This post is divided in two parts- the second one here

After years of  Demand Generation Marketing focus, Dell has, over the past few years, come up with some great initiatives at engaging prospects and customers. As a matter of fact, they have tasted a lot of success in the recent years with their Social Media initiatives, paved the way for an integrated agency structure of the future (OK we know how that one is going but still) and many more pioneering marketing efforts.

Dell by Nokimi

Agreed there are occasional snarls- like the recent issues with Dell Taiwan (some reports: Global Voices and Engadget) – but it is all in the game. Also, those issues have to do more with other business areas than marketing.

Dell’s brave moves of using Twitter for demand generation is now used as case study in the industry and has sent them tweeting to the bank with about $2 million in revenue reported just from their microblog network. Everyone knows about Digital Nomads and Dell having recruited dedicated staff for Social Media- at least in the US.

With this background and in the same spirit, Dell started a good initiative in demand Generation- the Dell Swarm. And this time started with a pilot in probably the best  Testing ground for any digital initiative in the world- Singapore. Singapore is a country with a small population, huge broadband penetration, crazy levels of mobile penetration and an eclectic mix of people from various countries and backgrounds. If there was ever a great sampling market for digital products and services- it is here in Singapore.

Dell Swarm- is a spree-like service- hang on- it IS a spree. You could go online- pick a listed ‘Swarm’ with a particular computer on sale- and get discounts when more people join in. The more people join, the merrier it is – because everyone then gets a higher discount. There is easy integration with your Twitter and Facebook- so you could invite as many people as you could. Better explained here:

Fantastic concept right? I loved it when I first discovered the concept and how beautifully it gelled demand generation with Social Media, Or as I call it- Social Reference Marketing.

But even then, I felt something was amiss. And it seems that ‘hunch’ is coming true as we speak. A quick look at the website would substantiate that maybe it has not caught the fancy of buyers- after an initial buzz. Though I do not have figures with regards to the response it has garnered, I did check on some proxy data .

Most past swarms seem to have attracted Zero or a Single buyers. Trying to chart the mention of Dell Swarm or DellSwarmSg (their twitter handle) yielded little results with trend tracking software mentioning there wasn’t enough data to sort the mentions of Dell Swarm. Their own volume of tweets show a decline- from 21 in May to 8 in June to 4 in July month till date.

Now hang on- this is not a post about how the exercise did not work etc etc. Let me substantiate that it is a great start and kudos to the team who made this call to make the project Live. At the least, it could make people like us think harder- and at the most- set a precedence for others.

This post was to set a background. To break the monotony- it is divided into two parts- click to read the complementary post and the real thing: Dell Swarm – Some problems and CrowdSourcing solutions.

In the next post, I try to put forth some pointers on what are the possible problems, let you read it- and then crowdsource the solutions, if any. Everyone benefits.

Cheers

Shalabh

Thumbnail courtsey: Flickr