India's brands go social: insights from the IndiaSocial summit 2012

Preeti Chaturvedi

Event Reports

IndiaSocial Summit, April 2012

 

 

India’s brands go social: insights from the IndiaSocial summit 2012

Preeti Chaturvedi

Following hard on the heels of ad:tech New Delhi, the IndiaSocial Summit underlined the burgeoning interest in digital media

as a marketing tool in India.

Usage of social media has been growing quickly in India, and the conference showed that Indian brands are becoming more

sophisticated in the way they use it, and getting results from it.

Facebook in India

India has become an interesting market for Facebook, with 50 million active users of the network in the country. Facebook's

key developments for advertisers, in particular its Timeline feature, were discussed by Eric Johnson, VP APAC at Facebook.

"In a world in which you are inundated with information, the most important information will come from those who matter the

most," he argued. Indian brands using Timeline include Shoppers Stop, a leading retailer. It has used its Timeline not only to

engage consumers and tell them more about its brand, but also to distribute coupons.

Brands, said Johnson, are witnessing the progression from advertisements to storytelling. Responding to an audience

   Title: India's brands go social: insights from the IndiaSocial summit 2012

   Author(s): Preeti Chaturvedi

   Source: Event Reports

   Issue: IndiaSocial Summit, April 2012

 

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question, "Will conversations focused on products bore my fans?", Johnson observed that it was crucial to encourage

consumers to share stories around their relationship with brands. Pizza Hut in India manages to do just this.

Johnson made the case for Facebook advertising offering greater ROI as well as relevance owing to the contextual nature of

ads on social media. "With Premium ads, advertisers can see three times the ROI. Ads can be placed in page posts, where

their brand is being discussed; on the right-hand-side panel; in news feeds on Facebook. This makes the ad appear more

natural."

He built his case on top of compelling data from Facebook. "Globally, about 850 million people are connected via Facebook, of

which 425 million remain connected from their mobiles and 500 million people log on from their computers. Facebook receives

2 billion posts every day and 250 million photos are uploaded every day."

Mahindra: social media for a grassroots movement

B Karthik, General Manager, Corporate Brand Management & Business Transformation, at Mahindra, presented a case study

on the company's 'Spark the rise' campaign, which sought to encourage people in India to take positive action to benefit

themselves and their communities.

His argument was that "digital media as a standalone will not work. We have to create events that the community can

participate in."

The campaign was designed on the theme of a cultural movement from the ground up.

The intent of the campaign was to create a digital platform on which individuals, groups and organisations could submit their

project plans aimed at benefiting society. Visitors were invited to view projects, offer advice, volunteer to take part and make

donations in kind and cash with winning 'Sparks' receiving grants from Mahindra to fund their projects.

 

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The campaign was a big success, with:

l 6,000 entries, and 1,346 projects showcased

l 250,000 votes cast, 48 grants given

l 740 volunteers, 473 experts, 151 funders

l Projects continue to come in. More than 200 were received after the cycle ended.

MNYL: social as a business driver

Instead of cigarette breaks, consumers are taking social media breaks, said a candid Anisha Motwani, Chief Marketing Officer

at insurance company Max New York Life (MNYL). Motwani's session touched upon the ramifications of social media for

departments as diverse as HR and IT. She shared her experience at MNYL, where the sales department is trying to use social

media for qualified leads, HR considers hiring through LinkedIn, and Customer Service continues to grapple with the amount of

content and responses generated online.

Motwani observed that it was important to determine one's business strategy for being on social media, and substantiated her

argument with the case study of MNYL's igenius platform. "We realized that insurance is a passive category. Agents push you

to buy insurance. The challenge was: How do you create an engaging community in this scenario?"

The answer: "We wanted to stand for insurance for children." This was a business decision that was executed via a social

media community.

Igenius was launched in 2010 to create a relationship platform to engage with customers and drive customer engagement

beyond business. The strategic objective was to extend the business focus in the child insurance space and engage with

existing customers and potential customers to drive brand awareness and position Max New York Life as a company that

connects with and understands its customers.

 

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"Our primary focus was on developing and nurturing an authentic first-of-a-kind parenting community in India on Facebook and

Twitter… An official blog and YouTube channel were created, where we discussed relevant issues and interviewed parents as

well as experts – school principals and child psychologists."

The community went on to gain 100,000 members within a span of one year. The insights gained on the community helped

MNYL to design Shiksha+, its child insurance product. According to Motwani, the igenius community had several benefits:

l Relationship-building for agents

l CRM enhancement for customer support

l Dedicated scholarships for children of employees and agents

"The programme helped us create brand differentiation by owning the 'child brand'. It also helped us generate awareness and

consideration among prospects through meaningful interaction." Motwani remarked.

Sony Music: social media and the entertainment business

Social media is having an impact on India's huge entertainment industry, offering new distribution channels and the chance to

cross-promote across platforms.

Rohan R Jha, General Manager, Media & Promotions, Sony Music India, stressed the importance of content. "For an

entertainment marketer, all projects have immense content. More is better."

He opined that marketers need to be savvy while promoting content. The same content can have a different marketing

 

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strategy at different times if it needs to be a success. Jha elaborated this with the case of Kolaveri Di, a hugely popular music

video from a Tamil film that went on to national success through a carefully seeded viral campaign.

"In Tamilnadu, we took a traditional approach with Kolaveri Di," said Jha. However, to take it to the national level, the

company seeded it as a viral piece of content.

According to Social Hues, the rate of Twitter mentions of Kolaveri Di increased by nearly 200% every day since it was

released online on November 16, starting at 179 and peaking a week later at 14,907 tweets on 24 November.

Jha went on to talk about the relationship between entertainment and social media. "The involvement, loyalty and ownership

expressed on social media are unparalleled." He took the example of MTV India, which according to TAM TV ratings reaches

out to 245,000 people, while the same channel has close to 33 million likes on Facebook.

The future of reputation

A session on corporate reputation began with summit convener, Rajesh Lalwani, CEO of Blogworks, setting out the 'ABC' of

reputation:

l A for Authenticity – do you do what you say?

l B for Big Data

l C for Community

Shivnath Thukral, Group President, Corporate Branding and Strategic Initiatives, Essar, used the recent Radia tapes

controversy (which implicated many senior Indian journalists in lobbying for public appointments) to make the larger point

about the social media age: "Nobody is spared".

He went on to cite a Euro RSCG Study from the US that shows people are becoming increasingly conscious of the value

system of the brands that they endorse. "The challenge for business managers is to get perception and reality together,"

Thukral observed, adding that corporations need to go back to restoring trust.

The session focused on several recent controversies in India's political space – and Thukral argued that they carried a

warning for brands. "It is dangerous when you realize that these social media attacks are being dominated by entities that do

not care to reveal who they are and yet their voice continues to mar reputations."

Senjam Rajshekhar, Director, Group Corporate Communications, Vedanta, agreed that social media could influence people,

and that NGOs, activists and corporations were using it to pursue various agendas.

 

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There is, he added, a risk in doing so. The case in point was 7UP, where the brand partnered with youth news title The

Viewspaper to conduct a 72-hour tweetathon where individuals were invited to discuss various social issues through a special

hashtag, #ifeelup.

There was some backlash when people realized that this was a product marketing exercise for 7UP. "Non-disclosure makes

people feel they have been taken for a ride, and the brand loses out in the overall process when things come to light," said

Gautam Ghosh, Lead, India Marketing, at social recruitment network Brave New Talent.

Narendra Nag, Co-Lead of 2020Social, a company that builds and manages online networks, set out some key trends in the

field of reputation management:

l Micro-reputation: reputation is no longer monolithic. Brands will have to think in terms of multiple reputations.

l Reputation narrative: brands will have to move from advertisements towards conversations and storytelling.

He concluded: "Reputation is not about facts. It is about faith."

Social media measurement: asking new questions

A session on measuring social media activity pushed the audience to think beyond 'fans' or 'likes'.

Karthik Nagarajan, National Director, Social and Insights, at GroupM, challenged the audience: "What is the ROI of taking your

client for golf or entertaining him over dinner? Why do we keep talking about ROI on social media when the medium itself is

rewarding?"

Vijay Shankaran, Head of Social, Nokia Siemens Network, echoed this point, saying that the real question to ask would be "Is

my brand really social? What can I do to make it so?"

He gave the example of Toyota's 100 Cars for Good.

The consensus was that brands should measure what's important, not what is easy to measure.

Takeaway points

l Social media in India is developing rapidly, and is now a serious option for marketers. As Facebook has become the

country's leading social network, options such as Timeline are now open to Indian brands in the same way as they are

open to brands in the US or Europe. However, Indian marketers are asking the same questions around social media

measurement as their international counterparts.

 

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l Many Indian brands are eager to develop closer links to local communities and gain more nuanced consumer insight.

Social has become a key platform for achieving this.

l India's huge content industry sees social media as a distribution and marketing platform.

l Recent political scandals have underlined the power of social as a tool to build (and destroy) reputations. Brands should

tread carefully in this space.

About the author

Preeti Chaturvedi writes about marketing issues for a variety of online and print media in India and internationally,

and has contributed to publications including The New Indian Express, Business and Economy and Business

World.

She can be contacted at preeti.chaturvedi@gmail.com, and blogs at chaturvedipreeti.wordpress.com.

 

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