India Digital Brand Index 2.0

By Manpreet on January 22, 2010


Edelman and Brandtology have jointly brought out the second edition of its Digital Brand Index for India. Covering the last quarter of 2009, this edition of the study tracked 154,492 online conversations pertaining to 104 large technology brands contained in 306 influential channels.
Here are some of the brands that emerged on top of the charts:


From the first edition of this survey in the previous quarter, i.e. July to September 2009, Samsung(Client) is now ranked #4 among the top 10 buzziest brands in India this quarter, i.e. October to December 2009; and the only consumer technology brand to feature in the top 5 (Google#1, Microsoft#2, Yahoo!#3 and Apple #5) during the period Oct-Dec 2009. With Samsung showing a significant leap of 3 positions in the list of top buzziest technology brands, it is reaffirming to know that some of the social media work we did for Samsung India’s Social Media campaign has shown results.
The study also derives that there has been an exponential 123% increase in the number of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 brand mentions). The Samsung Corby Colour Wars contest on Twitter as part of our Social Media campaign for Samsung India is likely to have contributed to this quantum leap. Our own post-activity analyses had shown around 3000 mentions of Samsung Corby, amounting to nearly 615000 exposures.
It was also interesting to note that many of the insights shared by the report are being employed by the team in our approach already. Sharing some key insights here:

  • Brands should integrate their digital communication along with their offline communication for best results
  • Marketers should consider implications of timing, alongside targeting and channel selection as a part of a social media engagement program
  • Conversations grow early in the week, spike on a Wednesday, and then taper off towards a weekend
  • Leading online content creators (influencers) are actively being wooed by brands
  • It’s time for brands to build the next set of influencers who are not sceptic about direct communication, and are likely to be influenced by the sheer gesture of reaching out

Do share your thoughts on the study too.

Posted in Social Media | Comments (3)

Ten trends that will drive Social Media in 2010

By Manpreet on January 21, 2010

Dataquest published my article ‘Back to the Future’ in their last issue, on Social Media trends to expect in 2010 for India. Reproducing the content here:
Back to the Future
The year 2010 will be about social media coming of age, albeit in select ways. Some relevant trends:

  1. Social Media For the Enterprise: 2010 will be the year where the enterprise looks towards social media for providing internal solutions for interaction, learning, fun! By 2010 end, internal e-mails should be passe, with people/ organizations sharing news, information, and updates through their internal social networks
  2. Search Will Open Up: If Facebook opens itself to search, that in itself would be the single most revolutionary development in the social media environment for the year 2010. Google may also bring its social search out of the labs as a service, which again would shift the paradigm back in favor of Google as the enduring, preferred search mechanism. Real-time search will gain ground
  3. Greater Focus On Tracking and Monitoring: Rigorous social media monitoring will emerge as one of the key focus areas for brands and organizations, in addition to their outreach and engagement initiatives over the social web, a symptom of maturing digital campaigns. While social media monitoring has relevance for several other sectors like governance, e-journalism, etc., it will be interesting to see if its potential gets tapped in 2010
  4. The Year of the Mobile, Finally: While for the last two consecutive years, we’ve been beckoning the arrival of the mobile as the next big thing, 2010 looks like the year that mobile will get third-time lucky. While it is already a ubiquitous device, the mobile itself is increasingly becoming the first tool for social media consumption, making it seamless and instantaneous. People would publish, consume, and share on the go!
  5. Collaboration Among Social Media Stakeholders: One of the crucial trends that 2010 will see materialize is the coming together of the various stakeholders within the social media landscape for sharing, learning, collaboration as well as fun. (There are immense possibilities of this vibrant coming together – to name a few, mutual notes-exchange, enhanced business value, cross-sector partnerships, global alliances, et al. One such step has been initiated by Blogworks in IndiaSocial™, with a case-studies series, the India Social wiki and a large-format flagship event in the current pipeline.) 2010 will see this coming of age of the Indian social media scene through such collaborative initiatives
  6. Convergence Across Media: Increasingly, all media are coming together – textual, audio, visual. Google Wave is one such example – a cross between chat, wiki, and email. Convergence would gain credence and adoption across platforms, and even in social advertising!
  7. Augmented Reality: The much touted phenomenon of augmented reality, only witnessed in science fiction, may not entirely materialize, but will surely develop further. While we already rely on LinkedIn and Facebook to profile/ sample people before we meet them, or meet over Twitter before a real-life face-off, extensive social profiling is something to look forward to. For instance, foursquare is a well known location-based network. This is also convergence in the sense that offline and online identities eventually come together, where the hitherto separate persona and the person come together as one
  8. Social Gaming: Farmville and Mafia Wars have only shown the tip of the iceberg in 2009, and this potential of purely fun-based engagement on the social web will be tapped further this year
  9. Interest Based Tribes Mature: Just like anything that comes of age, social media would also become boring in general. However, there’s respite in the fact that specific interest groups, as they mature, could become even more intensely active. However, these enhanced tastes imply that while 2009 was the year of un-friending, well gradually move to the year where people will un-join communities and un-fan pages that lie dormant on their social circuit. Brands will have to provide value to be on peoples social radars
  10. Revenue For Twitter: Twitter, the shiny object having lost its sheen by now, would be relevant for its use-value, and not just its glamor quotient. This in turn also means that 2010 is the one for Twitters growth as a business offering, it having fared well at the numbers growth in 2009

What are your thoughts? Would love to hear if you agree or otherwise.

Posted in Publised Pieces, Social Media | Comments (1)

Twitter tools you’re going to love

By Manpreet on August 3, 2009

Twitter, the fastest growing social network in the world (it grew 1448 percent y-o-y between May 2008 and May 2009), invariably comes up in every conversation about communication or new-media. Vice-versa, every event of any consequence (or otherwise) makes its way onto the Twitter-sphere. Something that was developed to send out short status messages (status was, in fact, the working title of the product) has found itself such differentiated value.

Much of it is due to its simplicity, but equally the result of the variegated effect that many of the services built around its core offer. Here are some of the applications and services enhancing the Twitter experience that you may want to try out as well:

Twitter Clients – Using Twitter’s API, these clients let you access the service the way you want. Multiple iterations allow you to choose the interface and the functions you prefer:

  1. TwitterFox runs as an extension on the Firefox window itself, with Twitter updates from friends popping up at set regular intervals
  2. TweetDeck is still in beta, but hugely popular, for, it lets you see all you need to on one page, for faster and easier twittering
  3. Destroy Twitter allows you to operate multiple accounts, and runs on Adobe AIR, with great functionality making it a one-stop web application for Twitter
  4. Dabr often called Twitter on steroids, is the most-loved Twitter application for the mobile. Being an application that incorporates user-feedback at the bat of an eyelid, this isn’t surprising at all!

Finding followers & friends – You can build your Twitter-stream based on various criteria, like people who match your interest levels, those who live near you, thought-leaders from your sphere, etc.:

  1. WhoShouldIFollow helps you find people with interests similar to yours as showcased in your respective tweets
  2. Twellow and WeFollow are two self-serve twitter directories where people list themselves based on their interests and can so be found accordingly. Each interest tag lists out all the people in that category, charted popularity-wise
  3. Twubble adds to your social-graph by listing out people who many of your existing friends may be following. It also has a locality filter to better the sorting process
  4. TwitDir is a Twitter directory that simply gives you the top 100 people at any given point

Search & Track – Track and listen in on conversations happening around current events & happenings, your brand or simply your favorite music-genre:

  1. Hash-Tags make your keywords search-friendly and allow you to track keywords of your choice, while TweetScan charts all conversations happening on Twitter live, which can then be further segmented by hash-tags/keywords
  2. Other than the classic Twitter-Search, TweetActive and Twibuzz graph the activity on your keywords in real-time, which can then be compared with other keywords over time as well
  3. Twistori tells you (quite literally) what people are loving and hating, thinking or feeling in real time!
  4. Happn is a localized search which shows you what people of your city are tweeting about. It only covers Mumbai as of now from India, but it’s a cool application anyhow!

Share – Share photos, audio/video, files and links with friends:

  1. AutoPostr shares your Flickr photos every time they are uploaded if ‘autopostr’ is added as a photo-tag photo, whereas Twitpic lets you post pictures directly on Twitter, along with a message, while also keeping track of how many views and responses it receives
  2. Bit.ly and Tweetburner shorten and share links and tracks views. They also let you customize links.
  3. Twitsay shares audio clips, and Twitddeo is for video-sharing. Twitcam and Qik let you live-stream videos
  4. TweetCube and FileSocial allow you to upload and share several kinds of files on Twitter, like mp3, avi, ppt, doc, zip files, plug-ins, pictures, etc.

Analyze – Interpret your activity and see where you’re going, to understand the service and its potential better, or just to have some fun!

  1. TwitGraph gives a visual progression of your statistics, while TweetStats shows bar-graphs of your ongoing weekly activity
  2. Tweet Beep tracks your specific tags, etc. on a regular basis whereas Twemes tracks all active tags in one place
  3. To judge volume of conversation on Twitter, Tweet-Volume tracks and compares volume for different keywords
  4. Twitter-Grader and Twinfluence grade your influence based on your power, reach and authority. They employ several logarithms including factors like number of followers, follower/following ratio, power of followers, frequency of updates, engagement, etc. to reach their conclusions
  5. Twitter-Friends analyses all the above, and more, and presents your engagement in a visual, interpretative manner for you to compare and analyze

Twitter Plus – There are several of these innovative services that let you do more in the same old 140 characters:

  1. GroupTweet and TweetKnot are services that allow you to create Twitter groups where friends can be invited for sharing messages in a more focused manner
  2. With Twitchat and Tinychat, you can create your own chat-rooms of your twitter friends for exclusive discussions that you may not want spilling over to your entire stream :P
  3. AutoDMer and TwitResponse send an auto-response to every new follower, or even set updates at a regular frequency
  4. Twitter backgrounds has a whole array of backgrounds to pick for your Twitter account, and also offers specific paid customization
  5. Write-up lets you share longer text through a link in a Tweet, while LinkBunch clubs multiple links for you to share at one go

This list is not exhaustive, merely a selection that as a combination, works best for most of my needs, and hopefully will help you too. There are several places that link to exhaustive listings of tools and applications, like Mashable, Twitdom, et al. Which Twitter-tools have you found useful? Do add them to the list!

Happy Tweeting!

Posted in Social Media | Comments (2)

The Zoozoo phenomenon

By Manpreet on May 6, 2009

Manpreet.jpg

Many a big brands are re-incarnating this season. But the top grosser in terms of eye-balls and adoration are Vodafone’s semi-alien, semi-ghostly & cartoon-like white bodied creatures called the Zoozoos.
While they were launched to co-ordinate with the second season of IPL and push the Value Added Services (VAS) offered by Vodafone, the happiest news is that with Zoozoo, Vodafone has finally found the antidote to the Hutch pug.
The egg-head, as its being lovingly called in many circles, are not even animated characters. Instead, it’s humans wearing specialized body suits, shot in creatively adjusted environs. The simplicity of the icon is actually what gave it the edge. With 10 creatives already on air, and 15 more en-route, the team had obviously expected this as well.
The most interesting bit, however, is that the name Zoozoo isn’t even mentioned in any of the ads/print campaigns. The popularity of the phenomenon is a result instead, of their attempts on the digital media. See, for instance:

  1. The Official Zoozoo fan page - collating their entire online presence on to one, and alongside giving live IPL match updates.
  2. What kind of a Zoozoo are you? A quiz, on their website! A temporal & catchy move, Quizzes are the new phase with Facebook flooding up with them anyway. Three questions and they give you an answer. The answer can then be shared with friends on one’s blog, through e-mail, on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, FriendFeed, et al!

    3. zoozoos(2).jpg

  3. Less than two weeks into the campaign, the Facebook page has over 68,000 fans. Not just that, the much loved Zoozoo who falls into the perils of a crocodile, has a fan page to himself!
  4. On Twitter – Well, it’s not trending ;) , but it sure is invoking a lot of interest. Don’t you wonder why the Zoozoos aren’t tweeting? ;)
  5. An Orkut community, initiated by fans, running polls, forums around the phenomenon.
  6. On YouTube, a channel has been set up. People are demanding more videos, and as a result, the making of the Zoozoo is now doing the rounds as well.
  7. A Zoozoo community toolbar.

That’s more than sufficient buzz. However, a lot of conversations are happening on these fora. What people like – or don’t like – from how they feel it reflects on the brand, how it compares to the earlier ads and what they think of the transformation, to even complaints in the VAS offered by Vodafone.
Not just are fans engaging, they are even giving suggestions on Zoozoo merchandise, and what all that should be! Not just the egg-head, the customers are trying to interact with Vodafone as well. Hope someone’s listening in to that.
A mix of simplicity, stupidity and hence, the charm, in both the figure and the nomenclature is what’s driving the fan-wave for now. That the Zoozoo, like a star-campaigner, may just overshadow the brand, or come to define it in inextricable ways, much like the pug, remains to be seen; but for now, it’s generating oodles of revelry.
Do share your Zoozoo thoughts with us :)

Posted in Advertising, Blogworks, Blogworks Team, Marketing, Social Media | Comments (4)

Marketers look at the online medium

By Manpreet on January 12, 2009

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A look at advertising trends given the economic slump has revealed how marketers are increasingly looking at cost-effective mediums of reaching the target audience.
Even as print and electronic are losing takers, online marketing initiatives are finding new ground and seeing good growth. Not only is the medium flexible to reach diverse kinds of audience segments, it is also much more cost-effective.
The interactive nature of online-forums and social-media platforms ensures enhanced brand awareness as well as backs retail with reliance.
Although the major part of the sales may still happen offline; online search, reviews, recommendations, etc are only becoming increasingly relevant.
This livemint story on a Google study shares some insights:

  1. Technology Products – 56% are researched online but purchased in retail stores; 26% are researched and purchased online.
  2. Consumer Electronics – 53% are researched online but purchased in retail stores; 28% are researched and purchased online.
  3. Telecommunication Products – Approx 59% researched online but purchased in retail store; 23% researched and purchased online.
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)