in the Singapore government. Attending a congregation of largely teens or tweens!
• NTUC Fairprice : Less known as a “trade union corporation”, more as a supermarket chain, their facebook page now boasts more than 26k members. Frankly, it is quite basic, slightly unkempt (“What’s up” section has nothing inside (!)) and seems a lot more could have been done than promoting a contest and their TVCs. But still worth a mention.
• SingPost: This is what happens when an old school service tries to appeal to the new age consumers. Singapore Post or SingPost is essentially a postal service (actually they have a lot more to their repertoire) and here is what they tried:
  • In the wake of Youth Olympics in Singapore, they decided to undertake a stealth marketing campaign.
  • Some graffiti artists were hired and in full public view, were made to paint graffiti on Singpost postboxes. In Singapore, that is BIG DEAL. Any graffiti on public properties is treated as serious vandalization and is punishable by law.
  • The morning after effect assumed was that people would talk about it, it would spread- followed by Singpost admitting it was a publicity stunt -and all will be hunky dory. Only it went the other way- complaints and social media buzz derided the act as distasteful and counter to the values we should impart to the youth.
  • To me, it was Classic germFeed- created an opportunity to talk- bystanders created content- took videos/took snaps, shared it and commented on it.
  • Good or Bad- to get a postal service get talked about by the youth is a huge deal. I am not sure if kids nowadays would think of Post Boxes as something to be like a fire safety poles. If kids were all about sharing and compassion and love and the spirit of games- gaming and cinema would have died long back.
  • Could it have done in a better way? Sure it could have been. Was graffiti necessary? Sure it wasn’t. But the idea of doing a radical exercise- something out of the ordinary- by itself is worth a mention.

What would I have done? Here is what I would have done- stick color codes or Augmented Reality code stickers on all Post boxes- promote it across media channels- encourage people to snap it with their camera phones- wherever they saw the boxes and create engaging content to engage with it. Maybe show the journey of a parcel,maybe show profile of Youth Olympic atheletes- tonnes of things to surprise people with.

Actually, as I said, none of these are examples of ‘great’ initiatives. But if they evolve from hereon- it is what will make the difference. If they continue trying it is then they will make that difference.

They have had their share of criticisms, let us allow them to entertain and engage us.

Think About It

Shalabh

“Think About It”- Ideas shaping digital media and marketing in the new decade

Its love’s labour. Really.

After more than a year of running ChasingTheStorm – with loads of loving time spent- and acquiring loads of loving friend circle, this is it. I put together a book.

“Think About It” is a book inspired by Ideas from this website. With more meat, more thoughts and well, in a different format. The title of the book is actually the signature I use in most articles.

The book covers Digital Media and Marketing trends in the new decade, Mobile Media, new marketing paradigms and Marketing Case studies.

It is written not as a tutorial to digital media platforms or Digital marketing 101. Rather- it attempts to raise a storm on specific Digital media issues. Offering an easy read for the evolved, thinking marketer, it is a book to raise debate- and expects a degree of interest in Digital Media.

I’ll talk more about it later- but since I am quite excited about it, I decided to put up the news anyways.

It’ll go in print soon (and available online and on the Kindle)- but as usual, not without your support in its making. I need you to help pick up the right cover design.

My good friend Ankur Khurana volunteered to get the cover design done- and boy- he did get them designed in two days flat. Many thanks buddy. And many thanks to MG Harti- the Art Director who helped the idea come into reality by doing many iterations.

So here are the designs- (the copy/text and some elements are dummy).

Just from a design layout perspective- let me know which ones do you like the best?

You could comment here, or

Email me: shalabhpandey at gmail dotcom

DM or @ at Twitter : @shalabhpandey

The cover Designs for “Think About It”

GROUP 1:

Cover One

Cover 2

Cover 3

Cover 4

GROUP 2:

Cover 5

Cover 6

Cover 7

Cover 8

Comment here, or

Email me: shalabhpandey at gmail dotcom

DM or @ at Twitter : @shalabhpandey

Think About It

Shalabh

Welcome to 2010. The year when Social Networks get into early adulthood- and get married. To whom? The real world. FTW for sure. And sure enough- the best man will be the mobile device.

I don’t say this to promote Augmented reality. That I’ve already discounted. No- not given up (I think it is pretty cool) just time shifted- not for the next 6 months in 2010.

Why do I say so? Listen up:

• Facebook has more than 65 million members accessing it using mobile.
• 20 percent of Twitter streams originate from mobile devices
• In 2009, YouTube video watching through mobiles was up 52 percent-  according to a study published in May by Nielsen.

These three social networks- pretty much rule the web world- and they are slowly but surely being mobility driven. Mobile is the BFF of Social Networking. But there’s one marriage that is long being awaited. That between the real and the virtual world. Tying the knot between real life interaction and virtual (mobile +web) presence.

In late 2007, while being on a panel at GSMA in Macau, one of the things I had felt and brought up was that location awareness could give a great boost to mobile marketing. Though many marketers did not have a great degree of success at the time (with limited bluetooth and SMS campaigns), I always had this hunch that the one obvious advantage of mobile over others is – ahem-mobility. And we finally see it happening now- with the convergence of Social and real life (location) and Mobile.

While Twitter plans to incorporate location based features soon; applications like Google Latitude and Loopt are already in this direction. The ability to connect with ‘friends’ based on location hyper targeting coupled with other triggers is a ‘no- brainer’ path that will be taken soon by many others.

Marketing dollars will aid the growth of such services- we the marketers are hungry for these things. Forever. Ah! The pain of dealing with yet another technology and yet another platform.

See again- I said ‘marketing’ and not just ‘advertising’. Though advertising is the obvious beneficiary as well.

Ad Networks like AdMob are already cashing in to the opportunity (and I don’t mean the Google way) by offering location based ads.

But speaking of marketing, services like Foursquare have been making waves (and I promise you the buzz around this service will almost be as much as Twitter had from 2007-2009 the next year onwards).

Of course you know Foursquare- don’t you? a location-aware app that lets users “check in” at venues in a number of cities. The opportunities for footfalls are immense. You could do coupons (opt-ins of course) to subscribers within a certain radius of a location (say restaurant or boutique); or you could run loyalty rewards for frequent patrons (called Mayors for some funny reason)

Foursquare is not alone. I struggle to find Asian examples (trust me they will pop up within a month or two of this post) but there are other popular ones like Rummble (an interesting story of already brewing competition here) and Gowalla.

Rummble

Gowalla

Update on 7th feb 2010:

Just received a mail from Placepop about their offering too. In case you want to take them for a spin- you could try them free at the iTunes store

This is of course, not all. And there are at least a few solid Asian examples after all.

We saw Friendster acquisition by MoL, a company that will probably use the social network’s remaining audience base to promote m-commerce, micropayment led social gaming and what not.

Alongside, in October 2009, mobile manufacturer Ericsson tied up with Kaixin001. The deal was to incorporate more social activities to the handset and ease of access.

All said and done- Mr Real World- it is time to say “I do” to Lady Social Network. The best man “Mr Mobile” will keep a close watch.

Happy New Year 2010.

The MicroInfluencer (TM) as a concept in pop culture has caught on. When I had first thought about the concept of the MicroInfluencer and published it, I wanted to highlight real life people who had actually achieved some success by exercising their influence over the digital medium. The thought of individuals and everyday people having influence on the internet was not new- but the phrase itself brought clarity to the meaning.

Anyhow, I intend to start a process I’d been thinking of since long now- highlighting MicroInfluencers from time to time – as and when I discover a few- and as and when you lead me to some of them.

Here is one- and quite with times too.

MicroInfluencer(TM): Danny MacAskill a.k.a the urban cycllist

Danny MacAskill- a bicycle mechanic. From Edinburg. Pretty obscure- maybe known in the local circuits. And then one fine day, he and his roommate decide to shoot a video of his ‘stunts’ en route to work.

Dave Sowerby- his roommate picks up a cam and shoots some excellent videos over the next few months. The founder of Inspired Bicycles- Dave Cleavers- (who has a razor sharp marketing brain it seems- following the success of the video- he has come up with new cycles similar to those of MacAskill’s and his bike brand has got some cool buzz going on the net. For his brand, he has started what I call the BuzzLifeCycle and is riding a meme at the right time) then had it put in YouTube. What results thereafter is this:

• More than 13 million views
• Highest viewed sports video on YouTube
• Spread all across the net via blogs and other social networking sites

Danny had made it- and like this article says- his life could now be phased as “Before youTube” and “After YouTube”. The video became a Germfeed Item that spread really quickly and constructively impacted Danny’s life.

This is the video that started it all – in case you don’t happen to have contributed to the 13 million views:

The video caught on like wildfire and soon enough not only Danny gets interview requests but even gigs- like this professionally produced ad for  recruitment company/website.  The story from the sponsors here.

What followed the epic first video was a flurry of interviews/articles and presentations from mainstream media. Worldwide recognition.

This excerpt from the NYT article sums it all:

One day, he was asked to appear in 10 countries. Filmmakers wanted to make documentaries about his life. Advertisers pounced. Big companies, like Red Bull in Britain, lined up to sponsor him. People wanted his autograph. Ellen DeGeneres, who bears a faint resemblance, wanted him to dress up as her and ride around Los Angeles. The Doves, a British rock band, wanted him for a video. Lance Armstrong called MacAskill’s video “a must watch.” A circus in South Korea wanted to hire him to perform stunts.

Danny is from Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye. Go figure where that is (clue in the beginning of the MicroInfluencer intro topic). From an unheard-of town to worldwide acclaim, being invited across the world for adverts and paid gigs. It’s a long way baby- in a pretty short time. You will soon be a MegaInfluencer.

Think about it

Shalabh

This article was published in iMediaConnection. For readers of ChasingTheStorm, pasting it here too.

You can see more on what I have written for iMediaConnection here.

The article on What to expect from 2010:

It is that time of the year again. Prognostications by industry watchers on the big next thing in (digital) marketing/media are all over the place. This is truffle sniffing season and we are all dogs in the jungle trying to sniff out truffles. I have had some success at this in the previous seasons, and here’s some I sniff this time around. Whoof!

Digital disciplines: From a digital marketing ‘discipline’ standpoint, social media and web analytics will gain huge traction. We will see more organizations deploy web analytics managers or make their system administrators get trained on web analytics (poor guys). Within a year, they will move to hiring new staff, realizing that the previous strategy was not exactly working out well. This might happen with in-house digital marketing staff too.

Social media and web analytics together will be the biggest force in 2010. If you thought you had heard enough about social media in 2009, are a ‘social media basher’ or are waiting for the ‘fad’ to die off, you have my sympathies on your disappointment. Not the least in 2010. As a matter of fact, analytics and social media will get closely intertwined. We are going to see this reach a different level of sophistication from a user and marketer perspective. More pain for the marketers, and cheerio to the users.

Omniture has realized that off site analytics needs to be tied in to onsite analytics in a seamless fashion and with one single tool. This is just the beginning. We will see multi-purpose tools for social graph management and we will see one tool attempting to aggregate reports being generated from multiple current tools like PeopleBrowser, SocialOmph, Hootsuite, Scoutlab, Radian6, Spiral16, Lazyfeed, etc. We will see many players entering in to this field and will see many acquisitions. The bigger sized companies will acquire the smaller companies to help provide a holistic interface. Whether or not this integration can truly happen is a subject of debate. There might not be a Swiss army knife for multiple reporting formats, but this will be attempted at the least.

Along with the maturing of the social media space, both from a user and marketer perspective, we will see mobile coming to play — finally. Social networking apps, location based apps and better, more robust mobile payment solutions will emerge. MOL buying Friendster is already being seen as social networking marrying casual gaming, ecommerce and mobile. I am tempted to mention color codes/QR codes in places other than Japan, but there is no evidence to see it coming next year (which is a pity). I will give it a miss at least for the first half of 2010.

Platform: From a platform perspective, expect to see ads on Twitter. Not really a prophecy since this has been in the offing for some time. But expect to see ‘differently’ targeted ads on Twitter. Expect to see contextual targeting acquire a new meaning. Facebook and LinkedIn will become more aggressive in advertising and we will see the emergence of more intelligent ads based on user behaviour, metadata information and interest.

Format: From a format standpoint, we are going to see the emergence of video. Not only will there be more marketing via video, there will be a further explosion of user generated content on video, specifically with an Asian perspective. And this will have an impact on both software-led and hardware-led services. Apart from the conventional players in digital imaging, we have heard about Cisco (acquiring) going full throttle with their Flip device, and there is no reason why there will not be a Chinese counterpart (maybe more loaded) — at half the cost. With all of this, happy videos to you.

Apart from video, we are going to see the reinvention of the banner space. Ads will be more rich, interactive and at the risk of sounding clichéd, ‘engaging’.

Off-site analytics: In off-site analytics (I don’t know if this is a term yet, but what I mean by this is  measuring all actions with respect to the brand happening outside of the ‘website’) I see the action-attribution phenomenon picking up steam. How different disciplines come together to achieve ultimate results will be the talk to watch out for (I am already working on this for the past few months). There will also be a marriage of offline metrics and online metrics. Online GRPs will be talked about a lot.

Alternate: Towards the second half of the next year, I see a wave of cloud-based services. Added to that, Chrome-powered net books — specialised single-purpose $100 laptops, towards the end of the year, will rule. How will that affect advertising/marketing? I would say this is still early days for this, and something to keep an eye on.

Client demands: From a client-agency relationship perspective, I see clients asking agencies for real digital expertise and holistic digital marketing offerings. They will demand subject matter specialists from the agencies. No one in advertising/marketing is pureplay ‘offline’ nowadays, so clients and agencies will quickly realize the difference that pureplay specialists bring to the table. Of course communications has always been ‘integrated’, hence we will see a re-emergence in demand for digital professionals. I also foresee them being groomed in TV/print advertising, in a shift from what we have seen in the past.

I hoped to write from a practical on-ground approach rather than something drastic and way too futuristic.

Web^sys: It surprises me when people, in their enthusiasm over sounding ‘cool’, say that the next big thing is semantic search, augmented reality or even brain/retina scanning technologies. Realistically speaking, before they mature, they are still pretty much ‘star trek’. Not unachievable but just immature.

There will be no ‘Web 3.0′ (as a term) but what I think is coming, as the next version of the web, is this — and this will happen from 2010 onwards:

The web 2.0 or conversational space will see a new level of sophistication. There will be better organization of content and more structured creation of content. Simply put, we will see the chaotic and unorganized nature of today’s conversational web become more systematic.

We will see the emergence of the ‘Systematic Web’ or Web^sys. The name itself will lead to the meaning unlike ‘Web 1.0′, ‘Web 2.0′ or ‘Web 3.0′ — which have been open to interpretation.

What do I mean by ‘Systematic’ and what are the findings that led me to this? I have covered this phenomenon in detail here. I invite you to give your opinions. The more truffles, the better it is. Happy Holidays. Whoof!

Think about it

Shalabh

OK. I give in. I succumbed to writing my Digital Marketing predictions for year 2010. The past few years have been spot on and I thought it might be good to pen down some thoughts- and revisit them later next year to get a pervert pleasure of how much and how many of them have been right.

iMediaConnection published the article, but a quick post explaining really what is the next wave for the digital media.

Essentially, my 2010 Digital media predictions are from a grounded and rational perspective. Of course, all of us are like Truffle hunting dogs at this time of the year- hunting for trends instead of truffles- and trusting our noses to get us there. But key is to keep expectations in place and have a more grounded perspective on what is practically achievable in the next 12 months timespan.

I have mentioned a few things- that you can find in another article , but I wanted to highlight one special point.

Of all the prognostications surrounding what the next wave around Digital / Social Media going to be, here is mine.

Translated, it means- The Systematic Web.

This is the next real wave on the internet. Actually, it is already happening in a way.

After Web 2.0, surely there will be no Web 3.0 (as in the term). Web 2.-0 as a term has also been less structured and open to interpretation in a lot of ways.

With Web 2.0 and the conversational wave on the internet, came the unorganized, free-for-all culture. Your digital conversations and footprints became haphazard, cumbersome and clunky.

The new paradigm and the next phase of the internet will focus on organization of this content.

The web 2.0 or conversational space will see a new level of sophistication. There will be better organization of content and more structured creation of content. Simply put, we will see the chaotic and unorganized nature of today’s conversational web become more Systematic.

We will see the emergence of the ‘Systematic Web’ or Web raised to the power of system . The name itself will lead to the meaning unlike ‘Web 1.0’, ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘Web 3.0’- which have been open to interpretation.

We have seen Twitter organization via lists- and Facebook organization with Live Vs News feeds. We have seen more privacy controls and better content organization by platforms themselves.

Not to mention the huge third party ‘organizers’ that have cropped up in the system. We have seen Friendfeed, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck- and so many others. Essentially what do they attempt to do? They organize content in a more meaningful way than the original platform owners. The Systematic Web.

Multiple platform fatigue syndrome? We have Posterous. Problems with finding the right conversations? We have many conversation monitoring services- that could systematize random conversations by various attributes- sentiments/influence/volume/topics- you name it. On the move?  Web 2.0 ratings not enough? Welcome Foursquare, Rummble,  Gowalla and what not.

Need to port your persona? Need one key to many sites? Easier than Feeds and Open ID? No worries. Facebook has Facebook connect, Google has Google Friend connect.

And now Google also has another one- Google Social Search.

Talking about search, It is not just Google- Twitter launched better search options a while ago- and included the ability to add an additional search modifier- location (and even sentiments) to the search (You could search ‘fit’ with a smiley to see positive or happy sentiments about fit and ‘fit’ with a for negative sentiments). Facebook too now allows for searching only your network or across Facebook.

This is not just Web 2.0. Think about it, it is all about Systematizing the present web. It is Web^sys

Systematization implies:

The next wave is already upon us- and it is not Augmented Reality (yet). Not sending ad messages by brain scanning. Not even the semantic web. It is the Systematic Web.

Web^sys

Think about it

Shalabh

Content is at the centerstage of Social Media. While we all associate content to be textual stories, video, audio and pictures, one format of content makes it easy to understand nuances of social media.

This is the pictorial representation of the various facets of social media- in the form of diagrams.

‘Social Media’ by itself is a generic term used to represent various facets of this vast discipline- from understanding the various elements associated with it, to the platforms and vehicles and even to the relationships between the players.

I am collecting some of them and mentioning some quick ones here. Do add some more.

• The Webtrend map: You would have seen this earlier in its earlier 3 versions. A cool version of the various Web properties mapped om the form of a Tokyo sub system. This is not just Social Media properties, but hey, if it is about Web trends, you know what to expect in times like these. Covered all across the web, this even sells in case you need to buy it- for about $49- printed version available. Click to enlarge- and enjoy!

Web Trends Map from www.InformationArchitects.jp

• The Periodic Table of Social Media Elements:

Large Size here

For all those who hate chemistry. Rejoice. And get some pervert pleasure from this.

Rick Liebling- the guy who made this, clearly was either good at chemistry in school or sucked at it so bad- he decided to take out his frustrations by getting back. A Social Media periodic table. Believe it or not.

“What’s the use?” You ask? Well for one, it seems ideal for those marketers who are in the pharma sector and trying to sell Social Media to their clients.

The hierarchy of digital distractions

They took it on to them with a neat, eye candy pyramid.
There is a hierarchy of needs by Maslow- and then there is this intensely illuminating one. Developed by David McCandless, this one is about Digital things that distract you from your work. Of course this is not just Social Media properties- but not a surprise to find too many Social media properties here. (Where is ‘Pacman’? Of course people still play that- it is THE eternal time waster from productivity)

iPhone at the peak makes me wonder what do people fiddle with- I won’t be surprised to find Social Media there too.

“Device failure” at the top cracked me up.

Social Media Propeties
By Social Media agency- “Overdrive Interactive”. The original map in the pdf form could be downloaded from their site here

Nothing fancy- clear and concise- and you know all the properties don’t you? Spot the odd category out of this chart though. Did you feel the inclusion of Search Engines to be a bit odd too?

And then two of my own:

The Social Relationship matrix:

I try to establish that Brands, no matter how loved or disliked they might be, don’t have the same relationships with people- as people have with human relationships. In this case, it was justifying why Brand communications and relationships could be handled by third parties, with sufficient caveats in place. Full read here.

Social Relationship Matrix

The Brand Relationship Onion

I followed up this article with the Brand Relationships Onion . The attempt is to highlight the various ‘layers of relationships’ that a Brand could have with people. This ranges from Distrust to nonchalance to approval to likeness to the holy grail- Love.

Brand Relationship Onion

Think about it
Shalabh

Avinash Kaushik is one of my favorite Web Analytics professionals.

Just had a string of conversations with him recently- and I am sure he won’t mind my sharing this with readers of ChasingTheStorm.

The conversation string stemmed from one of his posts where he discussed analyzing Twitter. This is also interesting because usually Web Analytics professionals  speak about “on-site” elements.

While I agree with many of things that Avinash has to say, I had some points of difference.

It is always a challenge to be  speaking to someone of his calibre on Analytics- but this is something quite close to me and I decided to out forth my 2 cents.

I am including the conversation here as it happened:

Thread 1- My response to Avinash’s post (with references to points made in his post):

Avinash had mentioned (amongst other things) that

• “Number of retweets per thousand followers” is a good metric as a measure of efficiency and value provided and people voting with their clicks, all rolled into one.
• A metric like “Follower:Followed” ratio is not worth it

To this, my 2 cents (with humility and some apprehension)

*Number of retweets per thousand followers is a good metric.
However, due to the nature of twitter- this would probably not be fair to someone who tweets less Vs someone who tweets more often.(Assuming ceteris paribus).
So if A has 1000 followers and sent 10 tweets a day out of which 1 gets RT-ed, my ratio is 0.1 RTs per thousand followers; and if B has the same 1000 followers and send 100 tweets a day of which 10 gets RT-ed, my ratio is 1 RTs pe thousand followers

I think (number of updates / number of retweets*100) could be a good indicator.
In the above example, this percentage would signify that A is actually equal to B- because the propensity of his tweets to spread is equal to B- irrespective of the number of followers (that is 10%)
This number would signify more closely what is the propsensity of messages to spread and perhaps also the quality of tweets sent (a larger score would mean more of my tweets are found valuable)

“I don’t care about Follower/Follow Ratio-
I think it is disingenuous to follow everyone who follows you just for appearances sake when you have no intention of reading what they all say. Why be fake?”

Quite true. On its own self this ratio is probably not so useful. But maybe this is not a metric to be seen in isolation- rather in a combination with other metrics.

At the least, it could ‘flag’ certain cases:

*There could be some more ways to interpret this metric- significantly more people following you then you following them could denote less ’socialbility’ but more ‘authority’. I mean if I am a celeb/authority – I cannot meaningfully listen to all- so I have a high follower-follow ratio. On the flip side, a low ratio could imply a twitter-er who follows people recklessly (in the hope that they would follow you back)- and in turn follows a significantly larger number of people than other people follow them.

This metric- coupled with a metric like, say- “rate of follower adoption” could give more meaningful insights into the “genuine authority/sociability” IMO

It is quite simplistic yet not entirely useless IMO- if we know what are we using it for (like most other metrics)

Shalabh

=============================================

Thread 2: Avinash’s response to this (This is not on the post- we communicated over email- but I am sure Avinash would not mind sharing this):

Thanks so much for the kind suggestions, they are wonderful good for thought.

The reason for making the metric per thousand followers is precisely to “democratize” the comparison, so someone with many followers and another with a lower follower count can be compared. The other goal is to set a higher bar for the person with high followers – if you have lots of followers and they are relevant then they would all retweet.

Your alternative is very nice, but it provides a different perspective (note: I am not saying a bad perspective, I am saying a different perspective).

To the last point, I am afraid by using terms like “sociability” and  “authority” you are falling into the trap I don’t want to. Sure there is a difference between how many people a “celebrity” can follow vs how many a normal person like me can follow. But in the end the Dunbar Number dictates that there is a pretty hard limit as to how many anyone can follow, and listen. 150. That makes the ratio even less valuable.

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Thread 3: My response to Avinash

Hi Avinash

I know you have a packed schedule and I don’t want to make it a long thread, but somehow this is taking me a while to get convinced. I am quite passionate about “Conversational/social media” metrics, and so will reply with some more of my doubts  :

Shalabh:

My doubt is this:

• Does the propensity to be retweeted depend on quality of followers or quality of your tweets? Probably it is the latter- and not the former.

• Also, due to the nature of Twitter- an average tweet stays in the stream for a few seconds. If I have a lot of followers from a different time zone (say I am from Singapore and have a lot of people from the US following me), the propensity of getting RTed would be reduced- because maybe many of my followers don’t even get exposed to that tweet.

Whereas if you compare this to the number of tweets I sent Vs the number of retweets, it might be a little more fair for comparison.

Yes I agree both of these achieve different objectives. But even then, I would contest that using ‘followers’ will make the analysis result a bit- well, wide.

Just because all people using Twitter are not the same. And this would make it a little more complex when diving deep:

• This would demand more answers like: what is the mix of followers- (a more homogeneous mix will react similarly to a message) , time zones, how influential are the followers themselves (are more influential people less likely to retweet you), how many people are the followers following themselves- and so on.

You are being humble, but of course you know you are a celebrity.

Apologies on the terms. The idea was not to indulge in “buzzword play”- rather defining what exactly could this measure.

So how I would put it is this way – on channels like Twitter it is difficult to have a meaningful and personalized one to one communication. By the Dunbar number, anyone who has more than 150 people in their network is doing injustice to everyone.

Relationships on virtual networks are different from real life relationships, in my opinion. And realistically speaking, even in real life, we filter communication and respond  to only a fraction of communication from even our close ones.

To that- the ideal “follower to follow” ratio need not be ’1′ . As you mentioned- you need not follow everyone who follow you.

But if we put “cut off points” it might have more to say.

Like if the difference is more than 30%- you either follow everyone recklessly (30% more following than followers) OR do not want to follow a third of people that follow you (which means either you are lethargic or plain “unsocial”).

Couple this with “rate of follower adoption”- and it could tell you whether you acquire followers organically or inorganically.

Just my 2 cents. Reminds me of that meaningless REM song (Losing my religion), where they quip:  “Oh! No I said too much”

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Think about it

Shalabh

Earlier on, I discussed the philosophy behind the marketing services agency of the future.

As a next step- here’s some food for though on the skill sets required to steer such a company.

I wrote this in two parts- featuring 6 new skill sets for an agency.

• Part 1- 3 skill sets discussed in Part 1 in iMedia connection article-
• Part 2 is here- the other 3 skill sets

The earlier three skill sets I proposed were those of a social scientist, a psychologist and a TransMedia Planner.

But that’s not all- there are more people that will be required to steer this boat. Take your picks.

Of course the future marketing agencies will be dominated with professionals with ‘digital mindsets’- so many of my recommendations will have that bias.

The Channel Specialists

First understand my usage of the difference between a ‘channel’ and ‘platform’-

If we take the example of search engines,

Channel= Search;

Platform= Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, etc. (my version- not necessarily industry speak)

Who are they?

These are specialists in understanding how a channel works. Specifically for the digital medium, we need Channel specialists. It is no longer enough to have a generalist media planner- to start off with. We need channel specialists- and groom them into appreciating other channels and their interplay- but have a focus on one channel first.

So we will have a search channel specialist- keeping up with all the changes in the search engine space, to a social networking specialist- who takes care of those platforms.

We need guys to own the space- alongside appreciating other channels.

What are the marketing implications?

Better understanding of channels enable marketers to create specially suited campaigns for these platforms. Each of these platforms has an affinity audience that behave in a particular way on these platforms. Be where the customers are and get involved.

Why is this important now?

The fragmentation brought about by the digital media is too dispersed and too fast moving. Not only individual platforms (like Google) – but entire channels (Like the Search engine landscape). Then there are digital signages, and mobility based media channels.

If this is not enough, there is gong to be further fragmentation ahead and the impact will be both deep and wide.

The Numbers Champion

Who are they?

They are professionals- comfortable with numbers (Cheeky I know. But you get the idea). I would go a little far. I would say- marketing agencies could get such people from non advertising domains- like, say, investment banking analysts (of course we can’t to pay them in the industry that we are. Or wait a minute from 2009 onwards- maybe we can) or ‘stock market analysts’.

Statisticians would also do just fine. Great actually.

What are the marketing implications?

Marketing will be more science oriented. More about facts than gut feel. Till now, it has been 80% art and the rest is science. Now it will be more like 50-50 split. We would see- better trend mapping, response modeling and cross media impact measurement.

Of course this does not replace creativity or gut feel. But it could put them on steroids.

Why is this important now?

Again- with the advent of “digital” in the marketers arsenal- over the past few years- analytics and data and reporting and dashboards have become mainstream and not just buzzwords.

This will soon be used across media and not just digital media. As a matter of fact, analytics would start being used for cross media impact measurement.

Even within digital media- the importance never ceases- with the advent of ad exchanges- media agencies are becoming more arbitrage oriented (they already were arbitrage agencies to an extent). Soon enough- with agency exchanges- we will arbitrage at a more cut throat level.

Even if we forget arbitrage, we are increasingly looking to quantify the value of any action by the consumer- and that is best achievable by redefining data crunching away from sales orientation to action orientation.

The Trend Watcher:

Who are they?

Well- just like the trans media story planner- this is not a profile you will get by searching on the job sites. You will probably need to spot someone from within the agency or give a dual responsibility. Like the social scientist we talked about- or the existing account planners- etc. Best is to build a culture and a system in the company to spot and report trends.

What are the marketing implications?

Today, communications- and marketing need to be a little opportunistic. Trends (buzz) happens overnight- has a shorter life span- and goes up and comes down pretty much very fast. Like fireworks. I call it the Buzz Life Cycle.

marketing today needs to take a ride on the Buzz Life cycle- and get additional mileage.

Why is this important now?

Trends never had the momentum they have now. Memes are abound- in Twitter trends to Facebook News feeds to YouTube home page mentions to slideshare features.

With TV becoming interactive (social) and Newsprint becoming digitized- memes are going to spread like wildfire.

I am also tempted to add that the CEO of this agency would be a mix of Chanakya and Socrates.

Great business manager and a thinker combined.

Alongside- to string all of this together- the agency will also need a manager. Someone who could think across all of this, and could manage the skill sets while understanding the nuances of each.

Not your usual Account Director. This is Account Director- on Steroids. (well- in a good sort of way)

Think about it.

Shalabh

In part 4 of this 4 part video brainstorm, we discuss how to market a start up.

Start ups usually do not have the luxury of huge advertising spends- and this pushed the boundaries being creative and using only the most efficient mediums for maximum bang for their buck.

Thorben highlights how he uses the Influencers (what I call the MicroInfluencers) to gain traction.

I had lots to discuss- but this was about them- and some good points were made .

Enjoy

Shalabh

In part 1 and part 2 of this 4 series video brainstorm, we discussed Orsiso and Advertising on social networks previously.

In Part3, we discuss whether downloadable appplications have a significant advantage over browser based or web based applications. Also another point- the funding story- the issues- what do investors look for, and the like.

In part 1 and part 2 of this 4 series video brainstorm, we discussed Orsiso and Advertising on social networks previously.

In Part3, we discuss whether downloadable appplications have a significant advantage over browser based or web based applications. Also another point- the funding story- the issues- what do investors look for, and the like.

Enjoy

Shalabh Pandey

We featured Orsiso in Part 1.

In part 2 of the discussion between myself (Shalabh Pandey) and Thorben, amongst other things, we discuss advertising on social networks, its significance and nuances.

Enjoy!

In a previous post (recommended reading), I described a situation where a question was raised.

“Relationships imply deep commitments- so how could a brand develop one? And whether it makes sense to handover this relationship management to third parties?”

The underlying assumption was that relationships mean deep interpersonal interaction and commitments. This connotes a huge entry barrier for brands- because obviously brands want to understand and be sure- before they venture into any such strategic issue.

Well, one way to get over this barrier- is to have a more pragmatic approach towards relationships. If this is understood, we can probably breathe easier, get more stuff done- and procrastinate a little less. Because we can’t just wish it away.

The simple fact of life is that- for an individual, relationships OR expectations from different relationships are not the same.

And to get this point across, I plotted the various relationships that one person has.

Relationships. They are not linear. Neither are they completely hierarchical. They are an intense mish mash. And each has its own significance.

The best analogy could probably be notes of music. Each of them is diverse. Yet for an individual piece of music, each has its own significance (Just like an individual’s diverse relationships). Even though the notes are the same, the intensity might vary- from time to time (Just like an individual’s diverse relationships). If you don’t play them right at the right time- your music appears off. And they might be played together, at occasions. (Just like an individual’s balance and expectations from diverse relationships)

The individual entities in the matrix are self explained. Note that even in human to human relationships- the characteristics, duration of relationships, objectives and expectations vary. They are not exactly the same.

OK- human relationships are more complex than this.

How about a boss/mentor or teacher?
How about distant relatives?
How about children, spouses or parents of friends?
How about children, spouses or friends of siblings/parents?

How about a rock star or a film actor?

Well, there might be endless permutations- but if you look closely, the matrix could have proxies for more situations.

The key, however, is this: Brands do not need to develop relationships and get into commitments as a human to human close relationship.

People have different expectations from Brands ( or even Commercial interest entities). It is different from a friend or a spouse.

The point of contact could be short and intermittent. People understand a commercial entity- and have come to mould their expectations similarly.

Think about it.

Shalabh