Digital Uprising
Beyond Revolutionary Banners
No we are not going to talk about
Imran Khan, for that you have to read your digital news feed. Although, if we
were to take Imran as a brand and just like any brand team revisit campaign
KPIs, he is not doing bad in terms of ‘likes’, and his TOM is increasing day by
day, but does it help achieve the overall business objectives for the brand?
I have been planning to bring
digital revolution to Pakistan, where campaigns will focus on smartphones, GPS
will be key element in most of them, youtube videos will go viral, twitter will
start countless conversations, facebook will make them look great on every ones
profile, and Google+… well still not sure about that one, but you get my idea
of a perfect digital campaign. And then my perfect digital world came to a halt
when a friend shared some heart breaking stats, more than half of our telecom
population are not able to send SMS, more than 150million are not yet online and
his brand spends approximately Rs.7 Million/month on web banners.
Naturally I was interested in
that 7 million now, so I gave it a thought and turned those stats upside down,
we have a phone in at least 60 million pockets, 20 million plus are online and
facebook is the ever increasing social platform of opinion leaders. Apparently
it wasn’t just me who discovered that fact, as I never got those 7m. But the good
thing was every brand started spending pennies on facebook, sadly they looked
at it as a banner rather than a conversational tool.
Once I pitched RFID led
activation linked directly to potential consumers’ personal facebook profile
but the brand team leader killed the idea of offline experience shared online
by asking a simple question “How many likes will I get on this page? Coke
Studio has an X number” upsetting I know.
We have certainly evolved now. My
brief was to be a critic and I thought I will have a lot of campaigns to
criticize and to my surprise brands are testing new things, a lot of viral
content is being generated, some brands are having serious conversations on
twitter and multiple facebook pages are popping up as I write, but sadly
marketers have been aimlessly chasing fans, no clear objectives are set for
digital and apart from the word digital, there is no integration in overall
marketing mix. No matter what anyone says, but as a planner I do believe that
brand building is the most essential part and digital can help brands on that
side.
As I went through my news and
twitter feed, skittles(fruit-flavored sweets) came to my
mind, in fact ill pop open a packet right now, but I am talking about their
extremely interesting website which was simply consumer-generated. All they did
was place a widget on their site linking Flickr for photos, youtube for videos,
twitter for conversations and facebook for fan pages, a simple execution to use
existing platforms to your advantage and
here on my feed most of the brand were focusing purely on facebook with standard
invite & win, play & win, like & win etc. Some actually had nice
addictive games but for that I have an iPhone now.
Around cricket world cup I came
across Coca Cola’s Junooni campaign, where they tried to own the word Junooni
by hiring quite a few university students and paid them hefty amount for their
facebook profile, they also ran an online video competition where winners were
joined by ‘cha cha cricket’ at the stadium in Sri Lanka, I don’t know how it
did for the brand but the word Junooni is still associated with the Rock Band.
Qubee and Telenor have taken a ‘caring’ route their digital campaign right now revolves
around social cause but in my opinion PTI is doing it a little better than
these, now for the most bizarre viral content, “A public service message by
kuch khas” Lolz!, In my opinion… spot on, we all said wtf! (Well that’s
fantastic) and would probably like to have a coffee at ‘kuch khass’ next time
we are in Islamabad. And my most liked campaigns are always going to be these
small business who build their fans purely by WOM, one that I liked the most is
HD Junkie, they have managed to achieve something rather interesting, an online DVD
store with free home delivery of HD content, a niche clientele but a reliable
one. They have also managed to divert traffic to their own amazon lookalike
website for orders purely using an existing platform where they have a pre-sale
conversation with clients on their own facebook profile.
But I am supposed to criticize
the current campaigns and to me these are the few that stand out, I possibly
cannot help myself and be nice to all of these as the digital agencies managed
to sell it to their clients and I am still trying to sell mine.
Brand: Karachi Snob
Platform: Website
Effectiveness: With these guys I am impressed they don’t focus much
on existing platforms, except for maybe a group page on facebook but that’s it.
Here is an information portal that focuses on what’s happening in the metros of
Pakistan, with comprehensive city listings and other guides. Not a unique idea
but a desi version of timeout guide.
Such listings are generally for
tourist to explore the city with ease but we the ‘yo’ crowd live in city
bubbles and possibly qualify to be tourist as well and snob sites are the best
way to explore and discover ‘happenings’.
This site is so effective now
that a café or any small business that pops up in the city must have themselves
registered with one of the snob sites. A membership card is being pushed by the
site which will keep the audience hooked.
The only thing I found missing
was a dialogue, almost all the reviews were by business owners and none by
actual audience.
Verdict: A brilliant replica but lacks mobility may be a mobile app
or a simple SMS address delivery will give them extensive database.
Brand: Pepsi Pakistan
Platform: Youtube & facebook
Effectiveness: Remember Afridi celebrating his birthday, Shoaib and
Razzaq playing cricket at some airport and the biggest of them all “Kis nay
kaha tha pepsi per 5 ruppay kaam karo?” All of these were big hits on social
media and went viral beyond brand team’s imagination. Although I still think
“kis nay kaha tha 5 rupay kaam karo” was not intentional, it just happened and
created enough user-generated content to encourage brand & agency to take
ownership and may be make a case study out of it(I would have done the same
thing).
But did anyone of you saw batting
and bowling tricks, which were made to look like raw footage by street
cricketers? I do, only because my brother was in it. It just did not click, who
is to be blamed? Of course the agency.
More attention-grabbing work is
being carried out on Pepsi Pakistan facebook page, a simple “Captions
Competition” on preset player avatar (I have to admit we crack great jokes on
cricket and politics). All you need to do to win is get 20 people to like your
caption, instantly shared.
Verdict: We can sit and say it’s too early or start experimenting.
There is nothing better than free media.
Cool Batting Trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KedFZ5S1zA0
Cool Bowling Trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnNeMWbog3c
Brand: Nescafe Pakistan
Platform: Facebook
Effectiveness: Nescafe Hum Hain Jawaan is not just a fan page
looking for fans but it is a perfect example of how to engage audience using
their own content. This fan page actually comes with a nice user-friendly app,
which encourages youth to share their stories using video or a rich full of
emotions and props comic strip toolkit.
The greatness of “Hum Hain
Jawaan” campaign is that it keeps the big idea intact across all the mediums
and a well thought digital execution gives them more than expected engagement
numbers.
I wonder if this app is backed by
some ground activation or secret seeding on college forums but they have
generated a pretty decent traffic.
Verdict: Probably the only campaign in Pakistan dependent on a
digital execution, such campaigns will indeed set a benchmark for other brands
to follow on social media.
Brand: Zong
Platform: Facebook/ Twitter
Effectiveness: They have a lot going on, let’s start with the special
Manchester United SIM offer, although no one knows what they are up to after
watching their teaser for over a month between every over bowled. There is
nothing fancy about their page that will attract traffic but they have kept a
simple rule, get the audience in a conversation and there is nothing better
than for brand to start chatting up with their audience.
They don’t have a dedicated
ManU/Zong page so cricket by default is part of their updates, what they did
with cricket is being applied on football now, predict score, discuss games and
win exciting prizes.
During their last M9 launch they
did something simple and exciting, every hour a re-charge code was being posted
and first one to redeem obviously gets to keep the balance. Now even M9 page is
catering to Manchester United but more to my surprise they post exactly the
same stuff on this page with a delay of 1 second.
Another interesting contest that
I spotted was Twitter Contest which actually encourages you to join twitter
just to retweet ‘Zongers’ and win weekly. I am sure the number of followers and
the conversations are not what Zong aimed at. I think they need a twitter
popularity contest like Ashton Kutcher and CNN to get to at least 2,000
followers.
Verdict: Confused. A lot of conversation going waste due to lack of
simple digital strategy.
Brand: Head & Shoulders
Platform: Facebook
Effectiveness: Branded Afridi fan page.
No one really needs to do
anything if you can afford the only super star of 180 million people, just
upload some videos, pictures and start a conversation related to that super
star.
But what I noticed or at least felt
that this page is not just there to worship Afridi, they are actually using it
to gather insight with random one click polls related to product/category and
they are getting more and more clicks on these polls, which wasn’t the case
before they signed Afridi fan club.
Digital team needs to keep the page
enjoyable, conversation relevant and data useful, whereas the client actually
needs to use this data to justify their investment.
Verdict: Say Something… Afridi makes these research polls fun but
is that what this page is all about?
Brand: Wateen
Platform: Facebook
Effectiveness: An interesting app offering a trip to infinity &
beyond, all you need to do is capture (image or video) emotion of your choice
and upload.
What I like about this app is its
simplicity, Wateen is not trying to sell you your dream destination but makes
you discover Pakistan, all they want you to do is express yourself and if the
brand can get that out from their followers “Jo Chaho” is spot on.
Verdict:
Keep it simple and catchy!
Revised version published in Aurora Magazine in Januat 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment