MxMIndia

Tag: Vivaki

  • This acquisition strengthens Publicis Groupe's presence inIndiaas well as its digital dominance

    Resultrix is now a Publicis Groupe company

    By A Correspondent

     

    Publicis Groupe has announced the acquisition of Resultrix, an award winning digital marketing agency with an international footprint in India, Singapore, the UAE and the US. This acquisition strengthens Publicis Groupe’s presence in India as well as its digital dominance.

     

    Resultrix was founded in 2008 and has grown to be the leading performance marketing agency in several strategic markets. Resultrix employs over 100 specialists across its global offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, Seattle and Dubai. The award-winning agency provides a full suite of services including search engine optimization, search engine marketing, online media, web-design, analytics, media buying, social media strategy, and mobile marketing with a differentiated set of performance-based business models. Resultrix’s extensive clientele comprises both international and local brands including Corbis Corporation, Bupa, Standard Chartered Bank, Airtel, Cleartrip, DBS Bank and Emirates National Bank among others.

     

    Talking about the acquisition, Daina Middleton said: “Clients are demanding best-in-class specialized skills and seamless digital integration at scale. Resultrix has an impressive track record as a leading search and interactive services agency. Their highly sophisticated suite of digital solutions perfectly complements our offering and will solidify our leadership position around the world.”

     

    Resultrix will operate as a unit within Performics, under the name ‘Resultrix, a Performics Company’. Its founders, Vidur Luthra, CEO, and Gulrez Alam, COO, will continue to lead the agency and will report into Daina Middleton, Global CEO for Performics and Gareth Mulryan, Managing Director of Performics, Asia Pacific.

     

    Vidur Luthra, CEO for Resultrix said: “We were founded on the belief that digital advertising provides the opportunity to disrupt the traditional media business models and this is a great opportunity to join a network that is renowned for being at the forefront of the industry. It allows us to realise our ambitions and leverage our skills, strengths and experience across a larger group footprint which is of huge benefit to our clients and teams.”

     

    This acquisition confirms Publicis Groupe’s ambition to accelerate its presence in fast-growing markets and develop its capabilities in digital in order to better serve its clients.

     

    Srikant Sastri, VivaKi Country Chair for India added: “India promises huge growth potential and opportunities, especially in the area of digital. This investment demonstrates our commitment to developing our networks in fast-growing and important markets and sectors.”

     

    According to the current ZenithOptimedia Advertising Expenditure Forecast (June 2012),India, the world’s 16th largest advertising market, will see an increase in advertising expenditure of 6.8 per cent over the course of 2012. Along with Brazil, Russia and China, India is forecast to account for 35 per cent of total global growth.

     

    The acquisition of Resultrix, which is subject to regulatory approval, is a testament to Publicis Groupe’s strategic commitment to expanding its operations across India, where the Groupe aims to double its size by 2015.

     

     

  • Just collecting data and running algorithms isn't enough, comments Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer @ VivaKi.

    The Six Ps of Data Driven Marketing

     

    By Rishad Tobaccowala

     

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his famous poem “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” has a stanza describing what it is like to be stuck in a salty ocean under a withering sun:

    Water, water, every where,

    And all the boards did shrink;

    Water, water, every where,

    Nor any drop to drink.

     

    Today we live in a data driven, data infested, data diarrhea world where we may plaintively wail:

    Data, data every where

    So much data that we will sink

    Data, Data every where

    Pray who will help us think?

     

    It is clear that data itself is being created in such piles that data itself is close to meaningless and information from it is often not too meaningful. What we really need is to be able to make this torrential flow yield a waterfall of actionable insights and maybe even wisdom.

     

    This is unlikely to come from yelling “big data”. ” we need to own the data”, “data is critical” and other data shibboleths that the most data challenged companies and individuals brandish like some magic sword.

     

    A better way is consider the six Ps of Data.

     

    1. Perspective: What perspective do you expect to get from the data ? What connections are you hoping to see? How do you plan to use this data? Asking the questions before you collect or cull through the data can be very helpful. There are times that the data itself may yield the answers but to do so you will need the next P which is people.

     

    2. People: The shortage in data driven marketing is clearly not the data or the storage capacity or even the computing capacity but of this rare bird called the “data scientist”. John Rauser of Amazon in this fine talk explains how this species combines applied math and engineering with a layer of curiosity, skepticism and good writing skills.

     

    3. Punctuality: The half life of a tweet is probably 8 minutes and of any piece of data probably less. Collecting data is like building a museum to the past in a real time world. What is critical is to have data arrive where you need it, and when you need, both from some past archive and some just in time magic. As the world gets more mobile and place and time-based relevance increases in importance so will the punctuality of data.

     

    4. Privacy: As data scientists glean insights such as the likelihood of you being a valuable pet food buyer is if you celebrate/promote your pets birthday on Facebook , and combine it with the amazing technology of just in time, things may get all creepy and icky. And to ensure that this privacy issue will become a critical factor one can look to the Government. Not just the Europeans but of every country whose political structures are being disrupted by technology armed citizens. To make an example of things the Government  will come after the big companies and so data policies and transparency will be key going forward to keep things all nice and elegant.

     

    5. Pooling: We are living in a connected world. The Internet is a connection engine. Data APIs and access to databases from all over will be critical to make data driven marketing a reality. Here is a simple example of how Google Trends data and retail location allowed for some superb marketing. It’s not the data you have but the data you can access. Access to rather than ownership of data is key and therefore the ability to partner and leverage platforms and portholes into data clusters will be key.

     

    6. Partnering: As large companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Experian, IBM and several others around the world build data stacks, warehouses and tools,  the key will be to partner with these platforms that allow companies to process, pool and pull their own information. There are huge economies of scale that come with data collection and processing and therefore it will be key to decide what platforms to partner with rather than build a complete vertical stack.

     

    The age of data driven marketing arrived some time ago. Now companies and people have to catch up with how best to thrive in such an age and collecting data and running algorithms are unlikely to yield much without the six Ps.

     

     

    Rishad Tobaccowala serves as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer of VivaKi which combines the media and digital assets of the Publicis Groupe including Starcom, Zenith, Mediavest, Optimedia, Digitas, Razorfish, Moxie Interactive, Performics and Denuo. Mr Tobaccowala can be reached at @rishadt

     

  • Professor John Philip Jones, Author and Brand Guru was of the opinion that like in India, even theUS did not make the best use of internet advertising. However, he felt that the medium would continue to grow in both parts of the world

    Ads must be rational: Prof John Philip Jones

    By A Correspondent

     

    The internet would be the third largest medium in the world by 2020 after television and direct mail, said Professor John Philip Jones, Author and Brand Guru at the last day of Goafest 2012.

     

    The last day, which saw another good and powerful line up of speakers at Goafest 2012, commenced with Professor Jones talking about ‘Adding Drive to Magical Ideas’ and about the need for brands to use right strategies and right data to make advertising more effective.

     

    Interestingly, Professor Jones was of the opinion that like in India, even the US did not make the best use of internet advertising. However, he felt that the medium would continue to grow in both parts of the world.

     

    In the Q&A session moderated by Mr Rajesh Jejurikar, President, Zee Entertainment, Professor Jones said that while it is good for advertisements to have emotional contents, there has to be some elements of rationality in the advertisement to make it more effective to reach out to the consumers.

     

    Mr Simon Wardle, Chief Strategy Offer, Octagon spoke on ‘Passion Drivers and the Magic of Why’, citing the example of passion for sports which varies from country to country, for instance, the passion for cricket in India and the passion for football in another.  He said that in order to understand the consumers’ passion, brands will have to think like the consumer. He gave the example of ‘Mars’, a chocolate bar that didn’t change the colour of its wrapper since the 1930s, but during the Football World Cup a few years ago, it ran a campaign and tweaked the wrapper giving hope to its consumers that their country would win the World Cup after many years. He also said that it is not the sport that the consumer is loyal to, but the team and brands must understand this.

     

    Mr Rishad Tobaccowalla, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Vivaki spoke on the future of creativity and the different mediums available today. He highlighted the abundance of opportunities in creativity within mobile itself, be through sound, picture, or even video. He was of the view that the real test of a brand is when consumers remember a brand for its creative, even after a period of time.

     

    Click here to view all Goafest 2012 stories

     

  • MxMIndia kicks off its countdown to Goafest 2012 with an interview with the organising committee chair

    10 Days to Go-Goafest! It’s all about celebrating ideas: Arvind Sharma

     

    As the countdown begins for Goafest 2012, Arvind Sharma, Chairman Goafest 2012 and Chairman, India Sub-continent, Leo Burnett, speaks to MxMIndia’s Tuhina Anand on the festival this year and why it is truly the celebration of creativity at its best.

     

    What can one expect from Goafest 2012? How will it different from last year?

    The Festival will stay true to its fundamental vision. It is a platform for celebrating creativity and a source of inspiration. Most importantly for the entire fraternity comprising young and not-so-young, Goafest is the preparatory ground for the industry to gauge where and how to go forward. I feel that the core, sometimes, is forgotten in the bid to do something new.

     

    I mean, we live in a world which is changing rapidly, so having something new is inevitable. If you look at successful festivals around the world 90 per cent remain the same. Similarly, at Goafest, we have defined categories and 95 per cent remain the same in terms of predictability of entering, judging, Awards Governing Council and Goafest Committee. There is consistency in that format and our effort of providing conversations. All this is same as what one had last year.

    Having said that about the predictability factor, let me also add that moving forward is equally important.

     

    So, what’s new?

    This year we are looking at ways to involve clients in a meaningful way. The fact is that, there would be no advertising if there were no clients. The business of advertising is about partnering with the marketers. We, at Goafest, believe in evolving vision that doesn’t really mean evolving identically, but in evolving together. We look at bringing in more opportunity for conversations and that’s the reason why we have brought clients this time into the seminar.

     

    There is a slight change in the format. So far, there have been series of international speakers, while some of these presentations have been received well, some weren’t, and there have been questions on the relevance of those to India. Changing that, we have brought in senior Indian clients to raise questions after the presentation. So there will be 30-35 minutes for the speaker followed by 10-15 minutes of Q&A led by a senior Indian client. He or she will be the voice and mind of the audience and bring in the Indian perspective to the entire presentation by agreeing, challenging, bringing contextual light and interpreting the whole presentation.

     

    We have also brought the Marketing Wizards to Goafest. This is calling the under-30 staff of the marketing community. We have had a good response and we expect overall 70 to 80 major advertisers to participate, which include team of two people representing to some even registering team of 30 people even though we have a limit to numbers.

     

    Why this whole idea of bringing in Grand Prix to all verticals?

    Grand Prix, traditionally, has been awarded in Print, TV and Integrated. This year, we have expanded the Grand Prix to cover all the 9 verticals. This was not an easy decision and the step was debated. We believe that the time has come for specialists in area to move to the centrestage. I don’t really know if the jury will find works worthy enough for Grand Prix in each of the vertical, but this would help in finding worthy advertising and celebrating it around India and even around the world.

     

    For a young designer who is always on the periphery of an agency, winning gold is good but winning the GrandPrix might help in moving the same person to leadership position. We hope that the move will catalyze long term fundament change in the way we create advertising.

     

    We hear this year there are entries from other South Asian countries?

    Yes, we have entries from Sri Lanka and Pakistan and we will have delegates from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In South Asia, we have different cultures but there are more similarities than differences within those cultures and we can learn a lot from each other. Unfortunately, the politics of the subcontinent is more difficult. We had planned a road show in various countries but our passports got stuck and this could not happen.

     

    Can you throw some light on the conclave and the seminar?

    We have put together an enviable list of names and these are speakers who really are worthy of listening. Jean-Yves Naouri, COO Publicis Group spends almost 150 days in flight. He knows what is happening in the business around the world and will share his valuable insight. Tim Love has been involved with theCannesand he played important role in the shaping of the future of Omnicom Group. Jonathon Mildenhall, VP of Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence, CocaCola promises to be stimulating session. Steven King, CEO, ZenithOptimedia will also be on panel. Anuradha Sengupta, who loves throwing challenge, will be part of the session.

     

    On the seminar speakers, Amir Kassaei, Chief Creative Officer, DDB Worldwide, Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, VivaKi and Prof John Philip Jones, Emeritus Professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications,Syracuse University,New Yorkwill be speakers. While the world is talking video as the future, Lucas Watson, Vice President, Global Sales and Industry Marketing, YouTube will tell us how and Simon Wardle, Chief Strategy Officer, Octagon will be worth listening to for all the planners in the industry. Erik Vervroegen, International Creative Director, Publicis Worldwide will give his take on creativity. We will announce one more name in this list soon. From the Indian marketers side who will be part of Q&A, we have Sanjay Behl from Reliance, Kainaz Gazder from P&G, Viral Oza from Nokia, Gayatri Yadav from Star India and Hemant Bakshi from Unilever.

     

    Awards have been under the scanner, do the controversies surrounding it mar the event in anyway?

    Awards show will have criticism. What is driving us is the celebration of creativity and look at this Fest as a platform to prepare ourselves for the way industry will go forward.

     

    Why did the Goafest Committee decide the theme – Magic of Ideas?

    Everything that happens at festivals is ideas. While advances in technology and database is important, but what we celebrate is ideas. If we add everything on an excel sheet, we will see that when a brand gets a lot of traction or if it is ignored, it is all to do with ideas. No client launches a product with the intention of not succeeding, so getting it right is important. For a product to be embraced, it has to connect with people and this cannot be reduced to a formula but has to do with the magic of ideas.

     

    The awards have been leaked in the past, losing some of its credibility, how do you ensure that this doesn’t happen this year?

    We believe that awards will not be leaked. In this, the media as well as the organizers have a role to play. There is a symbiotic relation. We do our best to avoid any such incident. Some information has to be shared with the media beforehand, but there is an embargo on release information and last year journalistic fraternity showed a sense of responsibility. I will add that the media has equally a big stake in the Fest.

     

    What will you say to the agencies that have decided to stay away from the fest?

    Whether to participate or not is an agency’s decision. We on our part, including the AGC, have been ensuring that our job that includes category, rules, audit and the jury does their job well. Let creative minds debate as for us touch wood, thing are going as per planned.

     

    If you have to send a formal invite to the industry for the Fest what would you say as to why must the fraternity attend?

    You will get to see the best of work and see the best creative minds judging what they think is worthy of awards. You get to interact with seniors and bright creative minds which many times is impossible in the busy schedules that we lead. Besides you will get to hear exceptional speakers’ line-up.

     

    Goafest creates the space for debate with peers and youngsters, which includes large group discussions and one-on-one interaction. We are expecting around 2,500 people to attend Goafest this year. Not to forget that Goafest is not heavy-handed like training sessions but good learning place where you also have loads of fun.

     

    Personally for you, how has it been plugging all the gaps before the festival?

    We have a very big team working across agencies. There is a sense of joy and shared sense of purpose to make Goafest a success. We are in it together and there still is a fair bit of work to be done. However, it’s been an enjoyable experience.

    Click here to view all Goafest 2012 stories

     

  • Rahul Kishore has joined Mogae Media as Senior Vice President, Priority Projects. He will work with Gaurav Luthra, Chief Business Officer of the company.

    Rahul Kishore joins Mogae as Senior VP, Priority Projects

    By A Correspondent

     

    Rahul Kishore has joined Mogae Media as Senior Vice President, Priority Projects. He moves from Vivaki where he worked with the Zenith Optimedia team.

     

    A career entrepreneur, Mr Kishore ran his own business for well over 20 years before changing tack in 2008 when he joined the exchange4media group as Business Head and later also as Editorial Adviser. An alumnus of St. Stephens College, Delhi, Mr Kishore’s stint at ZO/Vivaki centred around getting closer to the trading currency and purposive evaluation of media.

     

    “Rahul has entrepreneurial grit and drive. We need loads of that at Mogae,” said Ms Tanya Goyal, Executive Director of Mogae Media. “Rahul is being tasked to look at large opportunity blocks that can benefit from mobile as a medium. We hope he will be able to open up new vistas of opportunity for the company.”

     

    “Mobile has great opportunity. I am happy to be at the forefront of a ‘new’ medium that reaches 800 million consumers in India,” said Mr Kishore. “Mogae is a great new venture … I hope we create a new market with our efforts here. The response has been very encouraging and in the little time we’ve had, we have locked in two high-profile FMCG giants amongst our advertisers,” he added.

     

    In recent weeks, Mogae Media has announced many senior level appointments, including Messrs Tusshar Dhingra (from BIG Cinemas), Atishi Pradhan (from Contract) and Pavan Chandra (from Vivaki). Mr Kishore will work with Mr Gaurav Luthra, Chief Business Officer of the company.

     

    Mogae Media is the sole and exclusive monetization partners of telecom operator Airtel. Veteran mediaperson Mr Sandeep Goyal set up this new venture in January 2012.

     

     

     

  • As the global agency of record, MPG and Havas Digital will continue to handle both the online and offline media responsibilities for the airline in all 54 Air France markets

    Havas Media wins Air France global account

    By A Correspondent

     

    Havas Media retained the global Air France account following a competitive pitch with VivaKi (Publicis Groupe) that commenced in the second half of 2011. MPG, the largest media network under Havas Media, will support the win. MPG will manage the Air France account out of the French hub.

     

    As the global agency of record, MPG and Havas Digital will continue to handle both the online and offline media responsibilities for the airline in all 54 Air France markets. In addition, Havas regained digital markets throughout Asia that had previously been managed by VivaKi, including China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and Philippines.

     

    “On behalf of the whole team, I would like to thank Air France for renewing their confidence in Havas for the fourth time, thereby continuing the relationship that has been in place since 1992,” said Pascal Dasseux, COO Havas Media France.

     

    Havas Media – a real-time Global media agency leader – seeks to bring to Air France real-time solutions and constant reactivity thanks to a widely interlinked network; all Havas Media agencies will collaborate more closely and efficiently using their proprietary Flightdeck tool as well as the management and optimisation of paid, owned and earned media.

     

    MPG anchors the world’s fastest growing global media network, Havas Media. MPG provides media planning & buying, strategic consulting, branded entertainment and interactive marketing services for a range of clients in every region of the world. With offices in over 100 countries, MPG consists of over 5,000 media professionals working across a broad variety of disciplines and categories. MPG was named Mediapost’s Media Agency of the Year 2009-2011.

     

    Havas Media, the global media network of Havas, is one of the world’s fastest growing media groups having grown from 10 markets in 1999 to 122 markets in 2012. The companies within Havas Media include: MPG (Havas Media’s global media communications network), Arena Media (Havas Media’s tailor-made communications network), Havas Digital (Havas Media’s global interactive network) and Havas Sports & Entertainment (Havas Media’s global sports and entertainment communication network).

     

  • Chinese mobile ad network Madhouse enters India to offer comprehensive mobile marketing solutions

    Chinese Madhouse looks to wow India

     

    By Johnson Napier

     

    Countless comparisons could be drawn on how two of the biggest and most admired economies are driving brands from all across the world to be a part of a growth story that is unparelled. Or how the APAC region is all about just these two economies today, putting the other developed nations in the region in a state of oblivion. Having wowed the world with growth stories that defy market odds, China and India today command attention from business stalwarts and entrepreneurs like no other, especially entrepreneurs from emerging mediums like Digital and Mobile that are shaping the way the world goes about doing its business. But despite the huge buzz around these two economies, there is very little that transpires when it comes to the two economies trying to venture into each other’s territory to gain mileage and expand base – especially in the digital space.

     

    But all that could change with the advent of the largest mobile solutions and advertising network firm from China- Madhouse. Launched in 2006, the company enjoys the reputation of being tagged as the most intellectual and largest mobile ad solutions company in China. In India, Madhouse will work towards providing brands, advertising and media agencies and marketers with a host of comprehensive mobile marketing solutions. It has already tied up with a host of strategic partners including WPP, Vivaki, Omnicom, Aegis and so on from the media agency side of the business and would work towards providing them holistic mobile marketing and advertising network solutions.

     

    The Madhouse India team would be headed by Vinod Thadani, who until now was handling mobile responsibilities for Group M India andSouth Asia. Given that the two countries share market complexities that are similar in nature and have a population base that is very high, it seemed like a natural extension for Madhouse to step in to India, making it the first such venture into foreign territory in APAC.

     

    Throwing light on how the APAC market compares to the other regions and reacting on his choice of targeting India as the hub for launching the venture, Joshua Maa, Founder & CEO, Madhouse Inc. said: “Today APAC occupies ad spends growth to the tune of 32 per cent, making it the largest in the world. These are led by the economies of China , India and Indonesia that are the key drivers of this growth in APAC. To gain success in a market like India requires the ability to manage complexity, and this is an area where we excel.”

     

    Hoping to leverage the opportunity of using mobile as a mass media device, Maa went on to elaborate the business module by stating: “If you compare the mobile markets of India and China, they are almost identical. While China has a mobile user base of 960 million, India’s number stands at 894 million. But where mobile internet users are concerned, China has 356 million users while India’s number stands at 150 million. Therefore, we foresee a huge growth in India and decided to make this our first market to launch in APAC.”

     

    In India, the agency’s focus would be centred around disciplines of mobile ad serving, mobile ad network and mobile marketing solutions. Having wowed clients in China like HP, KFC, Unilever, Intel, Coke, and others, Maa hopes to emulate a similar example here by getting important brands to align with the network: “Being the only full-service provider in the market and having a skilled and experienced team in place, we hope to attract a lot of clients in the days to come.”

     

    Emphasising on the partnership, Vinod Thadani, COO, Madhouse said: “Madhouse will offer mobile marketing solutions created and carried out for advertisers by a team of experienced media professionals that understand this medium. On a technical level, mobile advertising can now achieve accurate intelligent targeting and provide real-time reporting – a very convincing proposition for advertisers.” According to Thadani, the need of the hour is to unlock the potential of the mobile medium and they are therefore determined to grow the Indian Digital Media market from Rs125 crores to Rs1,000 crores in the next 3 years. “The need of the hour is to understand the medium thoroughly and this would be possible by partnering with the right partners and going back with the right solutions to clients.”

     

    Perhaps the best reason for elation among mobile clients in India was provided by Ranjan Kapur, Country Manager, WPP, who began by discussing how India, as an advertising market, was highly undervalued. “Despite India boasting such a good growth in economy, the advertising spends in China stand at US $55 billion while for India it is at US $6 billion, this shows that we are still an under-advertised and under-branded market.” Citing the reason for China leapfrogging ahead of India, Kapur said that the single biggest factor for India’s dismal record in getting more ad spends was because it jumped on to the services bandwagon and chose to ignore the manufacturing sector. “While the Services sector contributes about 55 per cent to the GDP growth, it is still very shy on spending on marketing and promotional activities. And this is an area where Manufacturing excels. But all that is changing and the Services industry is opening up and spending more.”

     

    On the ad spends growth in India, Kapur said that while there is a 15-20 per cent growth, it is digital that is intriguing the advertisers the most. “Digital ad spends recorded a growth of 30 per cent.Mobile, specifically, is a Rs125 crore industry today and given that there are 300 million internet users predicted by 2015, mobile advertising is expected to account for about one-fourth of conventional traditional advertising. So it can be said that a revolution in digital in India is beginning to happen now.” This growth will be boosted further by the Government’s efforts to spread mobile and internet usage in rural areas for which it has promised 2,50,000 nodes for broadband in the next four years. “So mobile marketing in the rural areas will be a mass phenomenon, once this plan gains momentum.”

     

    Another interesting addition to the venture would be Rovio Entertainment that is more popular for its Angry Birds concept around the world. “Madhouse is a valuable partner for us in China , and we are excited about the opportunity to extend our collaboration to India as well,” said Bijay Gurung, Key Account Director, Rovio Entertainment Ltd. “With India being the second largest Facebook market, it opens the door for us to entertain even more fans as we are aiming for one billion downloads by the end of the year.” The current number stands at 700 million. Apart from that, Rovio would also focus on pushing itself as a publishing firm, a large-scale animations firm and further look to enhance its merchandise business.

     

    In an era where it is becoming difficult to lead lives without smartphones, iPads and other such mobile gizmos and with a lot left to be accomplished in the Data, Voice and Text domain and lack of established tools and systems that makes it difficult to answer the question of how this medium can be leveraged by advertisers to reach out to their consumers, probably an established Chinese mobile dragon could well show Indian mobile companies the way this medium could be harnessed to its full potential.

     

  • AdAsia tackles the question of how marketers can make good use of the digital revolution.

    AdAsia: From chat rooms to Twitter

    By Akash Raha

    That the digital revolution is already here, and is here to stay, is a given. But marketers are still perplexed on how to make full use of this phenomenon. In AdAsia 2011 a complete session was devoted to this very issue, and to be more precise, the subject of social media was discussed. The session in context was called ‘From chat rooms to Twitter… what next?’

    The panelists at this session were Kate Day, Communities Editor, Daily Telegraph Online, Arvind Rajan, Managing Director & Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan, LinkedIn and Earl Wilkinson, Executive Director and CEO, INMA. The session was moderated by Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Vivaki.

    The session proposed that discussions were going to be a reverse of what this conference is about ‘Uncertainty: The new certainty’. What the session proposed was ‘Certainty: The new uncertainty’. It is certain that over the next few years the driving force will be social media. However, the uncertainty aspect is only what it means to marketers, media company etc.

    Ms Day said, “The question one often asks is, ‘What is the next big platform?’ My answer is it’s all about the people rather than the technology. Actually the underlying shift is with the patterns of behaviours of the people involved and audiences. Brand and customer relationship is the key. If that’s the case, then what platform is next does not matter because the people are here.”

    All the panelists stressed on the need to build consumer relationship and make the social media experience more real and humane. The consumers today want to interact with a human rather than with an automated interface, they want real conversation, moreover, in real time. It is essential to “get your own house in order and make the customers feel at home”. Also, often while we talk about social media, there are assumptions made about the product, content and consumers. Such clichés are something one should stay away from and not base one’s social media plans on them. Crating content and platform for ones invaluable customers is the key.

    FB, Twitter and LinkedIn are three global platforms, but as Mr Rajan said, the reason they are used still remain different. Twitter is a syndication platform. FB is for friends and family and LinkedIn is a professional network. The social media platforms are still new, there is still a lot to be done and lot of understanding needed. The essence is to have meaningful conversation with the audiences, connect with the customers and once that is done, it can be leveraged upon.

    Earl Wilkinson, of INMA also shared his learning in the field of social media apropos newspaper publishers across the globe. He pointed out how sharing has becoming the value added special sauce for journalism online. And in a way, he emphasized that digital times have saved journalism. Now that social media is here already, and everyone knows that communication is essential, the trick is how to structure the communication. For newspaper publishers, the way forward is going to be projecting newspapers and news brands as a trusted voice out in the community and the blog-sphere and get the audiences back on the websites.

    Arvind Tobaccowala of Vivaki said that the essence to being leader in social media space is differentiating content. Speaking about social media platforms he expressed hope for Google+. He said “Google is an amazing company… Believe it or not, Google+ will work, and it will work in a very big way. I don’t know how it will fit into broader eco system but it will be interesting to watch.”

    Pointing to sharing content on the social space as an interesting behavioural aspect and social media phenomenon, the panelists expressed hope that it will only grow further as it is a great way to engage with the audiences. Mr Tobaccowala also pointed out that on the social media space it is important to understand the behavioral aspects of the consumers. There are heavy users and heavy influencers. Right now the focus is less on heavy influencer… Heavy influencers can be further be divided into advocates and detractor. In a nutshell, he stressed that it’s imp to talk to detractors because they are the ones who are more vocal, even more than the advocates. Social media helps rediscover the idea of sharing in new and different ways to new and different audience. The essence is to start with Social media and start with it now. The panelists beseeched everyone to get on it and one might stumble upon something wonderful… “It is not necessary that you always know what you are doing,” said one of the panelists. Also, one should not look for any returns, one will get it eventually. Social media is new and still developing. Not everything that one experiments with comes out right, but one should try nevertheless. Ms Day emphatically suggested, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” advocating that even if a few ideas don’t turn out right, it is a must to explore social media, as it is the big thing of the future.