Harsh Wardhan Dave, Vice President, Trinetra Focus
Most of the Indian brands on social media today are still running after likes and trying to creating engagements for their fans. If we look at the top 50 Facebook pages in the country with regard to page likes, 33 of them belong to brands. Globally, only 15 of such highly popular pages belong to the corporate world, the rest belong to celebrities. Same is the case with Twitter.
Most of the Indian brands on social media today are still running after likes and trying to creating engagements for their fans. If we look at the top 50 Facebook pages in the country with regard to page likes, 33 of them belong to brands. Globally, only 15 of such highly popular pages belong to the corporate world, the rest belong to celebrities. Same is the case with Twitter.Harsh Wardhan Dave, Vice President, Trinetra Focus is a situational engineer turned media consultant. Dave loves to experiment in versatile media creation and distribution. His earlier stints included Group Head, Digital at Omnicom Media Group, UK; Group Head – Digital at Valuepitch Interactive; and Consulting Producer at Triom Media & Entertainment, among others.
In conversation with exchange4media’s Saloni Surti, Dave speaks about digital – including social media, e-commerce and m-commerce – from an India perspective. Q. Has social media in India grown beyond likes, trending and views? Most of the Indian brands on social media today are still running after likes and trying to creating engagements for their fans. If we look at the top 50 Facebook pages in the country with regard to page likes, 33 of them belong to brands. Globally, only 15 of such highly popular pages belong to the corporate world, the rest belong to celebrities from the fields of music, sports and films. Same is the case with Twitter. Globally, only six of the top 50 handles on the site having the maximum followers are corporate brands, while in India, 32 of them are corporate brands.
Having said that, there are few companies that have actually thought about mapping their business objectives with social platforms and are using them very effectively for various benefits.
Vodafone India has a dedicated team for tracking and responding to user complaints on Twitter. On a daily basis, they send 90-100 tweets, most of them about customer issues. This is a very smart way to handle CRM at a time when the consumer is impatient and wants quick solutions. Similarly, companies like Hippo have used Twitter to streamline their supply chain dynamics. Going a step ahead, Faaso’s introduced Tweet to order to achieve actual sales via social media. Recruiting via Career pages on Facebook and LinkedIn is also being explored by companies. Micromax recently used social media and crowd sourced its new logo.
It’s very important for brands to know what they want from their social campaigns and then go about choosing correct platforms and then design campaigns accordingly.
Q. Small businesses are finally opening up to the prospect of marketing through digital and social media. How do you think they can make use of a tool like Graph Search by Facebook? Since Facebook has rolled out this feature to only limited users, it is rather early to analyse the true implications for users and marketers. The search tool could take more than a year to roll out to all of Facebook’s billion-plus users, and it'll surely see a lot of changes by that time.
Facebook has always provided marketers with awesome targeting data (city, age, interests, likes, etc.). With Graph Search, that bouquet of targeting options is going to increase. Once this feature becomes mainstream with more users adding valuable data, marketers will know more details about users like how many times you are checking in at places where your friends have checked in, and so on.
From users’ perspective, we all have been ‘Liking’ hundreds of things a year, sometimes a friend’s company or a new music album, sometimes even a goofy phrase that our friends have ‘Liked.’ Now, this feature could pull things up which we ‘Liked’ in 2009 and forgot about. For example, I searched for my ‘friends who like drugs’ and whoop, I saw three friends! Two out three didn’t even smoke a cigarette! But they got listed as they had liked related pages. (One of them had actually liked an anti-smoking product, which was listed under ‘drugs’ category.)
Interestingly, Graph Search only pulls in publicly available data, so users can avoid such situations by managing their privacy settings.
Q. With the increasing consumption of regional content, is it the right time for brands to focus on creating content on local lines through digital? Creation and consumption of regional content is definitely on the rise. According to the latest ‘Vernacular Report’ by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB, approximately 45 million internet users have used the internet in their local language as of December 2012 (out of the 122 million active internet users in India). This is predominantly content like news, matrimonial services and online banking.
Where regional content has really picked up well in digital ecosystem is mobiles. With 900 million mobile phones in India, companies have already started experimenting with creating useful and engaging regional content.
Unilever started a test pilot for building a low cost mobile activation model for media-dark geographies and it turned out to be one of the biggest mobile activations ever done for HUL. In UP and Bihar, users could dial a missed call on a toll free number and they received a call back with jokes in their own language, Hindi! In three months, five million missed calls were received from 7.7 Lakh unique numbers.
There have been other interesting players like Intuit, whose flagship platform in India, called Fasal, reaches out to more 1.2 million farmers across three states in India, who get free SMSes (about best mandi prices) in their local language. (These farmers span more than 36,000 villages in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka; Fasal is today integrated into 161 mandis across three states).
Q. Are Tier II and III cities seen warming up to e-commerce? How can e-commerce websites tap potential TG in these areas? Absolutely. A recent study done by India’s leading VC Accel revealed that 56 per cent of the India’s online shoppers came from Tier II cities/towns in 2012. E-commerce companies spending huge monies on branding (television ads, try and buy options, no questions asked 15-day return policy and most importantly, cash on delivery facility) is fuelling this trend.
Another interesting reason is creating availability. Today, an average housewife in Bilaspur, where a lot of brands are not readily available, can log on to any e-commerce or home decor brands’ website and buy products of her choice and budget, sitting right on her sofa!
Q. With the advent of m-commerce, what are the trends expected across the online shopping space in India? M-commerce is going to be really big. In May 2012, mobile internet traffic surpassed desktop internet traffic.
As per an eBay research, 68 per cent of Indian smartphone users have made an online purchase using their smartphone. A large number of Indians now use their smartphone to shop as well as compare prices. Shopping is the third most popular category of search after emails and social networking, with 70 per cent of smart phone users accessing online shopping websites.
E-commerce companies have started adapting their websites for mobile viewing and are also developing applications. This will help them tap repeat customers, create loyal fan base and increase sales.
In conversation with exchange4media’s Saloni Surti, Dave speaks about digital – including social media, e-commerce and m-commerce – from an India perspective. Q. Has social media in India grown beyond likes, trending and views? Most of the Indian brands on social media today are still running after likes and trying to creating engagements for their fans. If we look at the top 50 Facebook pages in the country with regard to page likes, 33 of them belong to brands. Globally, only 15 of such highly popular pages belong to the corporate world, the rest belong to celebrities from the fields of music, sports and films. Same is the case with Twitter. Globally, only six of the top 50 handles on the site having the maximum followers are corporate brands, while in India, 32 of them are corporate brands.
Having said that, there are few companies that have actually thought about mapping their business objectives with social platforms and are using them very effectively for various benefits.
Vodafone India has a dedicated team for tracking and responding to user complaints on Twitter. On a daily basis, they send 90-100 tweets, most of them about customer issues. This is a very smart way to handle CRM at a time when the consumer is impatient and wants quick solutions. Similarly, companies like Hippo have used Twitter to streamline their supply chain dynamics. Going a step ahead, Faaso’s introduced Tweet to order to achieve actual sales via social media. Recruiting via Career pages on Facebook and LinkedIn is also being explored by companies. Micromax recently used social media and crowd sourced its new logo.
It’s very important for brands to know what they want from their social campaigns and then go about choosing correct platforms and then design campaigns accordingly.
Q. Small businesses are finally opening up to the prospect of marketing through digital and social media. How do you think they can make use of a tool like Graph Search by Facebook? Since Facebook has rolled out this feature to only limited users, it is rather early to analyse the true implications for users and marketers. The search tool could take more than a year to roll out to all of Facebook’s billion-plus users, and it'll surely see a lot of changes by that time.
Facebook has always provided marketers with awesome targeting data (city, age, interests, likes, etc.). With Graph Search, that bouquet of targeting options is going to increase. Once this feature becomes mainstream with more users adding valuable data, marketers will know more details about users like how many times you are checking in at places where your friends have checked in, and so on.
From users’ perspective, we all have been ‘Liking’ hundreds of things a year, sometimes a friend’s company or a new music album, sometimes even a goofy phrase that our friends have ‘Liked.’ Now, this feature could pull things up which we ‘Liked’ in 2009 and forgot about. For example, I searched for my ‘friends who like drugs’ and whoop, I saw three friends! Two out three didn’t even smoke a cigarette! But they got listed as they had liked related pages. (One of them had actually liked an anti-smoking product, which was listed under ‘drugs’ category.)
Interestingly, Graph Search only pulls in publicly available data, so users can avoid such situations by managing their privacy settings.
Q. With the increasing consumption of regional content, is it the right time for brands to focus on creating content on local lines through digital? Creation and consumption of regional content is definitely on the rise. According to the latest ‘Vernacular Report’ by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB, approximately 45 million internet users have used the internet in their local language as of December 2012 (out of the 122 million active internet users in India). This is predominantly content like news, matrimonial services and online banking.
Where regional content has really picked up well in digital ecosystem is mobiles. With 900 million mobile phones in India, companies have already started experimenting with creating useful and engaging regional content.
Unilever started a test pilot for building a low cost mobile activation model for media-dark geographies and it turned out to be one of the biggest mobile activations ever done for HUL. In UP and Bihar, users could dial a missed call on a toll free number and they received a call back with jokes in their own language, Hindi! In three months, five million missed calls were received from 7.7 Lakh unique numbers.
There have been other interesting players like Intuit, whose flagship platform in India, called Fasal, reaches out to more 1.2 million farmers across three states in India, who get free SMSes (about best mandi prices) in their local language. (These farmers span more than 36,000 villages in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka; Fasal is today integrated into 161 mandis across three states).
Q. Are Tier II and III cities seen warming up to e-commerce? How can e-commerce websites tap potential TG in these areas? Absolutely. A recent study done by India’s leading VC Accel revealed that 56 per cent of the India’s online shoppers came from Tier II cities/towns in 2012. E-commerce companies spending huge monies on branding (television ads, try and buy options, no questions asked 15-day return policy and most importantly, cash on delivery facility) is fuelling this trend.
Another interesting reason is creating availability. Today, an average housewife in Bilaspur, where a lot of brands are not readily available, can log on to any e-commerce or home decor brands’ website and buy products of her choice and budget, sitting right on her sofa!
Q. With the advent of m-commerce, what are the trends expected across the online shopping space in India? M-commerce is going to be really big. In May 2012, mobile internet traffic surpassed desktop internet traffic.
As per an eBay research, 68 per cent of Indian smartphone users have made an online purchase using their smartphone. A large number of Indians now use their smartphone to shop as well as compare prices. Shopping is the third most popular category of search after emails and social networking, with 70 per cent of smart phone users accessing online shopping websites.
E-commerce companies have started adapting their websites for mobile viewing and are also developing applications. This will help them tap repeat customers, create loyal fan base and increase sales.
Tags
digital
