Do you think social media boosts brand value by leading to a lot of cross marketing? Can negativity on social media completely be avoided? This is what our CEO Dr. Ranjit Nair had to say in this month’s Femina special feature

1. may get irritated, but if you put up
a competition on Twitter and say the
best 140-word review will be awarded
a free cake, people would want to
participate in something like that.
You want to get people talking about
your brand and product. After all, one
of the reasons social media is so
powerful is because you’re getting
a recommendation from someone
you know and trust.”
This is a point that Shalini Mehta
who worked in the banking industry for
22 years emphasises. Even with just
over 3,000 friends and 2,000 followers
on Facebook, 1,200 Twitter followers
and 500 followers on Instagram, Shalini
is often urged to ‘like’ pages, post event
details on her timeline and endorse
products on her social media streams.
So much so that she actually changed
her ‘settings’ to ensure that nobody
could post anything on her Facebook
timeline without her approval. Why?
“My Facebook timeline showcases
my personal views—I feel—views that
people I know rely on. So while
I have no objection to being tagged in
events with a social objective, as that’s
for the greater good, I don’t see why
I should be used to endorse a product,
event or restaurant that I may not
even like.
Germin8’s Ranjit admits that people
do try to recruit influencers to push their
brand, some even resorting to
purchasing their “likes,” though he feels
this usually happens with celebrity
influencers with huge fan followings of
over 50,000 people. “You see when it
comes to anything you can buy online,
social media becomes a great place to
drive up sales, because you can engage
with buyers and see that the sale is
completed. “There is an ethical way to
recruit influencers though,” he outlines,
referring to tactics such as the one Neha
used. “So, a sports brand may contact
influencers and say try these shoes out
and tweet your experience, for instance
and, of course, the shoes are gifted to
the influencer.”
Steer around social
media pitfalls
Negativity can, therefore, be simply
avoided by employing the services of
a firm like Germin8 that helps brands
optimise on social media’s power. Ranjit
says, “It’s important to identify what you
want your brand’s image to be, who
your target client is, as well as to be
very clear about your goal. Facebook,
for instance, is, by far, the medium on
which people spend the most time,
both abroad as well as in India. So,
it’s a good channel to create brand
awareness. A lot of FMCG (Fast Moving
Consumer Goods) and computer
consulting companies are doing this.”
Twitter, says Ranjit, works best for
organisations like banks and car brands,
where customer care is a vital
touchpoint and where a lot of back and
forth communication happens. He also
reveals, “Certain brands may benefit
from knowing that Pintrest and
Instagram have more female users and
that 35 per cent of the online shoppers
on these platforms, we discovered,
were female. On the other hand, for
e-commerce websites, restaurants and
fashion labels that want to pull traffic to
their site, platforms like Pintrest and
Instagram are the ideal medium, as the
visual impact of images actually drives
action and results in sales.”
ARmaan, IShaan and ArYA, jewellery
brand Isharya currently retails in over
50 countries but the ladies behind the
brand tell us, “We also have a fast
growing e-commerce and social media
presence that generates sales globally.”
“Social media is an important channel
for us to curate our brand message
directly to our customers, as well as
engage with new fans in the most cost-
effective way. Besides, posting high
quality visual images with links back to
our websites or partner retailers has
definitely boosted sales. Currently, we
have 1,15,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook and
7,000 Instagram followers and we’re
now expanding our presence to other
platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr
and YouTube.” The brand image is also
boosted when celebrities and social
media influencers like Sonam Kapoor
and Kerry Washington post pictures of
themselves sporting Isharya creations
on Instagram.
Her own brand ambassador
Hyderabad-based wedding-ensemble
designer Anushree Reddy, whose four-
year-old label already retails in Mumbai’s
Twitter, we’re trying to reach out to
parents and influencers, so we may
weave a subject that’s trending into
content that’s relevant to our brand.
For instance, when the Mangalyaan
Spaceship’s orbit around Mars was
trending, we associated that with
speed and accuracy, two aspects
of students performance that we
work on improving. We use LinkedIn
to showcase the work culture at
our company so as to attract talent
and we use Google Plus along with
YouTube to showcase our academic
content and client testimonials.
Besides, we use Google’s ‘hangout’
feature to broadcast web-seminars.”
How effective is all of this? Some
evidence of the potency of Embibe’s
social media presence is presented in
the fact that the company was invited to
participate at the Web Summit in Dublin
in November alongside the world’s top
150 start-ups.
Lending the brand a new glow
Launched in 2004 by Tandon sisters-in-
law, Gauri (Mumbai) and Radhika
(California), and named after their kids,
high-end stores such as Ensemble, Aza
and Ogaan, relies solely on Facebook
and Instagram to build her brand.
Anushree, whose posts on these sites
have inadvertently turned her into
a brand ambassador for her label, says,
“I didn’t plan it that way, but I’d put
up pictures of myself with friends at
a restaurant or with a glass of wine
and since fans were following me on
Instagram, it built a more personal
relation with them.” The designer also
points out that the linking of social
media has led to a lot of cross-
marketing which, again, boosts the
brand’s recall value. “You get tagged in
personal as well as professional posts,
which are re-tweeted and shared across
social media, then people ‘like’ your
pictures and too attracts clients.”
Proceed with caution
Still, Anushree’s cautious of too much
social media exposure too. “The
downside with interacting with so many
people is that you could inadvertently
offend someone, say, if you haven’t
replied to a query or if you’ve missed
a message and that negativity could
snowball too. Besides, by posting
pictures of designs you do invite
imitations. So, my last print, for instance,
a design I developed with an artist
in three colours, is now available in
20 ripped-off versions.”
Pick your influencers wisely
Ritu David, CEO, Social Samosa,
a big data and social media crisis
management company, which, of
course, is also promoted on social
media, says that used right, “social
media can be an extremely powerful
marketing tool. It can give you insights
into how your product is placed in terms
of pricing; you can mine data to find out
what the optimal prices are by
comparing to peers or to gauge what
your target client would be willing to
spend on this sort of product. Data
mining companies can give you this sort
of actionable insight which could also
help you narrow down on which social
media platform to use and how. For
instance, if you ask people
to ‘like’ your page on Facebook, they
2.6 crore Linkedin users.
Drawing a comparison between
paid advertorial content on other
media and social media marketing
campaigns, Ranjit Nair, CEO of social
media intelligence firm Germin8, says,
“12.5 crore people have access to
television in India; Internet penetration,
on the other hand, is much higher—
somewhere between 25 and 30 crore
people—and of these, 14 to 21 crore
Indians are on social media. So the
potential reach is far higher than
television, though the actual reach
depends on the effectiveness of
each campaign.”
This might explain how 33-year-old
ex-banker Aditi Avasthi’s Embibe, a site
that personalises exam preparation
modules for students appearing for
highly competitive exams such as IIT-
JEE and AIIMS, already has 1,82,840
‘likes’ on its Facebook page, though the
company (set up in 2012) only reached
out to end users six months ago.
Reaching out to lakhs
of students
Aditi’s brother, Karan, who heads the
company’s marketing team, explains
that Embibe provides a personalised
alternative to coaching factories where
hundreds of students are jammed into
a class where they must struggle to
focus on the words of one tutor. Here,
students pay a subscription rate of
`12,000 per year or `1,000 per month,
a trifling amount compared to the lakhs
of rupees that coaching classes
charge.” But, the lowered cost of
tutorials and the convenience of working
at one’s own schedule and pace are
hardly the only benefits. Aditi’s site also
uses interactive tools to gauge students’
attention spans, problem-solving speed
and confidence levels (while they
attempt to answer questions) and then
prescribes case-specific performance-
boosting guidelines for each student.
With word out about the company
on social media, traffic on their website
increases by the minute, so in the time
it took to type this sentence, for
instance, 250 questions were attempted
on the site, taking the total number of
questions attempted to 16,40,946,
and the site garnered 115 additional
feedback views (taking the total to
4,51,817 feedback comments).
Encouraged by the response, Aditi now
plans to extend her company’s services
to CBSE students as well as students in
grades 8 through 10, “and then perhaps
we’ll also look at SAT exams,” adds
Karan. “Social media is a vital tool for
us especially since we’re dealing with
13- to 18-year-olds—there’s no better
medium to reach out to kids with.
Facebook is particularly popular with our
target age group, but we also engage
with clients via LinkedIn, Google Plus
and Twitter.” Each of these is used
differently and to different effect.
Marketing’s fine-tuned to suit
business model
“Facebook is a great way to reach
people so it’s what we use to educate
people about our company and what
services we provide—we have over
20,000 interactions per month. On
CMYK
T
wo years ago, Mumbai-based
Neha Sethi launched an
enterprise with a completely
unique selling point: It was
a nomadic cookie company whose
whereabouts and menu (different
cookies were sold on different days)
would only be published on Twitter
a day or two before the stall-on-wheels
set out. Social media was the only way
to contact the then-anonymous baker,
an ex-banker with a degree in finance
from Wharton School of Business,
who refused to take orders at the time,
determined as she was to limit the
enterprise dubbed ‘Sweetish House
Mafia’ to a labour of love, a hobby
rather than a business.
Back in 2013, this writer sampled
one of Neha’s Nutella-Sea Salt cookies
(`70 per piece), while riding in the Tata
Nano dedicated to the enterprise, and
watched awe-stricken as the tiny car
was mobbed by fans and a hundred
cookies sold out within mere minutes of
the Nano pulling up at a Breach Candy
parking lot. The cookies were good,
that’s true; the marketing, however,
was exceptional.
Cookie contagion
In no time, 29-year-old Neha went from
selling 100 cookies every couple of
weeks to selling 200 cookies every
couple of days and in September 2014,
she finally gave in to the ever-rising
demand for her product and opened
a store (complete with an old-fashioned
telephone number) in Mumbai’s
Lower Parel.
Recounting the birth of her brand,
she shares, “It was a friend who was
active on Foursquare, Instagram,
Facebook and Twitter who suggested
that we use social media to get the
word out. To create a buzz around the
product, we sent out samples to some
of his friends who are also active on
social media and their posts about the
cookies caught everyone’s attention.
So, the first time I sent out 50 cookies
back in 2013, they sold out in less than
20 minutes.” Now, plans are underway
to launch an e-commerce site for the
brand that also uses Instagram to
showcase its range. “We’re even
working on an app to enable clients to
place orders on their phones,” says
Neha, who now routinely prepares
customised cookie hampers for special
occasions and festivals.
Selling out in two clicks
Though Neha’s success with social
media came as a surprise even to her,
India-specific statistics compiled in 2014
by Wearesocial.net, a UK company that
uses research on social media trends
to fine-tune brand marketing and
communication strategies, shows that
social media users in India spend an
average of two hours and five minutes
on social media every day.” Digital
Insights, a site that publishes social
media trends, also offers some
indication of the Internet’s potential
to reach consumers in these figures
published on their site: As of March
2014, India had over 10 crore
Facebook users, 3.3 crore Twitter
users, 55 lakh Pintrest users, and
Social media’s driving a sheconomic revolution as women network online
to take their businesses to new heights. Now, there’s an idea we ‘like’.
By Anjana Vaswani
2 April 7, 2015 A special feature
AWOMAN’SDOMAIN
CYBERSPACE
Ranjit Nair, CEO, Germin8
Ritu David, CEO, Social Samosa
Gauri and Radhika Tandon, founders, Isharya jewellery
Neha Sethi, founder and CEO, Sweetish House Mafia
Aditi Avasthi, founder and CEO, Embibe
Shalini Mehta
PHOTOGRAPHBYVINAYJAVKAR