The development signals a sharp focus on digital marketing by the country's largest advertiser, and may make other marketers too to take the digital world more seriously. The lab at Hindustan Unilever's headquarter at Andheri is the fourth such centre globally for the world's second-largest consumer goods firm. Read more
Unilever has set up its first media lab in the country in Mumbai, which will train its managers on digital media marketing and certify all digital initiatives of its Indian unit before they go public.
The development signals a sharp focus on digital marketing by the country's largest advertiser, and may make other marketers too to take the digital world more seriously. The lab at Hindustan Unilever's headquarter at Andheri is the fourth such centre globally for the world's second-largest consumer goods firm. Read more
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RW Promotions Pvt. Ltd., India’s largest rural marketing and BTL activations agency has tied up with DigiSense Marketing Solutions, a 360 degree digital & interactive agency, in sharing a common goal-to open a new door for digital marketing in India.
With the aim to bring about seamless integration for most of the BTL and rural campaigns of RW Promotions Pvt. Ltd.’s 100+clients with digital media, DigiSense Marketing Solutions are set to provide a host of services to the same. Read more Global search engine provider Google will train small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the southern states to grow their business by adopting digital advertising, a senior official said Saturday.
“We will train our partners in the southern region to provide expertise in developing and launching digital campaigns for SME businesses,” Google managing director Todd Rowe said in a statement here. The training will offer end-to-end solutions, including search engine marketing, localised solutions across Google’s properties and mobile advertising platform. Read more.
Premkumar of SeaAnt
Mr Premkumar Ponniah, Director and Chief Technologist, SeaAnt Web Technologies, has over fifteen years of experience in software services, web and mobile technologies with vast international exposure. He developed www.roofbird.com, India’s first exclusive residential real estate portal which was also launched in the US in 2008. With a growing client base in the US and India, he took SeaAnt into mobile technologies by developing innovative products which demonstrated the company’s capabilities. Prem has worked for fortune 100 companies like IBM, Bell Atlantic and GTE in New Jersey and Washington DC, and Verizon at Dallas, Texas. At Verizon, Prem played a pivotal role in the successful development and implementation of number portability systems. He is an active participant in the mobile technology conference held annually in Spain. He is also the member of mobile technology committee of Nasscom, the apex industry body of the Indian IT industry. Excerpts from his interview to India CoCretaes on developing social software services: Now-a-days, all enterprise applications from finance to CRM to ERP come with social features. Why? What specific impacts social business tools have in business?
I am sure that the blending of 'social media tools' with enterprise applications will transform businesses and their operating methodologies. Internally, it can unlock the information flow and create a “wirearchy” across organizations that would result in innovations. Suggestions generating from all levels, would help management to make right decisions faster. In a traditional setup, many companies do not interact closely with customers. Thanks to many supply chain layers, companies do not know the ground reality. So, externally, social media can bring organizations closer to their customers by establishing two way communications. Formation of customer communities can help them mingle and build relationships with customers. Other than building communities, there is scope for introducing social in many interesting areas. We can generate Big Data using social data from user generated content, user interactions, user behaviour, social testing, A/B testing, and so on. This would help companies in the areas of predictive analysis in finance, social testing in online advertising. Another interesting application lies in integrating social platforms and machines in public places like malls and airports. Big IT firms say that over half of their top 100 customers now want them to deliver social technology, apart from mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC). What do you think are the managerial and technology competencies service providers have to ramp up to meet the growing demand for the SMAC stack? The challenge of integrating social media into a business lies in understanding the nuances of the industry verticals and devising a social media strategy that would make positive internal and external impacts and unlock the potential value for the business. Just “likes, shares, comments and connects” are not social. Likes should become leads and connects should become community. That’s how social media should work for a business. True social brings all stakeholders under one group and makes them work together. In future business enterprises might need to have CXO positions in charge of their social media management. The service provider should have the expertise in social media, creating value unlocking strategy, designing information/data sharing plan, social analytics, building secure and scalable technology, designing intuitive user interface, and customer experience and exposure to mobile, web and cloud. In the social product space, there seems to be a mad rush with several startups and companies creating too many social commerce, and social networking portals. It could remind one the heady days of dotcoms in Nineties. Where is social commerce heading? The business model behind social networking companies are based on number of users, user data, user generated content and community building. Some are interested in aggregating user data and sell it to third party agencies or use it for predictive analysis, while there are some who focus on creating real communities. Data collecting networks will become ‘social-logs’ like Weblogs. Useful community focusing networks are going to stay and reap the benefits. There are interesting forums and discussion groups in education, health care, special needs, which can be converted into social communities. More and more of social platforms based on stuff like photo sharing, likes/comments, short messages are not a healthy trend. Instead of helping users generate and share quality content, pushing junk and irrelevant content will impact the sector adversely. Do you find some common factors that underline the success of social platforms? In the case of social commerce companies like threadless.com and fabs.com are reportedly making profits? Yes. Features like finding common interest, association of like-minded people, enabling co-production and opportunities to share benefits have helped social platforms to achieve success. Every social community is built on certain principles and vision. Those basic principles of a community should never be compromised while trying to make profits. Wikipedia is a true social platform that has been running on user-generated content for so many years strictly maintaining its nonprofit organisation status. That’s a good example. What are SeaAnt's delivery capabilities in the social technology space? What type of services do you provide across the value chain that spans consulting to product development to maintenance? SeaAnt can build social networking platforms in web & mobile with cloud deployment for both consumers and businesses. We have helped companies in building collaboration oriented enterprise social platforms, interest based consumer social and community platforms, graduating enterprise intranets to social platforms and developing social data analytics: `data to decision boards’. Product development is our passion, while service is our business. We help companies in taking an idea to the market as a complete product in the shortest possible time.
A crowd funding project at Wishberry.in
You know who you can trust in your town - going by the track record of how a local company keeps its various financial and non-financial promises. Every one of us will have a list of companies-I-admire. It could be a local hotel chain, a transport organization, and so on. Currently, many of your most admired companies go to banks and even non-banking financial companies or even registered chit funds, to meet their financial requirements. It is not possible for them to accept deposits from the public. There is simply no way for you to participate in the success stories of these companies. They can't accept money from you as deposits. But if you go back to the good old days of regional stock exchanges, small companies with big local reputation had easy access to low cost equity. They could get themselves listed in local stock exchanges and raise money as low as one crore from the market. But as Mr Narendra Pani, beautifully writes in this article, the policy makers let local stock exchanges die. "With the coming of liberalisation, it was assumed that the greater regulation that the stock market desperately needed could only be provided by centralised control. And to be attractive to foreign institutional investors, the scale of capital issues was raised well above the reach of the small ambitious company. The entire home-grown regional network of stock exchanges was allowed to die," he points out. However, market innovations are likely to fill this gap in the form of crowd funding and crowd investing. If regulators allow, reputed local companies and individuals can tap the potential of crowd-funding and get access to low-cost equity - crowd equity - once again. Referring to the ‘Entrepreneurs Access to Capital Act’, which was recently passed in the US, Mr Ramanuj Mukherjee, writes : "In the USA, crowdfunding is a legally recognized capital market transaction - and the investors can get shares in the company they are funding - and therefore profit from the idea becoming successful. USA has made a special law to allow this to support startup companies under the Obama administration". If India can bring a similar law, it will make crowd funding legal. Nevertheless, India's very own crowd funds like Pikaventure.com, and Wishberry.in (a crowd funding platform exclusively for the entertainment industry) are creating crowd funding platforms that help companies, individuals raise fund in exchange of non-monetary benefits such as pre-ordering of proposed products and services. The FAQ at Wishberry.in, reads: "Anyone, above 18 years of age and holding an Indian bank account can submit a project for review. Upon positive review, the project owner can create crowdfunding campaign". The crowd will fund because, among other altruistic reasons, they will be getting "rewards in return for the crowd’s contribution, rewards that are exclusive & inaccessible in general, like VIP tickets to film premiers, invite to the launch party of your film/music project, autographed CDs, producer credits etc." A Pikaventure Video on How Crowd Funding Worksby G Sankaranarayanan, Editor, India CoCreatesJamshed Wadia, Intel Asia Jamshed Wadia has over fifteen years of experience in the ‘Information Technology’ industry that span areas like Product Management, Channel & Retail Marketing, Sales Management, Digital Marketing and Social Business Strategy. He holds a ‘Masters in Business Administration’ and ‘Bachelors Degree in Engineering’. Jam is currently a part of the Asia Pacific Brand and Campaigns team at Intel, focusing on Social Business Strategy, SEO and Intel Inside Program. He is also a certified ‘Social Media Practitioner’ at Intel and have been working in teams that have executed several innovative social by design campaigns. Prior to joining Intel, he has worked for organizations like Wipro Infotech, H&R Johnson, and Tangerine. He is "a social media enthusiast by heart, have a love for teaching and a passion for anything digital". Jam publishes his personal views on social strategy at his website: Corridor Conversations. In this exclusive interview to us, Jam shares his perspectives on how organizations can successfully tap the wisdom of crowds using social media. Excerpts: What business functions (such as HR, marketing, product development) make best candidates for co-creation using social media? And why? Organizations that are taking the lead in social media have come to the conclusion that groups, communities and crowds have the capacity to help them realize their vision. It is a simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant they are, or how better they are at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, or even predicting the future. Whether it is Wikipedia, Yelp, the Linux foundation, tracking SARS, driving in traffic or winning a game show, there is a stark realization that embracing communities is not a luxury but a necessity to solve extraordinarily large problems, including the cure for cancer. The right question to ask here is: “Which particular communities should we leverage on for the different business divisions?” For example there is no point in asking general consumers for their inputs on engineering, high-end design or recruitment challenges. The key here is to identify the right community to collaborate to with. Crowd sourcing can be used to tackle a variety of challenges: from new product development, insights and research to marketing innovation. The exceptions where I do see a potential risk are in the areas of legal and finance where information flow maybe restricted, leaving a slim chance of collaboration with outsiders. In summary almost every part of the organization can benefit from crowd sourcing. Should companies invest in building their own social platforms for specific co-creation/crowdsourcing purposes, instead of relying heavily on third party sites like Facebook? As I said, the key to crowd sourcing is choosing the right community to work on your initiative. Existing consumer communities on Facebook and Twitter can be used for generating ideas around marketing and general feedback for future products and services. But if more specialized skills are needed, then there are many existing third party communities managed by professionals that deal with specific problems. For example a community website like eYeka is used by many brands to generate top quality marketing and branded content. eYeka’s creative community members come from more than 150 countries representing all continents. They participate in challenges to express their creativity and to connect with leading brands to solve real-world problems with fresh ideas. Another example is of Dominos, which used a specialized community managed by Local Motors that focuses specifically on automotive design to help it design a prototype for their next generation pizza delivery vehicle. I don’t think brands need to invest in building their own platforms but they can leverage on existing communities on social and other web platforms that specialize in a particular discipline of business and marketing. Since social is handled mostly by marketing people, its scope in co-creating value in other functions is not being fully explored. Do you think putting a multi-functional team in charge of social would help?
Organizations need to know that social networking platforms will rise and fall and in six months the list of new and vibrant platforms may change dramatically. But importantly, brands need to realize that social is a behavior, not a channel. It may not be the end of social media as a marketing channel, but the days of ad hoc and chaotic social initiatives may be coming to a close. Going forward the consumer will need a consistent social experience with a brand irrespective of what part of the organization they communicate with. And hence the realization that “social” needs integration across multiple business functions. While social media may be measured in likes, followers and shares, the success of social business initiatives will be evaluated based on the business value they bring to an enterprise. To my mind, social is everyone’s responsibility in an organization and though marketing and PR may lead it, just from a program management perspective, its use is very broad across the organization. I do believe that every team in the organization going forward will have their own social leads that will propel their particular divisions’ social initiatives. Whether these people will be attached with each other as dotted or a solid line is just details. Presently, social platforms/technology is getting shaped by the entry of many enterprise application companies like IBM, Product Development companies like Autodesk. Where is social headed in terms of business adoption in your view? Though a lot of organizations have externally gone social, most of the internal collaboration and communication is still done in the traditional ways like email and static intranets. Employees will soon expect that they want to interact with their colleagues within organizations just like the way they connect with their friends, family and customers on external social media sites. This means that the companies that are in the business of enterprise social solutions will have to build their products with the similar experience that the consumers have come to accept on their personal networks. The other major barrier is less about technology but more about organizational culture. If the direction to collaborate and communicate socially internally doesn't come from the highest levels of the organization, then no matter how good the enterprise solution is, it would fail massively. Chris Brogan, a renowned social media strategist, in his latest newsletter, reveals a three-step formula for social media success: Outposts > Media Empire > Home base. Chris says that instead of trying to treat social media as a selling platform, individuals and corporates alike, can consider using it just for engagement. Here are his reasons, in his own words: "This has taken me a while to figure out. In fact, I could honestly say that understanding a better way to build out my online digital presence has taken years and years. Do you want to save some time? Then learn from my mistakes, and leapfrog me. In short, I think a lot of us have the order of operations wrong in how we’re building out our digital presence. My new magical formula: OUTPOSTS > MEDIA EMPIRE > HOMEBASE (OR EMAIL). That’s it. Let me explain it out. “Outposts” are what I call the various social platforms, places like Twitter and Pinstagram (I love mashing them together like this) and Facebook and Google+. Your “media empire” is a mix of your blog, your video content, your podcast, your ebooks, your whatever-gets-you-some-attention-and-is-useful-to-your-audience. Your “homebase” is your primary website, and/or the place where you hope to build conversion of some kind. So what I’ve come to learn boils down to something like this: * Engage at the outposts * Promote your media at the outposts * Point people to your homebase (or email list) via your media * Sell at the homebase What doesn’t work well is: * Sell at the outposts Where we seem to get it wrong is that when we try to push for a sale when people are using their various social media channels, most people seem less likely to take an action. Instead, they’re out looking for engagement (chitty chat) as well as interesting content (which could sometimes be served by your media). Thus, guide them at the outposts to your media and then at your media, you have the opportunity to recommend a conversion of some kind. Make sense? That’s my big giant this week." Chris Brogan published this article today for his weekly newsletter. About Chris Brogan: Chris Brogan is CEO & President of Human Business Works, an education publishing and media company dedicated to helping professionals work better, do the work they want, and to be brave. He is the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Impact Equation, and a sought-after professional keynote speaker. He also plays in the band, D3one3, with Jacqueline Carly. by Mr G K Suresh, ITC. In arrangement with Simplify360, a social media product company Ways to understand customer insightsLet’s face it. Customers are no longer loyal or rather they are loyal but to brands that understand and engage with them in the new world. The messages carried by the advertisements are no longer compelling. For years, brands were able to suppress the consumers’ voice. But now, all it takes is a Tweet or a Facebook update from an irate customer and the world knows about it. Honesty has become most brands’ top priority. Maintaining brand loyalty has suddenly become the biggest challenge. Moreover, the entire concept of loyalty is vague. All thanks to Facebook, where one person is interacting with several competing brands, all at once. In such a scenario, traditional branding exercises are no longer effective in getting the attention of customers. This is further complicated by the variety of devices where such micro eco-systems exist. This is the result of the digital convergence of culture, business and economy into bits and bytes. So, this is where lie not only the challenges but also huge opportunities for brands to understand their customers. Digging into the wealth of social media data, brands can today discover consumer insights like never before. There are four steps to understanding customer insights through social media:
One brand that has successfully utilized the above steps is Bingo! with the launch of Bingo! Tangles on Facebook. With over 3 million fans, Facebook offered Bingo! a great window into understanding consumers conversations. Consumers use these forums to talk about their likes & dislikes and welcome new information on product as they find it appetizing, tempting & satisfies their need for variety. Consequently we decided to launch the new Bingo Tangles first on Facebook and give a chance to loyal Bingo! fans to discover the product and also taste it before it hit the market. A teaser contest was created for Facebook fans which encouraged them to decipher the brand name and the winners could taste the product before it was made available in the market. Thousands of fans participated in the contest and packs of Bingo Tangles were sent to the winners. This campaign helped us connect with the brand advocates and also use Facebook as a launch platform for various other brands. Ways to improve customer relationsData is a vital raw material for building the business infrastructure in the information age. Brands that can put systems in place to access, process and utilize the data will be the most successful in connecting with the customers and influence their decisions. The key idea behind customer loyalty is customer retention. There are already different programs, which businesses employ like reward programs, referral programs and 1-to-1 marketing campaigns to ensure that customers stay with the brand. But social networks are taking over these programs in terms of gaining a deeper relationship with the brand. There are three ways to use social media data to improve and make social programs much more effective: 1. The Brand should genuinely care When you embark on the social media journey, be prepared to respond to negative as well as positive feedback and genuinely do something about consumer problems. On the Aashirvaad Multigrains Facebook page one of the fan brought to our notice unavailability of Aashirvaad Multigrains atta in her area. We used this info to investigate the issue with our sales team and figured out that there was an issue with the sales person operational in that area. Action was taken immediately and we called back the consumer to validate that her problem had been addressed. We figured out that this was an issue due to the sales person operational in that area. Thus listening to a single fan, who was representing a cluster of consumers in that region, we were able to resolve issues faced by many such consumers in that region. 2. Engage without losing focus on your brands Many times the focus on the content posted on Social Media platform goes to extremes. Either it is too generic or it is too brand centric. There should be a proper balance. 3. Brands have to learn to converse with consumers as equals. Brands are too used to speaking to consumers from a position of authority and knowledge and not as a friend. But today brands need to learn to converse with the consumers on equal terms and be seen as an enabler. The key thing is to do it without compromising on the brand “personality”. Hence the voice of Bingo! is more youthful & contemporary; the voice for Aashirvaad is always joyful & optimistic while that of Kitchens of India is authentic & welcoming. Ways to enhance brand loyalty"Fan of the Week" by ITC's Aashirvaad So we now know why and how social media can help decipher the mystery of brand loyalty. But the last portion and the most vital one, is to understand how to measure this in social media. There are four factors, which one must consider while looking into brand loyalty in social media: 1. First of all, know what are customers talking about your brand and how? What are their attitudes and sentiments towards your brand? What is their feeling towards your brand? Are they neutral, friendly, hostile or ignorant? This helps brand not only understand the emotion but also map them along the brand attributes and identify the missing bits. 2. Secondly, understand the emotional connection between a customer and your brand. Most often an out-burst by a customer is temporary, and can be mitigated easily. Hence, identifying such customers is vital. Many a times the reverse is true as well. There was once a complaint on Facebook by a consumer on the quality of atta. Before we could begin to address the problem other consumers had responded asking the fan to check the storage conditions at the outlet of purchase as well as her kitchen. 3. Thirdly understand that the customer is likely to buy more than one segment of products from the brand. This sends much a stronger signal of loyalty. 4. And finally, know which platforms are more effective in communicating with the customer. Email, social networks, mobile, TV, tablets and the list goes on. The avenues where customers are present are wide. Hence identifying the top engaging platforms and optimizing them is vital. Mining social data and building your decision systems on top of it is the secret of successful customer retention. The main goal is to make an emotional connection with the customer in each interaction to increase referrals, retention and acquisition. G K Suresh, ITC About the author: Mr. G. K. Suresh is the General Manager -Brands with the Foods Business of ITC Limited looking after the categories of Staples, Snacks, Confectionery, Noodles and Ready to Eat products. GK has worked in a variety of roles from Sales to Trade Marketing to Brand Management. In his prior assignment, he was Head -Brands and Business Development with the Personal Care business where he oversaw the launches of brands like Fiama Di Wills, Vivel and Vivel Active Fair - across the intensely competitive categories of Soaps, Shampoos and Fairness Creams. He was also Trade Marketing Development Manager responsible for the development of Distribution and IT strategy for all ITC's FMCG products. Written by Mr Jamshed Wadia, Founder, Corridor Conversations, and originally posted here on March 09, 2013 I was on a flight back to Singapore from the US and as I was putting together my presentation for Business Rocks, and midway I decided to take a break to watch some in flight entertainment. I was really thrilled to find that they had a recorded Coldplay 2012 concert video and so I decided to watch it. Very soon it dawned on me, that the concert had become an inspiration and a starting point for my presentation on ‘co-creation’. The concert recording had some accompanying commentary from Chris Martin the lead vocalist of Coldplay and there was one thing he said that made an emotional connection with me. He said that as a band their philosophy was to make sure that each and every member of its audience participates in the concert experience and that they not only encourage sing-along but also use technology to make sure their audience gets a chance to contribute to the concert. Before any Coldplay concert, the concert organizers distribute Xylo wristbands that are worn by its audiences and then switched on by a radio signal at appropriate parts of the concerts, hence making the audience as one giant LED display. To me it was an amazing execution how a band and its audience could become one body participating in the same experience. And I wondered how many Brands get that? How many brands actually see their customers as an extension of themselves and treat them as co-creators of their brand identity. Let me share six examples of brands that I felt have innovatively used their audiences as co-creators. 1) 7-Eleven Slurpee Bring Your Own Cup Day 2012 So on September 5th 2012, 7-Eleven stores across Australia held ‘bring your own cup day’, where for only one day customers could bring in their favorite cup and fill it up with their favorite Slurpee, a frozen flavored drink, for just only $2.90! And the classification of a cup was left to the customer’s imagination and could vary from cowboy hats to yard glasses, to even watering cans. Prizes were distributed to the most original and innovative cups to show up on that day. The result was that the fans created more content for the brand in one day than they had in the brands history. Check out more about the campaign below 2) Intel Korea’s ‘Make Thumb Noise’ campaign with 2NE1 (Disclaimer: Author is Intel Employee) 2NE1 and producer Teddy Park partnered with Intel Korea for the project to create a song for their new category of personal computing called ‘Ultrabook™’. The ‘Make Thumb Noise’ project allowed fans to vote for their ideal song for the Ultrabook ™ computer. Fans voted to choose their favorite instrumental for the track in Round 1, and picked their favorite song title in Round 2. Round 3 gave fans the chance to choose the song’s arrangement style, and in the final round, they picked the bridge for the track. Well the campaign results where outstanding. The collective views received for all videos on the project exceeded 7 Million and more than 1 Million fans participated in the voting process, but more than that the fans got themselves a stellar song ‘Be Mine’ from their favorite band 2NE1. Check out 2NE1′s music video for “Be Mine” below! 3) Hippo uses it customers on Twitter to take stock and help inventory crunch Hippo Baked Munchies was successfully launched into the Indian snack market in 2010 and because of their simple but yet insightful philosophy of ‘Hunger is the root of all evil’, they hit a connection with consumers. Hippo soon became a runaway success, but its nascent sales and distribution network found it challenging to keep track of stock, identify and re-stock empty shelves across 400 thousand stores. In India, 90% to 95% of the snack market is unorganized and inventory tracking is usually a logistical nightmare. To help solve this, Hippo turned to its followers on Twitter and asked them to tweet whenever they couldn’t find the snack in store. The result was impressive participation from their customers that eventually lead to a 76% jump in their overall sales. Check out ET Now report on the campaign. 4) Dominos – The Ultimate Delivery Vehicle Project The people at Domino’s are on their way to reinvent the way pizza is going to be delivered, and they are achieving this by partnering with Local Motors, an open-source automaker. Local Motors has activated their community ‘The Forge’ in action with end goal being to build a brand-new, purpose-built vehicle designed from the ground up with nothing but pizza delivery in mind. The winning design will earn its creator a good $50,000 US. The “design brief page” offers details about the competition, which encompasses five phases of design, packaging, interior, surfacing and rendering. Check out Domino’s Pizza Ultimate Delivery Vehicle Design Brief Video below. 5) Aviva Community Fund Aviva Canada launched a competition to find innovative ideas that would change Canada for the better in 2009, and offered $1,000,000 to make them happen. Centered on an online portal and supported by Facebook and YouTube, entrants were encouraged to submit ideas and upload photos, images, and videos to help describe their idea and attract votes to their cause. Canadians were invited to vote on the 2,000 ideas submitted, with the most popular entries qualified for funding. Aviva also ensured that other great ideas also received the financial and practical help they needed to get off the ground. Hear more about the success of this program, the lessons learned, and how Aviva departments worked together to create this unique forum where individuals could come together to make a difference. Check out Aviva Community Fund 2011 Video Playlist 6) Memories for the Future – Google Japan The devastating earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northeastern Japan in early March 2011 caused unimaginable damage and heartbreak to many. In response, Google has created a website named “Mirai e no kioku”, meaning “Memories for the Future”. The website allows the people of Japan to share photos and videos of their cities in an effort to preserve the memories collected over generations that may have been lost during the disaster. Google has also provided thousands of miles of Street View imagery that includes “Before” and “After” comparisons of the hardest hit areas. Check out more on the project in the below video. Mr Jamshed Wadia, Author In conclusion, great brands know that there is a power in leveraging the collective intelligence of its customers and turn their ideas, content and conversations into marketing and business opportunities. Matter of fact in a recent Forbes article, ‘Brand Crowd Sourcing’ has been identified as one of the ‘10 Brand Marketing Trends that will dominate 2013’. I see co-creation and cMrrowd-sourcing being actively leveraged in creating a shared experience, creating branded content, used in solving business problems, bring forth business innovation and making a collective difference in the communities we live in. Image credit: emeraldfrog.co.uk “Two mistakes companies make, ‘I am not going to do any online’ or the other mistake is to go wholly online,” said renowned marketing guru Philip Kotler, who was in Chennai earlier this month. Of course, he was referring to marketing, but bringing in a semblance of balance makes sense in retailing too. Walmart Stores Inc.,’s recent initiative of letting customers to order products online and later visit its stores offline for taking delivery, is a case in point. The logic offered: it could save time, as customers do not have to spend time interacting with front line sales staff. Many Indian online retailers send online-ordered products home for customers to have a touch and feel of those products, be it a readymade garment (yebhi.com) or even a diamond necklace (caratlane.com), before confirming the purchase or making the payment. Some online retailers in the niche segment (like the US based Warby Parker, an online retailer of glasses) are also shipping different product designs for customers to try for a few days. With all versatile Web 2.0 and social features, digital world is inching closer to becoming a real world. Even while conceiving digital retail platforms, retailers search for real world inspirations. Said Mr Jason Goldberg, CEO, Fab.com, a social commerce platform with about 7.5 million members: “We looked at it as, "How do we take the offline shopping experience and put it online?" You walk down the street in Soho or Brooklyn, and there's that experience of going shopping with your friends and having them point things out to you. How do you take that online? We needed to re-imagine it for the web, and that’s what the first iteration of our social feed is all about — how do you shop with friends and discover what they're buying, but also what they're liking or pinning? The feed is a great way to browse and discover, and from day one, we knew where we were going with social.” Fab.com tries to build real-world-like features. For instance, its Feed lets customers discover what their friends and friends of friends are buying. Customers can have a closer look of a product like car, using the enhanced online zooming technology, but when it comes to “kicking the tyre” – most prospective customers, auto retailers observe, have the "mindless gesture" of kicking car tyres while inspecting the new car, almost habitually or inadvertently – that can be done only in a real world outlet. While designing their digital platforms and strategies, retailers could better identify the equivalents of 'kick-the-tyre' activities in their industry, and have customers happily perform them offline. |
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