IBS Writing | Inception Business Services

Case Study: Paper Boat – Quenching thirst by rekindling memories

What was the campaign about?
Paper Boat is a brand of traditional Indian juices and drinks by Hector Beverages. What caught our key about this young, vibrant brand is the emotional connect it has made with consumers in a short span of time. Not an easy task, given the large budgets of some alternate / competitor brands. In terms of new age marketing, we find Paper Boat has trumped in their use of story-telling to create engaging content that has not just built brand awareness but a special kind of emotional connect and loyalty with its target audience. What we find works well in this brand is that the Paper Boat stories spring from the very essence of the brand and its philosophy.

Also one of the key features of the product itself is the packaging. From both aesthetic and functional perspective the packaging is very unique and appealing to the customer. The PaperBoat pouches are made of a four-part laminate. The two outer layers are a blend of proprietary polypropylene and polyethylene which makes the pack with-stand extremes in pressure and heat while at the same time being easy to print upon. The penultimate layer is made of bonded aluminum which keeps any form of moisture and vapour from entering the pack and tampering the goodness of the drink. This layer makes no contact with the drink. The innermost (and final) layer is made of virgin, food-grade polypropylene which keeps the content fresh, safe and tasty.

From a marketing perspective Paper boat’s brand promise is based on two broad aspects – drinks and memories. Their marketing campaigns have revolved around this philosophy by tapping into the memories and lives of the people’s childhood experiences that are in many ways connected to the drinks that they’ve had daily. From the actual product which includes much loved Indian flavours like Jal jeera, South Indian rasam or golgappe ki pani to the stories associated with them, the brand hits all the right notes and leaves a very happy after taste in the minds of the customer.

Their Marketing Approach

Paper Boat’s marketing campaign hinges around nostalgia and simplicity in its storytelling campaign as part of its marketing strategy. The campaign was crafted with a view to target urban India, particularly aged between 20 and 40: a large part of the demographic that grew up in 1990s India. The geographical target was crafted with a view to reach out to communities that had left their native homes to other parts of the country in pursuit of work and domestic demands. Using poetry instead of lyrical music, he story unfolds through both, visuals and audio. The return to an innocent and naïve time that everyone associates with the grand epithet of “the good old days” was re-created through the combination of animation that reminds one of simpler times, and music that matches a quaint, old-worldly charm.

Social Media Approach

Paper Boat’s social media approach included presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, as their key platforms for sharing stories and interactions with customers. Paper Boat built the Facebook and Twitter page around its brand philosophy, “Life still is Beautiful”. In the process, the dialogue remained alive around nostalgia, memories and elements from one’s childhood that come to mind in reminiscence. Everything from flying kites to catching auto rickshaws, from trying to reach for a jar full of treats atop a high cupboard, to making Paper Boats became a point of conversation. Games from one’s younger days, such as the desi versions of cops and robbers in the form of Raja, mantri, chor, sipahi, hopscotch and the top classroom favourite game Flames became a point of conversation. Indirectly, Paper Boat let the boat sail on the waters of nostalgia, encouraging sharing and exchange on bygone eras.

What worked for Paper Boat?

Storytelling Approach: What worked very well for Paper Boat on social media was in getting their fans and customers to share their childhood stories and moments on social media – allowing them access and relive a piece of their childhood life through these stories By tapping into these memories and creating interactions online with their customers, it helped build the brand among its audience by making it part of their daily life.

Customer Centricity: By focusing on their brand philosophy rather than on their product itself in their marketing approach, it helped build a more customer centric brand rather than pushing the brand’s agenda. It always helps when a brand can connect to customers and their lives in ways that are meaningful to them and Paper boat has done just that. By doing so then engagement Paperboat created online among its microcosm of users brought a sense of sustained ownership with the brand, its philosophy and the product. Paper Boat became a new avenue for people to connect across the country’s length and breadth, to share the little moments that defined their lives, regardless of where they lived.

Making stories work for the brand

“Social media today is part of everyday life and our presence has clearly helped increase the brand awareness for Paper Boat significantly and I can confidently say that it has had a positive impact on our business and revenues. We’ve had a consistent increase in fans and followers across our key social media platforms and it continues to be on the rise” – Parvesh Debuka, Marketing Head, Paper Boat.

To download our e-book that has a whole list of other case studies for you to read, click here.

Written by: Kirthi Jayakumar

Research team: Keerthi Ramesh | Ramya Rajaraman | Priya Balan

Special thanks to: Parvesh Debuka, Head – Marketing, Paper Boat

Social Media and the floods

If Captain Cool aka Chennai Super Kings’ captain MS Dhoni and Rajnikanth are anything to go by, it is no surprise that it takes a lot more for Chennai’s people to be riled and shaken out of their normal lives. Right up on top of the ladder with Mumbai’s resilience and Delhi’s activism, comes Chennai’s calmness. With the floods crossing all thresholds of acceptable levels, it became imperative for swift action to dispense aid, rescue and supplies to those in need. And what rose to the occasion? Social Media, of course!

From mobilizing aid to helping people avoid roads that were either clogged with water or traffic, civilian support rose to the occasion with regular updates on Facebook and Twitter, replete with pictures. Even as it was assumed that the city would come to a standstill with the power-cuts and internet connectivity challenges, phones were whisked into action. Twitter handles @chennairains and @chennaiweather came up with regular beats, updating people with stunning accuracy and authenticity of every instance of water levels rising, of vehicles getting stuck in water-logged areas.

Social Media proved to be an incredible boon in the face of disaster: as has been evidenced in the past by cases such as those of the Nepal Earthquake and myriads of other world crises – manmade or otherwise. There has always been a constraint as to authenticity on social media – especially where humanitarian crisis mapping goes, but the Chennai example is a perfect reflection of how authenticity comes to the forefront when humanity is placed before all other concerns – as a consequence, reports that came out of social media units turned out to be absolutely accurate, for the duration of their relevancy. An appreciable side-car is that social media helped keep the city’s spirits up – as the impending floods threatened to wreak havoc that the city has otherwise not known before, meme-culture became the hotbed of creativity. Social Media was a wonderful way for people to channel their anxieties, worries and fears through humour and conversation – for there is comfort in knowing that there’s support in the form of someone at the other end, looking at a computer screen or mobile device, going through the same thing as you.

One of the more inspiring tales emerging from this exercise is the resurgence of public transportation – but this time, as boats! What started as a meme and a source of amusement in the face of adversity soon became a clever way to deploy a business endeavour in a way that would service people. For Ola, it was a blend of both – assuming and performing in accordance with a sense of social responsibility, and, brand building. Ferrying free boat-rides out of water-logged areas, Ola has earned gratitude and respect from all quarters – beneficiaries (direct and indirect) and non-beneficiaries alike. The expediency of their deployment of these ferries is only reflective of their commitment to the cause.

What is especially commendable are the efforts that went into mobilizing humanitarian aid and supplies with exceptional speed through social media. Residents of Chennai came together to create a Facebook page, called Chennai Rain Relief 2015, and collected food, vegetables, grocery items and cooking oil to help provide for residents in water-logged areas. Inspired by the work of Iyyappan Subramaniam , who volunteered with the Arunodayam Trust, social media helped garner support and resources for the drive in a matter of minutes. The likes for the page flew from 10 to 350 within a few minutes of the page’s creation.

In war zones and in mobilizing protests against oppressive regimes, social media has been of exceptional use. In natural disaster, social media has been instrumental in bridging the gap between civilians in need and civilians willing to help – and has helped fill in the gaps in governmental action. A perfect reflection of the kind of commitment that society has exhibited in the bigger picture, Social Media has been a very pivotal tool in creating a communal culture of humanity. What it leaves you with, is the truth that though Social Media identities are reflective of demographics, when it comes to mobilizing, all it requires is a sense of commitment, a phone or computer with an internet connection. In creating an online space that enables communal giving, all of the boundaries that divide humanity are dissolved.

The ABC Of Facebook Insights

Marketing on Facebook is challenging – it’s important to stand out, to have any hope of capturing the attention of its user base. To this end, the way a campaign performs, and the manner in which it translates into fruitful results for a marketer is a vital element to keep an eye on. Insights on Facebook are a boon where this goes – for you not only gain insights into the kind of content that is getting attention, but also to understand exactly where your attention is coming from. Insights are really your playground: you can make the most out of it and gain amply from all the valuable data.

While keeping a finger on the pulse of your insights, here are five important things you need to keep an eye on:

Look at the right statistics:

Facebook insights have something called a “reach” for every post, which is reflective of a real and tangible number, but is not as valuable a statistic as the Engagement Rate.
It is useful to have your post reach more people. The reach for a post is in your control, only when you are promoting posts using Facebook Ads, or boosting each post as then you can target the right audience.
The Engagement Rate is the percentage of people who actually interact with your post, out of all those who have seen it, so itgives a fair assessment of the numbers when it comes to the sharing, liking and commenting on your post.

The Hidden Users:

Sometimes, users don’t interact, but may click on a link and read through the content. It is a common mistake to look at the likes, shares and comments, and end it there, but the hidden consumers of content still add to the visibility of your posts, as it means people are engaging more with your content than you realise.
To study these interactions using the insights, use Engagement and sort through it to see the posts that gained the most number of clicks in blue. Clicking on the post link will give you an insight into the entire breakdown of each statistic.

Download the Data:

While the insights one can access from the backend on Facebook is helpful, it tells only part of the story. Downloading the data and looking at the bigger picture is the right way to assess your insights.
A great load of information on a dashboard of a Facebook page is useful superficially, but when you download your data, you can manipulate and sort its presentation, and study it with a sense of clarity, and this in turn, will help you make your notes and keep an eye on particular trends.
Studying post data individually and in comparison with one another will help you assess which of the lot you gain the most interaction from.

Study the static and the dynamic:

In studying insights, it is important to not only make an assessment of statistics at a given time, but also equally important to ensure that there is a comparative analysis of the interactions across the board over a given time.
This will help benchmark the maximum amount of interactivity, and then identify deviations and variances across the board in the trends.
This will then be useful to identify seasonal and annual fluctuations in interactivity, and comes in handy while formulating and bringing out campaigns.

Keep watching: One of the most underrated uses of Facebook insights is the ability to keep a pulse on the competition.

This feature enables a page administrator to add up to 100 pages to watch, where it assesses the competition and its engagement strategy, and offers a quick, overall snapshot that can help assess what went right and wrong with the competition.
In operating the pages to watch, admins have the option to look into the Posts segment, which allows you to see the posts that went up on the pages you watch, which have gotten the most engagement.

Brand Platforms – Some Indian Examples

In an earlier post, we explained how we believe Brand Platforms can be leveraged in the era of social media. In this post, we share specific examples of Brand Platforms, which have worked very well in India and have captured public imagination in recent times.

What we mean by Brand Platform: While the general connotation for brand platforms has centered around the fact that it is a communication plank, what we mean in the current context is that a Brand Platform is closer to a whole new Brand Property. In our last post, we spoke about how a typical brand platform can be used as a content engine, for community building, for social virality and for a brand property. The point is that a brand platform, when used this way, can do wonders for a brand. It is larger than the product or service, and allows a space and bandwidth to welcome the collaboration with people, who, by themselves, are willing to collaborate because it is far larger than the platform itself. This post is all about explaining this better with a bunch of best practices in the market. Our recent eBook on New Age Marketing had 3 case studies of Brand Platforms that amplify these ideas.

One of the case studies we have presented is of Slice of Health – an initiative by Cholamandalam MS Insurance. Taking the core brand concept of responsible living (an idea strongly aligned to buying insurance products), the idea of Slice of Health was born. Its origin was a radio show that brought experts on air to talk about different health aspects. Slice of Health as a platform goes beyond the product and into realms that are of broader interest to people in the desired target audience for the brand. Starting out, Slice of Health was a content engine in the truest sense of the term. The campaign packaged the concept of good health as a lifestyle choice, and shared content across multiple platforms – YouTube, a dedicated and regular blog, and the radio. It successfully aimed at community building by encouraging readers to weigh in with their thoughts and tips towards building good health and a lifestyle that is both, healthy and sustainable.

Given that the campaign centered around knowledge sharing for good health and did not push to sell the product or service, the willingness to share content automatically launched a degree of social virality. Slice of Health is a brand property, indeed, crafting a dialogue around the concept of health, fitness and wholesome goodness for sustainable living. (read the full case study here)
Another case study features the Dettol Swachh Bharat campaign, where the brand worked towards engaging the goals of Dettol as a brand and the values of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. In interpreting the idea of cleanliness and a clean India, Dettol has set its brand platform around the notion of hygiene. It was completely content driven with grass root level action, taking the campaign principles of hygiene, cleanliness and working towards a clean India to large audiences. The idea underlying the campaign manifested in the form of community building through perceived ownership and the scale it achieved due to the right timing, collaborative effort and media attention has been phenomenal.The marrying of the brand’s core idea with a nation-wide movement sparked by the Prime Minister ensured a significant amount of virality, given that there was a sense of cause driven inspiration rather than brand promotion.

The third campaign that takes the crown on using brand platforms to the hilt is Coke Studio. A strong proponent of using music as the root of dialogue and communication to bring people together, Coke Studio completely switched from the core product: a soft drink, and established a completely independent talking point in the form of the music platform. Through sustained content creation that bridled talent across genres and experience, music became the star content of their brand platform. Further, the platform was able to leverage both traditional media like TeleVision and new age digital media like YouTube &FaceBookon a very large scale. Sailing on the love or music, users were encouraged to share purely out of appreciation and respect for the artists, their music and their collaborative engagements. This then manifested in the form of skyrocketing figures that exemplified their virality, as Coke Studio ably carved a niche for itself across multiple platforms. The brand property grew to become a force to reckon with, as Coke Studio became synonymous with good music, connectivity and an exchange of cultural trinkets in the form of world-class music.
Brand Platforms have evolved as a new space for engagement. Considering that engagement is key, and that consumers are significantly more aware of choices and making informed decisions, there is a tendency to share things that don’t merely promote a product. The virality, therefore, for a product-pusher tends to pale in comparison with content that is convincing, engaging and beyond the brand. Occupying these spaces, these brands, i.e., Slice of Health, Dettol with the Swachh India campaign and Coke Studio, made the most out of crafting brand platforms that sustained engagement with ease.

Still not sure how a Brand Platform would work for your business or brand? Get in touch – we’d love to discuss this and work with you on a potential Brand Platform that can be a long term brand asset for you.

Co-authored by Pavithra Charan & Kirthi Jayakumar
About the Authors:
Pavithra is Founder & Partner at Inception Business Services. A Marketing & Management professional with a keen interest in people and passion for ideas, Pavithra moved from being a Banker & Wealth Management professional to entrepreneur. Working with start ups, Brand management, Customer engagement, Content creation and Coaching/Training are areas of work that most excite her. She is a multi-tasking entrepreneur, mother of a 5 year old and wife of a businessman. Mail her at pavithra at inception.net.in.

Kirthi is a Lawyer by education, but a writer by choice. She writes content for us, and divides her time between daydreaming about lunch time and actually writing. Kirthi is known to randomly burst into song. If you find a near-six-footer singing “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music” in the middle of Mylapore, you can be sure it is Kirthi. Mail her at kirthi@inception.net.in

Inception Day 2015, Gurgaon

Inception Business Services proudly presents Inception Day 2015 – an annual event connecting business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers.

What’s on this year: Panel discussion on New age marketing such as Inbound, Content, Digital and Social Media marketing; Keynote address; and Launch of our eBook featuring Indian brands and businesses that have made New age marketing work for them.

Here’s the agenda of the event:

Here is a quick look at our Speakers for the event :

Demystifying Net Neutrality

Everyone’s talking about Net Neutrality. Typically a principle that dictates that all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and governments should treat data packets on the internet equally, Net Neutrality is a campaign that seeks to question the discriminatory rate regime that is being imposed on the data packets that one accesses using the internet. The point is that there should be no discrimination on grounds of content, destination, source or provider.

With the advent of different Over the Top (OTT) avenues such as WhatsApp, Skype, Viber, WeChat, Hike and the social network getting onto smart phones, the conventional route of using a phone lies forgotten at best. Text messages are no longer a regular route of conversation – and slowly, calls using a phone number are becoming less preferred in comparison with services of the OTT avenues. Thanks to this, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is alarmed: a huge chunk of their one-time revenue is now in absentia.

This led them to decide that they would charge an additional amount of money each month, to use these services on your smart phones and tablets. A smart phone or tablet connection user is able to call and send and receive text messages using the OTT applications and pay for the data charges alone. But, given that these applications have diverted what once used to be a massive revenue avenue for the telecom operators, and that these OTT applications have not invested in the networks, they want to charge customers extra. The Telecom Service Providers say that the OTTs are built on the logistics and infrastructures that they set up, and this is done without the OTTs investing in them. This earns them money, and also competes with the traditional services of calling and texting, which the Telecom Service Providers offer.

Flip the coin: and the OTT applications demand Net Neutrality. They say that there should be absolutely no discrimination of the data packets that are used on the internet. They argue that irrespective of whether you choose to see a video or send a friend a voice note, or you make a call on Viber, or indulge in some FaceTime on your iPhone, a customer should not be charged for anything more than the bare data charges.

If you are the average smart phone type of person, what does this mean for you? If the ISPs and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India win this, it is possible that they will charge you exorbitant rates for certain kinds of services on your smart phone and tablets. This might mean that you would pay a bit more for watching videos on your phone, or video chatting on your phone. We think this might just change the face of the Internet and its life on mobile devices. The ISPs will perhaps then try to fast lane some services, which means that some may gain preference over the other.

If you are a marketer and embrace the constant change brought on by the digital era and mobiles, this may need you to further recalibrate your online marketing efforts. Forward thinking brands are all using the Internet as an alternate channel to promote themselves – Could the lack of Net Neutrality dampen this? We think that is likely in the immediate aftermath. What goes viral on internet is often driven via mobile devices – videos, podcasts, .gifs, blogs and much more. If the common man is forced to pay high rates for the OTT applications, he is bound to have to choose from a list – and chances are that he may dispense with tools that come second to the content marketing avenues. In the US, the ISPs tried to hold content-driven companies at ransom with a similar course of action – but it didn’t work. In India, this is what the petitions and awareness drives are about. Trying to retain Net Neutrality is a key step to retaining current cost structures for mobile services. Without Net Neutrality, the cost element of such OTT avenues for brands will need to be seen, counted and then evaluated.

What do you think about Net Neutrality? As a mobile user or as a marketer – how do you see this affecting your life? Tell us here with your comments or mail in to inception@inception.net.in

Here’s an Infographic to help you understand the basics!

About the Author

Kirthi is a Lawyer by education, but a writer by choice. She writes content for us, and divides her time between daydreaming about lunch time and actually writing. Kirthi is known to randomly burst into song. If you find a near-six-footer singing “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music” in the middle of Mylapore, you can be sure it is Kirthi. Mail her at kirthi@inception.net.in

Facebook Algorithm Change – What it really means

In early February we shared with you a list of Dos for you to get Facebook-ready. Around then, some of the revised guidelines for Brand/ Business pages on Facebook (announced in Nov2014) came into effect. These changes do affect the way users get to see ‘Brand Content’ on their Newsfeed. As marketers, we have been able to adapt to these changes and ensure brand pages we manage still get the best visibility and engagement they need. In this blog, we let you in on what’s changed.

To set the context for these new rules, let’s look at what Facebook Pages essentially stands for – It is a platform for small to large business that are looking to connect to their respective target audiences. It sounds simple doesn’t it? Well as of 2015, Facebook has complicated it a tad more!

Recent user polls have given the researchers at Facebook some insights into what subscribers really want, and these results have a significant impact on how businesses should promote their products and services. The poll result was that people are far more interested in stories from their family/friends and the Pages they care about than in promotional content.

So what did Facebook do? They have decided that will give promotional posts less visibility!!

So what should do marketers & businesses do (other than panic)?

We say Keep Calm and Read On!

Once again, always keep in mind the Dos, with regard to your content. Let’s finally get to the all important Don’ts!

1.Don’t post overly promotional posts. This includes posts that push people to buy a product, download an app, participate in a contest etc. Use the Facebook Adverts platform for that.

2. Don’t post too many posts in a day. Less is more!

3.Don’t use the same content and visual in an advert and in a post. Keep them different, with the post being engaging and the advert can be more promotional.

4.Don’t focus only on getting more Page Likes; Engagement is very important.The engagement rate gives a clearer picture of the success of the brand.

5.Don’t post photos as posts and include the link in the text. Post the link as is and replace the image with the photo/creative of your choice.

The bottomline is, posts that are non-promotional, are engaging, use visuals correctly will have a better Organic Reach than other posts. Also, always remember to keep a Facebook advertising budget in your Marketing spends plan so that you can still use the Facebook platform to promote your products/services via FB Ads.

Facebook may be changing the rules, but at Inception, we understand that by maintaining quality and meaningful content on our client pages and by catering to their valuable customer requirements, we will continue to get the best out of this medium!

About the Author

Anusha Kousik is Project Director at Inception business Services. With over 8 years experience, Anusha manages key client accounts and projects and owns processes and deliverables across a gamut of marketing services, for IBS. From creating content for social media to overseeing client emailers, from analysing marketing metrics to reviewing new marketing tools, Anusha is a multi-tasking marketer.A foodie, her interests include reading, music and contemplating on life’s many complications. Mail her at anusha.k@inception.net.in

Crowdsourcing

7.3 billion is the approximate population of our globe. Facebook, as per the latest stats, has 1.3 billion registered users (and Facebook is banned in China!). One sixth of the world’s population is hungrily consuming, sharing, interacting and discarding content on the Internet. We are all talking about ourselves, our families, our loved ones, sharing our thoughts, emotions, ideas, actions and simply our day to day lives with the hundreds and sometimes thousands of “friends” that we have (accumulated) on social networking platforms.

How has this changed things for us Marketers?

Access – to customers, content, talent and

Speed – of response, feedback, testing

The attributes of access and speed have given us one of the biggest boons of new age marketing – CROWD-SOURCING. Money, ideas, concepts, imagery, content and more can be brought together at lightning speed and much cheaper than ever before. Businesses are being built around the concept of crowdsourcing (wishberry.in, designcrowd.co.in, talenthouse.com) and brands are beginning to realize the potential that crowdsourcing holds with regards to their marketing.

Over the last few years, at Inception, we have worked on some great crowdsourcing projects with some of our client brands. The purpose of crowdsourcing – the what, the why and the how – can be vastly different for different brands. Sharing here some great examples of crowdsourcing and some tips for you to leverage it for your brand or business.

SMALL OR GROWING BRANDS

For new brands that are just finding their feet, this is a great way to source quality content or media attention to get your brand going.

Examples:

Images / Product photography:

One of our projects involved marketing for a newly launched silver jewelry brand. The brand could not afford a full-fledged photo shoot (which costs 30-40 Lacs!), to get street styled imagery for the brand look book.Using the Crowdsourcing concept, we at IBS approached and collaborated with a fashion blog site, stylepile.com, which has fashion bloggers as members, to help get the right imagery for the brand. We handpicked some of the best fashion-istas from across the world (including Spain, the US and the UK), to style and shoot looks for the silver jewels.With some logistics and planning, we managed to get a 100 plus photographs with over 25 different models, which were perfect for our brand. It was great fun, the quality of what we got was inspiring and most of all, it cost a fraction of a traditional photo shoot.

Written content:

When you need diversity along with large volumes of content, crowdsourcing is a great way to get it. Some of the most popular travel related sites thrive on crowd-sourced content. One of the examples is ixigo.com. They regularly get travellers, content writers, travel enthusiasts and sometimes even their own employees to share great written as well as video content. 5 things to explore in Manipur, top 12 travel hacks, 20 greatest breakfast places, etc. are all the popular kind of pieces and a lot of travel buffs are more than happy to share their thoughts and experiences.

LARGE AND ESTABLISHED BRANDS

Large national or global brands that already have a large base of customers, who understand and are willing to engage with them, are able to leverage crowdsourcing to build greater engagement and connect with the brands. These engagements can be brought together through a specific campaign or as a regular feature. These are nothing but crowdsourcing of brand experiences and customer testimonials that can be used as marketing content on an ongoing basis.

Examples

Connect with brand attributes – a Valentine’s Day campaign:

One might ask what does a footwear brand have to do with romance and love? But if one associates
love with a lot of fun and colour, which are also core to the brand, it does not seem very off. A contest was created to get people to match the traits of their soul mate’s personality with that of a ‘Solemate’ (design) from the brand, and share why. The idea was to get people to think of their Valentines in a fun and quirky way by assigning attributes like ‘foodie’, ‘traveler’, ‘shopaholic’, ‘trendsetter’, etc to them (which are traits associated with “fun”). The contest saw 200 entries (along with some great social media engagement) where people got to see a lot more designs from the footwear brand, got to constantly associate fun, colour and comfort with themselves and the brand, got to visit the brand’s website and eventually become customers of the brand.

Re-iterate brand purpose – the Happiness campaign:

One of the most successful crowd-sourcing campaigns is said to be that of Coca-Cola’s – “where will happiness strike next?” Open Happiness is the positioning of brand Coca-Cola and has been established by the brand in myriad ways. Through this specific campaign, Coca-Cola asked its customers to share their moment of happiness with the brand. This has been an award winning campaign and the stats are simply astonishing. 4,416,618M YouTube Views, 200M+ impressions globally, 412k organic search results, based on “Coca-Cola happiness machine” search on Google and 22M for “happiness machine”, 3.5k YouTube comments, Total Blog Posts: 287 – 825, Total Tweets Over 5K, Other Site Views – 50,000+ Duplicate video views on You Tube: 40,000+.

Some things to keep in mind while crowd sourcing

Be VERY CLEAR about the objective of what and why you are crowd-sourcing. Ambiguity can backfire and do a lot of damage to the brand.
Ensure a layer of moderation between what you receive and what gets shared at large. Especially with mass campaigns, you may receive a lot of poor quality or redundant output.
As much as possible, target your crowdsourcing campaign to the right audience to get the best possible results. So if you have a large enough fan base, look at tapping that first.
Make the entire activity as fun, engaging and as creative as possible. There is much happening out there, so give people a reason to want to participate in your crowdsourcing initiative.

To want to know more or do more in this space, feel free to contact us at Inception and pick our brains!

About the Author:

Mala is a Partner at Inception Business Services. A Management & Marketing professional, Mala believes in the power of higher thinking as well as the power of on-ground execution. A voracious reader and a talented dancer, Mala is happiest when she is out there meeting new people, exchanging ideas and helping to make the world a better place. You can reach her at maladhalani@inception.net.in.

Quick Repartee, Moment Marketing – OR ARE THEY REALLY?

When you think of all the time the writer takes to create a “quick repartee” in literature, you cannot help but wonder if it was all that “quick” after all! However, when you read the Metaphysical poets or Shakespeare you are amazed at the available “wit on demand”. I would like to compare that with “Marketing at the Moment” or “Moment Marketing”. Marketing at the moment is exactly what it says. It usually pertains to making use of an important international/national event, topical political news or current affairs to market your brand. Your wit and speed in this kind of marketing is directly proportional to the popularity of your campaign. Let’s break that down a little.

So when you are following the World Cup and you happen to see a really witty post from a brand, tying itself to a player being bowled out two seconds ago, you get the same feeling of awe as when you read Shakespeare’s word play. But in reality in both cases the strategy has been thought of and planned and rightly so. A thorough planning must always precede moment marketing campaigns. To do that there a few steps one must follow.

While the meticulous planning within the marketing budget of a firm allows varied platforms such as advertising, events, public relations to be used; moment marketing is a miraculous solution for brands to stay relevant to their followers and reach them instantly. It gives the brand an identity that people can relate to and have a dialogue with. Twitter itself has made it really easy by publishing this quick tutorial.

To become a brand to reckon with in the sphere of moment marketing one must lay down:

The occasions that is relevant to itself
The reasons that those occasions are relevant and what it wants to achieve from it
Create hypothetical situations that might occur during the occasion or its outcome and be prepared with its content hence
Use Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help you keep your ears closer to the ground
Be prepared for situations not anticipated
Be ready with answers
Be active and keep communicating or else you will be forgotten soon

One great example of a brand that does this brilliantly in India is Amul. Below are a few examples:

Then again there are always things that one shouldn’t do. Pertaining to Moment Marketing:

Don’t do it for the heck of it
Don’t do it without a strategy and without being prepared to answer live questions
Try not to be demeaning or inappropriate

There are examples of how companies failed at moment marketing and the campaign backfired to make them look monstrous! I remember one such instance in 2012 when Kitchen Aid tweeted an insensitive comment about Barack Obama’s late grandmother after he mentioned her during a presidential debate. The person responsible was fired but the brand had already suffered an irreparable damage.

Get in touch with us to know more about how you can incorporate Moment Marketing into your planning and execute it like Shakespeare! You might just live the life of a legend for a while.

About the Author

Kriti Mukherjee – Project Director

Kriti is a solutions-focused Marketing & Communications Professional with proven success in not only revenue performance, but also in customer service, satisfaction and retention. As a marketer, her work has traversed concept, strategy, tactical implementation and ROI management. When she isn’t working, Kriti likes to daydream, read, drink martinis and listen to music. Mail her at kriti@inception.net.in

Are You FB Ready?

When brands and businesses begin life on social media, they tend to do so with caution. They pick one tool, try it to get their feet wet and then wait to see what happens. It is quite natural that a brand wants to test a few channels of marketing without a brand-wide commitment from the word go. In this time and age, social media does allow for experimentation (within limits!), building upto strategy and tactics.

So, if you want just one social media platform to start with, then our experience says your best pick would be Facebook. Don’t misunderstand us – we love our Pinterest, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram accounts; but to start with, Facebook is a great place to begin your social media journey.

Here is why we think so:

Like many Social Media platforms, it offers a text and visual medium to work with.
It is easy to set up your Page and get started, with just you or with team members to help.
It is also perfect to identify and attract your desired Target Audience/Market via its very cool targeting tools.

Having picked Facebook, we give you our 5 top tips for making the most of your Facebook presence.

Get Visual – The main idea is to get noticed. Take a moment and think of what posts catch your eye on your own Newsfeed, friend’s photos right? It works exactly the same for brand pages! This is regardless of whether you are retail or service brand. Use images and videos always!

Be Local – Your content and visuals need to make the cut on Facebook. So even if you love the 140 characters on Twitter or are familiar with the different filters available on Instagram – Don’t apply them here! Hashtags are common between Twitter and Facebook, but let’s face it……how often do you look for hashtagged content on FB?

Get Chatty – Facebook is NOT a one-way street! You cannot keep posting unidirectional and expect phenomenal results. Ask questions, get interactive and above all – use language that is understandable! No long-winding sentences or 10-letter words are welcome here!

Invite Engagement Or Action – Every post that you put other there must get either of 2 reactions – either engage your audience positively by getting their attention and hence likes/shares OR get them to act on your post by visiting your website/blog link. Mix it up, track it and gauge your audience response to arrive at the right mix!

Give & Take – Don’t expect other brand pages to like and share your content often. You need to share and like other pages’ content every once in a while to maintain your credibility in promoting the culture of engagement. Keep an eye on Trending topics, evaluate the connect to your brand, assess if the brand sharing the topic is one you are ok to be associated with and SHARE!

With these tips, you should be well on your way to activating your FB page and engaging your audience. To get more from your page, Facebook has many tools that you can use. More on that in another blog post. Tell us if these tips work for you. And drop us a note if you want more insights on making Facebook work for you.

About the Author

Case Study: Paper Boat – Quenching thirst by rekindling memories

Inception Day 2015, Gurgaon

Demystifying Net Neutrality

Quick Repartee, Moment Marketing – OR ARE THEY REALLY?

About the Author

Kriti Mukherjee – Project Director

Overview

Latest Tweet

Featured Clients