Indian Marketers Optimistic about 2012 Business

A study titled ‘Indian Marketers Continue Their Consumer Focus’, prepared by Ipsos Asia Pacfic Marketers Outlook 2012, throws light on the fact that building greater consumer loyalty for their brands with enhanced focus on ROI and Digital media would be top priority for Indian marketers in 2012.

The preceding year
The report states that majority (59 per cent) of Indian marketers say 2011 has turned out to be a year better than anticipated for sales across India; over three in ten (33 per cent) say it was same as previous year and only 9 percent believe it was worse than excepted.

The year ahead
In 2012 Indian marketers want to focus on the measurement of ROI of their campaigns. They expect better quality insights and creative thinking from their agency partners. Marketers think digital media; CRM and PR will take up a higher role in marketing communication plan.

As researched by the firm about nine in ten (88 per cent) Indian marketers believe outlook for their brand in 2012 would be better or much better and 61 per cent think their industry sector would fare better.

Improving media budget
The optimism has led marketers to increase their media spends in the coming time. The Indian marketing industry will see an increase of over ten percent planned by 46 percent of organisations in India and 38 percent in other Asia Pacific countries. About seven in ten (67 per cent) Indian marketers said they plan to spend more on market research.

Upping marketing budget
Over half of the marketers are planning to increase marketing investment for 2012 and only 10 per cent of the marketers are planning to decrease marketing investment for 2012.

Read full story here

 

An Internet Minute’s Infographic Representation

We recently saw this interesting Infograph on Intel’s blog.

In just one minute,

• More than 204 million emails are sent.
• Amazon rings up about $83,000 in sales.
• Around 20 million photos are viewed and 3,000 uploaded on Flickr.
• At least 6 million Facebook pages are viewed around the world.
• More than 61,000 hours of music are played on Pandora
• More than 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube.
• Nearly 640K Gb of global IP data is transferred in just one Internet minute!

Read the complete article here.

 

2011: The year of eRetail

Indian online retail industry is expected to touch Rs 7,000 crore by the mid of this year. The estimates were announced at the on-going two-day Indian eRetail Congress, in New Delhi.

“The online retail industry is evolving to create a bright commercial ecosystem. With 100 million internet users supporting the e-revolution, the total number of transactions in India is set to take a leap from the present 8-10 million to 40 million by 2015. It has been observed that Tier-II & Tier-III cities are joining the eRetail revolution” Gaurav Marya, President, Franchise India (an integrated franchise solution company, and organiser of the two-day Congress), was quoted as saying in an official communiqué.

Read full story here.

 

Stay Pinterested! 26 Tips to using Pinterest as a Business Tool

Pinterest is the latest buzzword of the virtual space. It has not only awed people with exaggerating growth but also hooked on users who are passionately pinning anything they like over the web. Social Media Examiner revealed a list of 26 tips for using Pinterest for Businesses. Here is a snapshot of the same:

#1: Add a Pinterest “Follow” and/or “Pin It” Button: When you add a Pin It button, you can encourage your customers and readers to pin your products onto Pinterest.

#2: Brands and Pinterest: Choose the email associated with your brand’s Twitter account to set up your Pinterest profile. You can then alter the name and email associated with your account, add a location and website and then add a brief description of your brand.

#3: Crowdsource: Ask fans of your brand to pin pictures of themselves with their favorite product of yours and tag you, then you can repin those photos onto a VIP board.

#4: Do Follow Links: As Angie Pascale points out, “Other large social media sites—Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.—started out with Do Follow links, but eventually implemented No-Follows in an effort to deter spamming. While we cannot predict whether Pinterest will also make this change as they grow… the current setup provides legitimate SEO value.”

#5: Etiquette: Be nice, credit your sources, avoid self-promotion, report objectionable content and tell them how they’re doing.

#6: Use as Focus Group: Look at the pinners who follow your brand and see what they’re pinning and who else they’re following.

#7: Grow Your Pinterest Pins and Boards: kEep your Pinterest presence alive and well.

#8: Use Pinterest to Engage Audience: Use theme based pinboards.

#9: Install the “Pin It” Bookmarklet to Your Browser: Lets you grab an image from any website and add it to one of your pinboards.

#10: Justification for Creating a Presence on Pinterest: Use infographics, statistics from research tools etc to convince members of your organization.

#11: Keywords and Hashtags: Optimize the pin by adding keywords that users may be more likely to use if they’re searching for specific content on Pinterest.

#12: Link Back to Your Own Sites: Add links to your company website and Twitter page on your Pinterest profile.

#13: Me + Contributors: Allow others to contribute to your boards

#14: Network With Others: Interact with others as you do on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

#15: Observe and Comment: People like to know that their pin was helpful and their board served as an inspiration. You can mention other users in a comment by typing @username.

#16: Pinterest for Content Marketing: Drive traffic to their content if they’re willing to get creative. Curate infographics, Collect statistical charts, Create more visual content, put tips on a visually appealing slide, include a photo

#17: Quality Photos: Have high-quality photos, Make sure your photos can be pinned, Ensure that photos are tagged correctly

#18: Referral Traffic: If you’re already on Pinterest, do you check your analytics reports?  Has Pinterest been a source of web traffic for your business? How does it compare to your other efforts?

#19: Search for Pins From Your Website or Blog: Substitute your company URL (http://pinterest.com/source/ADD YOUR URL HERE) to see what’s been shared from your website or blog.

#20: Team Communication on Pinterest: with members of your team. You can also use boards creatively for team-building.

#21: Be Useful: Brands that are perceived as being helpful to Pinterest users are making a splash on Pinterest.

#22: Videos: Videos have their own distinct section on Pinterest. draw attention to your videos  by adding annotations—basically a call to action—for your audience to pin videos they find appealing.

#23: Welcome and Encourage Comments: Popular pins on Pinterest have three things going for them: likes, comments and repins. create interest by asking a question. Use your new pins and boards as opportunities to converse with users on Pinterest.

#24: Examine Use of Pinterest for Your Business: Pinterest may not be right for every brand. Angie suggests that if your brand has “stunning imagery and develops unique products, Pinterest might be a good fit for you.”

#25: Why Pinterest?: Skyrocketing popularity, Ability to drive traffic, Build SEO value with Do Follow links, Appeal to multiple vertical markets, and the list goes on…

#26: Zine: Think of Pinterest as a much-loved zine and a user-friendly way for people to move through content, whether on their desktop or on a smartphone. It’s a visually appealing way for users to interact with products and ideas.

Read the full article here

 

Pitch Madison Media Advertising Outlook 2012 – What does the future behold?

17^th February 2012, we witnessed the release of the much awaited Pitch Madison Media Advertising Outlook 2012. The report pegged the Indian media advertising industry at Rs 25,594 crore in 2011. The second half saw sluggish growth at a mere 8 per cent, as against a projected growth of 17 per cent. According to the report, the year 2012 iss also expected to start slow. However growth is expected to pick momentum in second half of 2012.

Television continued to dominate with a share of 44.8 per cent, followed closely by print with a share of 42.2 per cent. The growth of Radio saw a flat growth of 3.1 per cent share of the ad pie, on the other hand, outdoor did better with a 5.1 per cent share. Cinema slid a few notches with a share of 0.5 per cent.

For detailed report pick up a copy of Pitch February 2012 Issue.

To read further click here

 

Are Flash Mobs the new Facebook of Advertising?

[Flash Mob: A large group of people who gather at a public location to perform a pre-defined action, typically a brief dance, and disperse rapidly after the event has concluded.]

Flashmob, the latest talk of the town, isn’t a new phenomenon. The world saw its first Flashmob demonstration in the year 2003 in Manhattan organized by Bill Wasik senior editor of Harper’s Magazine. However, it all began, like Facebook, as a playful social experiment – meant to encourage big gatherings, humor and spontaneity. Organized secretly through social media, viral emails or websites, these flash mobs gained immense popularity courtesy their element of surprise.

Like everything else, that becomes a rage amongst masses, takes to becoming the next marketing tool for the brands of the world. This phenomenon too didn’t get past the big brands unnoticed. It awestruck brands with some power performances across the globe and what followed was a flood of flashmobs.

However, a majority of these manifestations failed – just like what we saw for brand pages on Facebook – they came, they saw but they couldn’t conquer. Closer home in India, the brands and individuals got so enthused by the successful demonstration at Mumbai CST that it became the most overdone activity of recent time thereby leading to death of its charm.

This is not to say that Flashmobs have failed in India or that the brands should avoid using flashmobs but to make a point that howsoever interesting the tool may be its application has to be grounded on a solid premise.

Be it the Flashmobs or the Facebook, brands must remember these:

1. Consumers (as we are known) want to be ENTERTAINED, ENGAGED and LET FREE and not BOMBARDED with irrelevant communication. Hence, usage of social platforms or tools should be to engage people and not hard sell products.

2. TOO MUCH and TOO FREQUENT spoil the fun. Too much of branding makes it look like a marketing gimmick and too frequent activity kills interest and thus brands must keep it alive with relevance and surprise.

3. You don’t HAVE TO do it just because EVERYONE else is doing it. We saw this on Facebook – some brands credited their Facebook presence to being “early adopters of any new technology”, some did so to the “consumer centricism” while a lot others just exclaimed “We have to be on Facebook because EVERYONE is on FACEBOOK!” that’s quite honest I would say. However, a lot of brand efforts eventually died down all thanks to their aimless hunt for fans/likes.

4. Don’t follow the herd. INNOVATE. American comedian Charlie Todd, once had a group practice synchronized swimming in a public fountain in New York. Another time he had some 50 people enter an electronics store wearing the same type of clothes as the store’s employees.

Some super successful flash mob acts –

1.      Frozen Grand Central Flash Mob, Jan 2008

2.      T-Mobile dance, Jan 2009

3.     Central Station of Antwerp, Mar 2009

4.      Michael Jackson Dance Tribute Stockholm, Jul 2009

5.      Black-eyed Peas Major dance Mob, September 2009

6.      Bristol Lightsaber Flash Mob, Feb 2010

7.      Flash Mob at the Ohio Union, May 2010

8.      Opera Company of Philadelphia, Oct 2010

9.      Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Nov 2010

10.     Mumbai CST, Nov 2011

 

Volkswagen: Once in a lifetime

Volkswagen has come out with a new commercial for Polo, the ‘Once in a Lifetime offer’ which fiddles with the idea of reincarnation.  The commercial shows a Parsi man, obsessed at keeping his vehicle, the old Polo, tip top, neat over the years.

“The Polo. You’ll come back for it” goes the super, while the voiceover concludes that with the ‘Once in a lifetime’ offer on the Vento and Polo, one will be induced to check their nearest Volkswagen store to know more.

“While Polo does have a rich heritage, this campaign was not about playing it up. It was our aim to create intrigue and excitement about the carline and thus followed the creative idea around the fact that the offer is so tempting that one comes back for it even across lifetimes – thereby showcasing the different generations of the Polo,”  Lutz Kothe, head, marketing and public relations, Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Group Sales India said.

Read reactions from across the industry in the full article on afaqs

Let us know your thoughts on the commercial in the comments below.

 

How Cadbury celebrated 1 million Facebook fans

Cadbury has always associated itself with celebrations. So how did they exactly celebrate getting to 1 million likes on Facebook?

Cadbury celebrated their community with a large chocolate ‘like’ button. They even created an infographic with the stats behind the making of the massive chocolate model. Cadbury even selected a super fan to place the final square of chocolate on the top to complete the structure. Check out the infographic below:

So, what do you think about the way Cadbury celebrated with its fans. Let us know in the comments.

Read on digitalbuzzblog

 

 

 

Indian Government threatens to ban Facebook & Google if they do not censor their content

The two internet giants will have to face a blackout in India after a Delhi High Court ordered them to find a way to remove objectionable and derogatory content from their websites.

“Like China, we will block all such websites,” Kait said, The Times of India reports.

Here’s what Mukul Rohatgi had to say on behalf of Google India on the matter:

“No human interference is possible, and moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents,” Rohatgi said. “Billions of people across the globe post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene, but cannot be checked.”

Give us your take on the issue. Do you think banning such sites will help reduce access to derogatory content on the web?

 

Is the online retail bubble in India going to burst soon?

The online retail business in India is on a roll. The advertisements of such companies like snapdeal.com and flipkart.com are all over television and print.Many of these companies have been pumped in with a lot of cash for expansion which has seen them going into a race trying to scale up as soon as possible.

Swati Garg, Business Standard, wrote for afaqs the reasons why the online retail bubble may burst eventually:

• Sky high valuations
• Creative accounting
• Game of scales
• Its 2012 and not 2000

Read up the complete post on afaqs