Marketing Amnesia

Samsung Instinct has been recently launched and following the iPhone, chose viral marketing campaign route to spread the word. Unlike run of the mill viral campaigns, Samsung created an interactive series of videos all linked to one another, so if you want to know what happens in the end you have to follow your instinct and click on the links within the above video and move to the next in the series.

Yes! the links are within the video, powered by Youtube Annotations. Right at the end of every video, you are fed two options and depending on what you would like to do the new video loads to guide you through the story. Judging by the number of views on successive videos, I am not sure if many people actually understand that they have to click on to move through the story.

Check it out quickly and let me know what you think of this. This is so brilliant that I wish I could stake claim to being the first one to do it.

Source - Speak Media Blog

More Indian companies are joining the social media bandwagon and engaging the consumer like never before. Kingfisher for one, has launched "Be the next official Kingfisher Ad Director". All you have to do is create your Good Times Commercial, upload it to any video sharing site and share the link on the Kingfisher site.

This is a fantastic attempt at consumer engagement & content co-creation through crowd sourcing (2 birds or rather kingfishers with one stone). The winning ad will be the official ad of Kingfisher and will be aired on TV with due credits to the creator, but no great moolah to attract the really creative guys. The hype they manage to create around this concept will be a key determinant for success.

Do you think that this can succeed without the moolah? Would you enter without a monetary gain at the end of it?

There is a thin line between relevant email, that adds value vs email that is treated as spam. Even well meant email can act as spam for many.

There are tons of us who hate spam of any sort and in turn refuse to adopt a non permission marketing technique to reach out to potential consumers. When you have a decent database of your own and a strategy to build on it, thats great.

But if you are a young startup, then you might just need the help of low cost email to tell people about your new launch. Don't hesitate in targeting groups which look like they might be interested. In my opinion, the key to avoid spam is to send valuable information just once to people.

For eg: I keep getting a message from a social network which says that a friend has invited me to join the network. That information is fine if it is sent once. Once I have declined to join the network, or just deleted the mail, I get a repeat mailer in exactly a week and once again a week after. Now that is painful.

So don't hesitate in sending out information once, but don't send the same/similar information out repeatedly.

Do share your experiences with email marketing or the world of spam.

Regular blogging with an article a week was a piece of cake for me until I hit upon a really bad stretch for the last 2-3 weeks. Staring at the screen for hours on end has become a reality.

So here is a request to my readers, please suggest any topic in the realm of marketing or social media that I can cover in the next few days.

I will do my best to do ample research on the topic, and come up with something really useful. Thanks people

Image Source: kandyjaxx's photostream

Well, I have been meaning to write about the Firefox Download Day and their grand record. One brand which used Social Media Marketing and an existing community to generate buzz like never before. Of course the Guinness Record helped too.

Guinness and Buzz Marketing
A Guinness World Record is an established buzz marketing strategy for a brand and it isn't like Firefox is doing a first. Typical record strategies include building the world's "largest" something and examples of these records can be seen here. The problem with these strategies is they involve a few of the company employees and the buzz generated is through a mention in a few news columns. These record attempts do not really involve the consumers of these brands.

Firefox & Its Guinness Record
Firefox could have also attempted a record like the World's fastest browser to generate buzz, but that would have meant the same problem. A few company emplyees are involved and happy with the coverage in a few news columns.

Firefox instead chose a strategy which was inclusive. It hyped the Download Day with its current community and gave them the badges which they can plonk on blogs to in turn spread the word. The guiness record was a function of how well the existing community sells the idea to the rest of the world. It was upto the community to spread word about D Day and this strategy paid off by integrating a viral marketing component to the classical buzz marketing approach.

To read more on the definitions of Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing, please read this earlier post Want consumers to talk? Viral is in!!

What can Startups learn?
Now Firefox has a huge community of users, but there is also some take away for startups who have just a few 1000 users. What can you do to engage your community and make them spread the message about your product/website. I don't think your startup should be happy just acquiring users, when what you really need is an army of salesmen. How can you actually convert your existing community into salesmen?

Jennifer Leggio has a great post on the steps Firefox undertook to spread the message. The key take away is that Firefox relied on their community, involved them and empowered them to be salesmen.There is no single formula to replicate this but startups have no choice but to keep trying.

Appending relevant portions of Jennifer's post below to make it a convenient read

How did Firefox actually reach Out?
Spread Firefox
The Firefox community portal started out as the original gathering point for community members. Mozilla created a specific Download Day theme for the site where users could get badges to put on blogs as well as “pledge” to download the software on Download Day. Mozilla received 1.7 million pledges and the affiliate button distribution brought 43 million views to the site.

Facebook
The Firefox Facebook fan page has near 115K members. “We seeded the community with links of articles and other information that pointed to the Download Day site,” Kim said. Mozilla took a very similar approach with social networking sites Bebo and Mixi (Japan).

Twitter
Kim says that while Mozilla Firefox’s Twitter page was set up in 2007 it grew tremendously (now with close to 5K followers) and was a great complement to its other efforts. “We’re incredibly happy with the level of activity and response we received from our Twitter followers,” he said.

YouTube
Mozilla produced a series of feature overview videos that were narrated by some of the designers who worked on Firefox 3. From viewing the YouTube comments and ratings it does not appear that the videos gained much traction, however it was a low-cost alternative to doing traditional video advertising.

Mozilla Parties
Mozilla Party Central, a bit of a mashup of Google Maps and Upcoming, is where the company shares news about its launch parties and also gives users the tools to promote and host their own parties. As of last count there have been near 850 parties worldwide, attended by more than 6K people. Mozilla will receive its official Guinness World Record certificate at a party in London this Wednesday.

Mozilla also put energy into traditional public relations efforts, heading on press tour throughout the U.S., Europe, China and Japan. While this was successful as well, Kim says that its Mozilla’s community that truly helped drive Download Day success.

P.S - Firefox could take this bold approach of asking its users to set a record, because there was no record registered in this category before. So irrespective of how many downloads, Firefox and more importantly its community would have always emerged a winner.

Did you catch Firefox on D Day?

How does someone come up with an idea like this. Starting in 2003, way before viral became the huge term it is now. Simple, and daring as a concept, combined with the silliest dance ever, is Matt Harding's perfect recipe for 10 million views.

                                                        Source: Speak Media Blog

It is hopefully clear that Viral marketing success is really not easy and certainly not cheap. There is no way a company can think that Matt Harding's dance would go viral, and hence there is no way for a marketer to replicate this.

Stride chose the next best thing and sponsored this trip. They got a very insignificant mention in the end. Little does the traditional marketer who just cares for a bigger logo, realize the significance of the insignificant.

Stride just supported a guy to achieve a dream, something on his bucket list perhaps. It struck a chord like nothing else ever will.

The video series got enormous media attention. Also take a look at the number of diverse videos on youtube alone, ranging from queries like "Where is Matt?" to "Matt impersonators and fans". There is also a website called Where the hell is Matt

The series got a whopping 10 million views and is going strong. The positive rub off on Stride is obvious once you have seen the entire video. Take a look and judge for yourself.

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Want consumers to talk? Viral is in!!

Ok Lets get this done with it. Even the world's best marketer cannot market a bad product. Really!!

Especially if its to be sold on the interent using social media marketing, viral marketing and buzz marketing tactics. You know that you have to revamp your product when bloggers just about refuse to write about you. There is a reason why so many websites are launched every day and why most of them languish.

Of course, If you have tons of money to spend on TV, then the story is a little different. You can attract hoards of first timers onto your website or to try your product, but their loyalty is going to be a huge function of switching costs associated with dumping your product and jumping onto the next bandwagon.

When I say your product has to be great, it includes both the product and the promise. In other words known as the story or positioning of your product. Many startups do not understand that your positioning is paramount and the product features are actually a result of the positioning. If your positioning differentiates you, then its logical that your product is the result of the same differentiation.

To understand why the story is really important read ' Technology vs Story '

If you as a marketer don't believe a product or startup will make it, do everyone a favour and don't promise the sky. I wont promise to market a product until I believe it can really solve a need in a manner better than all other products out there.

Likewise if you are a startup and want to market your product / website, don't shrug the marketer's advise to rejig your product. There might be some value in what they suggest. Difficult to find perhaps, but trust me the good ones will not ' faff '. Finding the good ones is another task by itself

Dell Idea Storm was created to interact with passionate consumers and one look at the number of people on these sites will tell you how involved consumers can get.

The objective is to get worthy ideas from users and worthy ideas surface because other consumers promote or demote the ideas, very similar to a digg methodology. Post - Promote - Discuss. The step added to this is "See" - See the company respond to worthy ideas & what they are doing to implement them.

The herd effect necessary to promote the ideas might result in no trend setting futuristic idea actually making it to the top. Consumers are after all never great crystal ball gazers but you do get to hear their views on simple things like Dell's excessive use of plastic. What might have been thought of as a necessary packaging element might come under the scanner thanks to this idea.

Dumb mistakes of someone in the organization also surface like the printing of the logo upside down.

An open conversation with your consumers can scare the wits of most companies, and it can expose many of your silly practices as is evident from these posts, but aren't companies much better off with consumers revealing their frustrations with the product.

The problem with this approach is that the marketing team alone cannot engage the consumer in conversation. They have to get the other departments within the organization ready to change according to popular consumer appeal. (actually this is market research for free)

For eg: the movement towards Open Office got a whopping 138479 votes. Most companies would give anything to have so many engaged consumers and what does Dell do - Nothing!! A very highly debated topic and difficult to give one company stance, but you have to take one when so many people are waiting to hear it.

These are progressive steps taken by Dell to join the conversation and in fact control it at some level by bringing it under their wing. They still need to sustain this initiative by adding it to the DNA of the company. This can no longer be just a good initiative, it has to be a way of business.

P.S - If you think the engaged consumer only exists in the case of high involvement goods like electronics, Starbucks created My Starbucks Idea with a similar objective. Check out what happens when you get some coffee fanatics together in one place.

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Consumers are talking !! Are brands listening?
Its the Conversation economy dude!!
Marketing 2.0 vs Marketing 1.0

What a silly question is the first thought that comes to your mind. Maybe I can salvage myself by saying "Of course it does". This post actually discusses the strategy used by startups pre funding vs post funding. Are they different and should they be?

Poor => Make people talk
As a poor startup, one cannot afford to undertake large campaigns which will reach millions of consumers. Startups normally choose the next best alternative, trying to reach passionate users in the hope they will talk.

They even entice the key bloggers by giving away limited invites, build a story around the product & founders to eventually make the startup talk worthy.

When one blogger talks, you could potentially be reaching a 1000 readers. Its not just effective, it is more credible than anything you can do to communicate directly about your startup.

Social Media Marketing is tried in any form that helps spread the story far and wide.

Money => Acquire consumers?
Once money flows in, something changes in the mental makeup of a startup. They no longer focus on getting people to talk. Its now about adwords, promos, strategic tie ups, all of it ending in acquiring one profitable consumer.

Sometimes making your communication and product talk worthy takes a back seat and every spend on marketing is directed towards getting another buyer.

Not sure if that one consumer is more worthy of your attention than the 1000's of other bloggers who are waiting for an interesting story to talk about.

Who would you target, the one who buys or the one who talks. Don't say both, that just helps you justify what you are doing irrespective of the objective.

This was featured on Pluggd.in as a guest post. Thanks Ashish

Image Source: David Wong's Photostream

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Media Evolution
It wasn't too long ago when many of us sat waiting for Doordarshan* to air the saturday evening movie and irrespective of who acted in it, watched it. The whole family & the whole country could be reached by airing a single spot during this time band. For someone with money this is an easy option. For startups of course, this situation would be a nightmare.

Opportunities for entertainment and media options have evolved greatly since that day. From one TV channel and millions of viewers we have moved on to 100s of TV channels and a niche set of viewers.

Segmentation of audiences by the press, magazines targeted at niche audiences are all obvious indications of the world being continuously segmented into audiences with different interests and preferences.

Add to it the internet which is emerging as a leading entertainment destination amongst the youth. The consumer could be visiting any one out of over 50 million registered domains depending on his interests and this further confirms the theory of The Long Tail (a book you have to read, if you haven't already)

                                                    Image Source - Free Thought Canada

Chris Anderson, author of "The Long Tail" aired a quote " Every abundance creates a scarcity" in a fantastic post and ever since I have been dreaming of writing about it. Have finally got down to doing it.

Media Proliferation and infinite entertainment destinations on the web have clearly created a scarcity of consumer's time and attention.

Greater Segmentation => Lesser Wastage
Greater media segmentation both simplifies the marketers life and complicates it at the same time. The Doordarshan ad is a simple decision, while choosing amongst media options today is a full fledged job.

Marketing rules on the internet further complicate lives by adding an interactive element to the traditional ad. If done right, targeting and reaching your TG is much cheaper and the proportion of advertising wasted on an audience that doesn't remotely care is less.

Simultaneously the ad rates chargeable to reach this already segmented audience increase and sometimes by around 10 times. Chris Anderson's post comparing ad rates on Social networks like Facebook vs networks like Ning establishes the same.

* Doordarshan is the public television broadcaster of India