How about this Marketing Idea?

Was going through Drew's Marketing Minute and stumbled upon this marketing idea. Though it's still a drawing board idea from South Korea but it sure opens up more than an oppurtunity in revolutionizing traffic lights. Read more about the "Virtual Wall" on Yanko Design.

So all those creative and innovative marketers, does it ring a bell in your head about how this innovation can used to great PR and advertising oppurtunities.

How Brands make “Meaning beyond Money”

"...Mass media has become increasingly fragmented and viewers’ engagement levels have decreased. Only 5% of the viewers watch TV ads and 30% of the viewers watch TV while reading the newspaper" (tweet) by Stephan Loerke (PPT Link), Managing Director, World Federation of Advertisers.

So this calls for newer and innovative ways of customer attraction and retention strategies. Social Media gives a lot of promise in terms of participation, engagement, permission, collaboration etc which has brought the customers and the companies in the same platform.

But the question is why should you care?

One of the reason is, you like it or not, your customers will definitely talk about you and the web has given them a apt platform to raise their voice to appreciate as well as criticize you.

Now the worst scenario is that your customers are not talking about you at all. Think about it. They don't care about you. But they necessarily need not be negative conversations. They well could be constructive discussions filled with chances to learn about your customers and what you need to do to make them happy. Happy people buy more and tell their friends. It's your prerogative whether to join the conversation or not or rather we can say "To Participate or not to Participate is the question"!

The best outcome is that those who are talking about you are spreading the word on your business - Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell called them Citizen Marketers. The worst case scenario is that those customers who talked about you even once stopped doing so, they did not think you cared about what they were saying, so they stopped caring about you and your business - you become invisible to them (and increasingly their friends).

So letting your customers talk about your brands make a lot of difference since it makes "Meaning beyond Money".

Related Stories:

• Swainism #1: Marketing, Social Media & You
• After Mass Media, it's your turn Social Media to get Fragmented
• Eureka Bar: Backstory as a Marketing Tool
• Creating Empathy, Understanding & Openess in Business
• 5 key pointers towards Brand building

Remembrance of a Lifetime

This is one of the most unusual posts that I will ever write, I guess.

Have you ever felt bad or rather disliked a good customer service? No one does! Even I didn't thought so but in my case it was very unusual. Today I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC (a growing fast food chain). Everything was quite the usual types except for I was in a very foul mood. Even my companion couldn't help me settle down. So in my infuriated state I sat in a chair, soon to be asked to move since we were two people and some bunch of hippies wanted to sit too in our chairs. And that did it for me. I somehow lost it and gave it back to the waiter. It's not all. I accused him of bad customer service and how they should treat their customers. I even went to the extreme to meet the General Manager and told him that how their service sucks.

Now that's one part of the story. The other part made me feel more than guilty than I can express in words. The waiters (I mean all of them) were deaf & dumb. It was told to me by the General Manager. And the gestures of the waiter during the tiff was to make me understand that all the seats were in the sharing basis. I misread it and took it otherwise and blasted him off. Later he came around and did gave us a seat though and made us comfortable.

Uptil now I was totally infuriated at their unattended customer service but after knowing the real reason of communication gap I was totally immersed in guilt. After apologizing even, the waiter was so calm and still helping me out and making it seem more normal. I simply loved it! At that moment I was only wondering that does a man who can talk or hear can only communicate more, or is it about being more humane?

Still I believe that it's a great move from KFC to employ disabled people as the responsibility increases from both sides i.e. a customer as well as an employee to have a better and wholesome experience. So now before accusing anyone think twice that have you been a good enough to be served well?

But still this incident will be in my memory for a long long time.

P.S. Thanks Sangita for the suggetion.

Screenshot of the Day

What's this? Does Airtel and YouTube logos look similar? Laugh out loud my friend, it is!! Interesting I must say. Wondering is it "TRUE-COPY"?

Thanks Pratham.

Swainism #1: Marketing, Social Media & You

From this post onwards, I will try to post some personal insights on Marketing, Technology, Media, Advertising & to whatever life has to offer. I hope I'm able to express all my thoughts clearly through this specific blog posts henceforth. Please pardon me if I come across as someone who knows it all; As for me it's a just a learning curve and I would need ur admiration and criticism equally as I move along. I have named these post as "Swainism" (Pun intended!!).

• Man is full of contradictions whereas community thinks in a linear fashion. That’s why marketers should try influencing community on the basis of engagement & trust rather than demographics since the networked world has ended demographics.


• Social Media is not just another channel to push your message. It’s more about building relationships on trust, respect and faith rather than pushing it towards the consumers. These tools manage reputation, attention, and value chain sharing very well, and these are the tools that build business from trust. (Thanks Chris)


• Technology will be a key enabler in bringing the brands, customers and business in a holistic ecosystem where business will engage customers through trust & mutual respect to help build their brands. Social Media has a key role to play in that.


• Long gone are the days when marketing spend was treated as a percentage of sales like short term promotions etc due to easy accountability. Now need of the hour is long term brand building exercise which will touch the audience at 360 degree.


• Last but not least, most of today's business models which are "Community Driven & Socially Accepted" are the ones minting money in the backdrop of "KARMA CAPITALISM". The future is very bleak for them since THEY (reffering to consumers) know and Trust is missing in the equation. (From one of my Twitter posts)

If you have any such idea(s) and want it to get posted in this blog, do mail me at sampad.s[at]gmail.com. I will post it as soon as possible with a linkety link if possible.

How Less is More?

It's interesting to see the menu of any fast food joint like McDonald's or cafes like Barista, Cafe Coffee Day or Starbucks etc (Thanks Addy for telling me about Starbucks' thousands of coffee combinations)! I get all the more confused seeing all those choices in front of me. It's ok if you have decided what you want and order it. If you haven't then sure it's a problem to make up your mind.

So the question is "Do we need more choices or less of it"? It's a difficult one to answer thinking how much will be enough for anyone. But one example from an article from MarketingProfs really hit me hard and made me think about it.

"...The story is about In-N-Out Burger; their customers don't expect an extensive menu. Their menu only includes 3 variations of same kind of sandwich i.e. a hamburger, a cheeseburger and the Double Double which comes with two patties and two slices of cheese. You can order a side of fries and a shake. But that's all. NO chiken strips, no salads, no stuffed jalapenos, no kids' meals. You can customize orders from the so-called secret menu i.e. Animal style, for instance, added grilled onions but dining options is unapologetically limited. And last but not least, they keep the lines long and service slow."

One thing is sure. Too many choices can cause a lot of customer experience anxiety and mental exhaustion. So the best strategy would be to simplify the products, services and portolios as it helps customers isolate their needs from burgeoning choices that are in offer in the marketplace.

P&G got it right way back and more & more companies are realising it that nowadays "Less is More" & "More is headache". More so, it all depends how individually exclusive you can keep your products or services without diluting it in the clutter.

Creating Empathy, Understanding & Openess in Business

This post is a part of my explaination to one of my commenters about my "Branding 2.0 & Social Media" slides I posted some months back. So thought of sharing it...

"...Business in modern day has become quite complex because of many reasons. One of them is understanding customers. I will try to connect 4 steps which I mentioned in my slides of "Branding 2.0 & Social Media" (SlideShare Link)i.e. investigating, walking + talking with people, learning by doing and sharing.

For example, if you want to launch a new product, the first primary thing that has to be done is to know what your target audience wants. Some of the tools that businesses have been using are market research, newer methods like alpha & beta tests etc. But the question is do they truly help us understand what they want?

One more thing that has to be remembered here is that we all are dealing with people who by nature are emotional and more often than not are not guided by logic or rationale. So what are these tests do for us! Don’t get me wrong here; I am not saying that it is of no use. But I personally believe that a healthy mix of personal experiences and qualitative & quantitative research will work as a wonder drug in these cases where Logic + Emotion (had to mention David Armano here) is taken care of easily. And that’s where Social Media can help us. Social Media can help businesses to engage, connect, collaborate, corroborate, share and help socialize between customers & businesses.

Last but not least, validation to the extent of measurability & stepwise accountability of the ongoing processes of understanding your customers is an important criterion as it can make or break a company. It can be through bringing your customers into the validation process not just through alpha or beta tests as the question lies somewhere else. It’s much better to have rough answers to right question than to have detailed answers to wrong question like quantitative analysis or focus groups. Validation can be brought to the table through asking the right questions like memorability of trademarks or logos, customer’s brand voice (message) perception & last but not least your customers should be able to verbalize the brand’s concept. Then working backwards towards number crunching may be the total solution.”

Please feel free to add/comment/criticize on it.

Screenshot of the Day

This provides the perfect recipe for your morning coffee with snacks. Isn't it? NO I'm not kidding. Of all the Facebook Apps, research shows that "Just for Fun" is a clear winner. The next one is Gaming. Not surprising though, at least for me since I get most of my Facebook apps invitation from this group only (guys stop sending me such). Anyway getting down at number crunching, it's no rocket science to understand that numero uno i.e. Just for Fun Apps is ahead of the 2nd one i.e. Gaming by a whooping 270%+. Oops!!! There goes Facebook's valuation, at least for me...but as they say "..the rest is history".

Courtesy: Flowing Data

5 key pointers towards Brand building

This morning started with a lot of questions in my head. First up is brand building and how it can make our brand a time tested one. Though branding activities depend on geographical to user base preferences & tastes, but still the basic morphology of building a successful brand remains the same over-time. I have tried to chalk out 5 most crucial questions that is to be asked before building a successful brand:

1. Does your Marketing Strategy gel with the existing Promotional campaigns?


2. Does it give you Traction in the marketplace in terms of Scalability?


3. Is it Measurable to the extent of Flexibility?


4. Does it build a "Brand of Value" or a "Brand of Convenience" for the consumers?


5. Does it reflect in the Balance sheets (i.e. is it measurable & accountable)?

These 5 questions is in the heart of any branding activity since the market has become more dynamic than ever mainly because of Fragmented Media // More choices and less of time for consumers to choose // Traditional advertising is losing steam // And most importantly consumers are buying stuff more due to peer recommendation by factor "X" . So all these factors are affecting consumers to turn out to be into "Brand Sluts".

Related Posts:

• BRAND: Split wide open
• BRAND:Split wide open(Part II)
• Six pointers to assess a Brand
• "Brand Building" through the power of people
• Slidepost: Branding 2.0 & Social Media

Slidepost: Global State of Social Media

This is the Social Media Research done by Universal McCann including 17,000 people in 29 countries. The research provides a comprehensive global trends in Social Media usage.

I think the presentation's findings are quite interesting and insightful.

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