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Rajita Chaudhuri
Dean, Centre for Undergraduate Studies
at
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management |
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Stop Marketing & Start Talking
As technology radically transforms interpersonal communication, the very tenets of marketing are getting redefined...
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 Aircel seems to have flooded the markets with its red and blue hoardings and kiosks dotting the whole city. They plastered Delhi with Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s smiling face, they stole the front page of the Times of India and changed it to “Move on India”. On 21st March, apart from TOI, Aircel had literally hijacked all Radio Channels & TV Channels with its advertisements. Many have used such “Ambush” marketing techniques earlier, however this time, Aircel did something else too. This Apollo Group-promoted brand went and connected itself with the youth – and where else to go other than Facebook. Aircel launched a voice message application on Facebook, which allowed friends to leave each other voice messages instead of just text messages. Within no time, it got 190 users to sign up for its voice mail application. Social networking sites are turning out to be lucrative options, where marketers can focus on their target groups, and that too, at very cheap rates.
Lets Face it!
Facebook has become a place where every college kid now hangs out. Its stickiness has improved with a user spending 190 minutes on an average on the site. Originally developed for college and university students, where you could log in only if you had a college e-mail id, Facebook is available to anyone with an email address today. So now there is an increase in the users of the 12-17 and 35+ demographic. So these social networking sites are attracting a lot of marketers, especially those who want to target the youth, for it’s the young who have typically more free time to spend on a social networking site. So if you can do something interesting & creative, which catches the fancy of young minds, you can create a “friendly buzz” about your brand; something very necessary for a brand’s survival and growth.
In Australia, when Nestle wanted to launch its new Kit Kat Chunky product targeted at teenage boys, it decided to not use any traditional media. According to its head of campaign marketing John Broome, five years ago, the advertising campaign would have included television, radio and outdoor; but today, things have changed. This time, the campaign includes a multi-player online game, online videos, mockumentaries (mock documentaries!!) and a mobile component to the website. With teenage boys spending, on an average, 13 hours a week playing games online, this was the perfect way to reach them. The advantage – if they liked you, they would refer you to their friends, who would like you too – ‘coz their friends told them so. Though overall, Nestle spends about 10% of its media budget on the internet, but this time, of the $1 million kept aside for launching Kit Kat Chunky, it decided to spend 70% of the amount on the internet.
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 Nano, the latest offering from the Tatas to hit the Indian roads, broke new grounds in design, engineering and production processes. Now it’s using innovative ways to market and promote this unique Rs.1 lakh car. Unlike most small cars, Nano won’t advertise on TV. It will instead focus on online Nano games, Nano chat rooms, Nano pop-ups and even enter into a conversation with young users on Facebook, Orkut and blog spaces. Nano wants to be synonymous with anything “small, cute and brief” and it’s using the internet to help build this buzz about its brand, and probably this time, it’s not gone wrong, for the networking sites triggered a gushy response from people all over the world, asking for a similar car in their land too!
P&G, the world’s biggest advertiser, created a page on MySpace called “Miss Irresistible” to help market its Crest toothpaste. This way, it could connect with its users, potential users and along the way, gather market research. According to Wall Street, when the world’s biggest advertiser turns towards a new medium, a whole lot of others are bound to follow
If you want to market to the kids, you need to know where they live. When the giant US retailer Target wanted to promote its “back to-school” merchandise, it decided to sponsor a page on Facebook. No advertising of merchandise here – just conversing with the young people and getting to know them. The page was given a theme of “Dorm Survival Guide” where students were given advice on how to design their dorms, how to cook, how their furniture should match their personality – so there was a personality test too; and of course, it said how pillow cases, and comforters (available at Target too) could help make them more comfortable in their dorms. Initially, they included photos of dorms designed by designers, but you could upload your dorm pics too. It attracted more than 7,000 members, lots of photos, and lots of positive discussions about the brand. Target realised that on Facebook, you don’t sell first – you talk first. So it kept all discounts, promotions et al away from its Facebook page – and it worked. The community liked it.
JP Morgan Chase decided to market its credit cards with the help of Facebook and not its own website. To market to young people, you need to like them, and behave like them. You need to be relevant to their life. Its Facebook page gave advice to youngsters on how to use credit wisely, apart from earning points for joining Chase subgroups, et al.
Burger King created a page on MySpace and has more than 12,000 “friends”, who can post comments and get to know of various deals et al.
If you thought these social networking sites are being used by companies to peddle their goods, you are wrong. From Microsoft to Goldman Sachs to Deloitte, everyone is on these, building their own alumi networks to encourage their old employees to join back. Deloitte found that 20% of its new recruitments consisted of boomerangs – i.e people who had worked with it earlier. In
today’s times, “Boomerangs” are a blessing. They know you, so it costs
less to train them and they hit the ground running. Let’s face it – it’s difficult to stay away from Facebook & other such sites.
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