SmartCrowds Blog

We couldn’t agree more with Mr Vaidyanathan’s views in this article published by Economic Times. Our experience talking to some brands can be summarized as follows. They agree that online engagement is important and highly impactful, but they are reluctant to invest the time, are happy with the status quo, and are comfortable thinking that this can be postponed to some time in the future.. Online engagement is held to a far higher “ROI” standard compared to advertising even if its cost is a small fraction of the traditional advertising budget.

With the support and impetus given by folks such as Mr Vaidyanathan, the powerful force of Engagement Marketing will surely come to be part of the mainstream sooner rather than later. The concluding part of the article carries the gist:

“An even better approach would be to use the force to work for you….

Finally, user generated content is not just more information, it’s more credible. We can discuss the trappings, but can’t hide from the wisdom of the collective. Better to harness it. “

Mashable posted a thought provoking article on the question “Is Social Media making Corporate Websites irrelevant?”. Our short answer is “no”, but our long answer is about the role that corporate websites play in the overall digital footprint of a brand. Adam Ostrow, the author of the Mashable article, articulates a good set of pros & cons of using Facebook vs Corporate Site in a campaign, and concludes by leaning towards a Facebook based campaign.

The either-or question posed by the article is a limited one, or rather is subtext in a larger question about the role of each of the online elements (Corporate site, BrandAdda, Facebook, Ning, Myspace, Orkut, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, etc etc) in a Brand’s digital presence. We believe that Brands sorely need Engagement with Consumers to thrive in the new world, and need an Engagement platform that goes beyond the boundaries of a specific Social Media destination, even if the destination is something as large as Facebook. In other words, a “portable” or “multi-platform” engagement experience that “integrates” the best of each destination is what’s needed. It frees Brands from trying to pick one or the other, or investing in multiple, disconnected campaigns.

Corporate websites are great for “informational content” around a Brand. Building engagement tools into a corporate website is expensive (time, money, security vulnerabilities, performance, traffic acquisition, etc) and a silo’d effort. Engagement is best left to destinations that are focussed on it. Traffic is best leveraged wherever it is. What is needed is an effort to integrate the best-of-breed tools and destinations into a cohesive platform.

Imagine this scenario, which we’re enabling with the BrandAdda platform.  Brand X has FAQs and other informational content / support content on its corporate site. It shares “how-to” videos, and exclusive clips of its Brand Ambassador on YouTube. It has an “Idea Center” to tap into the creativity of its audience. It has a “Promotion Center” where it publishes its offers/promotions. It has an “Ad Center” where it publishes its big-budget ad-campaigns content to solicit feedback on how the campaigns are doing and to optimize its campaigns. It needs to do quick dipstick studies with polls. Wouldn’t it be great if a consumer can experience all of this functionality & content, regardless of whether they are on Ning or Facebook or a corporate site?.

You may call this “Engagement in a box”, or “ONE-Social”. We call it “BrandAdda” :).

In a recent post, we outlined the what of Engagement Marketing. We laid out the essential characteristics of Engagement Marketing. Hopefully, this will help Brands understand it better. Naturally, the next question a Brand might ask is “Why is it good for me?“.

The very core of Engagement Marketing is to tap into the hearts & minds of your consumers. It doesn’t have to be all consumers - just those that are interested in your Brand and are affected by it in good and bad ways. When a Brand is able
to connect with consumers in this way, the sky is the limit for the value that it brings.

So what are the ways in which you can benefit?

1. A perennial source of ideas on what consumers would really like from the Brand
   You expand your pool of creativity & innovation beyond your company’s borders.  You have thousands, if not millions, thinking for you.  Apparently, Dell & Starbucks love this, and so do many consumers. And there are many startups that try to  provide exactly this service (SuggestionBox.com, Uservoice.com, CrowdSound.com, ShouldDoThis.com, etc)
2. An instantly available focus group you can reach out to help with your decision-making
3. A way to measure and optimize your ad campaigns in traditional media
   All you have to do is ask, and you can optimize the gazillions you spend on advertisement without a clear understanding of its impact and effectiveness.
4. A great audience to help you with Product Testing before launch
   Note that you’re dealing with an audience you know. This helps you get just  the feedback you need.
5. A highly impactful PR channel
   When your involvement is trust-generating, you don’t just have a PR team anymore, you have an army!!. Imagine the waves & vibes that this army can generate for you, both online and offline.
   A common concern you may have is “What if it is negative vibes?“. Wouldn’t you rather be there to address the reasons for the negative vibes and tackle the problem before it becomes a crisis?. Imagine the positive goodwill you will gain when you deal with it head-on and turn the tide. Will the problem go away if you hide or suppress it?. The Streisand Effect could work against you.
6. A sound way to nurture leads for your products & services
   When you’re there to listen, talk, and share, you become a very personable brand.  Your Brand gains the aura of the human touch. Borrowing a phrase from this fine article, you become a magnet. Its better to be a magnet than a hammer!.
7. A great way to share useful and fun content with consumers
   It could be exclusive photos or video clips of your Brand Ambassador. It could be a how-to video. It could be free downloads of music, ringtones, wallpapers etc. It could be your promotions & offers. There are many things you could share with an engaged audience. Not just any audience, but an audience you know something about, and an audience that is loyal to you.

We, at BrandAdda, are building just the platform, tools and applications to help you realize these benefits. Do take a look and let us know your feedback.

Engagement Marketing is a new genre of marketing that is enabled by the ease of access and interactivity of the internet, and by the penetration of internet usage in every aspect of our lives. Some call it Conversational Marketing. We like to call it Partnership Marketing. Even Dialogue Marketing orTwo-way Marketing fits the bill. Folks at Hubspot call it Inbound Marketing. So what is this thing?. What’s behind these buzzphrases?.

We think it is best to describe it in terms of its essential attributes. Here are the 7 essential characteristics of Engagement Marketing:

1. There is a Dialogue between the Brand and the Consumers
   Its a two-way street. Consumers talk. Brands listen and respond. Brands talk. Consumers listen and respond. Openness & transparency are the hallmarks of the conversation. Any “acting”, “staging”, or “hidden agenda” is harmful in the long run. Trust leads to loyalty and tolerance. So Brands that build trust will do well.
   Brands should be willing to accept that the dialogue may not always be rosy. The Brands that work through a tough conversation with openness, honesty and willingness to listen and act will get ahead. Dell did a remarkable job in going from Dell Hell to Dell Swell. Brands that shy away from “critical” conversations, or those that try to suppress problems invariably end up losing Brand Equity. Look at how Skoda decided to deal with a customer complaint, and the gigantic proportions this issue has gained.
   This goes to show that, in the brave new world, Brands no longer have the control over Branding that they did in the past.
2. There is value in the conversation for both the Brand and the Consumers
   Consumers are in it because they perceive value in it. It could be some content for free; something entertaining; a new product they get to try out first; information about how to use a product; the emotional satisfaction of letting their feedback out where it counts; the pride of flexing their intellectual muscles in terms of new ideas; the fun of sharing their experience, their collections, their knowledge; etc.
   Brands are in it because they learn about how they are doing, about what exactly they should be building, and most of all because there is no better way to build a robust, healthy business than by nurturing a base of happy customers and leads.
3. Quality of the Consumer audience is more important than Quantity
   The conversation is meaningful when it is conducted with genuine interest. A handful of engaged participants can lead to a lot more value than a huge mass of disinterested individuals.
4. Brands are in the conversation to listen more than to talk
   They listen, respond and listen some more. They are not eager to sell, sell, sell. A good listener has many friends.
5. The entire Company is behind the Conversation
   Its not just the Marketing department. Product design, customer service, quality assurance, manufacturing, sales, etc have as much to do with the conversation as Marketing.
6. It is a continuous, living, breathing process
   It is not just a campaign with a start & stop date. It takes constant work and nurturing. The Brand gets value out of it in proportion to the effort that is put into it.
7. All Engagement Marketing is Social Media Marketing, but not all Social Media Marketing is Engagement Marketing
   Case in point: an ad blast on Facebook has no engagement factor to it.

The knight in shining armour when it comes to this mode of Marketing is Dell. Just look at all their efforts on building and empowering a community.

We believe Engagement Marketing should be an essential component of any Marketing Mix, alongside the traditional methods that focus on sending one-way Marketing messages to a mass or niche audience. We’ve built BrandAdda to nurture and promote this new form of marketing. Watch for our next post on why Engagement Marketing is good for Brands.

We are happy to report the latest addition to the SmartCrowds team - Arun Prabhakar.

Arun completed his graduation this year at MEC, Cochin.  He likes to tinker with code and websites. He was part of the design & editing team for his campus website, and was also the organizer for the hack competition during the college techfest this year. He has won prizes, too many to list, at various Coding Contests - most notably a First prize during Shastra ‘08 at IIT Madras. He blogs regularly at http://digitalpbk.blogspot.com/ (warning: very geeky stuff).

Welcome aboard Arun!.

This wonderful description of a brand was given by Tom Bernardin, Chairman and CEO of Leo Burnett Worldwide. We often perceive a brand to be just a product, but really it’s so much more. It’s a face, a warm fuzzy feeling, a bright light of cheer on a dark rainy night, a memory of something happy…. and so much more. That’s the secret behind the long life and growing profits of a McDonalds or a P&G.

At BrandAdda we’re giving life to Mr Bernardin’s statement. By bringing the brand and its consumer face to face and helping them to interact in a meaningful manner so that the results achieved are satisfactory both. After all, the consumer has a right to speak out for or against the brand by virtue of his/her loyalty to it and the brand needs that feedback to grow and thrive.

This isn’t really about the product we just launched. It is a fun experiment that hopes to illustrate the core belief of SmartCrowds - how little bits of contribution from people can add up to something valuable, and how technology is powering new ways of living and working. Wiki enabled the brilliant WikiPedia. We’re tinkering with what Twitter can do.

We think Twitter is a great platform for distance learning.. We can’t say for sure about all the types of distance learning that it enables… we’re still tinkering (What do you think?)… but something that can be delivered in byte-sized chunks is ideal…. For example, something like “learn kannada in 30 days” or “learn urdu a phrase a day”… The latter is what we’re going to try. It was inspired by the love for the language of course, and not as a random experiment. That helps keep the momentum :).

While the “Urdu class” we’re starting will be asynchronous and in small daily chunks, I can easily imagine a live class being conducted on twitter. One or more “teachers” can post to “http://twitter.com/Urdu101″ on a schedule and the “students” (followers in twitter terminology) get the gyan in real time. The students can ask questions in real time by responding to a particular “140-byte lesson”, and the teacher can ReTweet it so that all the students can see it at the same time. The beauty of it is that this class can be attended later at any time, anywhere, and using a variety of delivery mechanisms. By the same account, one can imagine a teacher conducting “office hours” for students anywhere on the globe.

There’s one small technical limitation with twitter currently. Multiple teachers have to share a password to post to one twitter account. With delegated administration support on twitter, or using some other innovations that exist or may come up in the near future, we can prevent the sharing of one password. Any ideas?.

We hope you’ll head on to http://twitter.com/Urdu101, sign up as a follower to learn Urdu a phrase at a time, and post your own knowledge through responses (which I will retweet for the benefit of all followers).

Share your thoughts, ideas on how twitter can be used for distance learning.

We are mighty thrilled to report that Mukund Mohan of BuzzGain has joined our Advisory Board. You just have to meet him for a few minutes to realize his positive, dynamic, can-do aura, and his penchant for ideas. Besides, he brings in a wealth of Marketing experience that is crucial for SmartCrowds to forge ahead and thrive.

Welcome Mukund!!

The toughest thing to do is, communicate. In a world so tightly linked together communication demands marquee status, yet we relegate it to the unimportant. We’re constantly emailing, sms-ing, blogging, talking on our mobiles….yet one hears comments like - I have no idea what he meant.

Clarity in communications seems to be more intricate than rocket science. The path to clear communications is littered with assumptions which is made more difficult by cold mediums like sms’ and emails  which unless used effectively, can be quite detrimental.

So all the more reason for a brand to ‘talk’ to its consumers than for them to rely almost totally on getting a message out which may or may not always be spot on. When a brand ‘talks’ to its clients in a non-regulated open forum it builds a measure of trust for itself which goes a long way in ensuring that it’s perceived well both by existing and prospective consumers.

Brilliant campaign by Ford.

Assuming fiesta is of decent quality to begin with, this campaign will only help Ford get better. It keeps them on their toes to do their best for their customers (they’re in the spotlight!). No company makes products everyone is happy with, but companies that engage with their customers and listen to their honest feedback are more likely to be ahead despite product shortcomings. Hide those warts and they’re likely to remain with you forever and balloon into long term problems. Do your best to fix the warts, and open up to your customers and you’ll emerge stronger! because you’ll earn trust, tolerance, support and ideas from them.