#McDstories – Are they loving it ?

By Swetha on January 26, 2012

What began as an attempt to bring out the positive stories of McDonalds, turned into a marketing nightmare for McDonalds. They  seeded the hashtag #meetthefarmers and #McDstories so as to showcase their commitment to deliver fresh produce. McDonald’s promoted video interviews with farmers that supply their lettuce, beef, and potatoes. Following which came the tweet which opened the floodgates for slandering:

“When u make something w/pride, people can taste it,’ – McD potato supplier #McDStories.”

Twitter users took over the hashtag to talk about all their rotten experiences. Twitter users across the world recalled stories, right from screws in their McFlurry to fingernails in their burgers. #McDStories pulled over 1600 negative conversations. A few examples are captured below -

 

 

What went wrong?

  1. Most people I know are acquainted with the brand McDonalds and have had at least one experience with the brand. My friend talking ill about the brand, prompts me to recall instances of my bad experience. This chain reaction catches on like wildfire. Within a matter of seconds, everyone has some story to share, good, bad or ugly.
  2. What McDonalds probably did not do, was weigh the larger sentiment of people towards the brand. In an environment where people are extremely conscious and moving towards a healthier lifestyle, a brand like McDonalds needs to do little to incite the negative comments. Is the story of ‘freshness’ credible enough for people to buy your story and write about it ? It is important to weigh those questions before rolling out a campaign, inviting stories from people. A channel like #McDonalds, else just becomes a reason for people to bring to surface all the negative sentiment that was simmering beneath.

Do share your thoughts with me.

Posted in Marketing, Social Media | Comments (0)

s.Oliver appoints Blogworks for Social Media Marketing strategy and engagement

By Swetha on October 27, 2010

We recently got great news  from s.Oliver, the leading European fashion brand. They appointed Blogworks to handle its social media marketing strategy and engagement.  This morning, exchange4media carried a news article, breaking the announcement.  s.Oliver is another feather in the cap and it is  a delight to work on, as it opens a plethora of engagement opportunities.

To kick-start s.Oliver’s social media programme, we have launched a new Facebook application – Color Me Casual – inviting participants to take Superstar interviews. In the 1st week since the launch of the app, the brand has seen a growth of 239 percent in the number of fans on Facebook (http://facebook.com/soliverindia), and rich engagement amongst users.

Speaking about its marketing strategy, Gaurav Sehgal, Chief Operating Officer, s.Oliver India said,

“We realise that more and more consumers want to share their fashion preferences and likes on social networks and we wanted to participate in these conservations,” adding, “s.Oliver is about Real Fashion for Real People. Real people are our ‘Superstars’ and you will see that insight driving our social media interventions.”

We have worked on fashion brands earlier as well, like Fastrack. s.Oliver gives us an opportunity to use our deep understanding in the lifestyle segment. You might want to see a few other brands we have worked with.

We will keep you posted on the updates and developments.

Posted in India, Social Media | Comments (1)

Work from home!

By Swetha on October 22, 2010

Work has less to do with the workplace. One need not be planted at their office seats in order to be productive. “Work from Lodhi gardens” as my colleague, Rajesh would famously put it. It is a mantra for us at Blogworks.

In the era of social networks, employees are demanding more mobility. I can collaborate with my team even while sitting at the client’s office. That is the freedom that social media networks and forums give me. A recent survey report revealed that three out of every five (amounting to 60%) respondents, wanted more flexibility and mobility at work.  Need of mobility and flexibility of being able to operate outside office is so great that it impacts the company loyalty (13%), choice of jobs (12%), and morale (9%). Employees show a preference towards jobs which would provide opportunities to connect to social media and related tools/devices.

“More than half of surveyed employees, who can access corporate networks, applications, and information outside of their offices, said that they were able to put-in extra productive hours everyday. While 45 per cent said they were able to give two to three extra hours a day, close to 25 per cent said they were putting in four hours or more.”

Source: The Times of India

I recently wrote a post over the increasing use of social media for internal communications. It is not surprising to know that companies are actually resolving attrition related issues by establishing social networks within the company. Companies like IKEA attribute increase in sales (with cost cuts), to internal communications 2.0 and use of social media.

While Sun Microsystems leverages social media to encourage participation on workfront, Thomson Reuters uses Yammer to seek opinion and votes on key issues. Yammer allows companies to customise and use it as a company-specific social media.

A lot of companies who face a threat owing to data leaks, are making their own indigenous social networks. An article in the Hindu Business Line talks about a study done by Deloitte. The study states that 22% of the companies have framed a set of guidelines for the use of social media. IBM, for instance has a well thought out policy in place.

According to the article, extensive use of social media actually helped save the life of an employee of EMC — Nick Glasgow, from cancer. The article does not explain how, but certainly social media has certainly transformed work into a lifestyle.

Soon “work from home” is not going to remain a privilege given to employees by only certain companies.

Posted in Social Media | Comments (3)

60% of social media users belong to non-metros – ViziSense media report

By Swetha on October 21, 2010

ViziSense released a report on the dynamics of the consumption of social media in India, capturing data from the ViziSense panel, for the time period of Jan to July 2010. 60% of the active internet users in India, are present on social networks. Interestingly enough, 60% of these users are from non-metros. The report analyses trends amongst the various demographics and geographics in India.

Tug of war between Facebook vs Orkut – top three trends


  1. It is not unknown Facebook has seen an exponential growth that set all the eye-balls rolling. It has grown two fold over the past seven months.The new study reveals that Facebook has the highest reach and approximately 2.21 crore people accessed Facebook in July 2010. Orkut followed suit with 1.85 crore users. Together Orkut and Facebook forms 90% of the social media populace. Rest of the players are at a lagging distance. Ibibo stands at the third position with 35.6 lakh users and has been increasing losing customers to other networks. It is not surprising to see Twitter make a fast leap to become the fourth most popular site.
  2. There has been a significant change in the photosharing and video sharing behaviour of the users. Even professional photographers, who used photo sharing sites like Flickr, have shown a shift towards the social networking sites. According to the report, ‘Home page’, ‘Applications’ and ‘Photos’ comes across as the most visited features on Facebook while on Orkut ‘Home Page’, ‘Scraps’ and ‘Photos’ were the most visited features.
  3. More than 90% of users visiting social media sites visit Orkut and Facebook. 50-60% users on Facebook and Orkut visit both sites. Moving ahead, we expect this number to fall in favor of Facebook as users find their complete circle of friends on a single, more dominant network. Other networks in comparison have around 90% of their users on Facebook and Orkut.
July 2010 Unique users Page Views
Facebook.com 22.1M 2,780M
Orkut 18.5M 1,671M
Ibibo.com 3.56M 141M
Twitter.com 3.14M 38.7M
Linkedin.com 2.95M 79.4M
Bharatstudent.com 2.95M 22.9M

Top three trends amongst various age brackets


  1. Highest number of users range between 15-24 years of age with the exception of Linkedin, which because of its inherent nature, has a higher number of users within the age bracket 25-34.
  2. Social networks being primarily driven by the youth, have maximum number of users in the less than 2 lakhs income category
  3. Since majority LinkedIn users are in their middle ages, they earn an income above 5 lakhs. Other sites in comparison have 20-25% of their users earning over 5 lakhs.

Impact of education on the use of social networks

Graduates and those pursuing graduation seem to the most ardent followers of the social networks, which explains the huge segment of users between the ages 18-24.

Top three trends in the activity levels

  1. Activity steps up post noon, spiking between 6 – 10 p.m.
  2. The age group 25-35, increases its usage of social networks around 3 p.m. which clearly indicates that working professionals mostly begin to ease out at the workplace. Users in the 15-24 age bracket are most active between 7 to 9 pm, which shows that they are using home computers more than the mobile, as popularly believed.
  3. Encouraging news is that, more than 50% users return to the social networking portals more than once a day. The frequency of usage seems have to gone up, with Facebook showing the most amount of loyalty amongst users with more than three visits on a single day.

“Facebook is the most engaging site with the highest time spent by users as well as the highest incidence of users who return to the site on the same day.”

Applications

The application economy shows a lot of promise. The following summary gives you a peek into the key insights -

  1. Taking Facebook as a case in point, applications show rampant usage, when compared to other commonly used features like photos and home page.
  2. Demographically, boys between the ages 15-24 spend 52% of their time on Facebook applications. However, the overall share for this age bracket on Facebook, is just over 40% which is an encouraging news for small business with budget constraints. Application developers should get a hint where to invest their monies.
  3. FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Café World and RYBirthday rule the roost on Facebook, with both men and women playing FarmVille the most. RYBirthday is used most by the 45+ age group.

“Interestingly, women have shown a huge liking and following of the Café World application contributing to a substantial 37% usage of this application.”

Posted in Social Media | Comments (3)