1. Turning a corner
Karthik Nagarajan
Director, Online Division, The Nielsen Company
When Blogworks approached Nielsen to partner on their India Social Report
research, I was personally very excited about the exercise. Reason? The Indian
market today is looking for empirical evidence that the ‘social media opportunity’
is real and that there is a real momentum building up for it. This book that you are
holding is that evidence, in my opinion. This has been the fruit of an exciting
period of research, during which the findings have oscillated between pleasant
surprises and reaffirmation of our beliefs in this medium.
We believe that the world of marketing in India is undergoing a permanent
transformation and social media is at the centre of it. By fundamentally changing
the way brands communicate with consumers, social media is all set to overhaul
the marketing food chain. This is not a futuristic concept or something that is
happening in a distant foreign land. This is happening in India as I write and Indian
brands have already started realizing and reacting to this.
I want to highlight two interesting stories that this research revealed to us.
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2. Getting strategic about social media
The term ‘social media’ by itself is something that seems to have multiple
definitions within Indian marketing circles. Many brands and sections of the media
assume it to be synonymous to social networking and micro-blogging. The impact
of discussion forums, message boards, review sites, video sharing sites and blogs
are often overlooked, primarily because they are seldom talked about in
mainstream news. As a result of this, many brands have been quite content with
just creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account and calling it quits, with a
belief that they have done enough to have a ‘social media’ existence. This has
seldom worked for them.
For this mind-set to change, social media needs the attention and the commitment
of the top management. There needs to be a clear understanding of the relevance
of this medium to the brand in question and a process to leverage it. This can
come about only if there is a plan and resources available within the organization
to support it. When we posed his question to brands, 27 percent of them said that
they already have a stated social media policy and 46 percent said that they are
working on one.
Why is this important? It is not that social media is a structured medium where
processes and policies define how you react to and leverage market situations. The
truth is quite the opposite – it is such a dynamic forum that brands sometimes have
to react in hours, if not days. However, the fact that almost 3 out of 4 brands are
serious about having a strategic social media policy, tells me that they recognize
the importance of this medium, right up to the top management and that is a
paradigm shift in perception, compared to a year or so back.
Scenario Consulting Private Limited
Business Office #24, Lower Ground, Adchini, Enter from Sarvodaya Enclave – 110017.
www.scenarioconsulting.in, www.blogworks.in
Landline: +91-11- 41829475

3. What defines success?
When we asked brands about the top five metrics on which they evaluate their
social media success, we got an interesting set of responses. The volume of
interaction (fans, followers, etc) expectedly and rightfully took the top spot.
However, the surprising element here for me was that ‘lead generation’ featured
in the top three. This worries me a bit because it reminds me of a similar trend
that has plagued the Indian display advertising market (and continues to do so) –
over-obsessing about ‘performance’.
Simply because online is a more ‘measurable’ medium, Indian marketers tend to
over-measure it sometimes and bring in impractical ROI angles to their advertising
decisions. This has led to large scale domination of performance-based advertising
that assumes incorrectly that a display ad (banner) is only as effective as the
number of people who click on it. While this might be actually true and even
effective in some product categories, it is not by any means the best way to
leverage the digital medium. The above-mentioned response on ‘lead generation’
makes me wonder if we will end up making a similar mistake with social media as
well.
The audience you end up having for your brand on social media is ‘earned’. It is
like a party that you need to be invited to as a brand. You cannot always gate-
crash it by asking your customer to click on an ad or sign up for something that is
not in his / her mind space. This medium is about engaging and contextual
advertising – or in other words, this medium is all about the consumer. This is why
historically and even in other countries, social media sites have had the lowest
click-through rates for advertising. So it worries me a bit that ‘lead generation’ is
one of the key reasons brands are here.
Scenario Consulting Private Limited
Business Office #24, Lower Ground, Adchini, Enter from Sarvodaya Enclave – 110017.
www.scenarioconsulting.in, www.blogworks.in
Landline: +91-11- 41829475

4. Having said that, ‘Sentiment of the conversations’ and ‘brand awareness’ also
featured in this top five list. So I hope my worries are unfounded and we as a
market leverage this medium by playing to its strengths. We need to remember
that social media in India, is a relatively new trend and the Indian online consumer
is just about warming up to it (70% of social networking users in India started in
the last 1-2 years). So if there is inertia and teething problems, those are
understandable and in some cases even inevitable.
Scenario Consulting Private Limited
Business Office #24, Lower Ground, Adchini, Enter from Sarvodaya Enclave – 110017.
www.scenarioconsulting.in, www.blogworks.in
Landline: +91-11- 41829475