MxMIndia

Category: Digital

  • The association, which began with the launch of the first video in March 2015, has, within a short period of its launch, registered over 1.5 lac views from across the globe

    Hungama.com unveils Studio Diaries Part 2

    By A Correspondent

     

    Hungama.com has launched the second part of the Hungama Studio Diaries by tying-up exclusively with Facebook. The Studio Diaries are video capsules of current musical icons that paid homage to Kalyanji-Anandji at the Hungama Studio launched exclusively over the social media platform.

     

    The association, which began with the launch of the first video in March 2015, has, within a short period of its launch, registered over 1.5 lac views from across the globe and has seen thousands of interactions over Hungama.com’s Facebook. The video is a montage of artists that sang the hit song ‘Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas’ created by legendary duo Kalyanji-Anandji. Musicians like Arijit Singh, Daler Mehendi, Shaan, Pritam, Amit Trivedi, Hariharan, Abhijeet and Armaan Malik are seen in the video performing their own renditions of the timeless classic at Hungama Studio.

     

    Part 2 of the Hungama Studio Diaries was unveiled exclusively on Facebook recently and will show Atif Aslam, Shraddha Kapoor, Shankar Mahadevan, Zakir Hussain, Sivamani, Leslie Lewis, Benny Dayal, Ankit Tiwari, Vasuda Sharma, Aakriti Kakkar, Kanika Kapoor and Runa Rizvi performing their renditions of Kalyanji-Anandji’s hit numbers ‘Har Kisiko Nahi Milta’ and ‘Laila O Laila’.

     

    “Speaking on the association with Facebook and success of the first video, Siddhartha Roy, CEO of Hungama.com said, “Hungama Studio has conceptualized this track to celebrate the evergreen music of Kalyanji-Anandji. The video of the renditions sung by this generation’s most loved artists has been appreciated by one and all over Facebook. The idea to exclusively launch this video over Facebook has brought about massive consumer reach and great results, seeing its success we are all set to launch the 2nd part of our video series. Our association with Facebook has been mutually beneficial, with this we hope to continue building on our space of original content and sharing this exclusively with our subscribers.”

     

  • TAM Adex data show that the big four e-commerce companies ­ Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and OLX alone spent a staggering Rs 600 crore on ads in 2014. Overall, the sector spent Rs 750-800 crore in 2014 and the budget would cross Rs 1,000 crore in 2015, say media planners

    E-com majors Flipkart, Amazon etc spend mega on ads

    By Shambhavi Anand & Pritha Mitra Dasgupta

     

    Ecommerce, probably the most happening sector in India, has turned into one of the hottest for the advertisement industry , too.

     

    Spending on advertisements by e commerce companies surpassed that of consumer durables, banking and financial sectors in 2014. They are spending as much as the traditional table-toppers -telecom and auto companies.

     

    TAM Adex data show that the big four e-commerce companies ­ Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and OLX ­ alone spent a staggering Rs 600 crore on ads in 2014. Overall, the sector spent Rs 750-800 crore in 2014 and the budget would cross Rs 1,000 crore in 2015, say media planners.

     

    The big spending has come despite the fact that Amazon started advertising in India as late as in May 2014. But that forced rivals, local leader Flipkart and Snapdeal, to beef up their efforts. In 2014, the sector spent Rs 60-70 crore on print ads, as they vied for premium positions, such as front page, jacket and double jacket ads in newspapers.

     

    The sector spent Rs 32-35 crore only on jacket ads ­ four full pages of advertisement that cover the rest of the newspaper as a jacket.

     

    But, more money has gone to television ads: as much as 50-60% of the total ad spend. While 15-20% of the total was spent on digital, 10-15% went to print media and the rest to radio and out-of-home media. “We expect the spend to go up by 20% in 2015,” said Anand Chakravarty , head of western India operations at media agency Maxus.

     

    The media mix of the sector will continue to be driven by television, followed by digital in 2015, he said, as the primary objective of the players is to build reach and ensure high visibility to garner more investment interest.”Digital drives business performance,” he said.

     

    Foreign investors who saw e-commerce as an opportunity to play in the nation’s mammoth $500 billion retail market have bank-rolled top online retailers’ efforts to scale up quickly over the past few years.

     

    This has also increased competition in the online market, where the players are waging a war to win over the consumer. While the companies have of late cut down on discounts to consumers, they are focusing more on brand building, signing up Bollywood celebrities as brand ambassadors and stepping advertisement activities around sporting events.

     

    The e-commerce sector is expected to spend heavily on the Indian Premier League.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2015, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Licensed to republish

     

  • Multi Screen Media, the official broadcaster of the Indian Premier League, is likely to make about Rs 1,000 crore from on-air sponsors and spot advertising this year, riding an ecommerce wave

    MSM to rake in Rs 1000 crore from IPL ads as e-commerce players join party

    By Ravi Teja Sharma & Ratna Bhushan

     

    If all goes according to script, Multi Screen Media, the official broadcaster of the Indian Premier League, is poised to make about Rs 1,000 crore from on-air sponsors and spot advertising this year, riding an ecommerce wave, say media planners and industry watchers. About 25% of the revenue will come from e-commerce companies, said Rohit Gupta, president of MSM, though he did not confirm the total amount that the broadcaster is likely to make.

     

    Spending by online retailers made up for 10-12% of MSM’s revenue of Rs 800 crore during last year’s IPL. Flush with cash raised at mind boggling valuations, e-commerce companies that will be seen on air this time include Amazon, Paytm, Magicbricks and CarDekho as sponsors while CarTrade, Snapdeal and Freecharge have taken television spots during matches.

     

    MSM has signed up 12 sponsors including Vodafone, Hero MotoCorp, Intex Mobiles, PepsiCo and Vimal Pan Masala, selling close to 95% of its inventory before the eighth edition of the tournament started on Wednesday. These sponsors have taken over 50% of the inventory while the rest has been sold as spots to other advertisers.

     

    “In the last couple of years, a lot of e-commerce companies have raised funds. Their target is quick consumer acquisition for which they are trying to use cricket as a platform to get quicker reach,” said Nandini Dias, chief executive officer at media agency Lodestar UM. IPL’s viewership has grown from about 160 million in the fourth edition in 2011 to 191 million last year.

     

    “There is no better platform than IPL to reach out to the Indian masses,” said Manisha Rana, head of marketing at property portal Magicbricks.com, which will launch the second phase of its new campaign that started in February. The new campaign is set around IPL matches and this time is in a shorter 15-second avatar.

     

    Media planners say e-commerce companies have almost doubled their spending this year. Amazon is one of the presenting sponsors this year after having been an associate sponsor last year. It gets 210 seconds of advertising time per match compared with an associate sponsor’s 100 to 120 seconds. “Amazon would have doubled their outlay as well as inventory this year,” said a media planner, not wanting to be identified.

     

    In a recent report, media investment company GroupM said that it expects e-commerce to lead advertising spends in 2015, though it currently has a much smaller base than other categories. A report by Assocham and Deloitte says e-commerce will cross $16 billion worth of business by the end of 2015.

     

    LK Gupta, chief marketing officer at Girnar Soft, the owner of CarDekho.com, said the momentum has been building up for the ecommerce sector for the past three to four years as it gets ready to explode into a mass category. “There is a watershed period when a category has to achieve scale. For e-commerce, that comes from Internet connectivity, mobile phone adoption, openness of the mass public to buy and search stuff online. That tipping point was crossed last year,” he said. “Cricket is a huge property to go behind because it gives you national scale in one go.”

     

    The Ratan Tata-funded company CarDekho will launch the second phase of its “Mr I Know” campaign during the IPL.

     

    Shankar Nath, senior vice president at Alibaba-backed Paytm, said the company plans to step up brand recall and salience for Paytm through cricket. The company is investing in IPL as an associate sponsor with the official broadcaster, for which it has planned a new campaign, and also is in a tie-up with Mumbai Indians as official partner.

     

    Gupta of MSM said youth, which is the big category and a target group for e-commerce companies, come in big numbers around the IPL. Apart from finding space on television, several e-commerce companies have tied up with IPL teams. Food ordering app TinyOwl has signed up with Mumbai Indians as its official food ordering app. Harshvardhan Mandad, CEO of TinyOwl, said the company will launch its first big marketing campaign through the IPL.

     

    Mobile taxi-hailing app developer Uber has tied up with Kolkata Knight Riders as the official local transport partner, Foodpanda is the shirt and kit sponsor with Sun Risers Hyderabad while Shopclues is the e-commerce partner of MS Dhoni-captained Chennai Super Kings.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2015, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Licensed to republish

     

  • The Great Indian Travel Festival will start on April 18 and end on April 26

    IPG Mediabrands to launch online travel fest in India

    By Pritha Dasgupta

     

    Media agency conglomerate Interpublic Group (IPG) Mediabrands India has joined hands with the travel industry to launch a festival to boost online holiday bookings in the country. The Great Indian Travel Festival, the first such event in India, will start on April 18 and end on April 26. GITF will offer deals and discounts on travel and stay packages for more than 50 holiday destinations within and outside India.

     

    “Indian consumers will find great value and deals to enjoy their summer holidays. We expect to reach over 3 million users over the course of the nine-day festival,” said Shashi Sinha, CEO of IPG Mediabrands.

     

    The participants include Google, travel websites Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Yatra and Via, and carriers Jet Airways, Indigo, British Airways and Spice-Jet. Tour companies Cox & Kings and Thomas Cook and startups such as Oyo Rooms and Doorstepforex have committed their participation. “While the industry has seen a major uptake in online hotel bookings, there is significant headroom for growth, and initiatives like these can contribute immensely in promoting the sector and contribute to domestic tourism,” said Vikas Agnihotri, industry director, Google India.

     

    IPG is building and designing the GITF website in-house and will host the participants on the site. Both Google and IPG are selling sponsorships and the proceeds will be spent on marketing the event and promoting the sponsors on the site.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2015, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Licensed to republish

     

  • The campaign will be live on 18th of April in two different edits for duration of 30 seconds each on television and the complete campaign of 60 seconds will be live on YouTube

    ‘I am Nikon’, asserts Nikon India in new campaign

    By A Correspondent

     

    Nikon India has announced the launch of its new ad campaign ‘I am Nikon’. Targeted to connect the brand’s heritage of professionalism, authenticity and innovation to an audience of photographers aspiring or professionals, the new campaign highlights the people from across the country freezing moments with their Nikon D-SLR.

     

    The campaign will be live on 18th of April in two different edits for duration of 30 seconds each on television and the complete campaign of 60 seconds will be live on YouTube. The campaign focuses on Nikon’s D-SLR range and highlights different human emotions which connect with our daily lives. It kicks off with a father capturing his toddler’s acrobatics moves moving on to a young man posing to be an Bollywood actor at different locations, the campaign similarly highlights different human emotions which instantly connects with the audience like dream of being a champ, thrill of risk taking, aspiration to be famous, elation of being married etc.

     

    Hiroshi Takashina, Managing Director, Nikon India Pvt. Ltd. commented, “With this latest advertising campaign ‘I am Nikon we aim at connecting on a more direct level with our audience over the feelings we all recognize around the art of photography. The campaign plays on Nikon’s existing tagline ‘At the heart of the image’ and includes real-life scenarios in which people show who they are with a Nikon camera.  We feel that this campaign really gets to the core of what it means to be a Nikon photographer and hope to remind our audience that they are at the heart of the image. We hope it will be as well-received as the previous campaigns”

     

    Sajjan Kumar, Vice President – Imaging Division, Nikon India Pvt. Ltd., said, “The new campaign resonates with Nikon’s commitment of enabling consumers to capture not only the perfect moment but also express who they really are. We have a legacy of creating technologically advanced D-SLR which are simple to operate and are capable of capturing moments and bringing out every emotion the way the heart feels it. In order to establish deeper connect Nikon has been consistently investing in advertising and other promotional activities to reach out to every photography aspirant of the country.”

     

    Conceived by the creative team at K&L Arms Communication India, the entire campaign has a very emotional appeal to it with an inspiring musical background.

     

  • World Wide open and Personagraph launches a Private Marketplace (PMP) for Mobile Developers in India

    Reliance partners with Personagraph; to provide more value for Game Developers and Advertisers

    By A Correspondent

     

    Reliance Entertainment Digital, comprising World Wide Open, Zapak, BigFlix and Reliance Games, is partnering with Personagraph to drive more value for advertisers by utilizing mobile specific segments, both from the brand and brand performance perspective. The company’s three large publishers i.e. Reliance Games, Zapak, and BigFlix, will be utilizing Personagraph’s Privacy Compliant SDK toolkit for monetization, using its predictive audience segments product line.

     

    One of the key benefits of Personagraph is that publishers own their data and that it is completely transparent and privacy compliant. The partnership would mean greater opportunity in an ecosystem that is capable of leveraging user insights to drive higher relevance, context and personalization in mobile, both at the publisher and advertiser end, while using a single data source.

     

    WWO and Personagraph are partnering to bring a Data/Audience driven Private Marketplace (PMP) specifically targeting Mobile Developers in India. A private marketplace is an exchange derivative that is selective about how and what inventory is brought in to the platform, and similarly which marketers are being provided access to brands transparently with audience attached to every impression. The Private Marketplace will be open for Mobile Developers with clear instructions on ad viewability, sizing, brand transparency, etc. while marketers will be allowed buy in to the inventory via guaranteed and non-guaranteed means.

     

    By using the Personagraph technology and with WWO demand already built in to the marketplace, the Mobile Development community can access growing and consistent revenue for advertising monetization now and going forward as we bring more publisher side partners and marketers to the platform.

     

  • Carlton will be reporting into Tarun Rai and will continue to lead HDS's creative leadership

    JWT elevates Carlton D’Silva as CEO, Hungama Digital Services

    By A Correspondent

     

    Carlton D'Silva

    J. Walter Thompson South Asia has named Carlton D’Silva as the new Chief Executive Officer, Hungama Digital Services. Carlton will be reporting into Tarun Rai and will continue to lead HDS’s creative leadership as its Chief Creative Officer.

     

    In his new role, Carlton will be responsible for leading the growth at HDS and further enhancing its creative output. He will partner Tarun to seamlessly integrate and deliver on J. Walter Thompson South Asia’s creative vision to offer the best value proposition to its clients. Carlton will have complete oversight of all six offices of HDS, including Hungama Promo Marketing.

     

    Tarun Rai

    Announcing his elevation, Tarun Rai, Chief Executive Officer, J. Walter Thompson South Asia said, “Carlton is a dynamic, creative leader with strategic capabilities, which makes him an ideal choice to head HDS. He is young, ambitious and has the drive to take HDS to the next level.”

     

    Carlton has spent close to 16 years with HDS. He is imaginative and inspiring and has diverse experience of working with some of the biggest brands in the country. He has won several awards and accolades for HDS across national and international award shows.

     

    Neeraj Roy

    “We are delighted to elevate Carlton as the CEO of HDS. Apart from being one of the most experienced digital advertising professionals in India, Carlton has demonstrated tremendous leadership qualities in leading a team of top performers who have won accolades for their clients and given them innovative and sustainable solutions with impactful and engaging consumer interactions. In his new role, Carlton will prepare our clients from leveraging creative digital activations and transform their communities to transactions. I wish him all the very best, always!”, said Neeraj Roy, Director on board, HDS.

     

  • netCORE is the market leader in email marketing technology and a leading provider of SMS, Voice, Push Notifications and USSD platforms

    Smartech, a cross-channel marketing automation platform unveiled

    By A Correspondent

     

    netCORE, a leading digital marketing solutions provider has launched Smartech, a cloud-based marketing technology platform. With the launch of Smartech, netCORE aims to help modern marketers streamline digital communication, increase engagement, automate cross-channel workflows, deliver data-driven personalization and improve operational efficiency.

     

    Commenting on the launch, Rajesh Jain, Founder and Managing Director, netCORE, said, “Smartech is yet another example of industry-leading innovation that netCORE has been known for. As technology transforms marketing, Smartech is exactly the platform marketers need to take away the drudgery of campaigns and enable a deeper personalized connect with customers.”

     

    netCORE is the market leader in email marketing technology and a leading provider of SMS, Voice, Push Notifications and USSD platforms. It is the first Indian company to offer a multi-channel integrated marketing technology platform.

     

    Through the launch of Smartech, marketers can streamline lead generation, enable lead nurturing and scoring, develop customer retention programs, measure marketing effectiveness through analytics and optimize ROI.  Additionally, Smartech enables automated workflows to be designed on the basis of a customer’s behavior like checking email, clicks, missed calls, SMS response, customer attributes and demographics.

     

  • Next week, all jury members for the Advertising & Digital Awards will gather in Mumbai-India to review, discuss and elect the best

    Kyoorius Awards gets 1419 entries across ad & digital

    By A Correspondent

     

    The final tally at the 2015 Kyoorius Advertising & Digital Awards has been revealed. 1419 entries have been submitted by Indian agencies and studios, at the second session of the Kyoorius Advertising & Digital Awards. This is a jump of over 40 per cent from last year’s total tally of 988 entries from Advertising & Digital Awards.

     

    Participating agencies include DDB Mudra, Ogilvy & Mather, Madison Group, Grey Worldwide, Contract Advertising, Creativeland Asia, Scarecrow Communication, Linen Advertising, Itsa Brand Solutions, Webchutney, Isobar, Rediffusion Y&R, Ideas@Work and BBH, to name a few.

     

    Rajesh Kejriwal

    Rajesh Kejriwal, Founder CEO of Kyoorius said, “This number has been very encouraging, and a sign of acceptance by the industry. Kyoorius thanks all agencies for their support. We look forward to a packed jury session next week as these entries battle it out for Blue and Black Elephants.”

     

    Next week, all jury members for the Advertising & Digital Awards will gather in Mumbai-India to review, discuss and elect the best of the best over an intensive four-day session. To make the judging process as transparent and open as possible, members from the industry are invited to see the jury in action at Nehru Centre from 29th April to 1st May. This is amongst the very few open to public jury sessions around the globe.

     

    Visitors can come in and watch the jury debate the entries, checkout some of the best in Indian creativity and attend four FYIdays conducted by the jury members themselves. This promises to be a source of inspiration for the young blood in the industry as they can witness in person the debates on how juries think, why some works are voted and why some do lose out in the end.

     

  • It's not just about gripes and grouses. Your customers are providing invaluable feedback when they write about your brand on social media websites. Six tips from Faisal I Farooqui

    Bracing yr Brand 4 Online Feedbk

     

    By Faisal I Farooqui

     

    Understanding the economic consequences of social interactions has always been a challenge in the regular, monetary economy. Where land, labour and capital were considered crucial elements in wealth generation, social interactions, private discussions and other ‘non-economic activities’ — while valuable and necessary — did not have any greater meaning. Until the advent of the internet, that is.

     

    While studies dating as far back as 1955 show us that word-of-mouth is an important source of product information and positioning, recent research by marketing gurus highlights that such word-of-mouth recommendation influences a consumer’s product purchase decision a great deal. The all-pervasive Internet has made it possible for thousands, or even millions of consumers to interact online — the consequences of which are now beginning to haunt every CEO and marketer involved in selling a product or a service. A rising culture of sharing experiences and opinions on everything, from goods and services, to the arts and attitude, is the result of a rapidly-shrinking world, with a global economy, global brands and global icons all well within reach of practically everyone.

     

    One thing is indisputable: social media is driving consumer choices and feedback. Social media’s growth relies around content that is primarily generated by users– or consumers in this case — and is bound by two common threads. The first thread is the platform’s binding medium, which is the internet with its software, servers, apps, websites and bandwidth.

     

    The second thread is human emotions: the passion of consumers who believe in empowering others by sharing their own thoughts and experiences. As the country’s landscape is rapidly flooded with products manufactured from all over the world, Indian consumers are taking to their laptops and various mobile devices to talk about the hundreds of thousands of goods and services on offer – and not always in a flattering way. But what is significant, though, is that with this trend, a sociological ‘mapping’ of the consumer space is also taking place.

     

    Various studies have indicated that more than 60% of online users in India do research on products and read reviews online before going ahead with their online or offline transactions.

     

    So, what makes people share their experiences online? These days, around the world, there is a set of extremely well-informed consumers who are trying their best to help other consumers. This ‘competitive altruism’ or the eagerness to help other consumers with honest opinions, is resulting in the creation of a unique and a powerful community of consumers. It is this community that turns the spotlight on both the good and the bad; the pros and the cons of things.

     

    The relative anonymity that the Internet offers has been known to enable people to shed their biases online, and review websites apparently draw out even the shyest of consumers and make them express their the opinions. And sometimes that feedback turns out to be quite influential.

     

    Such largescale opinion-sharing is creating a direct impact on the reputation and the bottomlines of brands. While consumers are calling the shots, companies can leverage such discussions to monitor these reviews and consequently improve their offerings.

     

    It is quite possible that if you are a brand manager or the CEO, you may come across opinions and reviews that criticise your products and services. You should have the ability to understand that most of the time, this is honest and unbiased feedback, and it would be good to address it.

     

    Six ways to engage the online consumer –

    1. Two-way communication: Set up a culture of dialogue. Build two-way communication with those who have written about your brand online.

    2. Listening: Don’t confront. The smart CEO will never confront reviewers, but engage and communicate with them instead

    3. Staff training and attitude: Empower your customer support team to quickly resolve issues. Often the cost of pampering a disgruntled customer is negligible, while the consequences of delaying it may only escalate matters.

    4. Analysis: The shift from word-of-mouth to offline-to-online provides the single biggest opportunity to measure and analyse an activity that has always been a challenge to economists. Analytical tools will help you analyse all online feedback

    5. Increase service quality allocation: Brands must spend more on service quality and customer support. If that means shifting some money from promotions and campaigns, so be it

    6. Reward: Thank those who talk about your brand online. Remember, millions of people who write reviews are actually providing you feedback — subtle or otherwise — without you paying them. It’s the biggest market research data available to you. And you don’t even have to hire an agency to get it!

     

    So get online, and listen to what your customers are saying.

     

    Faisal I. Farooqui is CEO of MouthShut.com, a leading consumer review and feedback platform

     

  • New tagline – 'Dil Toh Roaming Hai', to fuel growing travel ambition of people and give into their hearts' desires

    MakeMyTrip looks to get close to consumers with ‘Dil toh roaming hai’

    By A Correspondent

     

    MakeMyTrip unveiled its new brand-advertising campaign that has been conceptualized with the objective to strengthen the brand’s connect amongst travellers and drive its adoption among new consumers. Through this brand repositioning exercise and the new tag-line ‘Dil Toh Roaming Hai’, MakeMyTrip intends to be travel partner that fuels the growing travel ambition of customers at large.

     

    The campaign reflects the company’s strong connect and deep understanding of Indian consumers along with the width of its travel solutions. The film also integrates MakeMyTrip’s service offerings that enable a seamless and hassle-free travel experience. The voice over for the TVC has been given by the acclaimed Indian film and stage actor and director Naseeruddin Shah. The brand film will be promoted on TV, social media and digital platforms from 27th April.

     

    Commenting on the new avatar, Saujanya Shrivastava, CMO, MakeMyTrip said “MakeMyTrip has been instrumental in changing the way India travels. With the widespread adoption of Online Travel, it was imperative for us as the category leader to unearth a deep-rooted customer motivation and strengthen our association with customers. Leisure travel today is part of lifestyle discourse and there is a strong customer need to come across as “interesting”. Travel is a via media to increase the “interesting” quotient. Like financial or career ambition, people today have a Travel Ambition. The brand repositioning campaign seeks to partner the emergent customer in their growing travel ambition….”

     

    The story of the characters, in the ad campaign, has been brought to life by Joy Mohanty, National Creative Director, Publicis Capital. Talking about the creative concept, Joy said, “There was a time when it mattered if you were well-read. Today, it is of great importance to people to be well-travelled, and to have a repository of experiences to draw from. It is this that creates the ambition, or a khwaish, that every person wants to fulfill. Our new commercial is about these little stories behind the journeys, the desire to travel for oneself, or for someone else. It is this ambition that drives a son to take his 65-year old mum to see snowfall for the very first time, or for deadline-chasing dinks to lose themselves in the middle of nothingness. MakeMyTrip is the catalyst that helps fulfill these varied travel ambitions that are fast-growing in every corner of the country. And what better time to do this than the holiday season.”

     

     

     

     

  • Annual Twitter study finds Governments becoming savvier in the use of the Social Media channel

    Twitter now the medium of choice for world leaders, notes Twiplomacy study

    By A Correspondent

     

    Over the past four years, Twitter has become the social media channel of choice for world leaders to reach large audiences with key messages and sound-bytes, according to Burson-Marsteller’s Twiplomacy study, an annual global survey of world leaders on Twitter. Twiplomacy aims to identify the extent to which world leaders use Twitter and how they connect on the social network.

     

    The study notes that Governments are putting more effort into their social media communication and are including more visuals and videos in their tweets. The study analyzed 669 government accounts in 166 countries and revealed that 86 percent of all 193 United Nations (UN) governments have a presence on Twitter. One hundred and seventy-two heads of state and government have personal Twitter accounts and only 27 countries, mainly in Africa and Asia-Pacific, do not have any Twitter presence.

     

    “The Burson-Marsteller Twiplomacy Study has become an essential gauge of the power and reach of social media,” said Donald A. Baer, Worldwide Chair and CEO, Burson-Marsteller. “This fourth annual Burson-Marsteller Twiplomacy Study provides critically valuable insights about the communications practices and needs of leaders around the world.”

     

    While @BarackObama is the most followed world leader, he is also dwarfed in terms of retweets per tweet by Pope Francis who averages almost 10,000 retweets for each tweet sent on his Spanish account, against 1,210 for each tweet sent by @BarackObama.

     

    “This study illustrates that governments are becoming savvier and more professional in the use of social media,” said Jeremy Galbraith, CEO of Burson-Marsteller Europe, Middle East and Africa and Global Chief Strategy Officer. “It is interesting to see how foreign ministries have honed their social strategies and built substantial dedicated teams to manage their online channels. We believe corporations can learn a lot from governments and their leaders on Twitter.”

     

    More than 4,100 embassies and ambassadors are now active on Twitter. In New York, Washington, London and Brussels, most diplomatic missions use Twitter to have a voice at the digital table. Canada, the EU, France, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK and the U.S. have put most of their embassies and missions on Twitter. The UK Foreign Office in London also encourages personal engagement by its ambassadors, and it is virtually impossible to become a Foreign Office diplomat without using digital tools.